00:00The arrival of a U.S. amphibious assault group and the entry of Iran-backed Houthi forces
00:04heightening fears of escalation as the war enters its second month. Still, President Trump keeps
00:10insisting that he's ready to make a deal, saying Tehran has offered further concessions
00:15on allowing oil through the Strait of Hormuz. They've agreed to send eight boats two days ago
00:23and then they added another two, so it was 10 boats. And now today they gave us as a tribute,
00:31I don't know, I can't define it exactly, but they gave us, I think out of a sign of respect,
00:3820 boats of oil, big, big boats of oil.
00:41Let's cross over to Dubai now and bring in Horizons, Middle East and Africa anchor,
00:46Jumana Versace. And Jumana, by all accounts, this is an escalation. Houthi forces raising the ante.
00:55Yes, well, I will just say that going into this weekend, perhaps there was a sliver of hope that
01:01maybe the diplomatic channels would be reignited. And indeed, we did see some of it, but without
01:06U.S. and Iran representation, there was a summit that was held in Pakistan with the foreign ministers
01:11from the region, the likes of Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia participating. But again, nothing really
01:19substantial on the diplomatic front, despite the fact that President Trump is attesting once again
01:24that Iran have come forward and accepted most of their 15-point proposals. Now, still, the rhetoric
01:30from Iran remains to be defiant, one that indicates that they're not in the mood to compromise at all.
01:36And the backdrop to all of this is we have an intensification once more of military operations,
01:43both on the joint U.S.-Israeli military strikes that are taking place around Iran, Iran counterstrikes
01:49on Gulf states in the region. Averill now was just talking about some of the aluminium smelters that
01:54were hit, main ones from the region. And in addition to that, to your point, you had a new front
02:00open up.
02:00The Houthis, who so far for the past month have been quiet, have launched attacks at Israel,
02:06specifically targeted at Israel. And the question here is whether they may take it one step further
02:12and look to start targeting U.S. assets or even look to once again start disrupting shipping along
02:19the Red Sea, which would pose a problem, not least for the energy markets, because so much of the
02:25Saudi oil, about 7 million of it, has managed to be diverted from that east-to-west pipeline.
02:31And if the Houthis were to start attacking ships there, of course, that would just be another
02:37blow for this energy market.
02:41Jumana, we heard from Trump, Slali Ali, suggesting that could be a deal soon, but we have heard
02:47this many times before. Where are we with that?
02:53Well, to go back to what I was saying, there have certainly been a lot of mediation efforts,
02:58and Pakistan have indicated that they are very capable and ready to host the talks.
03:04What we know from the Iranian side is that they haven't so far engaged in direct discussions,
03:09though they have actually said that the points of the U.S. have been passed on to them via
03:14Pakistan. So they are receiving the messages. But as of yet, there really doesn't seem to be
03:20any inclination that they want to return to the negotiating table. But of course, a lot of this
03:25is rhetoric. You don't actually know what's going on behind the scenes. And you also don't know,
03:29Hazlinda, who exactly the U.S. are speaking to. Once again, in interviews over the weekend,
03:35President Trump referred to the fact that he's not even sure about the health status of the
03:43Ayatollah. This is the new supreme leader, Khamenei. So again, it's not clear who exactly the U.S.
03:50side are talking to. And then the other signal that's coming through is the U.S. are deploying
03:56these extra military assets, these extra ground troops to the region. The first constituent of
04:02this Marine Expeditionary Unit arrived on Friday. 3,500 troops. Lots of questions about what the U.S.'s
04:08objectives are with these ground troops and whether or not we could be entering into another phase of
04:13the war that includes potential ground escalation.
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