Retired U.S. Navy admiral on Trump’s threat to blockade the Strait of Hormuz : NPR

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

How could a US blockade of Iranian ports actually work? I’ll ask retired Navy Admiral James Foggo. He led U.S. naval forces in Europe and Africa. He was also a senior NATO commander who participated in U.S. and NATO operations in Libya and led naval forces that struck chemical weapons sites in Syria in 2018. He currently serves as dean of the United States Navy League Maritime Strategy Center. It is a civilian, non-profit organization that supports American maritime power. Admiral, thank you very much for joining us.

JAMES FOGGO: Great to be here, Michel, with you and NPR.

MARTIN: So in your experience, is a blockade like the one the president ordered feasible?

FOGGO: Yes, it’s totally doable. This is something that the Marines and our Navy have already done. You could go back to the Civil War, when we blockaded Confederate ships carrying weapons and supplies in and out of the South. So this is something that we know and that the Navy is trained to do. And when the order is given, as it has been, the Navy will carry it out.

MARTIN: Based on your knowledge of international and maritime law, is this legal? These are supposed to be international waters.

FOGGO: That’s right. The strait is no one’s strait. This is everyone’s strait. The strait therefore does not belong to anyone. It’s there for the free passage of goods and services on the high seas. So technically speaking, blockading a country or a country’s ability to export goods and services is an act of war, but it’s also illegal to charge $2 million per ship to transit the straits, which is what Iran does. And if you extrapolate that to a hundred ships per day, 365 days per year, that’s a profit of $73 billion. That’s more than the U.S. Navy got for its shipbuilding budget. They could thus reconstitute what was taken from them.

MARTIN: How risky is an operation like this? I mean, the president says the United States is already clearing mines across the strait. We can air a clip of him on Fox News yesterday.

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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to drop one mine, two mines, 10 mines. And it will – if you have a ship that costs a billion dollars, you’ll say, well, you know, I’d rather not get hit by a mine and lose my ship or seriously damage it, at least. And so it’s a small thing that they can do and it’s military power and military power that doesn’t do it. But you know, it’s extortion.

MARTIN: Okay. But how serious is this threat?

FOGGO: Well, the threat of mines is a very serious threat, and running a blockade is a very serious matter. As for the mines, we have also been there before. During the Gulf War, the U.S. Navy had about a thousand mines in the northern Arabian Sea and around Kuwait. We took them out, but at least three ships were hit, if I remember correctly. The Samuel B. Roberts almost sank, despite the efforts of the crew – USS Princeton, USS Tripoli. But these two ships continue to fight. So what we’re trying to do is quite dangerous.

MARTIN: Iran has already used drones to attack its allies in the region as well as sort of tankers trying to get through. So could drones be a factor here?

FOGGO: Yes, absolutely. And you saw that Iranian drones were purchased by the Russians and used very effectively in Ukraine. The Iranians therefore have a few missiles left. They shot down one of our M-15s (ph). It looked like it was a shoulder-fired missile. They have drones, the Shahed drone, which has a pretty decent range. And the problem for us is that we’re using high value ammunition. like the standard missile. to shoot down a drone – a standard missile, a few million dollars, a drone, 50 thousand dollars. They could therefore send these drones to attack the American ships which were carrying out the blockade.

However, the destroyers that would be part of this mission were trained for this over the last three years in the Red Sea, as the Houthis threw everything at them, and we defended ourselves and others. So we know what we are doing. And we also know what we are doing in terms of mine clearance. Mine clearance has evolved over the years from minesweepers and people on the minefield to remotely piloted vehicles. And these are available when the CENTCOM commander feels he needs them.

MARTIN: Before we let you go, we talked about tactics. But one of the things that’s interesting to me is that CENTCOM says the blockade will not impede the freedom of navigation of ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz to and from non-Iranian ports. How do they do that? How do they understand this?

FOGGO: Of course. Well, you know, one of the things about an Aegis-class destroyer is that it sees everything for hundreds of miles. So it can spot ships leaving Iranian ports and heading towards the strait, those that have been doing business or perhaps paying a toll illegally, and they can be stopped at sea with a call on channel 16 and then a search and seizure upon boarding the ship. And you can also carry out a search and seizure aboard a hostile ship. So if you need to, they won’t slow down, you can get on board and stop the ship, and you can send the ship to another port like a Gulf Cooperation Council country.

MARTIN: You’re confident in your abilities here.

FOGGO: I am extremely confident. The Navy is doing a great job and will continue to do so.

MARTIN: This is retired Admiral James Foggo. He is dean of the United States Navy League’s Maritime Strategy Center. Admiral, we thank you.

FOGGO: Thank you, Michel.

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