00:00I want to start actually with the energy news of the day, which is the fact that President Trump
00:04has now granted this waiver to India to buy Russian oil. It is a 30-day waiver, but it also
00:11constitutes a major walkback from the position that the Trump administration had and that it
00:15wasn't so long ago they were talking about applying extra 25 percent tariffs on India as punishment
00:20for buying this Russian oil. What do you make of the decision? Well, I think first, Joana,
00:26it's good to be with you. Look, I think it first indicates how concerned the White House is
00:32with the rising oil prices. If you don't look just at the last few days since the war started,
00:38but since we started talking about maybe going to war, so in early January, late December,
00:43when prices were around $60, $62, $63, we're $20 north of that right now. But what's more important
00:53to me is the complacency that right now in the market that we have. People in the market think
00:59that this is like, oh, this is like the 12-day war. This is like Venezuela. It'll be over soon.
01:04Or we can do some cosmetic changes like this waiver. But when you take out so much oil,
01:12such a massive volume of oil and natural gas and refined products and fertilizer off the market for
01:19such a lengthy period of time, if it keeps going for a few days, it's not about whether you can
01:25buy
01:25some Russian barrels off of ships, but rather, will there be shut-in of production in Saudi Arabia,
01:31in Kuwait, in Qatar, in UAE? And once you shut that in, it's very much harder to bring that back
01:39on
01:40than it is to shut it. And so I think if we go into this weekend with these prices,
01:48but on Sunday night when oil prices start trading again,
01:52if the straits are still closed, I think the spike will be much more significant.
01:59So let me ask you this. If you do think the price is going to be a lot more significant,
02:03how influential is the price of oil going to be in determining the duration of this war?
02:12Yeah, I think that's the million-dollar question. Right now, you have two forces that are fighting
02:17this war, Israel and the United States. It's very easy to be able to figure out what the national
02:21security rationale for this war is for Israel, and it's very popular in Israel. In the United States,
02:28America is still confused as to why we're in this war to begin with.
02:32Is this in the interest of the United States? So when you add to that confusion, and again,
02:39this confusion is with the fact that most people believe the Iranians are an evil regime that has
02:45enormous amount of blood on their hands of civilians, including many Americans. So no sympathy for Iran
02:51here. But understand between that and understanding why we're at war, and then you add a cost of energy
02:58prices, which goes to electricity, and food, and gasoline, and a lot of other commodities
03:05throughout the economy. I think people say, am I willing to be able to pay for this? And there needs,
03:11there's going to have to be a way for the administration, it's going to have to explain
03:15and to demonstrate that it is either very temporary, or that they'll be able to mitigate the cost for
03:23the American public. That is a very difficult thing to do in these kind of circumstances.
03:29Yeah, how do you think the US administration is going to define success in this instance?
03:38Well, I think we have two options here. One is success by saying that the regime is gone,
03:44it has collapsed, and there is a new regime in place, which is difficult to do without troops on
03:49the ground. The other is to declare victory at some point and say unilaterally, look, we defeated
03:55their navy, sank all their ships, we destroyed their air force, the leadership has been decapitated,
04:03their missiles have been mitigated and destroyed, most of their launchers and missile capacity,
04:10the nuclear has been destroyed, and we are stopping this war now, and the Iranians need to do,
04:17to change their behavior into the future, or else we will come back. So those are the two options here,
04:23either you change the regime, or you leave it intact, but weakened.
04:29How do you think the Gulf states are going to view this moment in time? And the fact that,
04:36you know, the UAE specifically has actually been the recipient of more drones and missiles than any
04:42single one of its neighbors. None of these Gulf countries were involved in launching the initial
04:48operations, the joint US-Israeli operations on Saturday morning. How does the Iranian retaliation
04:56reshape the region for years and decades to come, do you think?
05:00Well, I think there's a number of consequences that we're going to have to deal with for a long
05:04time. One, the UAE has sustained an unbelievable bombardment by the Iranians. And as you said,
05:11for no reason whatsoever, except to put pressure on the region and on Donald Trump and the Israelis
05:18to limit the war's scope and length and duration. And remarkably, the UAE has been able to defend
05:26itself, whether remarkably well. But I think that no matter what happens at the end, the relationship
05:32between Iran and its Gulf neighbors is going to be severely hampered for a very, very long time.
05:41The trust will be gone. They have just sustained a massive attack.
05:45Now, the question becomes, how long does this go? If this sustains for a few more days, several more
05:51days, the economic harm to the region will not be able to be repaired all that fast. So I think
05:59that
05:59you have to watch the issue of duration of both the ability to close the straits, de facto, and their
06:07ability to continue to launch the missiles. As we know, tonight, Israel has sustained almost no missiles
06:14from Iran for the first time. Clearly, Iran's ability to launch missiles is starting to diminish.
06:19But I don't think they're done yet. So the question becomes, how much longer? And this is
06:26of grave concern for the region. I think they're willing to sustain this because they know that
06:31this regime is no longer one that they can work with in the future.
06:39Yeah. Amos, I want to round up asking you about the other front that's opening up in Lebanon. And to
06:47our point,
06:48to the to what my colleague Dan was just saying, it's actually in some respects now become the more active
06:53front as far as the IDF are concerned. Look, I think most people that you talk to, the majority of
07:00the people you
07:01talked to will say that Hezbollah inflicted this on the country by choosing and voluntarily deciding
07:08to get involved in the war. The question is, you know, how far is this going to go? And do
07:14you
07:15actually foresee a situation where we go back to those pre 2000 years with Israel and IDF establishing
07:22a buffer zone or an occupation in the southern part of the country? How do you see this playing out
07:27for
07:27Lebanon? Well, Jamal, as you know, I was the one that negotiated the ceasefire a year and a half
07:33ago in November of 24 between Israel and Hezbollah. Hezbollah launching the rockets two days ago and
07:40joining the war voluntarily against the demand from the Lebanese government and the Lebanese people
07:47was a betrayal of Lebanon. Hezbollah has always been a parasite on the state, but has now become
07:53an enemy of the state. The president of Lebanon, the prime minister, the cabinet, including
07:59the Shia leader of parliament, Nabi Bari, all said Hezbollah may not take action at this time,
08:06and they did anyway. And so they are now acting against the interest of the Lebanese,
08:12not against the interest of Sunnis or Christians, but against all the interest of all Lebanese.
08:17My concern is that if they don't stop this, this will be used as the reason for Israel
08:21to establish that buffer zone, to occupy the South for the foreseeable future. And the government
08:28of Lebanon needs to take themselves, need to step up. They have taken courageous steps politically.
08:34They have begun arresting Hezbollah members. They need to deploy the Lebanese on forces
08:39to stop the Hezbollah from continuing to drag Lebanon further and further into this war.
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