Ankur Desai

He said...

if it was a normal economy people would prosper and thrive but in order for iran to be a normal country he said it could never get a nuclear weapon and he said we must have just to quote him the enriched material out of iran we must have their conclusive commitment not to develop a nuclear weapon that he said would be a very very good deal for both countries and he repeated what

He and the president have been saying that their view was that the weekend talks made some progress, but that both sides had to progress even further and that it was up to Iran to make the next move.

North America correspondent Peter Bowes reporting.

The conflict in the Middle East has had a volatile effect on markets and the wider global economy.

A few hours after the start of the US blockade of Iranian ports, and shortly after the close of trade on the American markets, I spoke to our business editor, Simon Jack.

The oil price is still actually right now below $100 and stock markets in the US are actually up and in fact have eradicated all their losses so far this year.

So either they're being horribly complacent about this or there's reasons for confidence that a deal can be achieved.

Asian markets, Asian countries and their economies are desperate for oil because we know this strait is so important to them.

So what are their solutions then if they want to try and access oil?

Well, we've seen supply constraints, which has seen what they call in economic terms demand destruction.

Things either get so expensive you stop doing them or the supplies aren't there and you can't do them.

And we've seen things like fuel rationing in Sri Lanka.

We've seen LPG rationing in India, four-day weeks elsewhere, people being told to stay at home, all of these kind of things to try and bring down demand.

And also there are, of course, other sources of oil.

The Gulf isn't the only one.

China, for example, gets quite a lot of its oil from Russia.

India also gets some from Russia.

But I'm not trying to downplay the fact that there are real shortages in some places causing real hardship.

And the more you are reliant on the Gulf, the more that hardship and certainly Asia fits that bill.