FULL INTERVIEW: Mark Warner Reacts To Trump's Threats To Blockade Strait Of Hormuz After Talks End

[0:00] Here with me now is the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Democratic Senator Mark Warner of Virginia. [0:06] Senator, thank you for being here. So what the president said in a pretty lengthy social media post is that he's imposing a blockade on the Strait of Hormuz. [0:14] What do you think of that? Is that a good move? Well, Dana, I have great respect for Nikki Haley. [0:22] But boy, oh boy, I see the circumstances so differently than what she laid out. [0:27] This administration, you know, literally days into this war of choice, and we need to continue to remember that. [0:33] This war, there was no imminent threat to America. Donald Trump chose this war. He said there were four goals. [0:40] First was regime change. And I think all of our intelligence shows the current leadership now is even more radical than the previous leadership. [0:48] Getting rid of these enriched uranium, these are canisters, 1,000 pounds, very volatile. [0:54] It would not be some simple operation. It would take 10,000 troops on the ground guarding a perimeter. [1:02] We'd have to send special operators in. And the Iranians could then bomb their own facility, potentially trapping our troops. [1:10] And this volatile uranium would be very, very dangerous. [1:13] The idea that we've gotten rid of all the ballistic missiles, absolutely not. [1:17] We thank God we saved those pilots, but they shot down our airplanes. [1:22] And what is crazy, Dana, with the war of choice, we've now run up, ran out of our interceptors. [1:28] We've been spending $2.4 million a crack to shoot down a $50,000 Iranian drone. [1:35] The Israelis have run through theirs as well. [1:38] We could have taken Ukrainian technology, where they figured out how to take down these drones much cheaper, but they didn't. [1:45] And then down to the question of the Strait of Hormuz, I have no idea, other than the idea that he could interdict at both ends of the strait, [1:56] how he's going to get it reopened, how we're going to get ships through. [2:00] Remember, you can sink all the Iranian Navy. [2:04] They have 300 to 500 little speedboats that you can put a bomb, a mine on. [2:10] We have not taken out virtually any of those. [2:13] So we're 40 days in. [2:14] I wish the vice president, I know he, I'm sure he gave it his best. [2:19] I hope they would continue these negotiations. [2:22] But I don't see how 40-plus days into this war that we are safer, that our allies are safer. [2:28] I'm not even sure Israel is safer. [2:30] And the idea that the president somehow acts like he was surprised that the Iranians closed the strait or attacked our Gulf allies [2:38] shows that he's either not getting briefed or he's not reading the intelligence. [2:42] This has been absolutely one of the reasons why, for 47 years, no American president took this action, [2:49] because the Iranian regime is bad. [2:51] But we know they were going to take those, close the strait, and go after the Gulf allies. [2:55] So, and just to pick it up where you just left off on the strait, it is where we are, where the world is. [3:03] And so given that, whether it's a blockade or some other military operation, would you support that to reopen the strait? [3:12] But I don't understand how blockading the strait is going to somehow push the Iranians into opening it. [3:21] I don't get the connection there. [3:23] I agree. [3:24] I think, actually, Ambassador Haley underestimated the threat, the economic threat. [3:29] We know we've got $4 a gallon gasoline. [3:31] We know that 25 percent of the world's natural gas goes through the strait. [3:35] We know a lot of aluminum does. [3:36] We know that this is so devastated. [3:39] Asian countries right now, they're shutting down their economies one day a week. [3:42] Fertilizer costs up. [3:44] You know, and the thing I was hoping was we could come to some negotiated truce or end, but even with that, you're going to see these energy prices continue at record levels, not for weeks, but months and years. [3:58] And how blockading the strait gets it gets it open suddenly, I don't get that logic. [4:03] Yeah, I mean, it sounds like, and this is reading this lengthy post and not being able to ask the president at this moment, but it sounds like they're trying to extract economic pain on Iran the way Iran is trying to do on the world. [4:19] I do want to ask you about