Peters on need to reopen Strait of Hormuz

That's fine. That's fair. I don't like it. You're right.

I know. I know, sir. I know you know the answer to that, and you're just not telling me. I get why you're doing that. But I would say, other observers say that basically, it's not the leader. Usually, if you take out a leader, that doesn't necessarily make the changes that-- in Iran's case, it's probably the Islamic Revolutionary Guard. That's the center of gravity. They're the ones that control the country, and they're very diverse to do that. The Americans' center of gravity is probably our economy and our ability to maintain public opinion support. We already know the public isn't there. We know the impact to our economy. And central to that is the leverage. I'm running out of time here, but the central of leverages the Strait of Hormuz. That is bottom line. We have to open that up. We have to take that away from Iran. The fact that we haven't done that yet and we're 60 days in-- we're just now bringing minesweepers from the Pacific in there. We have some unmanned of the opportunities, but we've got to have the capacity to do that. It was clear, even if there was a plan to keep the straits open, it was not going to be implemented because the assets were not positioned in a place to actually open the straits. If they were, we would have seen those happening right now. We're not. So we're missing the point here. The center of gravity is going to be bringing down the government of Iran in a way that they will want to have a peace treaty, so we can protect our country from having nuclear weapons pointed our way. But the center of gravity, in a lot of ways, is going to be focused on what happens on the straits. And that, Mr. Secretary, we've got to see action a whole lot sooner in the straits. The world community needs it. We're not going to bring this war to an end until we seize control of the straits in a way-- Which in part is why we have a blockade that has been impenetrable for the Iranians, because they don't have a conventional navy to contest it, which means we control the straights. The time of Senator Peters has expired. Let me observe that I very much appreciate the senator from Michigan suggesting ways in which our effort in Iran could be more successful. I do appreciate that. And let me also observe, Senator Caine, that civilian control goes back well beyond Marshall. It goes back to George Washington, who was wise enough to resign his commission to the elected membership of the government at that time.