03/15/2026: Choke Point, Laser Focus, Growing Up Behind Walls

0:08This was the scene this past week in the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow stretch of water where Iranian attacks on tankers and cargo ships have choked the flow of oil and threatened to hold the global economy hostage.

0:25This is the mother of all choke points. We could be looking at the highest gas prices ever paid in this country. If we don't open Hormuz to the free flow of traffic, yes. They call it asymmetric warfare. Iranian attacks with cheap, low-tech drones across the Persian Gulf. While the U.S. tries to shoot them down with anti-missile interceptors that cost millions. Could this weapon be the answer? The cost per shot goes from$4 million a shot to less than$5 a shot. It's rare you hear about something good happening in Haiti. But tonight we want to take you to a small oasis where children may be growing up behind walls, but hope is very much alive.

1:20Do you get greeted like that every time you come? Pretty much. Yeah. It's an orphanage called Have Faith Haiti. It's run by best-selling author Mitch Albom and his wife Janine. If you give them something beautiful and calm, they'll aspire to those things. And that's what I think you see with our kids. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. Those stories, and in our last minute, Oscar winner Jamie Lee Curtis reflects on America's next act, tonight on 60 Minutes.

2:07As the war enters its third week, U.S. military officials say 6 ,000 Iranian military targets have been struck, including ballistic missile sites and air defense systems, and that Iran's navy has been rendered quote, combat ineffective. Yet Iran continues to maintain its stranglehold over a tiny elbow of water called the Strait of Hormuz. It is the only route connecting oil-rich countries in the Persian Gulf to the rest of the world, a crucial 21-mile-wide waterway for a fifth of the world's oil. Normally, 130 commercial ships pass through it every day. But on February 28th, when Israeli and American jets began dropping bombs on Iran and Iran retaliated, those ships ground to a halt, spiking American gas prices.

3:00It is an unprecedented closure of one of the world's most vital choke points. And that is where we begin tonight, the Strait of Hormuz, where an estimated 20 ,000 crew members are stranded and under attack. This was the scene this past Wednesday in the strait. A Thai cargo ship was struck by a projectile from Iran, setting the ship on fire and trapping members of the crew. It is one of the few ships that has attempted to cross since the start of the war. Most others have been at a standstill in the waters surrounding the strait. With the constant sound of drones and scenes like this all around.

3:47At what point did you look at the situation out there and say, it's too dangerous, these ships should not sail through this strait? That was very early and very quickly. Iran already said that they would attack any vessel that is passing through the Strait of Hormuz and this was the moment when we called off. From her operations center in Hamburg, Germany, Captain Silke Lehmkuster oversees a 300-vessel fleet for the German shipping giant Hapa Gloid. So hundreds, if not thousands, of ships sitting, hovering outside the Strait of Hormuz right now. Yes, and they're all waiting basically to go inside, to go around the corner.

4:26Is that a complete standstill? This is a standstill. Six of her cargo ships carrying furniture, electronics, clothing, anything you might have in your home, were headed toward the strait as the war broke out. This is the message they heard from Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Attention all ships, attention all ships. Broadcast over their ship radios. From now on, all navigating through the strait of Hormuz is forbidden. So you heard this message from Iran and took that seriously? Yes. Captain Leem Custer ordered her crew not to proceed. Today, 150 men sit trapped as the war rages around them. What were they seeing out there?

5:12Drones flying by. Of course, they also saw explosions close to the port, a lot of smoke. They saw explosions close to the port? Yes. That must have been terrifying for them. It was. And they are not alone. Roughly 700 ships are currently sitting in the Persian Gulf, including 400 oil tankers holding 200 million barrels of oil. That's enough to fuel Japan for two months. This is Captain Leem Custer's view of the war now. Day and night, she and her team keep watch. Those orange dots are their ships. The men on board have been ordered to stay below deck as much as possible. How often are you able to have communications with the crews out there?

