Rudyard Griffiths

And maybe instead of focusing on the known unknowns, which is will there be any kind of agreement to end this war in the next 72 hours?

Let's hope.

But we're going to leave that to our listeners and readers to pay attention to their news feeds to find out what happened.

Instead, I want to go back for the last few days with you.

and talk about some kind of really particular and peculiar events.

And let's begin with the story, Janice, behind why Trump's Operation Freedom, which was the attempt to reopen the Straits of Hormuz to commercial shipping, was started and then stopped in the short space of only 24 hours.

Something important behind that that I think would be good for our listeners and viewers to know about as it's a dynamic that no doubt will impact what happens in this conflict next.

Some reports also that the denial of airspace was a concern that both governments had that the Americans were not defending the UAE from a first wave of drone attacks that had happened earlier in the week.

We now have reports overnight that the UAE has been attacked again by ballistic missiles and drones and that there have been fatalities.

The United States either chose not to prevent those attacks.

I'm just wondering, Janice, what is going on here?

I mean, at the core of the Middle East and America's relationship with these states and all the American military bases throughout that region—

was a supposedly unbreakable covenant that the United States would come to the defense of these countries.

It was, in a sense, a security guarantee, a security guarantee that affected billions of dollars of weapons purchases by these governments and also large amounts of capital investment in the United States.

knitted together the future of the GCC with that of multiple presidencies of various parties and various outlooks, probably

no more fulsomely embraced than by Donald Trump in the opening months of his second term.

What do you make of the fact that we've now had two attacks in the space of 72 hours on the UAE where the United States seems to be letting these attacks proceed because they're concerned about pushing negotiations with Iran

into a place, I guess, that would be irretrievable on the basis of either counteracting those attacks or going after the sources of those attacks in Iran.

This seems like a real change in something pretty fundamental.

But, Janice, doesn't it show just how much leverage the Iranians have?