Daniel Yergin

And that was the beginning of the Iranian revolution.

And then the second revolution where the Islamists captured the whole system and chanted death to America.

So in a sense, it's like this war has been brewing for 47 years.

But, you know, it is interesting because, of course, you know, oil was discovered in then Persia and Iran in 1908.

And Winston Churchill made the decision to convert the Royal Navy from coal to oil.

And it was going to be dependent on Iranian oil.

And in parliament, people were saying, you're going to be dependent on Persia.

That's very dangerous.

And he came up with, well, first of all, he said the prize of the venture is world mastery itself.

And that's where I got the title of the book from.

And then he said the basic axiom of energy security, which is on variety in oil, is variety is the source of safety, diversification.

So that continues to be the principle, even though at that point he was making the Royal Navy very dependent upon Iran, Persia.

But so it is, you know, how central Iran has been to the oil story since 1908.

And here it is today.

We're in 2026 and it is still central oil.

It's not the large producer it was.

There was a day when Iran and Saudi Arabia vied with each other to be the biggest producer in OPEC, but its ability to influence what happens in the entire Gulf and to shut down the Gulf shows that it too has a form of mastery which it has exerted with drones and missiles.

Well, yeah.

Listen, I watched it, and there was that famous episode at the wind turbine where the hero got in an argument with a young lawyer from Houston.

Yeah, the woke lawyer.