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00:00Yeah, this appears to have been retribution. This is the Alpha Jera oil facility. It's just a few
00:05kilometers south from where we are here. About 24 hours ago, there were two huge black plumes of
00:12smoke coming from there. This from two separate apparent drone attacks. Now, these weren't drones
00:17that necessarily hit the plant directly, but that might have been shot down. It's called an
00:23interception and that fragments thereof might have hit the oil facility, led to a stop of at
00:29least some of the operations there. They appear to be back up and running now. But yes, a retaliation
00:35it certainly was. And what Iran has been saying and has been clearly singling out the United Arab
00:41Emirates, where I am now right here, is that they're saying that U.S. attacks on specifically
00:47Harg Island, where, of course, Iran processes a very large percentage of its oil at its terminal,
00:55that that was attacked by the United States from the United Arab Emirates, from air bases or even
01:02from ports. So the reaction from Iran was to say that everybody should evacuate three big ports in
01:10the United Arab Emirates. And that includes the one we just mentioned, Alpha Jera, also includes
01:15the biggest port in the whole of the Middle East. And there was a threat that there were going to
01:20be
01:20further attacks on those ports again, because Iran says they were used to stage U.S. attacks on Iran.
01:28Iran is saying this without any proof. And indeed, the U.S. military hasn't even deemed it worthy of a
01:34response. Now, there haven't been any from the point of view of Iran, we should say successful attacks on
01:42those ports. There might have been some interceptions over the last 24 hours or so, but there have been no
01:49direct hits, no fragments of drones or missiles have hit any facilities or anything in the United
01:55Arab Emirates over the last 24 hours. And that, in fact, goes for most Gulf countries. There have
02:01been mass attacks of drones on Bahrain, for example, on Saudi Arabia as well. But the air defenses of most
02:10of these Gulf countries have been working well and increasingly well as this conflict continues.
02:16Jamon, I want to turn to you and go back to that comment from the president to NBC News just
02:20about
02:21the state of play in this war and where it might be headed, lingering on that line that Iran wants
02:26to
02:26make a deal, but the president doesn't think the terms are good enough yet. What is your sense of
02:30what the president is hoping for once in terms of a deal and how far apart these two sides are
02:35at this
02:36juncture in the war? Well, it's also interesting to observe the evolution of his thinking. It was a couple of
02:43days prior, I think he was calling for once again, the unconditional surrender of the Iranian regime.
02:48But now he seems to be open once again to establishing a deal with them of some sorts.
02:52In that interview with NBC, he declined to give a lot of commentary on exactly what the conditions
02:57would be, but maintained, and this is, you know, a stance that the U.S. has maintained even before the
03:02war kicked off, that Iran should never have the ability to develop a nuclear weapon. Now, from Iran's
03:08perspective, we've had a couple of notable figures from the regime speak out. We've had the Iranian
03:14foreign minister make some remarks, in addition to President Pesashkian putting up a post a couple
03:19of days ago, where they suggested their conditions to come to the negotiating table with the U.S. would
03:24include, number one, full recognition of Iran's, quote, legitimate rights, without giving a lot of
03:30information on what exactly that means. Number two, reparations for damages caused. And then number
03:35three, and this is probably the most important element, guarantees that a war like this will
03:40never happen again. So they are staking their own terms to go back to the negotiating table. Of course,
03:46their economy is massively buckling under the strain, even before this war kicked off. And now there's
03:52the real threat of civilian infrastructure being targeted as well. Karg Island, obviously a key
03:56lifeblood for them. But I would say from the perspective of the Iranians, we always said from the
04:02beginning, this was a fight for their existence. It's an existential fight for them. And the fact
04:07that the U.S. are now saying, or no longer talking about regime change, but are saying,
04:11okay, we're ready to cut a deal, in their eyes, actually is a victory. And they have sustained a
04:18lot of blows. Maybe they're losing militarily. But if they come out of this, the other side,
04:23still intact, and still effectively leading the country, then they will deem that to be a victory.
04:29So I think there's still a lot of daylight between the two sides. And from the Iranian perspective,
04:33they will continue to inflict as many blows as they can, as much economic cost on these Gulf
04:39countries and on the global economy, in order to somehow bring the U.S. as well closer to what
04:45they're asking for. Laura, I want to go to you now over in Tokyo, because the backdrop of all of
04:50this conflict is, of course, what it's doing to the world energy markets, what it's doing to global
04:54economies. And at the same time, you have this Trump-Xi summit coming up. And there's a couple
04:59things going on. There's U.S.-China talks about to happen, or happening right now in Paris. And
05:04then you are in Japan for this. There's economic secretaries there as well. David just wrote down
05:11the name of the summit, and I've already forgotten it. So can you please remind me the name of the
05:15Tokyo summit? And then just kind of set the stage for us, what's going on and where these two big
05:20countries are going to go in the backdrop of all this happening in the Middle East? It's not an easy
05:23net. It's on there somewhere. We'll set it straight. But yeah, this is a summit. It's largely between
05:29the U.S. and Japan. But there's also about 18 countries who are also participating with high-level
05:34economic and energy officials from the region to talk basically about critical minerals and energy.
05:40You know, that, of course, was important even before Iran. Now, with the backdrop of oil prices
05:45spiking, this has really added a lot of urgency and intensity to these discussions. Of course,
05:49the deals that have been struck, you know, so far this weekend have been relatively modest in scale.
05:53You know, these are longer-term arrangements. These are memorandums of understanding,
05:58things that won't really do anything to address the current situation at hand, but really set the
06:02stage for this visit. The Prime Minister of Japan, Takeichi, is headed to the White House on Thursday.
