Former CIA Director Ret. Gen. David Petraeus assesses the state of Iran’s military and leadership as Israel and the Gulf states continue to fend off missile attacks on FOX News Channel’s “Jesse Watters Primetime.” “What about Kharg Island? Because that would seem a major escalation on behalf of the United States, but also a real sweet spot to be able to control their output. Is that something that we’re considering?” Watters asked. “I am sure that we are, I don’t say that with knowledge, or I wouldn’t be able to say it, but obviously you would have to think through that contingency,” Petraeus said. “It’s discussed publicly, it would be a case of putting boots on the ground. The question is, then, what could they do to our soldiers on the ground? What would be the mitigating steps we can do to prevent that and so forth? So that certainly, I’m sure that’s an option somewhere along the line.”

JESSE WATTERS, FOX NEWS: General David Petraeus, former CIA director and CENTCOM Commander. General, the objectives, how far along are we into accomplishing them? GEN. DAVID PETRAEUS (RET), FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: I think we’re quite far along, actually. Obviously, we had enormous success, 40 leaders in the first 40 seconds. As the President noted, and you have noted, we’ve largely taken down their air and ballistic missile defense, we can now fly really at will with our non-stealthy aircraft, not just the stealth B-2 and F-35, but the B-52, the B-1, other fighter bombers. We’ve had considerable success against their Navy. Needless to say, we’ve taken down probably at least 70 percent of the missile launchers and a substantial amount of the stockpile. The missile strikes, as you also noted, way, way down. We’re still going after the drones, and that’s, I think, proven to be a bit more challenging. Frankly, they have thousands of them in tunnels. We are parked on top of the launch sites, as you would imagine, going after them. But that does remain a challenge in various ways, and that has, of course — that was the source of the loss of our three heroes in this war so far, and serious wounding of a number of others. A variety of other targets that we’ve taken out. Of course, a lot of the regime forces, their headquarters, their subordinate leaders, large depots, bases, the naval bases and so forth. So we’re very well along in this. The problem is that there still are challenges there. And I think probably the biggest is what you highlighted, the Strait. There still is a threat. Four ships were attacked today, one of those along the way of the 14 that had been hit so far was hit by an unmanned surface vessel. There’s the threat of short range missiles. You can lay mines with other than mine layers. You can actually use fast boats and so forth. It depends on the type of the mine. There are some mines, reportedly, less than 10, that have actually gone in the water. If we end up in a situation where they mine the Strait, that will be very challenging as well. So I think the President has got a lot to calculate here, and including in that is, of course, the effect of the price of Brent crude. And actually, I just checked it, it was back up to about $ 92.00 a barrel. And if the markets really are hanging on his every word, will we end it soon, or will we end it later? And that’s an awfully big question for those markets. I should note that for crude oil, the Saudis can get five million barrels out to the Red Sea, not through the Gulf. The Emiratis can get a modest amount out directly to a port outside the Strait as well. But this is 20 percent of the world’s crude oil, and maybe even more importantly, it’s 20 percent of the world’s LNG. And there are not large LNG stockpiles, the way there are the strategic stockpiles of oil, noting that the decision was announced today that the large countries of the world will release about 400 million barrels of oil to try to offset what is being lost out of the Gulf. But of course, that’s really 20 days’ worth of this, and it’s going to take time for the confidence to return for the CEOs of the shipping companies, who are, after all, they’re not responsible to the government, in truth, they’re responsible to their shareholders, and they will be cautious about this. These super tankers are extraordinarily expensive, as are the LNG carriers and so forth, and little, if any of that is moving through the Gulf right now. WATTERS: So general, how would you secure the Strait? PETRAEUS: Well, we’re doing it. Look, witness how wonderful that we actually have an admiral in charge of U.S. Central Command, instead of soldiers like me or Marines like some of the others. He knows this Strait. He’s been through it innumerable times. He knows — they were ready for this. But we have a modest mine sweeping capability. We’ve actually retired some of them, brought on some smaller ones. We would need the Saudis, we would need the Brits, who have often located their ships off Bahrain. They’re going after everything that threatens it. The problem is that if even one of these ships is hit, everyone understandably gets nervous and is not going to launch their vessels until they’re comfortable. The other issue, I think that has to be weighing on minds. I know it’s weighing on the minds of certain Gulf countries because they’ve actually announced it, and that is the so-called missile math, and they’re constantly trying to calculate, how many more launchers does Iran have and missiles? And you’re right, they were taking down even the manufacturing capability of Iran in that regard, that make the components that assemble them and everything. And then how many missile interceptors do we have left? And really it’s collectively, how many do we have