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Commentator Bill O’Reilly on Monday said the Pentagon’s strategic error in the Iran war is that it did not war-game the possibility of Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz.
“One major error by the Pentagon is they did not war-game the Strait of Hormuz. I can’t explain it; nobody knows why they didn’t,” O’Reilly told “Batya!” host Batya Ungar-Sargon on NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network.
“But certainly, that should have been taken into account. When you say if you don’t get regime change, if the mullahs tough it out, they’re going to try and strangle the world economy by screwing up the Strait of Hormuz.”
O’Reilly called the U.S. starting the conflict with Iran a “noble gesture to try and protect us and the world from a nuclear weapon that a terror state almost surely had.” But he emphasized that after “you start a war, and I said this at the very beginning, unintended consequences roll in, things that you never anticipated.”
He said other wars in U.S. history have had strategic errors, including the Vietnam and Korean wars and World War II. He said that “every single modern war has casualties,” such as the U.S. bombing of the Shajareh Tayyebeh Elementary School, which killed more than 165 people, mostly children, at the start of the war on Feb. 28.
“A guy at the Pentagon did not wake up that morning and say, ‘I’m going to kill schoolgirls in Iran,'” O’Reilly continued. “That didn’t happen. What happened was there was a mass bombing to destabilize the infrastructure of that country.”
The former Fox News host said this will “happen again because President Trump has two options” amid negotiations over the 14-point memorandum of understanding (MOU): establish inspectors’ access to Iran’s nuclear facilities or resume U.S. strikes.
“If we bomb them, more schoolgirls are going to be killed,” the commentator added. “That is what war is. I don’t justify it. It’s horrible. But if you think, in this age, where you’re using the most powerful weapons on earth, that civilians aren’t going to be affected, you’re crazy.”
Ungar-Sargon, who previously called the MOU a “total capitulation” to Iran, pushed back and said inspectors were in Iran as recently as “Operation Midnight Hammer,” when the U.S. and Israel first struck Iran in June 2025. She accused the inspectors of doing “absolutely nothing” because Iran was “able to keep enriching uranium.”
“But I think more importantly, the thing that I think is so horrifying to me about this MOU and what I think just happened is that Iran has moved the theater of war from the question of ballistics and nukes to the economic front,” she continued. “It has realized that the Strait of Hormuz is even more powerful, dare I say it, than a nuclear weapon because there’s no mutually assured destruction.”
O’Reilly said Iranian officials determined their country could retaliate by closing off the strait and that they can “probably cause a worldwide depression.”
“And I don’t know the extent of the Trump administration’s knowledge of that potential before they took the initial action,” he said. “But I’m more confident tonight than I have been, because the window is so tight on these mullahs now. They either are going to let the inspectors in, or they’re going to get blown to hell.”
The Hill reached out to the Department of Defense for comment.
The New York Times reported earlier this month that the U.S. conducted war games on potential conflicts with Iran and concluded that Iran would close the strait, according to participants.
Conflicting messages from the U.S. and Iran about whether or not the strait is closed have caused further uncertainty about the future of the waterway and global oil supplies. Prices have soared, and inflation rose to its highest point in three years as a result of the strait’s closure.
U.S. gas prices have lowered to less than $4 per gallon on average following the strait’s reopening last week, with the national average at $3.93 per gallon as of Tuesday morning, according to AAA.
Iran reopened the strait after agreeing to the MOU, but its military indicated on Saturday that it would again close the strait in response to Israeli strikes on Lebanon, despite their own ceasefire agreement.
U.S. Central Command previously said commercial ship travel through the waterway “increased” on Saturday and that safe passage “remained intact.”
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