Iran’s Attacks in Hormuz Strait Reveal Lack of Control: Expert

Joining us now for insight on the Iran war is Michael Pregent, military Middle East expert and a former intelligence officer. Good to have you with us today, Michael. Thank you. How do you currently assess the state of the Iranian regime? So the Iranian regime right now is trying to make it economically painful for our allies, hoping that they can put pressure on President Trump to call a ceasefire or to, you know, pause operations. They are indiscriminately attacking things in the Strait of Hormuz. They don't know what they're attacking. They've hit a Chinese tanker. They intentionally destroyed two of their ghost ships just to demonstrate a capability. Those are the ones that were in the Iraq area, the Basra-Unkasar point. Ports, correction. You know, we're very good at taking out infrastructure, military targets. We've decimated their command and control. But it's these disparate groups that are launching, you know, ballistic missiles. You know, another one at Turkey for no reason whatsoever. And then, of course, the Shahed drones. But we're seeing less and less of those being hit. But again, the media is constantly talking about the Strait of Hormuz and the Shahed drone attacks on oil facilities. And each country has come out and said that the attacks on these oil facilities are, you know, a drop in the bucket. They're minimum. But the, you know, the visuals of something on fire in the Strait of Hormuz, of course, is very troubling to people that are going through the Strait of Hormuz or trying to, and especially to these insurance companies. But the U.S. has the ability to stop this. And looking now at the leadership in Iran, the man the regime has chosen to lead currently has not appeared publicly. Do you see that as a smart security move or a sign of his weakness? Well, he was the favored candidate for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's what they wanted. He's the guy that's most aligned with what they're trying to do. And what better candidate than one that's in a coma, who's lost a leg, who can't talk? So we haven't heard the supreme leader elect, let's call him that, speak. We haven't heard his voice. We've only seen a cardboard cutout. And we've seen somebody in a hijab on Iranian press read a statement from the supreme leader, in quotations. The IRGC is running the show right now. Muthaba is who they wanted to be the supreme leader. They're happy about it. And what better supreme leader can you have than one that can't speak? Yeah, we'll be watching that closely. But what do you think it will take for Iranians to rise up, given the IRGC is armed and just killed an estimated tens of thousands of protesters earlier this year? Right. Well, there's a new phase in the war now, right? We've seen Israel conduct drone strikes against IRGC static positions, and also the Basij, the ununiformed thugs that ride around on motorcycles and kill protesters. We've seen video from Iranians as they drive under passes and point out a Basij checkpoint, and then soon after a drone hits it. So this is what the Iranian people need to see, the ability where they can call in to the Israelis or the Americans and see an automatic attack on the Basij and the Quds Force. This is something we did in Iraq when we had Sunni tribal leaders. We gave them a radio, and within 10 to 15 minutes, they had a U.S. close air support, or they had a U.S. ground force coming to their location. This is exactly what the Iranian people need to see. Now, what we need to see is that they're willing to actually mobilize. It has to have an Iranian face to it. It cannot have an American face where we force them into regime change. So how much support would you say the regime has in Iran right now in terms of percentage? Well, I'd say still about 15 percent. Now, we see these large crowds in the daytime, but what that really tells you is even the leadership knows the United States and Israel is not going to bomb a crowd. So it kind of defeats their argument that Israel and the U.S. indiscriminately target civilians. So you have Larijani out there on Quds Force parade day, a parade in Tehran where they honor the terrorist organization that's hellbent on taking back Jerusalem. So Larijani's out there, and the media is saying, look how defiant they are, look how strong they are. It actually means they trust the U.S. and Israel not to hit those targets. But the mistake made by Larijani is now he's exposed his movements. Now the Mossad and the CIA are tracking his movements post parade and looking for indicators, how he disguises convoys, where he goes afterwards. So he's basically put himself at risk by demonstrating or trying to show that he could do this in the daytime. It simply means he trusts us not to hit him. So Michael, as an Iraq war veteran, do you see any outstanding differences or similarities to then and now? Yes. So we're very good at this initial stage of war. We did this in Afghanistan, decimated al-Qaeda training camps, bombed al-Qaeda formations, Taliban leadership, pushed them all into Pakistan and other places. And in Iraq, we did the same thing with shock and awe, right? We did the same thing. But this is different because the Iranian people are actually asking us to come in. We're waiting for them to create the momentum. We're not deploying troops on the ground and having them push people into very difficult decisions. You know, there's a reason there's a lack of trust in Iraq and Syria for US service members, because trust is based on asking somebody to do very difficult things and then being there when they do it, being there afterwards, being there to support them. And what we're doing is we're waiting for the Iranian people to show us that they're ready to do this. They're doing it with intel. They're doing it by telling the Mossad, telling our intel guys on the ground where the targets are. And that is a clear sign. The more they see these little checkpoints start disappearing in Tehran and other key places, the more they're going to feel emboldened to come out and start taking back territory. And it's not certain when the conflict will come to a close. But the president recently wrote on Truth Social, We're totally destroying the terrorist regime of Iran militarily, economically and otherwise. Just to finish up, your thoughts and comments on that remark there. This is where we have a lot of experience maybe doing things wrong, right? This is where the regime takes the uniform off and goes into the civilian population. We've seen IRGC formations in kindergartens and schools and mosques and hospitals. This is where they will start attacking from, just like the Hamas model, the al-Qaeda model, the ISIS model. Fire from civilian population centers, where if we retaliate, it's going to cause collateral damage and they're going to be able to use that in the media. This is where we're at now. When the president says we're running out of things to bomb, it's because we are. But we will still bomb targets of opportunity. When we see formations or we see preparations for missile and drone launches, we'll be in the skies. We'll be able to see that. But the danger now is when they go into the civilian population, they start blending in and firing from civilian areas in the hopes that we retaliate, in the hopes that we kill civilians. We will certainly be watching it all closely. Thank you so much for your input and your insights. Michael Pridgen. Thanks for having me. Thank you.