Has the Ceasefire Shattered?

[0:00] it's tuesday may 5th and the strait of hormuz is a war zone again we start here as the u.s [0:09] encourages ships to start moving iran opens fire the u.s military saying they've shot all of those [0:14] iranian missiles down and none of the vessels were damaged has the ceasefire shattered we'll [0:19] get you answers from the middle east iran's not the only country where the white house is pressing [0:23] for regime change the only lights on in this neighborhood are the ones that are powered by [0:27] battery our team went inside cuba to learn whether an embargo is working and a ship is sitting in the [0:34] atlantic with suspected hanta virus on board rare and deadly it has up to a 35 fatality rate why [0:41] doctors are so worried about this cluster of cases from abc news this is start here i'm brad milkey [0:50] a ceasefire is not always necessarily black and white often it's shades of gray for example sometimes [1:01] it's unclear if both sides are following the rules of a ceasefire other times shots are fired but [1:07] maybe it's a group that a government doesn't have full control over both sides decide to kind of look [1:11] the other way maybe one side is testing the ceasefire but the other country turns a blind eye because [1:17] they really want it to work out do we want to go and just blast the hell out of them and finish him [1:22] forever or do we want to try and make a deal the line's not always clear but once that line is crossed [1:28] all it takes is for one of the parties to decide we are back in a hot war and yesterday it seemed [1:34] unclear if the u.s and iran were once again firing on each other our country's booming now despite [1:41] the fact that we're in a i call it a mini war because that's all they are remember president [1:46] trump's big priority was getting traffic moving through the strait of hormuz iran's priority seems [1:51] to be not giving up any of the cards that it still retains nuclear capability for instance well [1:57] in recent days president trump has said we're not allowing iran to continue its nuclear program [2:02] and he said we're going to start opening up the strait with force if necessary well yesterday ships [2:07] started moving and within a few hours iran had started firing on its neighbors let's go straight [2:12] to abc's foreign correspondent tom sufi burge who's been covering all this from tel aviv and israel tom [2:17] this was so head-spinning can you just walk us through how this kind of unfolded it's been a pretty wild [2:22] few hours uh brad yeah so late sunday we got this uh social media post from president trump [2:27] uh announcing project freedom all right catching us all underwear basically saying that the u.s [2:32] military was going to create the conditions in and around the strait of hormuz you know a new force [2:37] posture if you like putting lots of assets around not escorting ships but basically saying and in [2:42] particularly he was really kind of underlining that cargo vessels linked to neutral countries countries [2:47] which weren't involved in the war he wanted to create the conditions so that they could transit [2:52] out of the strait of hormuz we haven't received any concrete news so far regarding this uh transit [2:58] through strait of hormuz because we are still awaiting uh confirmation now from various maritime [3:04] authorities and our company office and then just within a matter of hours of the u.s beginning this [3:09] operation we got news that actually not only had two u.s linked commercial vessels made that trip from [3:17] west out of the persian gulf east basically out of those troubled waters we also got news that [3:24] two u.s military warships had moved in the opposite direction west into the persian gulf and were [3:29] deployed by centcom basically stare the iranians down so like basically if commercial ships are going [3:34] out u.s is going in that effectively is like oh the u.s is controlling the strait that's how it feels in [3:38] that moment yeah i think they were trying to base well trying to force iran's hand here basically break [3:43] iran's control over the strait of hormuz ever since there was a ceasefire announced a situation was [3:49] pretty normal no attacks were uh there but past few days it's been choppy again you know and then [3:56] we got word that not only had the iranians fired at u.s military vessels and commercial vessels centcom [4:06] saying that it had fired cruise missiles uh the u.s military saying they've shot all of those iranian [4:11] missiles down and none of the vessels were damaged but the u.s military also said it had taken out [4:27] six of those iranian small gunboats you remember president trump said on a number of occasions that [4:32] all of iran's navy had been sunk they have been literally obliterated the air force is gone the navy [4:42] is gone uh many many ships have been sunk they're war fighting ships but i guess they didn't know how to [4:49] use them well that's true for all of the big iranian naval vessels but according to analysts [4:53] and we've seen evidence of this throughout the war and the ceasefire iran still