But Doug, what did you take away from that speech?

There was a lot of buildup to that speech on Thursday and to European President Ursula von der Leyen's speech the previous day announcing that they wanted Canada to have what was called an associate membership of the European Union, not something that exists right now or has ever existed and not something that's been defined specifically in either speeches.

And this caused, in advance of it and during it and after it, just a flurry of concern, excitement, worry, criticism, endorsement.

But I think in retrospect that we sort of mistook the forest for the trees in that we Really, the big thing out of this was the speech.

It was the announcement.

What Mark Carney and Ursula von der Leyen declaring that Canada had a special relationship with the European Union and would have something called an associate membership, that was the political action.

That declaration that...

Is our cozying up to Europe going to affect our relationship with our southern neighbor?

What has the closure of the Strait of Hormuz meant for Saudi then? Because of course we hear a lot about the Strait of Hormuz being closed and its impact on the global oil economy, so how has that impacted Saudi Arabia?

Arabia?Well, it's both devastating for Saudi Arabia and also not as bad for Saudi Arabia as for other countries.

And if you look at the immediate effect of the US-Israeli war on Iran upon the movement of oil and gas out of the Persian Gulf region, Saudi Arabia was hit less than other places such as the Emirates or, or Kuwait because it does have a pipeline that carries oil, well, crude oil from its eastern oil fields to the Red Sea, which is, which is on the western coast of Saudi Arabia.

And that east-west pipeline can carry something between a, a third and a half of Saudi Arabia's oil output.

So it didn't have its exports completely cut off the way other Gulf states did.

Now, Iran, uh, in its reprisal strikes using drones and missiles, did strike that pipeline and its facilities.

So Iran was not just hitting giant US military bases in countries like Saudi Arabia.

Okay.

So why would Iran continue its attacks on the UAE and other Gulf states now that there's a ceasefire deal in place?

There are a couple theories about why this huge assault was unleashed in the day after the ceasefire.

One theory is that Iran wants to escalate things to a very high level so that the peace negotiations can, if they call for a de-escalation, it's from a very high point.

A second theory is that Iran is angered by Israel continuing to attack Lebanon and is continuing to attack what it sees as the US-Israeli proxy countries, which is the Gulf Arab states, most of which, including the Emirates here, have US military bases on them and facilities.

And a third interesting theory is that Iran wanted to use this last-ditch measure to cut off the ability of the Gulf Arab countries to export their oil and gas through means other than the Strait of Hormuz.

So Saudi Arabia has an east-west running pipeline that allows it to export to the Red Sea instead of the Persian Gulf.

And somebody, presumably Iran, hit that pipeline very hard on Wednesday, disabling it for a while, and some similar sort of facilities were hit in Kuwait.

It's always possible, of course, these talks could be called off, but if they aren't, what will you be watching for that would show progress towards a longer lasting end to this war?