Speaker 1: And hello, how are you welcome to the Big Podcast
on this Wednesday. Today is the eleventh day of March,
year of all our twenty twenty six. My name is
Tom Sullivan. And well, as we continue on, obviously it's
day eleven of the war, and there's getting there's some
interesting observations about what's going on with that, about whether
or not we're ready to wrap this up and move
on to something else because there's political pain, or whether
we are going to stick with the program, which most
of the military people have said will take three to
five weeks before we get most of everything that we
want to get done done. So they're not done yet,
but the president is getting antsy. We also have oil.
Yesterday we spent a lot of time on the oil markets,
and we'll give a little more information about that today.
But the markets, as far as the stock market concerned,
down two to three hundred points most of the trading
session today. Oil prices have remained somewhat stable, so things
have kind of settled down there. On the economy, we
got the consumer Price Index out today, which is usually
a very big deal. This is inflation for last month,
and the CPI consumer price index went up two point
four percent, which is about what was expected, and it's
pretty decent. It's remember this is February, so this is
prior to the war breaking out with Iran, so that
changes everything. So this is very stale, but we'll market
in the books two point four percent the car ray
you take out food and energy. How about everything else
that you buy out there went up two point five percent,
so that's not bad. Again, all that is going to
change when we get a report for the month of March,
primarily because of the price of oil and gas and
all of that. As far looking down the list, we
pull the list up here and look down the list
for what went up and what went down because the
big gain eleven percent increase was gas serve utility gas service,
so if you get gas at your home, that's way up.
Let's see, yeah, energy services up six m We look
down the list here, what else is medical services up
four percent? And what came down? Well, gasoline did? Gasoline
came down better than five and a half percent, so
we're seeing some Well that was again, that was February,
so it's not where the FED wants it to be.
But and the FED is meeting next Tuesday and Wednesday,
and I would suspect with this kind of report, and
with the war underway, I think they're going to sit
on their hands. I don't think they're going to do
anything when it comes to interest rates. We also got
a little side note that I thought was interesting. Apparently
they're early filers, people that have already sent in their
tax returns for twenty twenty five. The IRS says that
the refunds are running about eleven percent of where they
were same time last year year. And a lot of
this goes back to what the Trump administration has been advertising,
which is with the big beautiful Bill, by the time
people fill out your tax returns, you're going to find
out that you're going to have a bigger refund this
year than you have on average in the past. So
refunds running eleven percent ahead of last year, and they're
they're crossing their fingers and hoping that that continues, and therefore,
with more money in people's pockets, the increase in gas
prices won't be that much of terrible effect on people's
personal income. That's the hope. Anyway, too soon to tell.
So let's get into the war. Day eleven. We've got
the President was leaving the White House today and stopped
to talk to some reporters he was going to He's
giving the speech this afternoon in Kentucky, right right on
the Kentucky Ohio border Cincinnati area, and he basically says
the war will be over one. He declares, the war over.
Speaker 2: Park Board. You need to do militarily for this operation
to add.
Speaker 3: More the same, and we'll see how that all comes out.
Right now, they are they've lost their navy, they've lost
their air force, they have no anti aircraft apparatus at all,
they have no radar. Their leaders are gone, and we
could do a lot worse. We're leaving certain things that
if we take him out, or we could take him
out by this afternoon, in fact within an hour, they
literally would never be able to build that country back.
Speaker 1: That's very Trumpian of Donald Trump. You know, he's optimistic
about everything. But the leaders are not gone. And by
the way, the new Ayatola, the new leader, we haven't
heard from him, not a peep, not a photo, nothing,
not even a statement from his office. So people are
starting to wonder what happened to him. The semi official
word is that he was injured in the attack. That
killed his father and a bunch of other running leaders
in the first day of this war, but that his
foot was fractured and he had some facial lacerations. That's
that's what they're saying. But if you just have a
broken foot and a few cuts on your face, you're
still going to meet go before the people, go before
the cameras. So there's something up there. We don't know
what it is. Mike Pompeo kind of addresses that as well.
