Frank Gardner

And as far as they're concerned, they're winning.

If you strip away the kind of bombast from this, because there's a certain degree of chest beating by both sides here. If you do this, I'll do that. Strip that away. And this is quite a serious escalation, because Kharaj Island, it's been described as the beating heart of Iran's oil industry. 90% of its oil exports go out through that terminal. It's a small island in the north of the Gulf. It featured quite prominently in the eight-year Iran-Iraq war. It's known as the tanker war of the 1980s.

Because the Iraqi Air Force would bomb it several times, trying to hurt Iran's economy. So there's no question that taking out the military who guard it has been a blow to Iran, and it would have been an even bigger blow if it knocked out its actual oil facilities as well. It's slightly self-defeating for the Americans this, because...

If you knock out Harajan altogether, then that takes between one to two million barrels per day off the oil markets. And the price is already above $100 a barrel. Great for Russia, the money is flowing into Moscow's coffers. Not great for the US consumer or for Donald Trump's MAGA base. So there are risks in this. I'm not sure what we're to make of this.

Flotilla, this ARG, this amphibious ready group that he's ordered to sail from the Sea of Japan westwards to the Gulf containing 2,000 plus U.S. Marines and several thousand more sailors. Because if he plans to invade and occupy Harge Island, that is going to bog the U.S. down for an indefinite amount of time. This is exactly what Trump was voted into office not to do.

Yeah, because for a start it'll take a couple of weeks to get there. President Trump has recently said, I don't think it's going to be long until this is over, but sending troops suggests it's going to be a longer campaign. It does, and there is a parallel here. If we pull out and look at all of this objectively and historically, there is a parallel with the Tony Blair years, where there were a couple of very quick, successful in-and-out campaigns

Siirion 1999 ja Kosovo tuli hieman pitkälle, mutta

Ne olivat kuitenkin hyödyllisiä sääntöjä, joilla ei ollut liian monia vaikutuksia. Sitten tuli Afganistan ja sitten tuli Irak. Kuitenkin Britannia ja Amerikaa tuli sääntöön vuosien ajan. Donald Trumpin hallituksen tapauksessa sääntö oli Venäjällä, kuten he kutsuivat sen. Se oli hieman ympäristöä, mutta sääntöä oli hyvin hyödyllistä. Tämä oli todella hyödyllistä.

Ja he ovat olleet vahvistaneet tankkaita ja vahvistaneet russilaisen haastatankkaita ja niin edelleen. Mutta tämä on erilaista. Tämä on miskalkulaatio, mielestäni. Koska Gulf Arab States, joista puhun sinusta, he kaikki sanoivat, että älä tee tätä. Tämä vaatii kaikkia, erityisesti meitä. Voit voittaa tätä militääriä, mutta me voimme palata seurauksiaan.

Ja katsotaanpa, että se on juuri se, mitä tapahtuu. Ja se vaikuttaa öljypriciin. Se vaikuttaa turismi-industriin tässä osassa maailmaa, joka on valtavasti tärkeä paikka Dubaiin. Mutta suurin miskalkulaus on se, että USA tuntuu, että se voisi haastaa Irania.

to come to the negotiating table and comply with US demands. And that bit isn't working. The Iranians, yes, they've been absolutely battered, the Iranian regime. They've lost a huge number of commanders, but they haven't collapsed yet. They've only got to survive to win this. And currently they are surviving because they are still sending these drones into US and allied targets in the region.

Kyllä. Olin yhden päivän jälkeen keskustelussa ulkopuolella yhdistettynä yhdistettynä yhdistettynä yhdistettynä yhdistettynä yhdistettynä.

Heidän tehtävänsä on auttaa vahvistamaan Suomen kriittisen kansainvälisen infrastruktuurin, joka on vaarallinen. Jos katsotaan öljyä tai petrokemiaalia, niin nämä ovat isoja, isoja, isoja tavoitteita. En tiedä, muistatko, että seitsemän vuotta sitten...

a devastating attack by missiles and drones on Saudi Aramco's petrochemical facilities at places called Abqaiq in Jerez in eastern Saudi. And I went to visit the aftermath of that, and it knocked half of Saudi's oil exports off the market for several days. And that was a bit of a wake-up call to the Saudis as to just how vulnerable they are to Iranian drones. Seven years on, drones have become a part of modern warfare, an integral part of it,

Ja iranilaiset, vaikka he voivat poistaa kaikkia heidän balistikkojaan, heillä on melkein ilmaisempaa tarvetta näistä hankalaisista Shahid-droneista. Ne ovat noin 2,5 metriä pitkästä. Ne pakkaavat 90 kilogrammaa suurta kestävää. Ja ne voivat poistaa suurta kestävää asennetta, ympäristöjä, työpaikkoja, hotellia. Ne eivät ole isoja, mutta ne voivat poistaa koko päivän. Joten se on se, mitä ukrainalaiset ovat poistaneet neljän vuoden aikana.

He all know too much about these. It was the equivalent of the doodle bugs that Londoners had to endure after the blitz.

that these things would come over, sent by Germany. And there are so many of them that some of them get through. They can shoot down most of them, but some of them get through and they wreak a lot of damage. And Iran's got a lot of these. You can launch them from the back of a truck, from a cave, from pretty much anywhere, and it can reproduce up to 500 of these underground every month. So Iran is all about playing the long game, because they know that Donald Trump hasn't got the patience to do that.

He want this to be won and done, declare victory, job done, mission accomplished, off we go. But Iran is still going to be there, and so is the Islamic Republic at this rate.

China, says Amnesty International, does not release figures for the number of people it puts to death each year. But researchers at the Human Rights Group say the figure for 2024 is in the thousands, making China the world's leading executioner.

China, says Amnesty International, does not release figures for the number of people it puts to death each year. But researchers at the Human Rights Group say the figure for 2024 is in the thousands, making China the world's leading executioner.