This is an L.A. Times Studios podcast. The mission of Operation Epic Fury is laser-focused.

Destroy Iranian offensive missiles, destroy Iranian missile production, destroy their Navy and

other security infrastructure, and they will never have nuclear weapons. Our objectives are clear first.

We're destroying Arend's missile capabilities and you see that happening on an hourly basis

and their capacity to produce brand new ones and pretty good ones they make.

Second, we're annihilating their navy.

We've knocked out already 10 ships. friendships. There's been so many missed opportunities between the two sides and deals that could have been struck, deals that were on the table, that were rejected.

And I got to tell you, the latest one is quite a shocker, because in the negotiations last week, they did manage to get to a point in which Iranians agree to things that they never even would have contemplated in the deal that they struck with Obama in 2015.

They agreed to having zero stockpile of enriched uranium. They would only enrich uranium for needs basis and they actually wouldn't have a need for another five to seven years, which means that for the duration of Trump's presidency,

there would be no enrichment in Iran. Trump easily could have declared victory, but instead

he chose to declare war. I think it is because Trump had been lulled into the false belief by the Israelis that he could

get something even better, that he could get their complete surrender, and that if he just

threatened war enough, brought enough naval assets into the region, the Iranians eventually

would cave. And that was a huge miscalculation on Trump's

part to fall for this. But from the Israeli side, I think they knew exactly what they were doing.

They got exactly what they wanted, which was what they had been pushing for for more than

20 years to get the United States to go into a full-scale war with Iran. I think oil pushing beyond $80 seems very likely now. I think oil pushing beyond $80 seems very likely now.

I think there was already concerns about oil pushing well beyond $80 before we had the latest attack on Rastanura.

The severity of the spike is going to depend a lot on how severe that attack turns out to be still

unclear whether we're talking about a direct hit, whether it was debris. Operations are now closed,

but if we start to see additional direct attacks against energy infrastructure, not just

in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, but in other countries in the region,

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