We'll play that for you. But the other part behind
this is is that he's talking about something that he
could do within an hour and it would ruin Ron forever.
What he's talking about is in the Persian Gulf north
of the Strait of Hormuz. If you get through the
Strait of Hormus and you go north, you go up.
The ships go up to a place where a lot
of them load up their oil and it's a huge
loading facility and pipes that come in from all over
to the place in Iran. If you were to destroy that,
you would put Iran's business out of business for a
very long period of time. I think that's what the
president was talking about. By the way, a number of ships.
Three hundred there's the estimate. Three hundred ships are waiting
outside the Strait of Hormus, And there was a lot
of discussion about the Strait of hor moves today and
the President is encouraging the ship owners to go ahead
and sail through, and he's talking about he's mentioned a
couple of times that our navy can maybe escort them,
maybe maybe, while General Pain isn't so sure.
Speaker 4: We'll look at the range of options to set the
military conditions to be able to do that, and then,
like we always do with every potential mission, come to
the Secretary of the President with both what are the
resources required, what is the command and control required, and
what are the risks and how do we mitigate those risks?
Speaker 1: And the risks are big because even though yes, the
President's right, a lot of the Iran's abilities to strike
militarily have been diminished to have take have been destroyed,
but they still are firing missiles and they're still firing
their drones and they all they got to do is
dial in where the ships are in the Persian Gulf
and attack them. Now we have three of them that
have been hit so far, but the President is still
talking about going in because this is the choke point,
this is what's causing oil price is to go crazy.
And obviously he's keeping a big eye on that oil market.
But this is what he had to say about using
this Strait of Hormos.
Speaker 5: Hey fanta' trasy of various oil companies, encouraging them to
use the straight of Corbier.
Speaker 1: Right, they should, I think they should. I think they
should do they?
Speaker 3: Look, we took out just about all of their mind
shifts in one night. We're up to folk number sixty.
I didn't realize that that big a navy. He mentioned
the mind shift. There are ships and not shouldn't say ships.
There are ships.
Speaker 1: There's also little tiny speedboats that are laying mines apparently
in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz. And
so Donald Trump, who is always a big risk taker, yeah,
go ahead use it. But right now there's most of
the ship owners are going no way and try and
get cruise on these ships. So everything is still plugged
when it comes to the straight forwards. They tried, but
three ships tried and three ships got struck. So now
the Washington Press Corps is circling the White House and going.
Donald Trump is looking like he wants to get out
of this. He's looking at the markets, he's looking at
the price he's looking he's looking at the political pain
that the Republicans and will suffer if this continues much longer.
Yet the military keeps talking about three to five more weeks.
So Josh Dawsey, who rights for the Wall Street Journal,
said this, behind the scenes, he.
Speaker 6: Doesn't have an appetite for a long term war, at
least according to my sources that I've talked to. He's
looking for ways to sort of message we've done this,
we've done that, now it's time to leave.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: The question has that may have said, how much of
that can he control?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: If he says we're out of here, and then let's
say the Iranians keep attacking with the missiles of a Dronta,
they have left what as a president too? And the
president has a lot of power. He's obviously, you know,
and a lot of ways, the most powerful figure in
the world. But he can control everything, right, and some
of these things are beyond his control. But he wants
to get out at some point. If he watches the
markets closely, you see when he makes comments when he
wants the markets to sort of to go back up.
He watches the markets closely, He watches all prices closely.
He watches the MAGA supporters closely. I mean, Joe Ogan,
I can quite tell you. President I notices that he's
watching voices, he's watching polling and his part, he's watching
the midterms. And I don't think he has an appetite
for a long term sustained conflict with Iran, at least
according to what I'm told by folks inside the White House.