5:58Sometimes the communication is difficult because a satellite phone is interfered as well. But we are in constant communication with our crew. Her biggest fear? What's happened to many other ships? Like these two oil tankers off the coast of Iraq, struck by Iranian explosives, and set ablaze in the Persian Gulf. One was American-owned. Crews had to be rescued by boat. The next day, scorched vessels were seen drifting in the water. Since the war started, there have been 16 confirmed attacks on ships in and around the Persian Gulf. Iran has claimed responsibility for several of them. At least eight crew members have been killed.

6:45Matt Smith monitors ship activity in the strait as an oil market analyst for Kepler, which tracks global trade and shipping. He made this time-lapse showing how quickly ship traffic moved around the bend of the strait in the days before the war. So on a normal day, you see about 100 or so ships that pass through there. When the bombing started with Iran, we saw it drop to about 70. On the Sunday, we saw it drop into the teens. And then since then, it's just one or two tankers that are passing through there every day. All those red and green arrows represent oil tankers that haven't moved for the past two weeks.

7:25Fair to say this is a very expensive parking lot? It is a very, very expensive parking lot, that's right. The few ships that have moved are mostly from one country, Iran. And you can see that Hilda is loaded with Iranian crude. Hilda is an Iranian vessel. Yes, an Iranian tanker. Loaded with Iranian crude. Two million barrels, and with all that Iranian stuff, it is typically heading to China. That oil is going to China? Yeah. And this past week, Smith and his team made a surprising discovery that Iran has exported daily 100 ,000 more barrels of oil than it did before the war, most of it going to China.

8:05Smith says nine Iranian oil tankers have traveled through the Strait of Hormuz by turning off transponders that reveal locations. Thursday, on Iran State TV, the first public statement from the country's new supreme leader was read, saying, quote, the leverage of blocking the Strait of Hormuz must continue. Chokepoint a fair description? Chokepoint understates it. This is the mother of all chokepoints. Imagine your heart has one artery taking that lifeblood to the rest of your body. And that is what the Strait of Hormuz is. Bob McNally was an energy advisor to President George W. Bush during the Iraq war, who now advises clients on oil and gas markets.

8:54Last year, he made a prediction. You saw this coming. Absolutely. My team and I wrote a big report, and we're not surprised that if unmolested, Iran would be able to make Hormuz unsafe for that lifeblood to flow. We're not surprised at all. Would you have advised President Bush to go through with these strikes? Yes, I believe that what President Trump is doing in terms of defanging the Iranian regime is principled, courageous, and correct. Totally support the goal. If I were advising him on how to achieve the goal, I would emphasize the need to manage the oil and gas market implications. And that means making sure from day one we are attacking Iran's ability to do what it has done for some 12 days now and may apparently do for an entire month.

9:50Did they do that? I don't know. Do you have concerns based on what you've seen so far? Yes. In the United States, gas prices have increased by more than 65 cents per gallon since the war began, the fastest weekly spike in 20 years. The all-time high for the most consumers have ever paid for gasoline was in the summer of 2022 after Russia invaded Ukraine. It was a$5 per gallon average. If we don't open up Hormuz soon, I can see us making new records. We could be looking at the highest gas prices ever paid in this country. If we don't open Hormuz to the free flow of traffic, yes. It's not just gas prices.

10:32The cost of jet and diesel fuel has risen 25 percent. And as a result, higher plane tickets and grocery prices are expected to follow. The gasoline we pay for at the pump, the price of that gasoline is set in a global oil market. And a supply disruption anywhere leads to a price spike for consumers everywhere, including here. We're seeing this trickle-down effect? We are. So when that mom in Des Moines goes to the store to buy food for her family, that food was grown with and transported by oil. And as those producers and growers of food react to and absorb these price increases, they'll be passed along to the consumer, to that mom in the store.

11:19So what's happening at the Strait of Hormuz today affects the entire supply chain? It does. The Straits are in great shape. We've knocked out all of their boats. They have some missiles, but not very many. I think we're in very good shape. Despite President Trump's assurances this past Wednesday, the reality is most ships remain too wary to cross. In recent days, U.S. Central Command took out 30 so-called mine layers, boats believed to be used by Iran to deploy mines in the shipping lanes of the strait. The president said the U.S. would help cover the cost of risk insurance as a way to reassure nervous ship owners and suggested the U.S.

