00:00Now, Simon Diggins is a retired colonel and a former British attache in Kabul.
00:05I think it would bring the war not just to, if you like, state organisations, but to the people as
00:11well.
00:11I mean, because power, particularly in that part of the world, is not just about electricity and everything goes with
00:17it,
00:17it's also about water, air conditioning, everything goes with it.
00:20So conditions for ordinary people would change very rapidly and not necessarily for the better.
00:25So these are major threats.
00:27I think Donald Trump is extremely irritated with the Iranians, as we know, for all sorts of reasons.
00:32But at the moment, the Iranians have basically said that any vessel that's not an enemy vessel can pass through.
00:38They've established safe lanes or they claim they've established safe lanes, but you have to pay a toll to go
00:44through it.
00:44And clearly all of those things together are not acceptable to Donald Trump.
00:48All the alternatives, you're liable to attack and or, and this is the really big $64,000 question,
00:54which we don't know the answer to, but subject to attack by, by mines, which may have been pre-laid
00:59or they may be,
01:00or they may be mines that could be automated and, and, and set forth if people don't, don't, don't do
01:06what they're told.
01:07So, yeah, it's a very, it's a very dangerous potential development.
01:09And I'm not quite sure which way Donald Trump particularly will go.
01:13He is noted for a big threat and then pulling back from those.
01:17But we're interested to see which way he goes.
01:20So we have the attacks on the ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
01:23What about the energy infrastructure around the rest of the Gulf?
01:27How much more do we know about what kind of serious damage Iran is likely to inflict on its neighbors?
01:32Of course, affecting fuel prices, which affects all of us.
01:36Yeah, I mean, I think the, the, the attack on the, the, the refineries attack, I think both sides saw
01:42as, as, as, as a major escalation.
01:45Certainly, I think it's probably fair to say that Donald Trump was taken by surprise by the Israeli attack on
01:51the, on the, on the, on the Paz oil field,
01:53or the bit of the Paz oil field that sits inside Iran's waters.
01:56And then the response back attacking Qatar's liquid, natural, liquid, natural gas facilities was, was also regarded as a major
02:06bloke.
02:07The difficulty with some of these, these particular facilities is they're very, very technical and very, very fragile.
02:13And even to repair the damage being done so far, I've seen some estimates, we're talking about weeks, days, even
02:20years to fully repair some of that, some of that damage.
02:23So it'd be very easy to have a kind of Armageddon type war in there where basically everybody knocks out
02:30each other's infrastructure, oil infrastructure, fuel infrastructure, power infrastructure.
02:34And it then takes a long time to, to put right.
02:37And, you know, particularly with the, with the, with the, with those countries, particularly the Gulf state countries, they're now
02:42very sophisticated countries.
02:43You know, they rely on the ability to generate power.
02:46They rely on the ability to generate, generate income.
02:49They're very technical, very technically advanced countries, knocking out their power facilities, if that's what they did, what happened to
02:55them would be a major blow to them.
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