00:00What do we know as to what's happening right now in the Strait?
00:04Yeah, interesting as well, listening to the president saying that he is not going to be
00:08held hostage by Iran. He did say that he thought things were going along well.
00:13I think everyone thought about five or six hours ago. Since then, the Iranians have
00:19appeared to attack two shipping vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. One tanker just off the coast
00:25of Oman, so very close to Strait of Hormuz, said two IRGC, Iranian gunboats, came at it and didn't
00:34talk to it on the radio, literally opened fire on this tanker. The crew and the vessel are reported
00:40safe. And then about two hours later, in the same area, an unidentified projectile hit a container
00:47ship. Some of the containers damaged, no fire, no environmental damage. But this comes just hours,
00:53just hours after the Iranians said they were reversing their opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
01:00We've heard a lot of pushback from hardliners in Iran saying that that move essentially was too soft
01:07and that they are not responding well to the fact that President Trump said that the U.S. blockade
01:13would remain in place. Iran accuses the United States here of not following through on its
01:19obligations on the ceasefire. So we've gone from a point of early this morning where things look like
01:24they were moving along well, talks getting close, people talking about potential of talks here in
01:29Islamabad in a couple of days, Iranians upping the ante. And I think perhaps that gets to what
01:36the president said. He's not going to be held hostage. And he said he's expecting an update on the
01:41situation later today. Nick, how much of this has to do with the situation in Lebanon with Israel?
01:49Or are these events concentrated based on concerns over the Strait itself?
01:56Absolutely. The the Iranians opening the Strait of Hormuz was based on the fact that they saw President
02:02Trump and the Pakistani negotiators, the field marshal here, Munir, get this ceasefire in Lebanon. That was a
02:10big part of moving things forward. But the Iranians, they then did a quid pro quo and opened the Strait
02:16of Hormuz because, of course, they wanted that ceasefire in Lebanon. They thought there'd be a
02:21positive response from the White House. That's what they're saying. What we've witnessed is a negative
02:27response in Iran to President Trump's response. We've even seen internal tensions in Iran between the
02:33hardliners and the moderates. The moderates are the ones who were in the negotiations. The hardliners have
02:38been saying that had been threatening to re-close the Strait of Hormuz. They've gone ahead and done
02:45that. Their gunboats appear to be attacking maritime vessels, tankers, container ships close to the Strait
02:52of Hormuz. So the two things are interlinked. But we're now back to the bigger issue here of U.S.-Iran
02:58tensions. Do we talk or does this latest escalation at the Strait of Hormuz, does it scuttle all of that?
03:07The president said that we'll know more later today, and I imagine that will be the case. Nick
03:12Robertson in Islamabad, thank you for that report. This latest escalation could mean big issues for
03:18oil and gas prices. So let's discuss now with Yahoo Finance correspondent Ben Worshkel. Ben,
03:24good morning to you. Obviously, the impact, the consequence of these Iranian gunboats firing on a tanker go
03:31beyond that exchange. It's the chilling, as Nick said, of any willingness of any of the other
03:41companies to send their vessels through. Fit this piece of the puzzle into what has been clear as mud
03:48over the last 24 hours about the Strait of Hormuz. Yeah, I think chilling is the right word here.
03:56And this is a chill that's been in evidence even through all these ups and downs from the shipping
04:01industry, even with this announcement of an opening of the Strait of Hormuz. This latest development in
04:07the last hour will clearly amplify that further. But the shipping industry has been very wary,
04:13even as oil prices have come down, of increasing their shipping through. We've seen ships start to
04:20come through and then turn around. We've seen a few, as Nick mentioned, a cruise ship getting through,
04:24but that is kind of more of the exception rather than the rule at this moment. Prior to the war,
04:29it was over 130 ships that would pass through the Strait of Hormuz on a given day. Now it's,
04:34we're hoping for sort of 20 on a given day, and we're not even there yet. So what I'm hearing
04:39a lot
04:39from the shipping industry is that this is going to be a long road back, even in a best case
04:43scenario
04:44here, of a Strait of Hormuz, some sort of level of reopening. Obviously, the last couple hours
04:49have made that even more difficult. But this is going to be a long road back with with hundreds
04:54and hundreds of ships still stuck on either side of the Strait. Yeah, those those vessels,
04:59and we can put the map back up. They're not moving on rhetoric, right? They need some proof. They need
05:04some security. The oil prices yesterday certainly moved on rhetoric. Brent crude down nine percent,
05:12around 90 dollars or so a barrel. I wonder, is the expectation that after what we saw today,
05:21that that the inverse is going to happen?
05:26It could be. Yeah, we will. The oil prices, we won't know sort of how the oil prices move for
05:31a
05:31little bit, given it's the fact that it's the weekend. But the ships are simply not going to move
05:36until until there's a lot more clarity on this. Another aspect of this that's important is that
05:41even this this opening of the Strait of Hormuz from the Iranian side has been couched as towards
05:46the end of the ceasefire. That ceasefire is set to end on Wednesday. And even President Trump has
05:51talked in the last in the last day about about about resuming bombing after that. So these shippers
05:57need a lot more a lot more certainty here about whether they can pass through, whether they can get the
06:03insurance to get through and kind of increase the oil flows that were that were to pre-war levels.
06:09We're a long, long ways from that. And even if even if we see a lot of good developments in
06:13the last
06:13week, it's going to be weeks and weeks after that before we kind of see markets fully stabilize on this.
06:18All right, Ben, let's talk gas prices. The president was in Nevada talking up the economy,
06:24by the way, $4.99 a gallon in Clark County. Nationally, the average this morning, according to
06:30AAA is 406. Here's the president talking about the economy, his narrative on gas and the economy at
06:38large. Well, they're not very high. If you look at what they were supposed to be in order to get
06:43rid of a nuclear weapon with the danger that entails in the report released last week, core inflation was
06:49down to the lowest level in five years. And very shortly, we're going to be probably eight or nine
06:55years. Don't forget, we're having some fake inflation because of the fuel, the energy prices.
06:59We had the best economy in the history of our country in my first term, and we're blowing it
07:04out now. We're blowing it away now. And despite our little diversion,
07:10despite our little diversion to the lovely country of Iran.
07:16Yeah. And the president also saying that, you know, prices on gas are going to come falling down.
07:22The initial narrative from the White House was short-term pain for long-term gain. And now it
07:29sounds like it's shifted to what pain?
07:34Yeah. Yeah. And exactly. And I think that this price coming, the price of coming down of gas is
07:40going to be a long-term process here. There's an economics term called rockets and feathers,
07:44where prices at the pump shoot up like a rocket. I think everyone who's had to fill up their car
07:48in the
07:49last months has seen that side, but then it comes down much more slowly, like a feather going down.
07:54That's been a problem for presidents for years. And Biden felt it almost exactly four years ago
08:00with the invasion of Ukraine, with high prices there. And I think we're going to be talking about
08:05that a lot all the way through the summer. There's new projections from GasBuddy that talk about,
08:10you know, the prices now are over $4 a gallon, but even early estimates there of a best-case scenario,
08:16and I think the developments this morning cast further doubt on that, only $350 a gallon gas
08:23by the end of the summer. That's months and months away, $3.80 as the summer begins. So this is
08:29going
08:29to be, the projections are, a very slow process down for gas prices if we're looking at the history here,
08:35and one that I think will be frustrating for the White House, hoping for this rapid fall,
08:38and I think frustrating for folks who are planning their summer travel as well.
08:42All right, Ben Worskel, thanks so much.
Comments