Name: Bolton reacts to Trump's latest Iran threat: ‘I wouldn’t recommend that’
Uploaded: 2026-03-30T23:02:16.000Z
Duration: 13 min 33 s
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This morning, oil prices spiking again after President Trump said he wants to take Iran's oil.

Adverbs of manner

And then moments ago, he posted this on his Truth Social, quote, saying, "If for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and

Adverbs of degree

if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electrical generating plants, oil wells, and

possibly all desalination plants." The president also has now pushed off the deadline that he has set another time, now saying that he's going to hold off until April 6th and targeting Iranian energy sites to allow for these talks that he's now writing about this morning.

You wrote that continuing to push this off is a sign of weakness.

Do you think he should hit Iran's energy infrastructure, though?

Well, I think if we have the support of the Gulf Arab states who risk retaliation from Iran, if we do that, then the answer is yes.

Just on this point, the mediators said that Iran had not asked for an extension of the deadline.

The mediator, not Iran, the mediator said they never asked for it.

So it's very much in question just exactly what the state of play in these negotiations really is.

But I don't think any negotiation that goes on by passing messengers through the mediators is close to a solution.

If we sit down with the Iranians and come up with something, that would be different.

But I'm not optimistic even on that point.

And the president also this morning, I believe for the first time, is now threatening to as part of the retaliation, part of what would come if Iran doesn't come to the table, I believe for the first time he is now threatening to hit desalination plants.

That's what he wrote today, which are a critical source of freshwater, of course, for the entire Gulf region.

What impact do you think that would have on this conflict?

No, I wouldn't recommend that, again, mostly because I'm concerned about retaliation to our Gulf Arab allies.

And that's something we need their continued support and participation.

I think the president's focused on one thing and one thing only,

and that's the international price of oil.

Not thinking about nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, terrorism.

He's thinking about the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which is why you have this speculation about what the military may be up to.

The better answer is to blockade the Strait of Hormuz and not let any Iranian oil out.

If our Gulf Arab allies can't ship oil, then neither should the Iranians, nor should they be able to earn the proceeds from that, which in one way or another filter back to their war effort to kill American service members.

Let me ask you, if the focus if you think the focus is definitely largely, at least, on the price of on oil and the price of oil.

But we now also have reporting from the Wall Street Journal suggesting that Trump's weighing U.S.

military operation to go in to extract nearly 1,000 pounds of uranium from Iran.

If he would be able to secure the uranium, is it worth sending in ground troops, you believe?

Well, I think at some point we have to make sure that the enriched uranium, the centrifuges, all the sensitive materials and information about the nuclear program don't fall into the wrong hands.

At the beginning of this, I thought the time for that to happen would be as the regime collapses, when the disorder might permit people to get parts of that enriched uranium shipped out of the country.

I think as long as we can keep attacking the program, that for now, that's sufficient.

I would be more inclined to take steps to make sure that Iran can't continue to finance its effort.

They've blockaded the Gulf Arabs, in effect.

Malcolm Davis is a senior analyst on defense strategy and capability with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.

He joins me now from Canberra, Australia.

Thank you so much for being with me, sir.

Let's just start by bringing us up to speed on where things stand right now.

We are hearing such mixed signals from President Donald Trump, talking about progress and holding back on strikes,

How do you read the strategy at this point?

I think that talk of peace negotiations and the war coming to an end are simply not credible.

I think that what you are seeing is a buildup towards probably the deployment of ground forces.

But before we get to that point, the air campaign by the Americans and the Israelis will continue to attack the Iranian missile capabilities and other targets across the country.

And then at some point, probably in the very near future, I would say within a week or so, you probably will see ground forces being introduced into the battle.

So there's no way you can say that this is heading towards an off-ramp or peace.

As you say, we have seen a significant U.S.

buildup in the region, thousands of marines and sailors arriving there.

What does a deployment of that size tell you about the direction of travel right now?

Well, I have to say it's a small deployment.

If you really wanted to do a massive ground invasion of Iran, you'd need much more larger ground force deployments than what we're seeing.

I think what we are seeing is sufficient ground forces to be able to do limited operations of the sort that could be deployed against Carg Island to seize the oil infrastructure there, potentially a ground force insertion into Iran itself to secure control of highly enriched uranium and extract that from Iran to deny Iran the ability to have nuclear weapons, potentially ground force operations to seize other islands in the Persian Gulf and in the approaches to the Straits of Hormuz.

The sorts of the size of forces that we're seeing at the moment being deployed into the region are not sufficient, for example, to ride towards Tehran.

There is growing focus on the critical energy choke points, including the Strait of Hormuz and potentially even sites like Carg Island now.

How central are those to U.S. and Iranian planning, and how risky would any move around them be?

I think the rationale behind seizing Carg Island is to deny Iran any sort of access to its oil revenue because Carg is the key locations through which 90 percent of Iran's oil goes through.

So by seizing Carg, supposedly the Americans could control that oil infrastructure and then deny it to the Iranian government and use that as a means to coerce the Iranian government into signing a peace agreement.

I'm not convinced that it's actually going to work out as well as they plan.

I think that the Iranians can probably sit back and attack the Americans on Carg Island,

So I'm not convinced that Carg is actually going to deliver some sort of peaceful conclusion to the war.

In terms of the Strait of Hormuz, that's the critical area.

So long as the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, the energy and economic damage at a global level will continue to rise.

And at some point, the Americans do have to force open the Straits of Hormuz militarily.

That will demand a multi-week campaign to destroy Iranian defenses, to destroy Iran's ability to interdict shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, to clear the strait of any sea mines,

and to attack Iranian forces well inland to deny them the ability to attack shipping as it enters the strait.

So that's another whole operation even beyond Carg Island, in my opinion.

On the defensive side, Israel and its allies are still intercepting large volumes of missiles and drones across the region.

Is there a real concern about how sustainable that is?

There is a concern for the simple reason that both the U.S.

and Israel are running low on interceptor missiles, the sort of missiles like Patriot and THAAD for the Americans and Arrow and David Sling for the Israelis.

As those magazines, as those stockpiles of ammunition get lower and lower, it's easier for the Iranians to get drones and missiles through.

And these missiles like Patriot are very expensive to produce.

They cost about a million dollars each to produce.

Compare that to the cost of a Shahed drone at $20,000 a drone.

It takes a long time to produce these missiles, whereas it's very quick to produce the Iranian Shaheds.

So we've got a serious issue here in terms of an economic imbalance between defense versus offense that does need to be corrected in terms of how we defend against the drone threat, in particular in future wars.

Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Gabe Vasquez of New Mexico.

Look, you just heard and probably saw what the president put out on social media saying if Iran doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz, he will take out the electric generating plants, oil wells, Carg Island, and

Well, first, I think the president is trying to negotiate the United States out of war that he single-handedly started.

Look, the attacks on the infrastructure on Iran and these empty threats, it seems like, I believe, don't hold a lot of weight considering that the president is negotiating a major international conflict by social media.

I think the United States needs to get serious about putting an end to this conflict and not being litigated by social media.

So it's very hard for Americans to understand, one, the intent of the actual war itself, second, how it winds down, and