Speaker 1: Well, long term is all relative. I mean when we
started off, even Haig Seth stood up there the first
day and said it could be three to five weeks,
could be sick, could be seven could He said it's weeks,
not months. But again the President promised. And I think
this is his true nature. He doesn't want long term
for a rewards. So he's looking at this and we're
eleven days into it, and the question is is he
getting antsy? Wall Street Journal, the editorial board wrote a
piece today, the nuclear job in Iran is not finished?
Why lead the regime, the infrastructure and stockpile to try again.
They're basically saying, we're this far into it. Don't stop now,
get the job done. And the other criticism is confusion
about the messages about the presidents talking about well and
yet Defense Secretary Heggseeth is going, look at we're just
getting started here. Doctor sin M b Kill with one
of the big research institutes in London says she's getting
different messages.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm a little perplexed because actually in Israeli government
official also announced today that the war is going to
go on for weeks. So for me, this raises questions
about how aligned the United States and Israel is in
this joint campaign. And certainly the United States and Israel
together have the capability as formidable military powers to keep Iran.
But you know, President Trump hasn't quite made clear what
the off ramp is. Is the off ramp sort of
job done. We've killed the old Supreme Leader, and we've
targeted everything we need to target, so thereby we're done.
Speaker 1: And how does this war really end?
Speaker 7: Because it's important to think about the Islamic Republic here.
They are not going to accept a ceasefire similar to
what we saw last year during the Twelve Day War.
On the twelve, the last day of the Twelve Day War,
the US struck Iran's nuclear facilities, and then Iran responded
by striking a US base in Qatar, and then we
were done. But for Iran that end left the door
open to further strikes. So they're going to be looking
for a guarantee that this doesn't happen again. And so
this ceasefire is going to have to result in something
more meaningful. And here the objectives of the US, Israel,
and Iran all need to be under stood and taken
into account, which.
Speaker 1: Also strikes me as Iran is not going to stop
until everything is just powder dust. They're not going to
finish early. They're not going to say that's good enough.
I think they're going the whole way. One guy who
obviously is very much in favor of going the whole
way is General Jack Teine.
Speaker 8: Well, first of all, I think the strait of a
moose problem gets resolved when we end this war, and
we're three to five weeks from doing that. I think
in the meantime, the fact that the media and the
president's opposition party seems to be in a frenzy over
the fact that oil prices are spiking, and it seems
to me that oil prices spiking should not be the
pacing item for this war. The reality is is that
we're going to end this war on our terms, based
on the conditions and the objectives to be achieved. And
it seems to make some sense to me that if
we have to put up with some oil price, this
is spiking for a few weeks to end this tyrannical regimes,
diabolical influence and control regionally and writ large in the
world and imposing their will and determination and hell that
they've caused you for almost fifty years. It's worth the
cost of doing that. I mean, can't we bear this
little sacrifice for a few weeks while we do this?
I mean, that makes more sense. Let's finish this war
on our terms and get it right, and those prices
will come down now with the strait of a mouse.
There is a problem there. If we start to bring
out warships through right now, the Iranians still have the
capability not just at the coastal area, which we can eliminate,
but hundreds of miles back to range those ships with
precision weapons. And that makes no sense in terms of
the risk when we're going to finish them off entirely
in a few weeks. In the meantime, the commander of
Central Command has got has it as a task, and
he's deliberately working to eliminate the potential of those offensive
weapons interfering with escort operations in the straits of a move.
We're likely not going to begin that task of escorting
tankers through until that threat is removed. But I think
about the same time the war will be ending. In
any event, we're on a pathway here. The President has
talked about it. He has the patience to listen to
his commanders and to listen to the IDF leaders and
the Prime Minister Netniow. When those objectives have been achieved,
then I think we'll see the termination of military operations.
