I’m George Gerbo, and welcome to Washington Times Weekly, where we get a chance to sit down with our reporters and talk about their coverage of the latest news and events.
And joining me this time is defense and national security correspondent John T. Seward.
[GERBO] A two-week ceasefire in the war in Iran is now in effect, though there’s still been aggressive posturing from all the parties involved. The Pentagon says it’s ready to restart strikes if the ceasefire fails. Israel has still been targeting Iran-linked Hezbollah targets in Lebanon. And Pakistan’s kind of the one playing mediator here, John, in these talks, which are going to pick up again.
Do we think that during this two-week pause, there’s going to be actual movement toward a full peace or cessation, whatever we want to call it? Or is it more allowing these different parties involved to redouble their efforts in case that it doesn’t hold?
[SEWARD] I think that that’s the big question, right? I think that’s exactly what the administration is asking itself, as well as what folks on the other side of this in Iran are asking themselves. Is this actually going to lead to some sort of real peace?
As you mentioned, there’s been a lot of posturing around whether or not control of the Strait of Hormuz and the inclusion of some of our allies in Europe in what security there looks like actually contributes to this idea of peace and of a finality to this conflict.
But, you know, I’ll point back to our story and say what we saw from Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth at the podium was this claim of victory, right? He said, “a capital V military victory.” From his perspective, I think from the administration’s perspective right now, they’re seeing themselves as very much in control of the military situation. But one of the questions posed to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Caine, was, hey, what about the actual security of the Strait of Hormuz? And Caine sort of took the questions and said, well, you know, I’m paraphrasing here, but I see it as diplomatically settled. That being said, yeah. But it’s very tenuous at this point. Both sides have continued to have a pretty loud amount of rhetoric around being the one in control. And we’ll continue to keep folks updated and keep them informed on how it’s actually going. Because at any moment, any one of these little hotspots could crumble that current ceasefire.
[GERBO] And the Strait has been a big part of your recent reporting. This key waterway, not only for all types of cargo, but specifically for oil. A fifth of the world’s oil passes through the Strait of Hormuz, controlled by the Iranians. The ceasefire has allowed the oil to flow again more easily through the Strait.
But it’s interesting, John, to think about. When we think about wars historically, and you guys at Threat Status do such a good job with this about how people perceive war, you know, when we talk about Vietnam or the Gulf War, even the war on terror to what we’re dealing with now, both in Ukraine and here in Iran, it’s these territorial controls and a lot of this posturing.
Sometimes it’s not just who has the bigger bomb in some cases, and as the Iranians have enriched uranium in potentially trying to develop their own nuclear weapons. But it’s almost the transportation, the land access, the ports, those type of things have become more key in this new kind of battlefront of war that we are seeing around the world.
[SEWARD] I find myself quoting this often, but right, it’s the Clausewitz quote. It’s a classic. War is an extension of politics by other means, right? It’s this, very, very ugly thing, but we do. We see a lot of great power competition right now, especially for these pieces of geopolitical key terrain. And just last month, I was talking about the Arctic and Arctic security before things in Iran kicked off.
But to your point, the Strait has become sort of the key position that a lot of this posturing is around. I sat with a panel of analysts over at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, folks that have been very focused and very studied in the Middle East, especially. And one of the things that they pointed to was for Iran, there started to become this realization that control of the Strait may actually be a more powerful thing than them attaining a nuclear weapon.
One of the things that’s gone back and forth for a number of years is the claim by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of how close Iran is to a nuclear weapon. Obviously, we’ve seen the president very publicly on Truth Social talk about the need for them to never have a nuclear weapon, that threat sort of looming. But as you pointed out, we’re seeing much more this great power struggle over pieces of key terrain, and the strait has become a key symbol of that.
Watch the video for the full conversation.
Read more:
- Trump says Navy will blockade Strait of Hormuz after ceasefire talks with Iran ended without a deal
- Starmer, Trump discuss reopening Strait of Hormuz with ‘military capabilities’
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth: U.S. forces prepared to restart strikes if ceasefire with Iran fails
- Strait of Hormuz is Iran’s new ‘nuclear bomb’
- Are U.S. troops ready to face Iranian drone swarm attacks?
- Trump pivots from military victory to negotiation with Iran, dispatches Vance to Pakistan
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