12:06Navy could offer escorts for protection, though it is unclear when that will happen as the Navy is currently busy fighting the war. Captain Leem Custer is still not letting her ships move through the strait. Would more insurance help? You cannot insure the life of a seafarer, So more insurance would not necessarily help. We'd rather have the escorts. Has a U.S. Navy escort been offered? No. To move more oil onto the global market, this past week the Trump administration announced it will temporarily lift sanctions on Russian oil that had been meant to punish Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine.

12:5132 countries, including the U.S., also plan to release 400 million barrels of oil from the strategic reserves the world's emergency supply, a process expected to take at least three months. I've worked in the White House during an energy crisis. There are no policy solutions to a prolonged closure of the Strait of Hormuz. You're saying there's not much a White House, a president, can do to stop this bleeding. You open up the toolkit, and the tools in there, the options range from marginal through symbolic to deeply unwise. Escorts are a sideshow. Strategic stock releases are a sideshow. Gas tax holiday?

13:35Gas tax holiday, sideshow. You got to restore the flow of the Strait of Hormuz. Even if the White House, President Trump declared an end of this war today, tomorrow, is there any guarantee that Iran would open up the strait and it's back to business as usual? No guarantee. It's not like there's a big gate that swings open in front of the Hormuz and Iran locks the gate. So all Iran has to do is demonstrate every day, every other day, that it has the means and the ability to attack ships in the strait, and that will be enough. And those attacks continue, including on this ship Thursday. Remember the orange dots Captain Leem Custer was monitoring in the operations center back in Hamburg?

14:22Two days after our interview, one of her six cargo ships stuck in the Persian Gulf was struck off a port near Dubai. The ship caught fire. No crew members were injured. What needs to happen in order for you to get on the radio to your crews and say, go, it's safe? We would need really an end of this escalation so that there are no drones, no missiles, no whatsoever flying, and that there is a clear message from everyone that they will stop. Yesterday, President Trump called on other countries, including China, to send ships to help secure the Strait of Hormuz. saying, quote, this should have always been a team effort.

15:09This morning, Iran's foreign minister said its military decides which countries are allowed to pass through the strait.

15:23Hi, my name is Lloyd Lockridge, and I'm the host of a new podcast from Odyssey called Family Lore. In this podcast, I'm going to have people on to tell unusual and sometimes far-fetched stories about their families. I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita. And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true. He gets a patent one month before the Wright brothers. Oh my God. Please follow and listen to Family Lore, an Odyssey podcast, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your shows. They call it asymmetric warfare. Our highly sophisticated interceptor missiles, patriots, thads, against Iran's low-tech drones made of materials you can largely get at your corner hobby store.

16:10While attacks by Iranian drones were down this past week, the amount of damage they have done has come as a jolt. An Iranian drone attack caused the first American casualties of the war when it killed six soldiers in Kuwait. Iranian drones are a drain on the U.S. weapons stockpiles and a threat to the Strait of Hormuz. We have found that in the race for a counterweapon, there are contenders that look like science fiction, lasers that focus on zapping drones out of the sky.

16:51This is Iranian propaganda footage of its arsenal of drones that have been menacing the Gulf states, blasting apartment buildings, airports, oil refineries. These Shahed drones are getting faster, stronger, they can move in swarms, and there are tons of them. Perhaps their greatest advantage, how cheap they are, often made of flimsy plastics. One costs as low as$20 ,000. To shoot them down, the U.S. is using anti-missile interceptors that cost millions. A possible solution? Lasers. It changes the economics on how we can actually defeat and defend against these targets that are now being deployed and produced by tens of thousands.