But until such time, we're going to continue to pursue
those objectives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm fascinated by this topic because I hear people
talking about, well, let's go ahead and send the ships
on through, like the people like the Iranians are standing
on the short line throwing rocks at the ships or something. No,
they can be five hundred miles away. If good artillery
person zoomed the directions in, and they will, they will
blow up that oil tanker from hundreds of miles away
without having to show up on the shore. So and
it's the whole Perusian Gulf is a target rich area
for the enemy. And the President knows that, but he
likes to kind of overseell if you will. But he
gets his information. He's got good information in his head,
but he likes to, you know, talk about all the shiny,
wonderful stuff that we're doing. General King talks about the
fact that no, he knows, he knows what's going on.
Speaker 8: Sure absolutely. Where does he get all his information from? Well,
he gets it, you know, from the Secretary of War,
the Chairman of Joint Chiefs, principally from the Central Command
commander who has all of these facts he is leading
the war effort for us. And also he gets the
information from the IDF operations. We have a three star
general and a complete staff embedded in the IDF, and
they have a one star general and a complete staff
embedded in Central Commands headquarters. The trust and exchange here
is really something of a sea. And listen for the
military people out there who would appreciate this, who've gone
through twenty years of nine to eleven wars, We've never
had a partner like this who brings together not only
to shared values which we've had in the past, certainly,
and common objectives which we've had in the past, but
unbelievable capability and proven capability. These are the two most
proven militaries in the world conducting the first time ever
combined operations against a common objective and a common enemy.
And we're going to get this job done together, make
no mistake about that.
Speaker 1: So you can tell the general who really understands the
military part of this completely believes that this is death
going to be a win when all of this is
finally done.
Speaker 8: There's no doubt in my mind about it. And talking
to the commanders, I'm kind of irrelevant compared to them.
You know, they they speak with total confidence, and when
they began this operation, you know, our commander Flood total
the President, you know, I have total confidence that we
will be able to accomplish successfully all military objectives, mister President.
And I'm certain that that confident and that that commander
Admiral Brad Cooper, who's truly exceptional officer, transferred that trust
and confidence to the President himself, and that is where
he is he was then, and that's where he's been
ever since on this operation, and he talks to Prime
Minister net Now, these are two wartime commanders now talking
to each other, much like Churchill and Roosevelt will continuing
to talk to each other, common objective, shared values, working
together as best as it can possibly be expected. I'm
not Pollyannish. I'm not trying to provide flowery marks here.
I'm just trying to state the facts. This is really
organizations coming together, built on trust and confidence in each other,
and it's something really to behold.
Speaker 1: So even in our military, we have people that see
things differently. And General Keene obviously was the vice chairman
of the Joint chiefs of Staff. He rows up to
number two in the entire hierarchy. But a one star general,
guy by the name of Steve Anderson, he's retired. I
want to play this for you to see what you think.
I couldn't believe what this guy said. He is the
most negative one star retired general that I've ever heard.
Speaker 2: Well, this war will end whenever Donald Trump says it's
going to end, whenever he decides to declare victory, and
if he is, he declare victory today and go home.
Because this is not going well. We have a more
radicalized regime in place.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: The IRGC does not seem to be impacted at all.
In fact, they've become perhaps even stronger. Sure they've lost
a lot of military facilities, they've lost a lot of assets,
but there's nothing that they can't recustom to quickly. And
I just reminded what Henry Kissinger said in the War
of Vietnam. He said, you know, the United States loses
by not winning. In the Vietnamese win by not losing.
And that is certainly the case here. The Uranians will
win by not losing.
Speaker 1: But there is some truth in some history to the
fact that countries, people in a nation that are at
war will defend their nation. Look at the Ukrainians. They're
incredible how they're defending their country. So will the Iranians
defend their country? I'm not so sure. Are there, of
course supporters of the Ayatola and the IRGC, but that's
not the majority of the population. And this guy uses
Vietnam and listen, he'll talk about Ukraine. This is not
the Ukraine War, but that seems to be his fixation.