has these small gunboats [4:58] which it can use to threaten ships six of those sunk by the u.s military in that period and then we [5:04] also had a major escalation with iran then appearing to respond to these actions by the u.s military in and [5:11] around the strait of hormuz firing a volley of drones and missiles at the united arab emirates [5:17] a key u.s partner in the gulf the iranians seem to be sending a signal here saying look we can still [5:23] go on with this asymmetric warfare you try and take out our control over the strait of hormuz our major [5:28] card in this war in the in the negotiations and we'll hit back at all facilities in the gulf or in [5:35] that area more broadly close to the strait of hormuz and so just so i'm clear then tom the iranians then [5:40] they're primarily firing on the uae here right i guess like if you're at war with the u.s just so [5:47] we're all clear why not fire on the american ships the american navy well the cencom says that they [5:52] did fire at u.s navy vessels president trump sort of threatened if that iran does that then the u.s [5:59] would strike uh iran in a major way oh so this is like on the so these are all like different levels [6:05] of escalation the biggest escalation would be taking shots at an aircraft carrier and president [6:09] trump being like oh that's when we go back to full war yeah i mean look what what has happened is [6:14] two u.s warships have you know crossed through the strait of hormuz been deployed more closely [6:19] into that area that they're much more in the fire zone of the iranians and the iranians have lashed [6:24] out against those u.s military assets moving into that area it appears that the capabilities of the [6:29] u.s military have been able to shoot down all of those threats so this is sort of major escalation [6:34] but a sense of de-escalation in the fact that the u.s military force has been able to defend [6:38] against all of that clearly iran has breached the ceasefire and then u.s officials have been asked [6:43] has the u.s breached the ceasefire in responding and the main response from u.s officials at the [6:48] moment is that the u.s is defending cargo vessels in that area and that is the mission of the u.s [6:53] military right now but yeah wait so tom this is a central question because this is what the president [6:58] said to the radio host hugh hewitt yesterday is the ceasefire over mr president is it over we're [7:03] gonna have him tonight uh well i can't tell you that so i'll ask you is the ceasefire over like [7:09] at this moment are we just fully back to firing on each other or could it somehow all come back [7:14] together for a period of several hours we were definitely i think completely unsure it looked [7:20] like there was a real risk that this ceasefire was just going to be blown to pieces it was definitely [7:26] over temporarily for a period of time there was firing there were exchanges there were the iranian [7:32] strikes against the united arab emirates they say that most of those were intercepted it seems at [7:39] this point of time when we're talking who knows what's going to happen in the next few hours it [7:43] seems like the ceasefire might be broadly still in place and that we had this major escalation these [7:49] major breaches of the ceasefire the u.s effort to break iran's control over the strait of humuz [7:55] the question now brad is is our commercial vessels going to try and make that transit i think [8:02] after all of this firing most shipping companies would have serious reservations about doing that [8:07] and like are you going to be the ship who's like okay i president trump told us it's okay let's go [8:12] for it like at this point probably not yeah and remember in in the hours preceding the major [8:17] escalations we saw two u.s flagship they were u.s flagships maybe they had been convinced you know [8:24] more by the u.s and the u.s military that that it was okay to cross will vessels linked to neutral [8:30] nations really make that same calculation and especially in light of all this firing and then [8:36] is the u.s military still gonna you know have this quite significant posture in and around the [8:41] strait of humuz can't let iran have a nuclear weapon we hit all new highs and i said we have to take care [8:49] of business because we can't let that happen so we did a little detour then it's working out very [8:54] nicely it appears so president trump announced his plans sunday it's still in place in theory it's still [9:00] operating it started early monday what are the implications of that are there going to be more [9:05] moments when potentially the iranians the u.s military are going to come into contact and [9:10] potentially cargo vessels being kind of caught in the middle all right uh tom suvi burge there in the [9:15] region right now thank you so much tom thanks brad next up on start here you think our gas prices are [9:21] bad right now imagine what a cuban oil embargo looks like our team will take you there after the break [9:28] after the u.s military shocked the world by capturing the leader of venezuela nicolas maduro [9:39] in a