00:00Are you optimistic this ceasefire is going to halt?
00:04Unfortunately not, because we've already seen a little bit of violation on both sides.
00:08But let's look at what the kind of details of this so-called ceasefire are.
00:13Iran didn't just give the United States a peace proposal, but really a kind of plan of action for the
00:20future,
00:21where it's looking in its 10-point maximums plan for a lifting of all U.S. sanctions,
00:27compensation for damages, regulating the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian military coordination.
00:33But I think critical here is this $2 million per ship toll, which would stand to generate $87 billion for
00:40Iran,
00:41a country that makes just about $50 billion annually on its oil.
00:45So the tolling of the strait is where it sees its kind of future income.
00:50Interestingly enough, hidden in this 10-point plan is the idea of sovereign rights,
00:56which some are signaling that Iran is building into it, future perhaps uranium enrichment.
01:02And so what we're seeing in this plan put forward is that Iran is actually perhaps putting a proposal for
01:08the future,
01:09for its future, a kind of guarantee, taking advantage of this moment.
01:13If you look at this on the U.S. side, the goalpost of so-called success has shifted significantly.
01:20Initially, it was complete regime change, then complete destruction of the ballistic military capacity,
01:28and then it moved to nuclear enrichment.
01:31And now it's simply opening the Strait of Hormuz, which is what we heard from President Trump today.
01:36The Strait was open before the war.
01:38And so what this signals is that in terms of coming to the brink, which we were at just a
01:44few hours ago,
01:45it seems that Iran perhaps is in a position with a greater bargaining range than the United States is.
01:55All sides seem to be framing this as a victory.
01:59And I was just noting some comments that the White House press secretary, Caroline Leavitt,
02:05put up painting it as a victory for the U.S.
02:07and that they had largely achieved their military objectives.
02:11Do you see this as a victory for the U.S.?
02:16It's certainly not a victory in that the United States has nowhere achieved any of its military objectives.
02:22Actually, the war has cost the United States much more than anticipated.
02:27But in terms of U.S. strategic positioning in the world,
02:30we know that our European allies are quite frustrated with the United States.
02:35We even heard President Trump yesterday go after South Korea and Japan and Australia for their lack of support.
02:42So we're seeing the United States increasingly isolated.
02:45Interestingly enough, the country that has emerged as a global power player is Iran.
02:52Other than Iran, it's been Russia and increasingly China.
02:56We know that it might have been China that put its finger on the pulse to actually the scale, if
03:01you will,
03:02to shift the negotiation for this ceasefire.
03:06China has significant power to gain from this just by sitting by
03:09and allowing for perhaps the future tolling of the strait to be in the Chinese currency
03:15rather than on the petrodollar, which was significantly weak in the U.S. economic standing in the world.
03:21So we're seeing in this increasingly multipolar world the reemergence or creation of a new pole,
03:27and that is Iran and its ability to make significant demands on the system
03:32but also make significant financial gains and perhaps alter the future of the petrodollar
03:37given what we've seen in the past five to six weeks.
03:43Such an important point regarding perhaps a structural change in terms of the strait
03:50and how vessels will transit through it for the foreseeable future if it does, of course, happen.
03:56Let me also ask you about the other front, that is the Lebanon front, Israel active war with Hezbollah.
04:06And it is interesting that just a couple of hours ago the Israeli prime minister did make some official remarks
04:11saying that Israel had subscribed to the U.S. a ceasefire proposal
04:15but that it would not include Hezbollah from their perspective.
04:20How do you read this?
04:23Well, ultimately, it's really about if we look at a kind of a larger scale view of this war
04:28and was it in U.S. strategic interest or was President Trump drawn into the war because of Israel.
04:35We could be at a point where Israel is repositioning itself as the important lever even during this peace process
04:42because if it doesn't perhaps get what it wants in terms of being able to further expand in Lebanon,
04:48then it could be the country that dismantles an element, important element, strategic element in the future negotiation.
04:57So while we do talk about U.S. and Iran negotiation in Pakistan, especially starting on Friday,
05:05Israel still plays a kind of wild card into the future of the kind of fragile peace that has been
05:12established for the past few hours
05:14and what is going to be negotiated on Friday, one of the 10 points is a hands-off of Lebanon
05:20and that obviously has already been violated.
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