Rudyard Griffiths

word of jet fuel shortages in not just Asia, but Europe now, diesel prices in the United States, which is what powers transport trucks, which haul people's groceries and all those things that were

The cause of the Biden presidency falling off the rails, inflation.

I guess what I'm struggling with, Andrew, is surely the president can't let this status quo proceed as it is because he loses.

He loses politically.

He loses because of inflation.

So

What would the off or on-ramp look like?

I guess the on-ramp is a re-escalation of the war.

To what end?

I don't know.

The off-ramp would be what?

China leaning on Iran to somehow broker an end to this conflict?

That would be a different kind of humiliation for the United States.

That's right.

But inflation lurks out there.

The longer this goes on, there are upwards now of tens of millions of barrels of oil that are trapped behind the choke point of the strait.

And at some point, I don't... There's math there on the side of Iran.

So you would hope that the White House knows this, so they know that there's a clock running.

There's analysis by their own intelligence agencies that it seems like Iran potentially could wait out two to three months before its economy would be

in collapse, but that date probably falls after this acute oil shock, which would then ripple through the United States, would ripple through gas prices, transportation prices, into food prices.