Graeme Wood

David, it's good to be with you.

So I had been in Dubai and, you know, missiles were coming in, drones were coming in.

And the Strait of Hormuz was more and more in the news because it was being closed.

And that's the choke point for about a fifth of the world's seaborne oil.

And my instinct was just to go see what it looked like.

You know, this is an area that I'd crossed before as a ferry passenger, but actually just laying eyes on it when it is the center of the world's attention seemed important.

So I just got in a car, drove there and then chartered a Dow.

D-H-O-W, which is one of these old wooden boats that, you know, in normal times, it's there for pleasure cruising.

It's there for smuggling.

And guess what?

Right now, it's really cheap if you want to hire a Dow for a pleasure cruise.

And although you made me sound very intrepid by going out there, it was a quiet, beautiful day.

There were dolphins.

There were damselfish.

And there was no sign at all of a war going on just over the cliffs.

It was.

That's exactly what it was.

When you're there, of course, because it's closed, the ships are not going back and forth.

So it's quiet.

In fact, in the strait, I saw lots of these dhows just idling there because it was not a time when you could safely go back and forth to Iran.