and chris harmer institute of study of war. thanks for joining us. chris your reaction? >> first i point out technical detail the fact that the centrifuges were reduced 19,000 to 6100. if you own 6100 shares of berkshire hathaway have very valuable stock. only thing that happens they will get rid of old centrifuges, and bring in new centrifuges. only thing that matters is through-put ratio. this is ridiculous deal we will allow the islamic republic of iran to enrich uranium. we legitimatized their nuclear program. melissa: stephen yates. >> all agreements stand or fall on verification. almost all of them fail on verification. earlier comment referenced experience with north korea which is extremely instructive, we concluded an agreement. there were verification steps and they developed alternative path to nuclear weapons anyway which exceedingly high probability with iran. it also does nothing to address iran destablizing neighbors sponsoring terrorism calling for elimination of israel, death to america et cetera. we still have a middle east on fire. technical agreement

chris harmer. on any other day if we weren't focus odd baltimore this would be a huge story.ssion of what's going on here? >> my impression is you can never know for sure why the iranians are doing what they're doing. we're seeing reportings from the farz news. they received a court order from the iranian courts to seize this vessel for nonpayment of port fees. that's a ridiculous story. they're sending a message to the united states that they still believe that we, the united states, need the nuclear deal with iran more than they do. there's this hard lined faction that wants no deal with the united states that thinks iran is completely independent or should be completely independent from western pressure on their nuclear program. i think the hidden message is being sent here. we won't know what actually happened. >> and this is the straight of harmoz. 20% of the world's oil production goes there. some people are wondering if there's something on this ship that they wanted. is that a possibility, in your mind? >> it is a possibility. it is a danish owned shipping line. they

tom foreman is live in the virtual room along with chris harmer a former u.s. navy officer. they're there to show us how all of this might play out as the tensions escalate. tom. >> hi jake. yemen is right peer. the u.s. forces are coming this way, the iranian forces coming this way. this is the line of convergence. look at the size of the force that we're talking about. u.s. force about 12 u.s. naval ships and the iranians someone between seven and nine of their own vessels coming in. and even though this looks like a big standoff you're saying that nobody here intends to shoot anything. >> that's correct. it's been other a quarter of a century since they actually fought each other. both sides want to avoid an inadvertent escalation. we don't coordinate directly with each other but we deconflict to make sure we don't inadvertently escalate the situation. >> we see the fighter jets out there and we saw the tomahawk missiles and all of the potential for these coming into play, the actual goal here is to make sure that these do not come in to play and yet, while everyone is lo

navy commander chris harmer who once served with the u.s. fifth fleet which operates in the persian gulf in the arabian sea and former navy s.e.a.l. jonathan gilley m. commander and lieutenant, there seems to be sort of a unique wording going on if you talk to the pentagon, this is all about keeping the shipping lanes good to go, talk about the president he says that, too, yet he also says this is about sending a message, rather than another conflict in the region, we need to settle this now. so first to you, commander, what is this? is it a message or is it truly just want to keep that commerce going? >> there's always a message we see politically and publicly we're intending to do and then an actual message we're sending to our enemies or competitors in the region. the verbal written message, message we're releasing publicly, we're there to keep the seas open for commerce, sea lines open, free trade on the high seas, no piracy. the real reason is to make sure the iranians know we have significant military forces there, up close and persona

retired navy commander chris harmer, now a naval analyst, thanks for being with us. >> thanks for havingally about shipping lanes and under what circumstances would the u.s. military forcibly board another ship and how would that work? >> well it's not really about shipping lanes everybody has got a cover story when they do military operations. our cover story here is the united states is guaranteeing freedom of navigation operations or freedom of the seas, high seas commerce. the iranians' cover story, they are there to protect their shipping against piracy from the somali pirates. in reality both are there for a different reason. iranians are there because they want to send weapons to houthi allies and we're there because we want to keep an eye on iranians and prevent them from shipping those weapons to the yemenis. >> i imagine you're not entirely happy with us being there but let's look at the inverse or opposite side, can we afford to not be in this reasonable with our navy? >> we have to be there we're always there. the u.s. navy always has a certain level of presence in the red se