It's Friday, the 13th of November. Welcome to the PDB afternoon bulletin. I'm Mike Baker, your eyes and ears on the world stage. Alright, let's get briefed. First up, Iran says it struck an American military installation in Bahrain, marking a new escalation in its ongoing confrontation with the US. Later in the show, China deploys more than 100 vessels in massive unannounced war games around Taiwan, potentially rehearsing how to keep American forces out of a future conflict. But first, today's afternoon spotlight. The low-level conflict between the US and Iran is continuing with the Tehran. Now claiming it's carried out a direct attack on an American military installation in the Persian Gulf. Well, that doesn't sound very low level. Iran's revolutionary guard corps, the IRGC, announced early Friday that their forces had targeted and destroyed a US early warning radar system in Bahrain. That's home to the US Navy's fifth fleet. The Iranians say it was retaliation for an airstrike on a telecommunications tower in the southern Iranian port of Syrac on Thursday. Now, an important qualification here, neither the US nor Bahrain has confirmed that the radar was struck much less destroyed. And while Iranian media reported explosions in Syrac, Washington has not acknowledged carrying out and the attack Tehran is blaming on the US. But the claim itself is significant. According to Reuters, this is the first time since early September that Iran has claimed an attack against American military assets in a Gulf country. And it comes as Washington and Tehran continue exchanging blows without the US committing to another full-scale military campaign. Bahrain is important for American power projection, as mentioned it hosts the headquarters of the Navy's fifth fleet, which oversees US naval operations across the Persian Gulf and surrounding waters. Iran has not identified the radar installation that they claimed to have hit, and there's no independent damage assessment. So we are not at this point saying that an American defense system has been knocked off line, or just reporting the Iranian claims. Still, the reported exchange follows a familiar pattern that we have been tracking here on the PDB. Rather than a return to the massive strikes that marked the opening months of the war, we're seeing a series of smaller confrontations back and forth, attacks on islands, vessels, infrastructure, each carrying the possibility of a larger response. Earlier this week, we told you about Iran's reported attack, a navigation system located on Olman's Didymar Island that's near the street of Hormuz. Reuters subsequently confirmed the attack with three sources familiar with the matter, and verified footage showing smoke rising from the island. What remains unclear is just how much damage the navigation equipment actually sustained. Meanwhile, the pressure on shipping has not stopped. On Friday, the IRGC claimed that a tanker had struck a naval mine while traveling through what Iran called an unauthorized route in the street of Hormuz. The Associated Press said that accounts could not be independently verified, and there was no immediate confirmation from the British maritime agency that "tracks" attacks on ships. All this comes at a complicated moment for the White House. On Thursday, President Trump said the U.S. no longer needed a negotiated agreement with Iran, arguing that American economic pressure and control over the street had given Washington's sufficient leverage. Yet in a separate interview, Trump said Saudi Arabia and several other golf partners had urged him to hold off on further large-scale strikes. He specifically named Bahrain, among the countries that preferred to keep the current approach in place. Washington, of course, wants to maintain pressure on Tehran without returning to a major regional bombing campaign. Golf governments have their own reasons to want to avoid another escalation, including, of course, the risk of attacks on their territory and energy infrastructure. Iran, meanwhile, may see these limited attacks as a way to demonstrate that the pressure can cut both ways. The Iranian regime can impose risks and costs without necessarily inviting the kind of overwhelming response that a much larger assault might provoke. Of course, calculating where that threshold lies is dangerous, especially if American personnel are hit. All right, coming up next, China mobilizes a massive naval force across the Western Pacific, practicing operations that could isolate Taiwan and keep the U.S. military at bay. I'll be right back. Hey, Mike Baker here. Now, I've been a business owner for many years, and I want to take just a moment to talk to all you small business operators out there. 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Authorities in Taipei were monitoring the Chinese build up as it unfolded earlier this month. But new reporting from Reuters on Friday is revealing just how extensive the operation was and what Chinese forces may have been rehearsing. According to a senior Taiwanese security official, China's military assembled more than 100 warships and Coast Guard vessels during the first week of November. The exercises reportedly included simulated attacks against Taiwanese cities and military forces along with operations designed to establish control over large sections of the western Pacific. The deployment was even larger than China's last formally announced military exercises targeting Taiwan. Those were conducted late last year. But the scale wasn't the only unusual aspect. According to Taiwanese officials, the operation involved coordinated forces from China's eastern, northern, and southern theater commands, along with the Liao Ning aircraft carrier strike group. Now that's a significant amount of naval firepower operating together across an enormous area. And it suggests that Beijing may have been practicing something considerably more ambitious than simply surrounding Taiwan with warships. For years, American military planners have been concerned about two related scenarios. The first is a Chinese blockade of Taiwan, cutting the island off from outside supplies and potentially forcing its government to capitulate without a full-scale invasion. The second is what military strategists call area denial, essentially preventing American and allied forces from getting close enough to intervene. According to Taiwanese officials, some of the vessels were operating far beyond the waters and immediately surrounding Taiwan, including areas east of the Philippines. That would place them along potential routes that American forces could use to approach Taiwan from bases elsewhere in the Pacific. Taiwan's Defense Minister Wellington Co.