surprise raid the question was whether president trump might start taking military action [9:44] in other countries just a few weeks later our troops were firing on iran but much closer to home [9:50] there is another regime that president trump has essentially threatened to depose that has not come [9:54] to pass yet but the u.s has applied an incredible amount of economic pressure it's blocked much of the [10:00] world from sending oil into cuba cuba's a failing nation and we're gonna do this and we may stop by [10:07] cuba after we're finished with this and as this embargo has taken hold the average person there is [10:12] just hanging by a thread you're hearing very different things from the cuban government from [10:17] the american government so recently abc's matt rivers made a rare trip to the island to see it for [10:23] himself he is back in the u.s with us now matt first off can we just take a step back because the same [10:27] regime has been in charge of cuba for more than half a century now what has changed in just the last [10:32] few months well you know there has always been this conflict this inherent conflict between the [10:37] united states and cuba going all the way back to the revolution when cuba was supported by the [10:42] soviet union this goes back to the democracy versus communism cold war era and it's lasted [10:47] decade after decade after decade and cuba has obviously outlasted the soviet union which fell in [10:52] the early 90s and yet still the united states and cuba have these this ideological divide where they [10:58] are just natural enemies 90 miles apart from each other's shores but what we've seen during the first [11:03] trump administration and now the second trump administration is kind of a renewed focus on the [11:08] island it was during the obama years that there was sort of a detente put into place i have come here [11:13] to bury the last remnant of the cold war in the americas you saw a thawing of relations for the first [11:20] time you saw american tourists be able to go to cuba you saw flights go back and forth trump one [11:25] comes in the first trump administration they walk back a lot of that opening up they increase sanctions [11:30] they stop cruise ships from going to havana which have made a huge impact there and then the second [11:35] trump administration comes around and it seems that they've really ratcheted it up where they have now [11:39] said we do not and will not stand for the current form of government in cuba to exist anymore i think we [11:46] would love to see the regime there change we would like to that doesn't mean that we're going to make a [11:49] change but we would love to see it change then comes what you just mentioned nicolas maduro cutting [11:54] off of the oil supply from venezuela to cuba which was a huge part of cuba's oil import supply and that's [12:01] effectively strangled the cuban island of oil about 60 percent of cuba's oil needs came from imports [12:09] basically in the span of a few days that was cut off that revolution it's not even a revolution that [12:14] thing they have uh has survived on subsidies from the soviet union and now from venezuela they don't get [12:19] subsidies anymore so they're in a lot of trouble and the people in charge they don't know how to [12:23] fix it so they have to get new people in charge that's what we're hearing from the administration [12:27] from president trump from secretary of state marco rubio is that they want regime change they're not [12:33] being coy about this they want to change the government and for now they are doing this strictly [12:37] economic pressure campaign but they explicitly have not taken military action off the table but what [12:43] is clear is that the trump administration wants this regime gone and economic pressure just like [12:48] military pressure has an effect on regular people so i mean what does that look like on the ground [12:53] like what do you see there when you show up well we've seen electricity issues on cuba for years now [12:58] blackouts in the country are not new there's been a lack of investment in infrastructure there for a [13:03] very long time blackouts are something that cubans have dealt with for a while but since this oil [13:09] embargo has been put into place it has gotten exponentially worse the only lights on in this neighborhood are the [13:15] ones that are powered by battery you've got blackouts that are lasting sometimes the entire day they come [13:21] without warning you don't know how long they're going to last we actually went to see this one [13:27] family spoke to a single mother of two a woman named irania and she said it's impossible to plan her life [13:36] right now we are all in a crisis it's very stressful to live right now she's worried about her children [13:42] there's this sense of how can we advance how can we move forward how can we enrich ourselves when we can't even [13:48] turn on the lights reliably we actually watched her 17 year old daughter do homework by flashlight [13:57] you go to the hospitals there for example they are conserving power to the point where hallway lights [14:03] are dimmed