Paul Rogers

Hi, good morning.

It is.

And there's another report which isn't confirmed yet, that a Chinese ship has actually come through

the strait and has not been intercepted by the american navy at least not as yet even though i believe it was one which you would expect the americans to actually try and prevent through so we simply don't know what's happening there but of course it does mean there's a much greater tension around really across the whole scene what does that tell you if they did allow the if the americans allowed the chinese through there must be some limit to the action that they're willing to take

Well, there may be.

And I think one of the problems is you're getting two different voices coming from within the senior realms of the Trump administration.

Trump himself, who seems to play a sort of shooting from the hip and plays it very hard on occasions, but is hugely unpredictable.

But then you have essentially J.D.

Vance, the vice president, who seems to be taking a more cautious view.

And right from the start of the conflict with Iran, he has really stayed more in the background and said very little, although he did become very prominent, of course, when we had the start of the negotiations a week or so ago.

So it may well be that there are conflicting orders coming through from the center or at least uncertainty.

There's certainly uncertainty.

There's no doubt about that.

Where that leaves us.

Sorry.

Given the group within the Trump administration, he was probably better than just sending Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who are the normal people who go to these kinds of things, even though they have no real diplomatic experience.

And certainly,

are not sort of negotiated in this kind of area.

So to that extent, he was probably the more appropriate person.

But yes, I agree entirely with you on this issue of what happened with Orban.