left? And we know how many we bought in patriots last year, 620, it’s public knowledge. We bought fewer than that when it comes to the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense interceptors and then the ones that operate off the ships. Again, our Gulf state partners have them. Israel has them. It’s an integrated air and ballistic missile defense Nonetheless, if that missile math gets a bit uncomfortable, that will also be a factor, as I think, that President Trump will consider and his advisors as they’re really sorting out when have we achieved enough, and then what happens with Iran? Because the real question, I think that is becoming more pressing, is that the next Supreme Leader, you know, we wanted a Delcy Rodriguez to use the Venezuelan analogy, and instead, we got Kim Jong-un, Jr. So it’s the son of the former Supreme Leader, presumably hard line cleric, and so forth. And so will Iran continue this war? That’s where I think you start to see the Chinese get involved. They’re the ones, together with Japan, Korea and India, who are most affected by all of this. They’re the big consumers of the oil and gas that comes out of the Gulf, although it affects the price of our West Texas Intermediate crude as well. But when do they put pressure on Iran to say, knock this off. When do the Iraqis put pressure on them? Because they do some of their sanctions evasion through the Iraqis, and they’re starting to shut down their oil loading. Many of the oil loading facilities have literally shut down and they are shutting oil wells and so forth, production, which will take time to re-establish as well, once you flush out all the tankers that are sitting in there full and all the storage capacity that is full as well. So a lot of dynamics here, I think, Jesse. WATTERS: Yes. PETRAEUS: And your opening identified a lot of those, frankly. WATTERS: Well, thank you. What about Kharg Island? Because that would seem a major escalation on behalf of the United States, but also a real sweet spot to be able to control their output. Is that something that we’re considering? PETRAEUS: I am sure that we are, I don’t say that with knowledge, or I wouldn’t be able to say it, but obviously you would have to think through that contingency. It’s discussed publicly, it would be a case of putting boots on the ground. The question is, then, what could they do to our soldiers on the ground? What would be the mitigating steps we can do to prevent that and so forth? So that certainly, I’m sure that’s an option somewhere along the line, there’s actually some other locations that we could go into and so on. We’ve actually done offshore oil terminals as well, back in the tanker wars in the mid-1980s and shut down some of them. But remember that President Trump called Prime Minister Netanyahu and said, no more on their oil industry. Not only will that affect the price of Brent crude worldwide. At some point, they’re going to have to have an economy again. And so there’s again, various issues here, about which we need to be careful. WATTERS: Would you hit any of the ghost fleet that’s going out to China, just to send a message to say, you know, this is going to get dangerous for everybody if the Iranians don’t knock it off? PETRAEUS: We actually have been going after ghost fleet ships, not just from Iran, but also from Russia. And often, there are reasons that justify it. They’re quite above board. They don’t meet safety and health standards, or whatever it may be. Again, they’re flying under other flags, often there are deficiencies in these particular vessels, and we’ve been doing that very effectively against Russian exports. But of course, now this war means that we have to lift the sanctions on Russian oil sales. India had agreed to reduce that very substantially, which would have reduced the revenue that keeps the Russian war economy going. Now, unfortunately, we have to relax that for a period of time. And this also, we should be going after Russia with our sanctions in the Congress. They’re providing intelligence to Iran. I can’t believe that Iran would have the kind of accuracy with the Shahed drones in particular, that have been a problem. And so we should — it’s time for the Senate to vote on the bill that Senator Lindsey Graham has championed and has, as I understand it, 90 of 100 senators have signed up for it. WATTERS: Well, the Russians didn’t provide some key intelligence to the Ayatollah before that breakfast meeting. They sure missed the ball on that one. PETRAEUS: I don’t think they had that Intelligence. WATTERS: I don’t think they did. PETRAEUS: That was intelligence that our services gathered. And of course, that was, I think, the proximate cause for why the war started when it did. WATTERS: Exactly. PETRAEUS: First, there was a knowledge ahead of time that the Israelis were going to hit because they were very worried about the reconstitution of the missile program. Second, President Trump understandably very frustrated with the stringing along of us during the nuclear negotiations, regardless of what some people said publicly from other countries. And then all of a sudden you have this extraordinary intelligence, presumably the Iranians believing that since we didn’t attack when we always do in the early hours of the morning, that we weren’t going to attack in that 24-hour period, and then had a meeting that enabled the achievement of one of the principal objectives of the campaign right away. WATTERS: Yep! When you see an open shot, you’ve got to take it. General Petraeus, thank you so much for coming on and everything you’ve done with the country. We appreciate it. PETRAEUS: Good to be with you, Jesse. Thank you.

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