00:00It's a mission impossible, is it not, to reopen and take control of the strait?
00:04No, I don't think it's a mission impossible, but you need political will and you need the
00:08military resources to do it.
00:10Anything can be done if you apply enough resources.
00:12But I think you have to look really at one of the reasons that they cancelled that operation
00:16that you talked about, Tom, and that was for diplomatic reasons, particularly from
00:22the Pakistanis wishing to re-energise the negotiations.
00:27So really, we're looking at a triangle here, which is to do with reward, pressure and
00:31concessions.
00:32What's happened is we've really gone through two bits of sort of gaming, really, in the
00:39war so far.
00:39We had the pre-war, we had the sanctions regime, then we had the kinetic regime.
00:45They're now trying the third path, which is the blockade.
00:49The key thing here is both of the sides are really adopting a kind of anaconda strategy.
00:55That is, who's squeezing the life out of the other side?
00:59And it's who blinks first within that, which determines what the outcome of this will be,
01:04both either in diplomatic terms, in kinetic terms, or in economic terms.
01:10We don't know the outcome to that.
01:12There are risks for both sides.
01:14And we don't know how long the time pressure conundrum will work for both sides.
01:18And we'll see what happens.
01:20You
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