Jeffrey Sachs

They were mad about the 1973 war.

U.S.

support for Israel.

Exactly.

This has been the same issue.

I was four years old when that happened.

This goes back a long way.

And then 1979-80 was the Iranian revolution.

And...

The oil got turned off, but the oil fields weren't destroyed.

There was no war in the oil fields.

There was no physical destruction of infrastructure.

Refineries weren't destroyed.

What will happen in the next few weeks, if we don't choose the off-ramp, is the physical destruction of a lot of the Gulf region,

and of the middle east more generally because the u.s will rain missiles and bombs on iran and iran will launch what it has against targets in the neighborhood to show deterrence and hoping that that deterrence will stop something often instead what you get is just both sides unleashing their arsenals

And what will happen in a short period of time is not a closure of shipping, but a destruction of the physical capacities of providing the oil and the gas and the fertilizers and the petrochemicals and the other products.

very core commodities for the world economy.

And it doesn't take that much to bring the world economy into a tailspin because you don't need to close down half the oil supply.

You might need to shut off 20% of the world oil supply, and that by enough will send the prices soaring.

make americans really suffer across the board because it's not only at the gas pump and not only in the utility bills but also in the cost of food which will soar from this as well because there will be a worldwide disruption of food supplies coming from this because we're a very significant proportion of the urea