06:08She has been quite critical of the U.S.'s stance in Iran, has questioned the legality of these strikes,
06:13and said she plans to have a very frank and stern conversation with Trump. So this is, you know,
06:17kind of, we're seeing a lot of posturing from allies in the Indo-Pacific region looking to
06:23get in the good graces of the Trump administration with some of these deals,
06:26but looking to take a stronger, firmer stance when it comes to geopolitics.
06:30Our control room tells us it is the Indo-Pacific Energy Security Ministerial and Business Forum.
06:35I feel less bad for not having had the time of my time.
06:37Rolls right off the tongue. And we have Lee Zeldin, the EPA administrator,
06:40joining us from those talks here in a few minutes' time, I should say.
06:42But of course, nothing is shaping the conversation about global energy more than
06:46the strait that we see behind Philip Crowther. And Philip, I'll go back to you and again reference
06:50that interview that was on NBC News, or NBC News conducted with President Trump via telephone.
06:54He said, we're going to be sweeping the strait very strongly, and we believe we'll be joined by
06:59other countries who are somewhat impeded, and in some cases impeded, from getting the oil.
07:04I'm looking at that line, we believe, as he invokes China and France and Japan and South Korea
07:09and other countries. This is a war that largely has been prosecuted by the U.S. and Israel,
07:14just the two of them. Now we have a president talking about the need for allies to reopen
07:19or get traffic flowing in that strait once again. Your sense of the willingness of other countries
07:24to do that, and I know yesterday we had a conversation just about how little traffic
07:27you were able to observe in the strait behind you. Has anything notionally changed here over
07:31the last 24 hours?
07:34First of all, it hasn't. There has not been any increasing traffic here, because there is
07:39no deal, and it is still very much deemed too dangerous for any container ships, one of
07:45which we see behind us, but of course more crucially for the world economic markets, for
07:50oil tankers and those carrying liquefied natural gas to pass from the Persian Gulf through the
07:57strait of Hormuz to, well, essentially where I am here, out into the wider world and bringing
08:02those commodities to the international market. Now back to what you mentioned, though, you know,
08:07this has happened before in the Middle East, that the United States has more or less unilaterally
08:12gone to war, and then in the aftermath is asking for help, essentially. And in this case,
08:18what President Trump is doing, he's maybe enticing other countries to get involved in what
08:23would boil down to an international coalition of warships to protect these ships going in and
08:29out of the strait of Hormuz. Is he enticing them? Is he provoking them into joining him? Is he just
08:35basically saying this is a fait accompli? You need to now be part of this because it's your
08:39ships that are not getting through. And it is true, of course. These are countries and companies
08:45that are very much affected by a U.S.-Israeli war on Iran. And China is number one there because
08:53such a huge percentage of the oil that passes through the strait of Hormuz goes to China.
08:59So in his post last night by President Trump on his social network, on Truth Social,
09:05he was naming countries specifically, not innocently, you know, there was a reason for
09:10this. France, the United Kingdom, of course, that's understandable. These are Western allies,
09:15but also Japan, South Korea, and specifically China. He wants them to be part of, well, essentially
09:21a bit of an armada that would be led by the United States to protect these ships and get the
09:27traffic
09:28flowing through the strait of Hormuz again. This is a lot easier said than done while these Iranian
09:34threats to hit any ship that tries to go through that is in any way affiliated or allied with the
09:42United States and Israel or its allies. While those threats continue, well, you have to presume
09:47that there could be Iranian attacks on warships as well.
09:50Jamona, speaking of Israel, there's a report that's popped up in Semaphore that is exclusive saying
09:56that Israel has informed the U.S. this week that it's running critically low on ballistic missile
10:00interceptors as the conflict with Iran rages on. Israel has reportedly entered the current war
10:04already low on interceptors that were fired during last summer's conflict with Iran. Now,
10:08this complements reporting from Bloomberg that UAE and Qatar were also running low on those
10:14interceptors. I do need to say both those countries have pushed back vociferously on that reporting.
10:18But I'm wondering if you have any sense of the veracity of these reports, if this is something
10:22countries in the region are worried about, I mean, it would make sense at this point. But what are
10:26they telling you?
10:30I think, you know, let's just go back to the starting point of all of this, which is the
10:35asymmetry of the military warfare here. I think I don't think there's a question that the U.S. and
10:40Israel have military dominance. And in fact, if you go back to some of the comments that Central
10:44Command have said, they've said that they managed to eliminate around 60 to 70 percent of missile
10:48launchers in Iran, around 60 to 70 percent of their missile stockpiles. But at the same
10:56time, I think most of the region was taken aback at the sheer intensity and frequency of
11:02the strikes that came through from Iran onto these Gulf states and indeed onto Israel itself.
11:07I mean, just to give you the example of the UAE, they said that they have engaged in over
11:121,600 drones and 300 missiles launched by Iran since the war began. And this was over two
11:18weeks ago. Now, as our colleague reporter was just saying, the interception rate for
11:25these projectiles is very high. It's between something like 92 to 95 percent, whether it's
11:30drones or missiles. But there is a mismatch in costs. And this is something that Iran recognizes.
11:37They're capable of manufacturing these low cost drones in a huge amount. They're estimated
11:42to be sitting on around 50,000 of these drones. And they are costly to take down. And so the
11:48longer this war goes on for, the more there are going to be questions about how long these
11:53air defense systems can hold up for. I should say, however, that these Gulf states maintain
11:58that the air defense systems continue to have very high interception rates and they are doing
12:03what they can to beef them up.
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