air conditioning and you know cuba is obviously a warm place air conditioning is only being used [14:09] in areas of the hospital that are completely essential right uh you know the doctor that we [14:13] spoke with actually has to hitchhike to work every day because there's not enough gasoline around for [14:19] public transportation it's hard to keep back the tears it's a little difficult but no matter what [14:25] i'll be here because it's what i do public transportation buses trains whatever they're not [14:31] running for the most part because there's not enough oil to fuel them and then to that end we spoke to a [14:36] taxista a taxi driver named rolando sosa he drives this incredible 1976 lada it's a soviet era sedan oh [14:49] yeah because they're famous for having like the old cut like the cars exactly because of the blockade [14:53] imposed by america you see a lot of these old cars in cuba and he's a taxi driver he showed us his lada [14:58] he can't take it out of the garage because one single gallon of gasoline in cuba right now one costs [15:04] forty dollars roughly ten times the price excuse me forty dollars for a single gallon of gasoline in [15:11] the country that is way way way way poorer than the united states so the idea that a normal working [15:17] class person could afford forty dollars per gallon if an american can't afford that which we couldn't [15:21] right imagine what a cuban can afford they certainly can't so it has affected every single aspect of [15:27] society the other aspect of all of this is that the cuban government according to the united states [15:32] according to cuban government critics has been wildly inept for decades has been wildly corrupt [15:38] terrible stewards of the economy not investing in infrastructure so the the oil blockade sure has had [15:44] an effect but a lot of the suffering that you see on the island there's no question that the cuban [15:48] government has a big role to play in the way it has mismanaged that country for a very long time [15:53] so i guess i'm wondering though with all this pressure are the trump administration's policies having [15:58] the desired effect even if that is devastating to people well i mean we know that both sides are [16:03] negotiating we know that the cuban government is definitely fearful about this situation all sides [16:08] i think agree that this is not sustainable in any sort of way i mean you can't just keep on going like [16:14] this and i don't think we spoke to a single cuban while we were there who is really in support of [16:19] the government they might not love the united states they might think that the united states is the [16:23] hero in all this but they certainly are not big fans of the cuban government and yet you go around [16:29] the island and a lot of people won't say that out loud why they won't say that out loud because the [16:34] cuban government and its famed secret police can throw you in jail for criticizing the government and [16:38] there's and they're still listening that's and they're still listening i mean even when we were [16:42] there we just assumed that all of our conversations were being recorded because that's just generally what [16:46] happens but the fact that all of that is still in place shows me that the government at least for [16:53] now remains very much in control of the streets we have not seen mass protests we have not seen any [16:59] sort of open criticism of the government we haven't seen some sort of political opposition movement [17:03] at least publicly so far so for now the communist government remains in control and we actually saw [17:09] that firsthand at what they called an anti-imperialist march this is something that they takes place on [17:18] international workers day on may 1st we saw hundreds of thousands of cubans brought out for a march along [17:25] the famed malecon which is the uh the highway there along the coast in havana so that building right [17:30] there is the u.s embassy and the whole point of that obviously was to show solidarity to show strength [17:36] in the face of what the cuban government would call imperialist aggression that said hundreds of [17:41] thousands of people would not be showing up organically some of them are paid by the [17:45] government some of it's basically a wink and a nod this is mandatory you better show up or you're [17:49] going to have problems you know that is certainly the case and yet the cuban government still managed [17:54] to mobilize whether they wanted to be there or not hundreds of thousands of cubans so that shows you [17:58] that the government is still asserting control over the population there what are the next steps then [18:03] it's i mean and from the trump administration's perspective does that include military action [18:07] they haven't taken it off the table a place called cuba which we will be taking over almost [18:13] immediately no cuba's cuba's got problems we'll finish one first i like to finish your job i think [18:25] in the near term you're going to see continued ratcheting up of economic pressure i think the trump [18:29] administration still remains largely distracted