Trump’s Plan to Economically Strangle Iran & Taiwan Rehearses for Invasion

**SPEAKER_1** (0:09)
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**Mike Baker** (0:27)
It's Friday, the 14th of August. Welcome to The President's Daily Brief. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. First up, the Secretary of War or Secretary of Defense of your old school, Pete Hegseth, says the United States can maintain its naval blockade of Iran indefinitely, signaling Washington may be preparing for a prolonged economic war of endurance with the Iranian regime. Later in the show, Taiwan holds massive invasion drills as tensions with China rise, testing everything from civilian air raid responses to the Coast Guard's role in stopping an amphibious assault. Plus, Russia pounds Ukraine's largest grain export port facility on the Danube River as President Zelenskiy warns that Kiev still needs more patriot missiles before the winter sets in. And in today's Back of the Brief, Vladimir Putin visits a disputed island claimed by Japan, adding additional pressure on Tokyo as Russia, China, and North Korea increasingly close ranks. But first, today's PDB spotlight.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth says the US is prepared to maintain its naval blockade of Iran indefinitely. Speaking to reporters Thursday, Hegseth said the Navy has enough ships to keep the operation going for as long as necessary, simply rotating vessels in and out of the region. And that word, indefinitely, tells us where the US administration's strategy toward Iran may be heading. After more than five months of war, a failed ceasefire, and negotiations that have repeatedly stalled, Washington increasingly appears prepared to turn this conflict into an economic war of endurance. The basic strategy is relatively straightforward. Keeping Iran's ports under pressure, prevent Iranian vessels from freely moving through the region, cut Tehran off from the economic benefits of normal trade, and wait for the financial pressure to become greater than the regime can tolerate.
The Pentagon's message is that the US military can keep that squeeze in place for as long as the president wants. Washington has already poured tens of thousands of troops into the Middle East since the war began, along with more than 20 warships. Since the blockade was imposed, US forces have redirected more than 55 commercial vessels accused of trying to run through the blockade. American forces have boarded ships, disabled others, and earlier this week, a Navy helicopter fired two Hellfire missiles into the engine room of a Panama-flagged vessel after its crew ignored orders to turn around. So when it comes to enforcing the blockade itself, the Pentagon appears confident.
The problem is that Iran is pursuing its own war of endurance, and the regime doesn't need to actually defeat the US Navy, of course, to make that strategy work. It simply needs to keep the Strait of Hormuz dangerous enough that shipping companies, captains, insurers remain unwilling to take the risk. Before the war, more than 130 vessels routinely crossed through the Strait every day. On Tuesday, just 14 made the trip, at least that's the number of vessels that could be recorded. It's unclear how many were transiting dark. And according to ship tracking data cited by the Wall Street Journal, of 166 crossings recorded so far this month, only two are known to have used the US protected route along the coast of Oman. The rest either traveled through routes administered by Iran or, as mentioned, shut off their tracking systems while crossing. As we mentioned before here on the PDB, Iran doesn't have to completely close the strait to create instability. A handful of missile and drone attacks can be enough to convince the commercial shipping industry that the risk simply is not worth it. War risk insurance that cost roughly a quarter of 1% of a vessel's value before the war can now reach as high as 10% for a larger tanker. That could mean paying anywhere from 3 million to 10 million dollars in insurance costs for a single trip through the strait.
And that leaves Washington and Tehran locked in an unusual economic standoff. The US can continue the blockade on Iran, as the Pentagon has said. Meanwhile, Iran can keep enough pressure on Hormuz to prevent the waterway from returning to normal. President Trump insists that America has, quote, total control over the strait. Iranian officials are now making the exact opposite claim. On Thursday, Tehran's military said no vessel can pass through the strait without Iranian permission. While another senior official said Iran will not fully reopen the waterway until Washington meets its commitments under the previous ceasefire agreement. The reality, so, of the situation appears to fall somewhere between those competing claims. The US., of course, has overwhelming military superiority in the region and can prevent Iranian shipping from operating normally. But Tehran has demonstrated that it can still make commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz extremely expensive and dangerous.