Why would Saudi Arabia, uh, uh, decide to become involved at this point?

There was a big miscalculation I think at, at the beginning of the war.

The, after the 12 day war last year when, when the US and Israel struck the nuclear sites, there was this assumption that the Iranian response would be against Israel because, you know, that's what we saw last time.

In fact, there was, you know, the period between June 2025 and, and this war which began in February, there was a massive rethinking by the Iranians about how they would respond to any future war because they thought they would be fighting again and soon.

One of the Iranian strategies in this conflict is to hit American interests, US bases close by in the Gulf, in Jordan, uh, US economic interests.

You know, it's hitting things that are close by in the Gulf, and the Gulf nations are being forced to make sort of very hard decisions.

They've always tried to sit on the fence in, in, in these kind of, you know, in, in the conflict and the friction before.

No.

Yeah.

Um, but they're seeing this as kind of an escalation in a different way.

Now, that means that, you know, we're unlikely to see anything around Article 5, the core of NATO, which is that an attack on one NATO country is an attack on all.

But at the same time, I think senior European officials, what NATO is making clear is that this feels very, very close to the edge and in light of all the other stuff that's been going on, whether, you know, we're talking about Russian-inspired sabotage attacks in Poland.

You know, it was the head of GCHQ was talking earlier this week about sort of the increase in Russian hybrid warfare against the UK.

There is a sense that this is part of the picture of general Russian aggression, is the fact that we're now seeing consequences happening across borders inside NATO countries, and I think there's a very, very strong desire to remind Russia, you know, what kind of perilous territory that this is tilting towards when you have drones exploding on the top of, of Romanian apartment blocks.

Yeah.

They're very happy with, uh, with the kind of anger.

I mean, has Trump accomplished anything through this or is this just a massive failure?

It's hard to see that he's accomplished anything.

I mean, I agree with that.

I think it's been a massive strategic failure.

If you look at the way this war has been conducted, I mean, he was warned by, you know, the intelligence community that, you know, Netanyahu's claims that he could somehow sort of bring about regime change in Iran were a fantasy, essentially, or bullshit.

If you're looking at the United States today from North Korea or China or Russia, you're going to come to the conclusion that despite all the violence, despite all the expenditure, a pretty sort of low to medium-sized military power with a bit of will has been able to stand up to the biggest military power on the planet.

I mean, it will not have been missed.

Well,

Tell me about this strike that Israel has carried out and why it is so significant as an act of aggression.

Well, as you said, the South Pass gas field is part of the biggest gas field in the world.

It's shared with Qatar.

I mean, it's all one system.

So, I mean, it's not like, you know, here's the Qatari part and here's the Iranian part.

It's all joined up.

So this produces some of, you know, most of the world's liquefied natural gas.

Exactly.