Speaker 2: I think that they probably want to inflict as much
pain as possible. I think that they would like to
end the war. But if you look at what they're
doing now in the straight up humus for instance, I
mean they've got incredible asymmetric capabilities. They've got mines, perhaps
five thousand, They've got ballistic missiles they can fire. We
know that they have about one hundred and twenty launchers left.
Speaker 1: They have drones.
Speaker 2: I remind viewers of what the Ukrainians were able to
do with air and sea based drones against the Russian
fleet in the Black Sea. They have homemade cruise missiles.
Again back to the war in Ukraine. Remember the sinking
at the Maskva four years ago, the Russian battleship. They
was sunk by essentially a surfboard loaded with munitions fired
by the Ukrainians. The Uranians also have suicide bones once again,
remember excuse me, suicide boats. Remember once again the USS
hole in Yemen that was attacked in two thousand by
a suicide boat. And of course they also have speedboats,
perhaps a thousand of them. They could be loaded with
RPGs and all kinds of munitions. They could wreak havoc.
There's lots of asymmetric threats that the Uranians can use,
and I think that they're looking at inflicting as much
damage as they possibly can to end this war as
quickly as they can.
Speaker 1: So Sadly, military, especially the general ranks, are supposed to
not be political, but they are, especially general ranks, they
all have to have a politician support them in order
to get that star. He got one star, and I
looked him up. I looked at his background. He's an
Army brigadier general retire, and he does not like Donald Trump.
This is I think, overshadowing his military background and military expertise.
One other shall we say a voice from opposition to
some of the people that like General Keene. One of
the politicians is, of course, none other than Rand Paul.
I think high oil prices will be a problem. I
think the twenty twenty six elections already we are behind
the eight call as far as the electoral process.
Speaker 9: I think if you add in high gas prices, high
oil prices, and if we are still bombing around with
kinetic action, people don't want to call it war. There's
still kinetic action that causes all to be over one
hundred dollars. I think you're going to see a disastrous selection.
Speaker 1: So he's talking about politics, and he's talking about at
the midterms in November. Brett Behar, who knows his politics
in Washington better than anybody, had this real that's.
Speaker 10: Right, and he is correct. They are behind the April
if you look at polls right now, if you look
across the country, Republicans would be probably in a place
where they would lose the House, maybe squeak by in
the Senate. The White House is looking at the calendar
saying they have a month or two before the cake
is baked, and at least they're forecasting that the kinetic
action that Senator Paul references is going to come to
an end sooner rather than later, and that the straight
up removes is not going to be a problem, even
though it's a complex istion.
Speaker 1: So from politics and TSA at the airport not being
in full full numbers, the question then becomes is are
they going to ever fund DHS And that's a bill
that they're trying to get through Congress right now.
Speaker 10: Well, I think they get a deal. I think it's
tough to place the blame in Washington on these bills,
but this one seems a little bit easier because the
TSA lines and what you see you can say. I
was just at the airport today. Somebody came up to
me and said, one of the Democrats going to do
the deal. He was a TSA guy, and I said,
you know, I'm not sure when the deal is going
to happen. He said, they got to get it done.
I'm working on my second shift, you know. So you
feel for them. They're showing up for work and not
getting a paycheck. I think it's easier to place that blame.
I bet they get a negotiated deal. I also think
this Save America Act and what we're seeing with John
Cornyn and others making changes, there may be something that
politically changes the dynamic for Democrats there.
Speaker 1: So back to the war and back to the Strait
of Horror moves. People are questioning whether or not the
military is just now trying to figure out what to
do about about getting ship traffic going through the Strait
of Horror moves again. And no. Mike Pompeo waited and said, no,
They've had these plans in place for years.
Speaker 11: I don't think for a moment they're just figuring this
out now. They're getting ready. They're doing the nescess in
the same way that they set the field, set the
defense so that we could knock down ballistic missiles and drones. Right,
took several weeks to get all of that in place.
They're not putting in place. They work so that we
can safely escort ships through the Strait of Removes. No,
the military planning for this is years in the making.
