00:00Now, Bloomberg has learned some leading European powers now accept that ships transiting through
00:05the Strait of Hormuz will have to pay fees to Iran and Oman. That is despite the United States
00:11and Gulf Arab countries insisting the nations cannot impose charges. For more on that story,
00:18we're now bringing in Patrick Sykes, Bloomberg's breaking news Middle East editor. Patrick,
00:23thank you for coming on this morning. What more do we know about this story and this acceptance
00:28that is happening behind the scenes about the tolls in the Strait of Hormuz?
00:34Morning. It really marks a shift from the, I think, assumption that ultimately navigation
00:40would go back to a free status of the kind we saw before the war and that this demand from
00:46Iran
00:46that some kind of oversight, sovereignty over the Strait and how it's managed was a negotiating
00:53position. Shifting from that to an acceptance, in principle at least, that there will have to be
00:59some kind of toll fee, be it for navigation, for security, for safety, whatever it may be,
01:07and still at a level to be determined. Importantly, the report talks about this happening at the level
01:13of several European governments, but also within some Gulf states as well, that there's a growing
01:21consensus there as well, that this would have to come in place.
01:28And Patrick, this weekend we'll see the funeral of the former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
01:34What can we expect out of that? Who's going? When does it commence?
01:41Yeah, we're already expecting dignitaries from China and Russia, of course, key partners of Iran,
01:48both in the war and beyond, from areas from energy to defence. As for the organisation,
01:56we know that the public element begins tomorrow with a kind of laying in state ceremony open to
02:02the public in the capital, Tehran. That will continue for two days. And then we'll begin several
02:08multi-stage processions in Tehran, in the seminary city of Qom, in Iraq as well, in the neighbouring
02:16holy cities of Najaf and Karbala. And finally, he'll be buried around the middle to the end of next week
02:23in his hometown of Mashhad. Iran is saying that there could be as many as 20 million mourners
02:30attending. That would, of course, be a huge number. But it's worth remembering the only other time that
02:35Iran has buried a Supreme Leader back in 1989. It at the time set a world record for the number
02:41of
02:41people attending. That too was in the millions. So I think expect Iran to do everything it can
02:47to draw out maximum crowds and in turn to use that as a kind of show of strength
02:52for its status, for its place, the place of the Islamic Republic in the country following the war.
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