what the president has said. [4:21] But, Dana, just one quick thing there, though. [4:24] You know, here is the irony of this. [4:29] When the president decided to release the sanctions on the Iranian oil that was already at sea, we literally gave Iran, the Iranian regime, $14 billion. [4:43] We are paying, helping the Iranians fund their effort to attack us, to attack Israel, and to attack our allies. [4:51] Iran is the most crazy, upside-down kind of policy I can possibly imagine. [4:56] So, you know, if you want to strangle Iran, why we leave the sanctions on their oil? [5:01] It's crazy. [5:02] Even before these talks concluded without a deal, the president said, regardless of what happens, we win. [5:10] We totally defeated that country. [5:15] You have a lot of access to intelligence. [5:18] You are one of the few people in this country who has, or at least presumably you know what's [5:24] going on on the ground there. [5:26] Given that, how do you think the U.S. gets out of this war? [5:29] You know, it is an extraordinarily fair question. [5:35] I know people have said, well, even though you may not like how we got there, what do we do now? [5:42] Because, you know, the president can declare victory. [5:46] And I think, you know, I don't know. [5:48] I've not met an American yet who wants to send their son or daughter to another ground war in the Middle East, especially in Iran. [5:54] But, you know, if we declare victory today, luckily we can maybe then reopen the straits and we can move forward. [6:02] But Iran will claim with some vindication that they have taken on the two major military powers in the world, United States and Israel, and at least fought them to a draw. [6:13] Our Gulf nation states who look to us for protection, we've seen that we've helped some. [6:19] But take the UAE, the Emiratis actually has been bombed and missile attacked many more times than Israel, or are they going to hedge their bets? [6:28] And because we did this with Israel alone and no other allies, you know, this is where the kind of actions of, you know, [6:36] President Trump threatening NATO or threatening Greenland hurts us when we look to those NATO allies for either assistance or support in this kind of action. [6:45] Again, I shed no tears for the Iranian leadership that's been killed. [6:49] They are awful. But I don't know how, outside of the president's own bubble, he can somehow claim that Iran has been totally destroyed [6:59] when we see them continue to strike, when they have virtual control of the strait. [7:04] And unfortunately, the regime is, if anything, filled with more radicals than before. [7:10] Senator, you said the timing of this war was dictated by Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel. [7:16] Is that based on the intelligence briefings you received, or did you learn that elsewhere? Where did you learn that? [7:25] Well, Dana, I'm a huge supporter of Israel, continue to be right to defend itself. [7:31] I'm not so much a supporter of this Netanyahu government, who, again, I question. [7:36] When Pakistan put out the terms of the truce, I'm sure the Americans signed off on that. [7:41] That's the way things work. By having this ambiguity, I was hoping the truce would extend to Israeli actions in Lebanon. [7:48] But my statement, how this was started, wasn't based on anything that was said in a classified briefing. [7:57] It was what Senator, or what my friend, Secretary Rubio, said was, and he said it publicly, [8:03] well, the Israelis were going to go, and we know then if the Israelis were going to attack, [8:08] the Iranians would then attack us. So we went ahead and went first as well. [8:11] I take Secretary Rubio at his word. [8:15] Before I let you go, Senator, I do want to ask about allegations against one of your fellow Democrats, [8:22] Eric Swalwell, allegations of rape and sexual misconduct. [8:26] He denies these allegations as false, say they never happened. [8:31] You are a leader in your party. Do you think he should resign from Congress or face expulsion? [8:37] You know, Dana, I have seen the reports. I think I've met Mr. Swalwell once or twice. [8:45] I want to hear his side of the story. But obviously, if any of these allegations are true, [8:52] he should no longer be a candidate, at least candidate for governor. [8:56] But again, I don't know any of the facts. And I'm a little old fashioned. [9:01] I feel like I ought to hear the facts before I start weighing in. [9:04] Speaker 4