Colonel Layton, if the U.S. were to join Saudi attacks on the Houthis in Yemen, what impact would that likely have?

Well, there'd be several impacts.

Well, of course, one of them would be on the Houthis.

They themselves would be subject to probably more bombing attacks like we've seen just recently where the Saudis attacked the Sana'a airport in response to the attack on the Riyadh airport.

So that type of activity would continue and there would be more attacks against their allies.

headquarters against uh you know their missile emplacements and things of that nature i think an effort would also be made to go after any uh huti positions on param island which is near the or in the babal mendeb strait uh so that would be one other area and the possibility also exists that both the us and saudi arabia would try to alleviate pressure on the Yemeni city of Taiz, which is where the Houthis are trying to basically mount an offensive and capture that city.

That would be the third largest city in Yemen, and that would open up the way to Aden, which is the capital of the officially recognized or internationally recognized government.

Is any ceasefire likely to hold at this point?

How does that make sense from a strategic standpoint?

For us, it doesn't.

one of the oddest things I've heard when it comes to this kind of a monument.

When you look at any kind of defensive position or any reason for this, drones are in places, protective drones would be in places where they can actually do some good.

You would be looking at them interfering with the flight patterns, for example, at Reagan National Airport.

You would certainly be wondering where these snipers are supposed to do their work and for what purpose they would be doing their work.

So there is no military reason that I understand for these things to be on any building of this type or any structure of this type.

Is that real, as you see it, or is that just trying to make these controversial projects more palatable? Does it seem real?

Colonel Layton, I just want to first get your thoughts on all of this, just the context around these attempted suicides and how you view this report.

Yeah, Pamela, I think it's one of the most difficult things that any commanders have to deal with because what you're talking about here is the welfare of the sailors on board the Abraham Lincoln, but it really pervades throughout all military services.

And one of the key things that commanders have to look at and also the enlisted leadership has to look at is how their troops are doing at any given moment in time.

And when there are extra stressors like deployments that seem to be without end, it really makes a big difference from a mental health perspective.

Even really solidly performing troops have a tough time when things that were once certain now all of a sudden become uncertain.

And that, I think, is the most difficult thing that the sailors on the Lincoln had to deal with.

And I think that's true for anyone who deploys anywhere, and especially if those deployments are extended with inadequate forewarning.

Colonel, did the Pentagon have much alternative to leaving the Lincoln Strike Group in place for so long?

Why the shift here?

Yeah, that's a great question, Phil.

One of the reasons that they did this is because there's a preponderance of American military forces in places like Kuwait, Jordan, and Bahrain.

There are also some in the UAE, but there are some relationships that the Iranians have with the UAE and with Qatar, which also has a major U.S. military base.

In fact, the largest Air Force base overseas is in Qatar.

The Iranians have decided at the moment not to attack those two areas because of those relationships and the fact that Qatar and the UAE are also working on mediation with Iran.

So that's one of the main reasons.

What does that tell us about the strategy, the shifting strategy, whatever things are at this point?

In your opinion, will Iran ever willingly cede that control over the Strait of Hormuz?

It's going to be really difficult, Wolf, for the Iranians to cede control because what they've discovered through this war, this conflict that they've had with the US and with Israel, is that once they get that leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, it's even more profound than any other leverage that they've had in the past they have done things in the persian gulf going all the way back to the 1980s really to the beginning of the islamic republic but none of them have been as effective in terms of actually shutting down or potentially shutting down the flow of oil and the flow of liquefied natural gas from the Persian Gulf.

And so they realize that they're in a basically a catbird seat when it comes to influencing the global global economy.

And this is a critical thing that the Iranians won't give up willingly.

What would those discussions be like before deciding to actually launch a major attack like this?

yeah it you know it depends of course on the personal chemistry between the various individuals involved but the way it it seems the way president trump was describing things was that he didn't necessarily get permission from the europeans european nato members to do anything like this But they realize that this is a kind of a fait accompli.

This is something that is going to happen regardless of what they say.