17:50Wahid Nawabi is CEO of American defense contractor AeroVirament, AV, that makes lasers that he says solve the money disparity. So let me give you an example, a real example. A Patriot missile battery costs about a billion dollars to procure one system. Each missile costs about$4 million a shot. Compare that to a laser. The cost per shot goes from$4 million a shot to less than$5 a shot. In most cases, about$3 a shot. That's shocking. The price difference of firing a missile or a laser is like buying a mansion versus a cup of coffee. We visited A.V. in Albuquerque, where their laser system, called Locust, is built.

18:42The top part that looks like WALL-E is the beam director. The deadly ray blasts out of one of the eyes. The base contains batteries as the power source and a cooling system. Each unit costs roughly$8 million and can be stationary or installed in the back of a truck. Has it ever been deployed in battle? Absolutely yes. Multiple battles in different theaters around the world, including against Shahids. Are you telling us that it has been deployed in the Middle East? Yes. He said he's not allowed to tell us exactly where, but it is not being used in the current war. That drones have become so pervasive in the war brings up the question, why didn't the U.S.

19:32have a cost-effective solution ready? They went into this war prepared for certain threats, like missiles. They did not go into this war prepared for other threats, like drones hitting soft targets. Mara Carlin worked at the Pentagon in both Democratic and Republican administrations. Her last job was Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy, Plans, and Capabilities. Is Iran doing anything that surprises you? Not really. If anyone were to war game this out, you knew there were a couple things the Iranian regime would do. They would always look at how to use cheap, tough-to-counter capabilities like drones in as many spots as possible.

20:21Is there anything within our arsenal to confront the drones? So I can't tell you that there is one magic solution that will do it. And frankly, that's kind of the history of warfare. You find multiple ways to counter different challenges, and then your enemy either catches up or they then get a counter to that counter. While A.V. is not a household name, it's a leader in developing drones as well as lasers. But their lasers face stiff competition from some of the giants, including Lockheed Martin and Raytheon. Countries are in the hunt as well. Israel has iron beam, part of the Iron Dome. Ukraine has a system.

21:09And China just revealed its lasers in a large military parade. But you're going to start tracking this. John Garrity, who's in charge of the Locust program, showed us how it works. First, Locust's radars find the enemy drone up to seven miles away as it moves toward the target. Then an operator, in this case me, locks in on the drone by clicking an ordinary Xbox controller. I'm going to have you tap that bumper one more time. From that point on, the laser tracks the drone as it approaches using AI. I don't have to touch anything. It's going to follow the drone wherever it goes, correct? Yes, exactly.

21:54Yep. And that's the beauty of a laser weapon system, that ability to track and take that overhead burden off of the operator. As it gets two to three miles from the system, the final step, destruction. Tell us about the kill. So imagine, if you will, you're taking a beam of light or a flashlight and pushing that out several miles away. and that creates enough heat to melt through the plastics or what the material is that these drones are made of. For a closer look, he had a drone placed in a hangar. The door was bolted, and we observed on monitors outside. John showed me what an operator would do.

22:37All right, Leslie, what I'm going to ask you to do right now is go ahead and pull the trigger. Watch closely because the invisible beam travels at the speed of light. Here's the replay. The beam went right through the drone. You can see there instantaneously flames. Look at the flames coming out of there. That is out of the sky. It is no longer a threat. This is what the drone looked like afterward. And so let's go ahead and fire again. We were able to see the beam through cameras sensitive to infrared light. Look at that. Isn't that cool? And so what you're seeing there is effectively clear light that's traveling across the sky and hitting the target that you intend.

23:24So the benefit of a laser system is you can just keep on lazing at that target until it goes down. Can this shoot down 100 drones at the same time? Because you're only taking one second or less to kill some of these drones, depending on the range, you can quickly go through and complete your mission. Right now, today, is it strong enough to shoot down the Shahad drones that Iran is sending in? So we've had a lot of great success with those types of drones, and our new LOCUS system is directly intended to get after that Shahad fight. As drone technology keeps evolving, lasers have to keep up. Laser technology overall is still relatively young and experimental.

