00:00Samuel Romani is an associate fellow at the RUSI think tank and the CEO of Pangea Geopolitical Risk.
00:07Welcome back, Samuel. Good to see you. Has the ceasefire ceased?
00:13Well, I think that the ceasefire is obviously under a great deal of pressure right now, in part because of
00:19the situation in Lebanon.
00:21Netanyahu has made it pretty clear that the ceasefire does not actually apply to its operations against Hezbollah,
00:25and he's defined that as a separate front.
00:27Clearly, the Iranians don't agree with that, and the Iranians and the Pakistanis, who are the chief mediators,
00:32see all these things as interrelated.
00:35So, Iran is now restricting transit to the Strait of Hormuz.
00:39It's allowing only selected vessels from friendly countries to come through.
00:43The U.S. wants a full reopening, and we're now on a nice edge once again,
00:47and a lot of it's caused by Israel's actions in Lebanon.
00:49Everyone, all parties, are supposed to be heading to the peace talks at the weekend tomorrow.
00:56Where is the basis for a negotiation at these peace talks, given what's happening?
01:02Well, I think obviously there's going to be a negotiation to basically get the Strait of Hormuz reopened as soon
01:08as possible,
01:08even though the Trump administration is talking another line,
01:12basically saying that European countries and Asian countries have to fend for themselves.
01:15They're under also a lot of pressure from those allies to make sure that the Strait opens up
01:20and that energy prices come down.
01:22The Iranians are obviously going to want significant concessions in response to that.
01:27They're going to want probably some kind of a minimal threshold of uranium enrichment for civilian purposes.
01:33They're probably going to want maybe even bargaining for some removal of sanctions,
01:37as we've seen in the 10-point plan, and also transiting fees to be charged,
01:42maybe shared with Oman, that could make up for some of the damage caused by this war,
01:46and giving the Americans a sense that they need to pay reparations, de facto.
01:50So, yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of intense dialogue
01:54and very hard to find a consensus right now.
01:56How far can the United States go in terms of any further military efforts?
02:03Well, I mean, the United States obviously has basically implied that if Iran doesn't open the Strait of Hormuz,
02:08there's going to be a much stronger military offensive than we've ever seen before,
02:11and that will extend to civilian infrastructure, that will extend to bridges,
02:14that will extend to power plants and large-scale bombing.
02:17But Iran has already shown that it can absorb a massive amount of bombardment
02:22and still carry out significant disruptions with missiles and drones, on Gulf energy infrastructure,
02:27and also on U.S. bases and on American personnel in the region.
02:31So I don't think that air power alone, or more bombing of civilian infrastructure,
02:36is going to break the Islamic Republic or lead to a regime change in Iran.
02:39The only path for the Iranian regime to change is through a ground invasion,
02:44and that's something that the Trump administration, even if it escalates,
02:47doesn't really want to go anywhere near.
02:49So how close is Iran to exhausting its ability to retaliate militarily?
02:57Well, I think that it's actually got more capabilities than you might think.
03:01I mean, they've got the ability to still use sea mines in the Strait of Hormuz.
03:06They have the ability to weaponize the Houthis and the Babamandam Strait.
03:09They were just starting to get into the war, maybe, on the Red Sea,
03:12but now they could use them more fully.
03:14They could definitely still continue to use missiles and drones.
03:18Obviously, there's some research assessments that show that missile capabilities in particular
03:23are less than what they had before, but they still have an after-cause disruption to aviation travel
03:28and also damage to oil fields and gas fields akin to what we saw in Razlanav in Qatar.
03:33So I think that Iran obviously has seen some of its capabilities significantly degraded,
03:37but their ability to retaliate in the near term remains high,
03:41and I think that they can still be a major disruptor to global economy and global energy markets,
03:45and that's why I think that the U.S.'s options to retaliate right now
03:51and not have a diplomatic solution are probably less than what Trump has implied.
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