by what's going on with iran but in all of the [18:34] conversations that we've had it does appear that the trump administration wants this year to be the [18:39] last year of the current form of government in cuba how far they're willing to go to make that happen [18:45] to make that an actual reality on the ground that we're going to have to wait and see yeah if the [18:50] strategy is normal people's lives are so terrible that they have to rise up normal people's lives have [18:55] to get terrible like that's part of the equation and all this all right matt rivers great reporting [19:00] thank you so much thank you brad okay one more quick break when we come back you thought you had [19:07] heard about nightmare cruises before well those weren't level four biohazards one last thing is [19:13] next and one last thing there are a million reasons to love a cruise the sun the water the multiple [19:23] locations with one home base the stuff to do on board that all comes with a trade-off though you're [19:29] stuck on board with hundreds even thousands of strangers who you may or may not like every now and [19:34] then you hear about a viral outbreak on a cruise ship but rarely is that virus something like this [19:41] this morning global health officials responding to a suspected outbreak of the rare and deadly [19:46] hantavirus infection on a cruise ship in the atlantic sitting off the coast of western africa right now [19:53] is a cruise ship called the mv hondias out of its roughly 150 guests 17 are american and now several [20:01] people on board have died from suspected hanta virus this is so many people's nightmare right to [20:07] hear a deadly virus trapped on a cruise ship this is abc's foreign correspondent maggie ruley [20:14] she says the family of hanta viruses are often listed as some of the most dangerous on earth we have [20:19] to reiterate it is very rare as well but it is rare and deadly it has up to a 35 fatality rate which [20:26] is quite extreme for a virus the world health organization has now identified a cluster of [20:32] seven possible cases on board two laboratory confirmed five suspected but out of the seven [20:37] people here this now includes three deaths one critically ill patient and three reporting mild [20:43] symptoms so what do those symptoms look like if you get hantavirus it may not look scary at first [20:49] it usually starts like a flu fever body aches fatigue maybe some nausea most people wouldn't think [20:56] twice about it but the problem is what can happen next dr stephanie widmer is the director of medical [21:01] toxicology at st john's riverside hospital in new york and she described what happens next the virus can [21:08] trigger something called hantavirus pulmonary syndrome where the blood vessels in your lungs start to leak [21:13] fluid so instead of your lungs filling with air they start filling with fluid absolutely terrifying right [21:19] so how does this happen well first it's important to understand how these viruses spread [21:25] so the theory is you're around rodent droppings rodent urine rodent saliva and it gets sort of [21:33] mixed up and people inhale it and while that's gross it also means humans generally aren't spreading it [21:38] to each other generally there have been some potential cases of human to human transmission even [21:44] those unconfirmed reports emanate solely from south america but here's the thing this boat sailed from south [21:50] america medical officials are intent on quarantining all these passengers and it's why some of these [21:57] nearby countries are a bit hesitant to let them disembark so right now they're off the coast of cape [22:02] verde cape verde is saying don't come to my country they're talking about taking them to potentially the canary [22:09] islands and all these other places and the local authorities have come on board the ship to monitor [22:14] to check vitals to provide assistance that has resulted in these people being stranded and scared [22:19] this traveler posted this to instagram all we want right now is to feel safe to have clarity and to [22:27] get home so if you're seeing coverage about this just remember that there are real people behind it [22:35] and that this isn't something happening somewhere far away it's happening to us this already wasn't going [22:41] to be your typical cruise it goes from argentina to antarctica past africa all the way up through [22:46] the north arctic it's the cruise of a lifetime specifically tailored to adventurers but no one [22:52] was anticipating a trip quite like this can you imagine by the way i should say this is the part [23:00] where the cdc would say to prevent something like this you want to reduce your contact with rodents [23:04] you want to maintain hygiene washing your hands in case you do come into contact with droppings etc but [23:09] honestly it's so rare it's generally not considered an everyday risk but i i do not want to be stuck [23:14] on a cruise ship with that more on all these stories on abc news live including some of these [23:18] scenes matt rivers reported in cuba absolutely breathtaking i'm brad milkey i'll see you tomorrow