who said earlier this week that China appeared to be conducting precisely these kinds of area denial operations. And coordinating warships from three separate military commands would be an important part of preparing for such an operation. There was also a potentially significant development involving China's nuclear capable forces. According to the Taiwanese security official interviewed by Reuters, a Chinese submarine launched an intercontinental ballistic missile from the Yellow Sea toward mainland China during the exercises. That reported test has not been independently confirmed, but if verified, it would add a strategic missile component to an already unusually large military operation. Now, there's another element of this story that does deserve attention. China never gave the exercise an official name or formally announced that it was conducting these large scale maneuvers. That is a departure from previous major operations around Taiwan when Beijing frequently publicized its exercises, released dramatic military footage and issued warnings to the Taiwanese government, not to mention coming up with super cool names for their exercises. A foreign intelligence source told Reuters that the decision appeared deliberate, allowing China to apply military pressure without generating the diplomatic backlash that might accompany the formally declared military exercise. One Taiwanese official described the operation as "silent intimidation," end quote. And there could be another benefit there for Beijing. By conducting increasingly large military operations without formal announcements, China could gradually make the presence of enormous naval formations around Taiwan seem almost routine, and that creates a challenge for Taiwanese and American intelligence. If China routinely deploys large numbers of ships around the island, well, how do you distinguish another exercise from preparations for an actual military operation? And that uncertainty could become particularly dangerous during a crisis. As a Friday, Taiwanese officials said that the Chinese naval presence had declined to approximately 70 vessels operating now within the first island chain. But significant formations remained active, including the Malal Ning carrier group, while Chinese military aircraft continued operating around Taiwan. Beijing has characterized its carrier operations as routine training, nothing to see here, not directed against any particular country. China's defense ministry did not respond to Reuters' questions about the broader exercise. On Thursday, Chinese President Xi Jinping delivered a major speech, reiterating his desire for what Beijing calls "peaceful reunification" with Taiwan. Meanwhile, China is preparing to host the APEC leaders summit this next week, where President Trump and Xi are expected to meet. Now, we can't say definitively that these military exercises were designed to influence those meetings and negotiations, but Taiwanese and foreign intelligence officials believe that Beijing may be deliberately calibrating its military pressure ahead of the major diplomatic events. And that, my friends, is the PDB afternoon bulletin for Friday, the 13th of November. Now, if you have any questions or comments, just reach out to me at
[email protected]. And to listen to the show, add free, well, you can become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting PDBpremium.com, and of course, look at that. It is Friday, oh, Friday the 13th. Now that means, and this is not spooky in any way, or superstitious, if that means that the PDB situation report is about ready to launch a brand new episode. You can catch that tonight at 10 p.m. on the first TV, and as always, you can catch it over the weekend on our YouTube channel, some call that the gold standard of YouTube channels, just search up at President's Daily Brief there. And of course, you can find it on all podcast platforms everywhere. Now, I'm Mike Baker, and I'll be back over the weekend with the PDB Situation Report. Until then, stay informed, stay safe, stay cool. Hey, Mike Baker here, with a word about personal health and weight loss. Now everybody's been talking about weight loss injections, right? Because the, well, the results are so dramatic. They work by lowering blood sugar and reducing appetite. But what if you're looking to lose weight, and you're not interested in painful weekly injections, especially when you hear about some of those side effects? Well, that's why doctors created a weight loss supplement called lean. That's L-E-A-N lean, and the results are remarkable. The studied ingredients and lean have been shown to lower your blood sugar, burn fat by converting it into energy, and curb your appetite and cravings. So you're not as hungry, it's as simple as that. But listen, lean is not, for the casual dieter with only a few pounds to lose. The doctors at Brickhouse Nutrition created lean for frustrated dieters with 10 or more pounds to lose. Let's get you started with 20% off and free rush shipping, so you can add lean to your healthy diet and exercise plan. Visit TakeLean.com and enter PDB for your discount. Once again, that's promo code PDB at TakeLean.com.
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