So they're basically waiting to potentially join things like mine sweeping operations in the Strait of Hormuz and perhaps other parts of the Persian Gulf.

But when he said that we're going to continue with the mission, to complete the mission, it's still not clear what that mission is.

Look, I think Trump is on course to get a thank you card from the Ayatollahs this year.

This speech was a disaster.

It started off good because he was tough on the Iranian regime.

He's explaining why they were bad.

But the three things Americans are looking for from this president – It was three strikes and you're out.

First of all, regime change, which is something that has been on the table, he just fudges it and says, well, we have it because we went from an old Ayatollah to a young Ayatollah with the same name.

What's your understanding based on the limited details we do know so far?

Yeah, so it's very interesting, Caitlin.

You mentioned two Stratotankers.

So these are two tanker aircraft flying together and one possibly refueling the other for further missions.

So this is basically a gas tank, a flying gas tank that is used to refuel all the aircraft that are engaged in the operations in Iran.

all the aircraft that are basically flying throughout the Middle East.

So it could not only be US aircraft that they are helping to refuel, but also allied aircraft.

Does this kind of aircraft have the ejection seats? Does it have parachutes, anything like that that we know of? So

What kind of role will Europe play in shielding Ukraine from future Russian attacks?

So it's going to be an indispensable role, especially if you look at America's national security strategy that the Pentagon just unveiled this past week.

So the key thing here, Wolf, is that that strategy is basically talking about a retrenchment of the U.S. from Europe.

If that comes to pass the way they talk about it in that strategy, then the Europeans are going to have to step up and they're going to have to be the ones that are the guarantors of Ukrainian security.

And that might mean that they have to do some things like include Ukraine in an air defense identification zone, which means basically that they would be responsible for the air defense of Ukraine, or at least a portion of Ukraine.

It also could mean that they eventually may even station troops there.

So they have to be prepared to do those things.

What kind of pressure is President Zelensky feeling from the Trump administration right now?

How much more can Israel's military achieve in Gaza?

Really not very much, Pamela.

And part of the problem is that the Israelis have actually, in essence, destroyed at least 70% of the actual structures and then made basically 90% of them unusable.

And that is something where they have definitely achieved what they can achieve militarily.

But what they haven't done is they haven't really determined what their end state is.

And that's a real problem because they do say they want to destroy Hamas as being part of their end state.

But that's an unrealistic end state because once you get into the psychology of a particular rival or a particular adversary, You have to understand where they're coming from.

Are you as upbeat as Aaron, Colonel?

But are we reliant on that kind of imagery when you can't get there physically?

So that can be a problem actually because traditionally BDA has been done using imagery with some of the other intelligence disciplines like signals intelligence being kind of in a supporting role.

In this particular case, we need basically everything in order to get at least the hope of an accurate assessment.

So imagery will be primary, but you also need imagery from underground if we can get it.

So that would mean potentially using human assets to go down there take the pictures and extract those pictures and bring them out so that they can be assessed at the Pentagon and, of course, in Israel.

So those are the kinds of things that would have to happen.

You have to have multi-source intelligence that would also include human intelligence, as the Iranians talk about this among themselves.

Did you actually accomplish what you set out to do? And if you didn't, what action do you have to take to get there?

So how does that complicate the potential military avenues?

So the most at-risk pieces are going to be the aircraft carriers in the... probably in the Eastern Mediterranean.

They could also potentially be in the Persian Gulf or the Arabian Gulf.

But those are the most at risk for offensive operations by the Iranians.

The B-2 bombers, which would be the most likely means of conveying the special bunker-buster bomb toward the facilities in Iran, would be pretty safe based on what we've seen the Israelis do when it comes to destroying the air defense capability of the Iranians.

So we'd basically be riding on top of that to take care of that mission if we were to do that.

So are we really questioning what we've got between us and what the U.S. is hearing from Israel?

So one of the big differences, Adi, between the Iraq situation and the Iran situation is we have been focusing on Iran for a very long time.