00:00Bloomberg has been told that the US and Iran are in discussions about holding another round of
00:04face-to-face negotiations before their ceasefire expires next week. Earlier, President Trump said
00:09Iran had reached out to his administration after the US began a naval blockade of the Strait of
00:15Hormuz. Right now there's no fighting. Right now we have a blockade. They're doing no business.
00:22I didn't like seeing boats come out if they were doing business with Iran, but if there weren't,
00:27no boats came out. So now they're doing, Iran is doing absolutely no business and we're going to
00:32keep it that way very easily. Don't forget, their navy is gone, their air force is gone,
00:37their anti-aircraft is gone, their radar is gone and their leaders are gone.
00:42Let's bring our politics editor, Laura Davison, and our oil and shipping reporter, Waylon Zun.
00:47Laura, let me start off with you. What are we hearing in terms of, there's a bit more of a
00:51positive tone, but we've got to remember those talks over the weekend yielded really no compromise
00:57and the reports are that the parties are very far apart on these key issues.
01:03Yes, the key issues, namely being the future of Iran's nuclear program. The US has said that
01:09Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. They want to take the enriched uranium stocks, whereas Iran has
01:14said that they are allowed to have some of these elements for energy. They have previously in the
01:19past agreed to no weapon, that that was not on the table here. Really, the talks over the weekend
01:24fell apart, and that led to a lot of saber rattling ahead of this blockade that went into effect
01:28yesterday. The tensions have cooled a bit a little over the past 12 hours or so, as it's clear that
01:34there hasn't been any sort of military confrontations near or in the Strait of Hormuz, and the both sides
01:40say that they're talking about talking, essentially. So next weekend is sort of the dates that they're
01:46eyeing potentially for talks. That's important because that's just two or three days ahead of when
01:50the 14-day ceasefire is set to expire, so that the main goal there out of those talks would be
01:54to get
01:55some sort of extension of that ceasefire. So Wei Lun, what are we seeing in terms of shipping
02:01in the Strait of Hormuz right now? Right, so traffic has really come down to almost nothing again.
02:08It spiked about a day before because we saw like a few super tankers actually going through
02:13the Strait of Hormuz when all this while during the war, almost no ships have been going through.
02:19So it's now back to zero again. I think the ship owners inside the Gulf are still waiting to see
02:24what can happen with the U.S. blockade. So in fact, they're actually working with two blockades now.
02:29One, you have the Iranians trying to control the traffic, and on the other side, you have the U.S.
02:34Navy waiting for ships to come through. So how this will be implemented in practice remains to be seen.
02:40But for now, the Strait of Hormuz is back to standstill, as we can see this morning, Asia time.
02:48And Laura, this is really consequential for all countries around the world.
02:52So we're seeing the likes of China, the likes of Pakistan, trying to perhaps act as mediators.
02:57What are they doing?
03:00Yeah, so Pakistan has played a very formal role in mediating these talks, hosting the talks last
03:05weekend, likely a host if there's any future round of talks, and sort of being that formal out in front
03:10of
03:10the cameras party that has credibility and trust on both sides with Iran and the U.S.
03:16China, for example, has played a much more behind-the-scenes role, particularly nudging
03:22Iran in both agreeing to the ceasefire. Trump has said he thinks that's one of the reasons
03:26that they originally signed on to the ceasefire several days ago. And also, kind of, as these
03:32talks have gone on, encouraging them to keep continuing these talks, ratchet down some of
03:36the increased tensions we've seen as there's been a little bit of a sort of military buildup
03:42as a showdown has sort of formed, at least rhetorically. So China has played a really
03:47crucial role here. And this is actually a role that, you know, that Trump is actually very
03:50happy for them to play. He would love for countries who have relationships with Iran to sort of push
03:55them towards some sort of talks, towards some sort of peace deal. Of course, these countries,
03:59particularly China, are also some of the most affected by some of the energy shortages that we're
04:02seeing. So there's a lot of both geopolitical and economic factors at play.
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