00:00Motor vessel Majestic X, we intend to conduct the boarding of your vessel.
00:15U.S. President Donald Trump is threatening to destroy the small boats that the Iranians are
00:20using to mine the Strait of Hormuz. This is coming after such small boats were used by
00:25Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard to seize two cargo ships passing through the Strait.
00:31That Strait in peacetime sees about 20% of all crude oil and natural gas pass through it, but
00:37since the Americans and the Israelis launched this war on Iran back in February,
00:42Tehran has maintained a chokehold on that international waterway. Now, Trump's threat
00:47comes as U.S. forces also seized a second oil tanker associated with Iran's oil trade out in
00:55the Indian Ocean between Sri Lanka and Indonesia. Now, this ship had been previously sanctioned by
01:00the U.S. Treasury over being part of what's known as the Iranian Shadow Fleet, which is bringing that
01:06sanctioned crude oil out of Iran and into Asian markets, particularly into China. Iran has not
01:13responded to either Trump's threat or this latest seizure, but Iran has insisted that it will
01:19maintain the closure on the Strait of Hormuz. Now, all this is coming as ceasefire negotiations
01:25between the United States and Iran were supposed to happen this week but failed to materialize.
01:29Iran insists that it will not attend any ceasefire talks until the United States ends its blockade
01:35on Iranian ports targeting Iranian ships. And for its part, America insists that it will not attend
01:41any peace talks until Iran opens up the Strait of Hormuz to international traffic. So all this together,
01:47it really has drawn questions about whether we'll see any negotiators back at the table anytime soon
01:53in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad. But as these attacks at sea continue, that's really put this ceasefire
02:00under new strains and drawn question into whether or not we could see a return to active combat.
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