00:00For more, we can speak to Paul Taylor, a senior visiting fellow at the European Policy Centre.
00:04Hello, and thank you for speaking to Paris Direct.
00:08Just wondering, what can European or any countries do to help secure the Strait of Hormuz?
00:23Don't really have the capability to fight their way into the Strait of Hormuz.
00:29And even if they did, no ship owners would want their ships to be escorted under those circumstances.
00:34Once the fighting is over, and that will require not only the United States and Israel to stop their attacks
00:40on Iran,
00:42but also Iran to accept a ceasefire and to stop its retaliation against Gulf countries and their oil and gas
00:51infrastructure and shipping.
00:53And for Iran to agree that the Strait of Hormuz can be opened.
00:58Iran effectively does hold a veto over the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
01:03At the moment, they're actually allowing a selective handful of tankers to go through,
01:09making them sail through Iranian territorial waters.
01:12And there are reports that ship owners are paying up to $2 million for safe passage.
01:20That's something, obviously, that Western countries would not want to accept as a system that the Iranians would put in
01:28place for duration.
01:30We missed the very beginning of your first response there.
01:34Would reopening the Strait of Hormuz require some sort of troops on the ground in Iran, or is there another
01:40way around that?
01:42No, there's no need to have troops on the ground in Iran if there is an agreement with the Iranian
01:48authorities that are there after the war that Iran will no longer fire on shipping and will not obstruct.
01:57But if Iran wishes to continue blocking the Strait, it has all sorts of means.
02:03The United States is currently heavily bombing the whole shoreline on the Iranian side of the Strait to try and
02:13destroy what they believe to be undercover caves
02:18where there are sea drones and ships and missiles stocked that could attack shipping in the Gulf.
02:26But it's unlikely that they'd be able to catch everything in this kind of bombing.
02:32And as we're seeing, the Iranians are being very effective with drones, and they have very large numbers of them,
02:40which cannot all be destroyed.
02:42This operation, I think we all know, called Epic Fury, this joint U.S.-Israeli operation.
02:48I'm not sure if you saw the new Economist cover, Paul, the Economist cover this week, leading with Operation Blind
02:55Fury.
02:56What does it say that we're three weeks into this war and we still don't have a clear picture of
03:02what the objectives are for the Trump administration?
03:07I think that to a degree, when you start a war, you have to know in your own mind what
03:13you seek to achieve,
03:14even if you don't necessarily telegraph it all in public.
03:17But it's not clear that the U.S. really knows in its own mind what the end state is that
03:24will lead it to declare victory and withdraw.
03:29Clearly, they have decapitated the Iranian leadership, but the regime remains in place and continues to function.
03:36It's a decentralized command system, which has allowed units to continue to operate and to cause severe damage,
03:46even though their commanders have been killed.
03:49And we are seeing that, you know, three weeks into the war, they're still able to target very accurately facilities
03:57in a lot of neighboring countries
04:00and indeed as far as Israel.
04:04Now, the question of what President Trump considers to be an acceptable end to the war,
04:10he could at any stage say, as Prime Minister Netanyahu did yesterday,
04:15we have destroyed their nuclear capability and their ability to make enriched uranium.
04:23We have destroyed most of their missile launchers.
04:26We have destroyed most of their missile production facilities.
04:30And we have decapitated their leadership.
04:35And the way is now clear for Iranians to choose a better future.
04:39That, of course, would be slightly false.
04:44But nevertheless, it would, I think, enable the president more or less wherever he wants to declare victory.
04:52And why he's not quite doing that yet is a bit of a mystery to me.
04:58But clearly, they feel that at least there are several more days of destroying Iranian capabilities,
05:07notably on the coastal line, all the way along the coastline route from the Strait of Hormuz further north,
05:13to make sure that Iran does not have much capability left to disrupt shipping after the war, if it chooses.
05:22Yeah. And then we saw that meeting with Japan's Prime Minister and Donald Trump.
05:27That made for some moments of awkward viewing when he alluded to the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
05:33But also, I mean, the question is, how do you pull in allies to get involved here?
05:39Because without a clear objective for the U.S.,
05:42and why would they get bogged down in a long-term Middle East war?
05:45Japan, though, does not have a lot of leverage here.
05:49It gets about 95% of its crude oil supplies from the Gulf.
05:52It would want to ensure the safe supplies for its own domestic means.
05:58Can you see Japan?
06:00What can you see Japan offering here?
06:04Well, I'm not an expert on the Japanese constitution.
06:07But clearly, there are restrictions to what Japan can do in terms of deploying its navy far from Japan's shores
06:15in a conflict situation.
06:17Once again, the condition for anybody doing anything to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz is a cessation of hostilities,
06:27not just by the United States and Israel, but also by Iran.
06:31That will involve talking to Iran, talking to whatever authorities there are in charge in Iran at the end of
06:39the conflict.
06:40It will also, for the comfort, I think, and legal certainty of the nations that would get involved,
06:49involve getting a United Nations resolution mandating them in some way to open the strait.
06:57And so they have a firm legal basis for doing so.
07:01And that's what has been going on to some extent.
07:05There will be preliminary talks with the UN Secretary General at the EU summit yesterday.
07:11France, in particular, is active in trying to put together some kind of diplomacy on this.
07:16But all of this, and the British are involved in military planning,
07:20along with the French, for a possible naval task force.
07:26A number of countries have ships in the East Mediterranean that could reach the Gulf relatively rapidly
07:32if there were a cessation of hostilities.
07:35But I think it will be weeks rather than days before any such thing is put in place.
07:41And again, it is really contingent on the war stopping soon and on the Iranian authorities accepting a ceasefire
07:49because, you know, the other side has a voice too.
07:53All right, Paul, thank you so much for your time.
07:54Paul Taylor, joining us from Brussels.
Comments