We know precisely how to do it. There is more
work that needs to be done to take out raining
capability so that we can do so safely. But you know,
you heard the threats on American ships traveling through their town.
We shouldn't forget those threats have been around for decades.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 11: The very reason President Trump is having to do what
we're doing is because they have threatened to close this
straight time and time again and held American hostage and
say nope, don't come get them because we'll blow your
stuff up. This is very necessary. The right approach is
being taken. Its methodical world. Just eleven days in, lots
more work to do, and when we do, we'll get
the straight reopened. We'll do so safely, and we will
have punished in an Iranian regime that has taken so
much toll on American life for so very long.
Speaker 1: So let's get an update on oil today. Because the
straight of hor moves the courses. Everybody's talking about it,
but at the same time as oil being traded. And finally,
the IEA came out today and said, okay, let's do
some sort of release from the strategic petroleum reserves around
of the G seven countries. Charles payin my old financial
body over at Fox Business, He's not for it.
Speaker 12: I'm not a huge fan of the move. Now, different
countries have different supplies, right, Japan has the most supply
in terms of how long they can feed their economy.
We're like number two and number three. Some nations are
called completely flat footed, like Canada, right, which is ironic
since they drill for oil.
Speaker 1: So it's one of these things.
Speaker 12: If it could bias let's say twenty days of calmness
or mitigate the pressure from maybe twenty days. If the
calculus is that this will be over effectively in twenty days,
then okay. Otherwise, if it's a political move, I think
it's a mistake.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a mistake too. But they're going
to do and the President late this afternoon was asked
about are you going to go ahead and tap the
strategic petroleum reserve that we have, and he said he would.
He didn't say how much, he didn't give a number.
But again I point out the fact that we've got
plenty of oil. We don't need to tap our strategic
petroleum reserve and putting oil on the markets from the
they're releasing collectively all these countries four hundred million barrels
and that will make a dent of a few cents,
I mean maybe twenty cents, but it's not going to
change things, and it's a one time deal. Then what
do you do if this war drags on. In addition
to that, well, by the way, this is the largest
release of strategic petroleum reserves in the history of our nation.
But in addition to that, you can't just release four
hundred million barrels overnight. It's going to take weeks, if
not months, to do that. Max Layton is the head
of Commodities over at City Bank, and he's well, he says,
look at he said, there's some things that plenty of
gasoline is in reserves, but he said, things like jet
fuel are they degrade very quickly, So you really can't
store them, so there's not much of that to be released.
Here's Max Layton.
Speaker 5: I think the early signs are it's not particularly quick,
but it could be. And I think that's the important
bit is on paper. So for example, if the US
can do a certain run rate of de stocking of
public inventry, then you add on top of that the
European countries, and you add on top of that the
Asia based OECD countries. In total, according to this study,
you could do up to twenty four million miles. The
market probably only needs around ten. I see, you know
it's possible, but they have yet to commit to doing it.
Speaker 1: What he said was that there's been studies that say
you can release with all these nations collectively could release
twenty four million barrels a day, but he says it's
probably more like around ten. So if ten million barrels
a day they want to release four hundred million barrels,
well you do the math. It's this kinetic stuff going
on over there in Iran is probably going to be
long over before before we get done with releasing all
this oil. So I really don't think it'll make much
of a difference. But speaking of the markets, today and oil.
Most of the stock market was lower, but oil prices
did go up. Let's start with the Dow. The Dow
down two hundred and eighty nine. It was trading between
the minus two hundred minus four hundred most of the
trading session, so it was down, but it was fairly stable.
Down two eighty nine to forty seven, Thoy four to seventeen.
SMP was down five and n ASDAK gained nineteen. The
price of gone hold down fifty eight dollars. It's at
five thousand and one eighty three. And oil there's that
green arrow up five bucks, closing today at eighty eight
dollars for a barrel of oil. Thank you for coming
by today. We will be back again tomorrow. Try this again.
I hope to see you then