LARRY KUDLOW: Will economic starvation bring Iran to its unconditional knees?
FOX Business host Larry Kudlow discusses the state of conflict in the Middle East on ‘Kudlow.’
“The ban scares them more than the bombing – they’ve been bombed for years, but it’s the ban they hate.” That’s President Trump speaking to Fox News’ Martha MacCallum in a statement. And it’s possible that the factionalized Iranians just can’t come up with any kind of collective agreement to present to American negotiators.
It may also be that there is no such thing as a covenant, other than unconditional surrender. All nuclear activities stop. Enriched uranium should be moved from Iran to America. All proxies and other forms of terrorism must be stopped. The Strait of Hormuz must be completely opened. And frankly any other American demands are placed on a badly defeated Iran.
In a sense, the war is over now, but American military combat operations, much stronger today than at the beginning of the war, could be resumed at any time. And perhaps most importantly, the United States Navy’s blockade of Iranian ports continues. That is the state of play and the state of the war right now. No oil, no money. That is Iran’s problem.
Fox News senior strategy analyst Ret. Gen. Jack Keane breaks down the future of US-Iran talks and President Donald Trump’s ‘time-pressed’ decision to stop firing on ‘Kudlow.’
America will almost certainly control the entire Persian Gulf theater, including the Strait of Hormuz. It probably costs Iran something close to $450 million a day, amounting to about $160 billion a year, with a budget of only $100 billion a year. Simply put, there is no money to meet paychecks or retirement.
All the criminals, and the barbarians, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and all the governments, and all the businesses they stole and looted, and all kinds of tyrants will not be paid.
If we actually took out Kharg Island, that would produce an additional 1.5 million barrels a day, worth about $140 million at current rates, including 190,000 workers, according to a NY Post release by retired United States Navy captain Lance B. Gordon. And there could be as much as 200 million barrels a day of Iranian oil floating in the high seas mostly near Communist China, which could be worth about $20 billion. Yet the recession that comes from foreclosure is the biggest and most powerful financial weapon; we’ve never tried this before, and it might work. I would like to see the United States Treasury seize all the bank accounts of the criminals who run Iran, but that is a different story.
The point is that at the moment, Mr. Trump is content to let sanctions impose their punishment on Iran for the foreseeable future, perhaps as long as it takes to bring them to their unconditional knees.
