Alan Kohler

It's closed, I think.

There's no ships going through at the moment, as far as I can tell.

I've been looking at live trackers and nothing is passing through at the moment.

I mean, I'm not sure what...

the US rejecting that means.

Yes.

One of the American senators got up and said that if Iran continues to sort of close the strait, America will take it over by force.

Well, that's not going to happen.

I mean, so I don't think what, you know, America's ideas about sort of somehow stopping Iran controlling it are credible.

Iran does control the Strait of Hormuz now and it's decided to exercise that control through this Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which it's doing.

Well, it's obviously because the oil price, although it's come down a lot, you know, it's in the mid-70s now, it's still $10 above what it was before the war started.

So, you know, there's a sort of a $10 per barrel price premium, you know, on the price of oil as a result of what's happened.

So, you know, I think that probably they're stuck.

The government's probably stuck.

As long as the price stays...

above, you know, that much above where it was before the war began, it's probably going to have to keep foregoing excise revenue, at least for a while.

We'll have to see.

I mean, look, I don't know what the politics of it are, really.

I mean, whether if the price stays where it is, whether the government will get away with putting the entire excise back on the petrol price, I don't really know.

What do you think?