US blockade on Iranian ports begins: Experts warn of Gulf port strikes, global oil shock

[0:00] all right well we have two experts to look at this situation on set is sultan barakat professor [0:05] of public policy at hamad bin khalifa university but first let's go to muhammad islami he's a [0:11] research fellow in middle east and north africa studies at tehran university muhammad there the [0:17] language of threat doesn't usually go down very well with iran how do you think it's going to [0:24] respond to the blockade that now it seems is in effect first of all thank you so much for having [0:32] me from the iranian point of view i think that there are two uh direction the first one they think [0:39] that this blockade by the u.s army is a kind of political pressure in a joint effort by by by [0:50] military forces in order to pressure put pressure on the iranian negotiators because right now the [0:57] pakistan government is trying to convince two parties to come back to the negotiating table [1:03] at the same time from the and from another direction they think that this blockade is not good for them [1:11] in order to sustain their domestic needs in terms of food medicine and some other things more than [1:21] exporting oil and lpg and something like this so it seems that donald trump is closing the straight [1:28] of foremost in order to open the straight of foremost this is a very very complicated decision [1:34] by trump administration and if the u.s action for for this operation goes in a way to i mean i mean i [1:43] mean attacking vlgc's or vlcc's iranians from into from iranian ports i think that iran will respond [1:52] militarily i don't know if to the ports or the other tankers super tankers in persian group right [1:58] and sultan barakat that is a legitimate concern here in the region is that we know throughout this war [2:04] every time iran has been attacked by the us or israel iran has carried out with these retaliatory [2:09] attacks like for like so what is the concern there when it comes to the gulf uh region especially [2:15] because that strait of humus there you have the uae for example anoman yes well if the iranians see [2:21] this as blockading their ports and isolating them then it is likely that they will want to retaliate [2:30] by blockading and isolating and potentially even attacking gulf ports i think probably they have jabal [2:37] ali in mind mostly because of the tense relationship between them and the united arab emirates but [2:43] also because of the size of the operation there but uh i think the real worry now is that jubal ali [2:50] port yes in united arab emirates i think for now the real issue is whether this will affect the [2:57] ceasefire or not i mean the talks as in reaching peace agreement we now understand that did not reach [3:04] that stage but both sides seem to have agreed to continue with a two-week ceasefire now will the [3:11] iranians interpret this as a military move a violent move against their interest or or not and this can [3:19] only be judged by the time we see this blockade in operation so far there aren't really real signs of [3:26] how it's going to work what does it actually mean who's going to undertake it and to what level the [3:33] americans are willing to risk the lives of their own soldiers and navy in the in these narrow waters [3:39] i mean the iranians can using very very uh basic technology cause a lot of harm to a very sophisticated [3:48] naval equipments what happens if this blockade is implemented in terms of timelines because we are in [3:55] the middle of a ceasefire right now um and is this uh perhaps the plan in the beginning by trump that [4:03] they weren't really serious iran has accused them of not being serious to take part in these ceasefire [4:08] negotiations confidence between the two sides let's put it this way you know the fact that yet again we're [4:13] talking and you're still planning uh a move against us uh won't land well with the iranians [4:21] uh but i think uh with the americans given that they've come all the way and he kept on building [4:26] the forces in the region he must have something to do with these forces and uh unfortunately he seems [4:33] to have uh trump seems to have trapped himself in a dead end and cannot find a way out and i must say [4:40] the iranians are not helping either allowing him a way out because on on the one hand they say well [4:46] the strait is open but there is not quite open to all uh one day they come back and say we're going [4:54] to impose a toll which of course is not acceptable to a lot of gulf countries and so on so they are not [5:00] helping either making sure that the americans are focused on where things matter mohammed islami [5:07] ultimately this seems to be economic pressure by donald trump uh to put on iran trump says iran won't be [5:15] able to sell oil but earlier uh iran's ambassador to india said that iran has oil and is ready to sell [5:22] to any country that wants it meanwhile oil prices have jumped by seven percent just on monday to over [5:29] a hundred dollars a barrel what about iran's relationship with other countries china for [5:36] example pakistan india all those countries that are heavily relying on iran how will it be able [5:41] uh to circumvent this iranian think that keeping the global economy and energy market being hostage of [5:52] the uh trump administration cannot take that much line because because right now even even before this [5:59] is for even at the time of the ceasefire the global market the energy market was and right now is under a [6:07] very very huge pressure and ambiguity regarding the future of the market and you know that uh they [6:15] talking about the indian indian customers the company reliance which is a very very big company [6:22] and the owner of this company is donald trump's close friend they had exemption for buying iranian oil [6:29] in the beginning days of the war so so from the iranian point of view and calculation they think that [6:36] donald trump cannot impose a real blockade on just sort of foremost because if they if he wants to do [6:42] the same and the decision he should think about expanding the war on china and india and also european [6:51] countries because right now um some european countries are doing back channel negotiations with [6:57] the iranian government in order to solve their their problem and paying the money for passing this [7:04] straight up for most also i should name japan the japan prime minister recently was donald trump's um [7:11] i mean i mean in washington dc she she met donald trump so the iranian think that the time is not [7:21] helping donald trump and they are they are yeah this is how they think okay and uh sultan uh we've um [7:28] been seeing a trickle of ships that are going in and out during the war because iran is allowing some of [7:33] these uh ships um but this now with this u.s blockade it seems will effectively completely [7:39] block the strait does this set um a worrying precedent here when it comes to countries just being able [7:47] to take over a waterway and decide what it does with it even though there should be free passage [7:53] well the hormuz strait is is i think a special case because of the territorial waters of iran and oman [8:00] that are really overlapping so there is no international waters in between but there is [8:05] a customary understanding that ships should pass but the at the same time the u.s has a history of [8:11] this i mean they've located cuba for such a long time venezuela more recently and so on if you have [8:17] the power and the ability to do it you feel you could do it now is it illegal i doubt it uh even in [8:25] times of war the u.s has not declared war on iran they still see this as a special operation so there [8:30] is no real official status of war between the two countries so and they tried and some of their allies [8:36] tried to help them by taking the issue to the security council a few days ago in the hope that [8:41] some language will pass that would allow this to be dressed in some form of legality but that failed [8:48] as well the real issue i think it will it's going to put the united states in direct confrontation [8:53] and tension with china and we don't know whether this is part of calculations of trump or is it going [8:59] to be a a by-product i suspect that it is part of his calculation for the bigger picture he's [9:07] he's determined to make sure that europe europe is dependent on american oil and gas and that is [9:14] pretty much is the case today he's determined to make sure that the chinese they do get their oil but [9:19] they get it at the international price and in dollars and i don't think he has much he doesn't [9:25] give really much thinking to us in the gulf here and this is really dangerous because although we [9:31] provide 20 of the world's oil the world is not going to wait for us to resupply them they're looking [9:37] elsewhere so we could easily find ourselves in a few weeks time with no customers particularly i think [9:43] maybe the lng and some of the more sophisticated products that we export from here [9:47] if people find supplies elsewhere we're going to end up with the iranians fighting over a fishing [9:53] lake i mean this is this is no good to anyone as far as our own development is concerned all right [9:59] i'd like to thank both of you muhammad islami research fellow in middle east and north africa [10:03] studies at tehran university joining us from the iranian captain of course sultan barakat a professor [10:09] of public policy at hamad bin khalifa university here in doha