24:09Ongoing military tests have raised concerns about performance, accuracy, how heavy the battery is, how much energy is required, and how effective the beam is in certain weather conditions. I'm told that there's a lot of trouble with these systems if it rains, if it's humid, if it's sandy. like in the desert, if there's fog, if there's dust. Now, when you're talking about does the system operate in rain, well, traditionally drones aren't flying in rain. What about sand and fog and dust? You know, I won't get into our deployments, but I can tell you that our systems have been actively deployed and placed at their battle stations and never had to come inside during any weather events.

24:59We asked Mara Carlin, the former Pentagon official, how laser technology should fit in the U.S. arsenal. That would be an element and has clearly been an effort that has gotten some investment, though surely not enough. But even for the lasers, you've got to be able to figure out where the target is coming from. So do you have sufficient intelligence along those lines? Are you able to make the physics work in terms of what you're actually aiming towards? So you don't think lasers are a magic bullet? So at this moment in time, they are very valuable. When we are sitting here six months from now, I don't know that will be the case.

25:41But as the war enters its third week, there's an alignment of moments with laser weapons maturing exactly when less powerful, less expensive military hardware is needed. Is the U.S. military right now procuring locust? Yes, Leslie. Just this fall, the United States Army requested from us to deliver about$100 million worth of locust laser-directed energy systems. Turns out the lasers have been in use since last month, not in the war in Iran, but in the war on drugs at home. We have learned that the Army is routinely shooting down drones operated by cartels along the Mexican border. Drug smugglers are sending the drugs in by drone.

26:35Not just one direction. It's a lot easier to fly cash via a drone than to dig a tunnel and then transport it underground. So it's the Army that is conducting these operations using locust on the border area. I believe the United States Army is working in cooperations with Customs and Border Patrol. But after LOCUS was used near West Texas, the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, shut down the airspace near the border twice, causing flight cancellations and cargo diversions. Do you know why the FAA shut down the airspace over El Paso? Because there were some concerns that these systems can interfere and hurt commercial airplanes, which is not true.

27:26It's not true? It is not true. Well, how do you know it's not true? The FAA, just this past weekend, conducted a series of tests to ensure and demonstrate that the type of system that we've developed cannot and will not defeat or harm a commercial airliner. So if you aim this beam at a Delta flight, it won't burn through it and disable it and crash it? The system is designed to not make mistakes like that. Oh, my God. In order for the lasers to be sold to the Gulf states, the Pentagon and the State Department would have to approve the sale because of the national security aspect of the technology.

28:14And then there's another issue. Let's say Bahrain wants 500 of these to protect their hotels and all the other targets. Could you send them 500 tomorrow? Not tomorrow. Remember, there's a chicken and egg thing in here. So far, we've only been authorized and allowed to provide this to the U.S. military. So I cannot go at risk and build a billion dollars' worth of this stuff when I don't have a contract in place that allows me to have a security or guarantee that somebody's going to buy it. The reality is that even if the government gave the go-ahead for a sale to the Gulf states tomorrow, it would take months for AV to scale up its laser production.

29:04It's rare you hear about something good happening in Haiti. 16 years after the devastating earthquake, which killed some 200 ,000 people and left more than a million homeless, the government has all but collapsed and gangs battle for control of the capital, Port-au-Prince. But tonight, we want to take you to a small oasis in that besieged city where children may be growing up behind walls, but hope is very much alive. It's an orphanage called Have Faith Haiti that's run by best-selling author Mitch Albom and his wife, Janine. Since the earthquake, they've been taking in the most at-risk kids, Abandoned infants, toddlers with disabilities, children begging in the streets.

29:47It hasn't been easy, but with love, faith, and a focus on education, the results have been extraordinary. It's too dangerous for international flights to land in Haiti's capital, so every month Mitch Albom flies the two hours from Florida to the northern city of Cap-Haitien. That's where we met him and boarded a helicopter to reach Port-au-Prince. From the air, much of Haiti is a maze of dry riverbeds and rugged mountains stripped of trees. Then appears Port-au-Prince, a dense sprawl of chaotic streets and dilapidated buildings. Once on the ground, heavily armed guards drive Album to the orphanage in a convoy of bulletproof vehicles.