Iran attacked: What the weekend strikes reveal — and Britain's anti-migration moment

So what's on our docket today?

Well, I think we better start with Iran, right? Because that's been a lot of kind of tit for tat over the weekend.

So maybe you might track us back to what's happened since this memorandum that, that I think you did actually say last week that it's not worth the paper it's written on.

But also, I think because it was so soon-

Yeah

... that things started to fall apart, I think people don't really care as much as they would if it had gone a little bit longer and then started again because it just feels like there's not been a break at all in this.

Well, I mean, it's very strategic and maybe a bit like a lot of back rooms have been busy.

So what happened was that on Friday night, I believe, there had been attacks by Iran on four different vessels, although three of those attacks had been intercepted, and one f- on the Ever Lovely, which is a nice word for that, had been unfortunately successful.

Looking more into it, this is what happened.

Tehran and Muscat had been very closely allied for this entire conflict season, if you will.

And Iran had kind of, of course, had this control of the strait.

They had mined the strait, and so there was all sorts of ways in which they were reinforcing their own control of this region.

And Oman seemed to be kind of going along with it, in many ways kind of diverting its position from the rest of the GCC, the Gulf Council community, and, and really aligning more with Tehran.

But it turns out Oman had been kind of engaged in this back room deal around what's called a southern strategy, which is a way out of the strait, both in and out, that adheres much more to their coast than to what's called the northern route, which is the Iranian route.

And it had effectively opened that up, thereby denying quite a bit of Iran's control over the strait since it was recently opened.

And of course, if Iran cannot use its chokehold on the strait both to reinforce its position, but also to potentially charge quite a bit in order for countries and their supplies to go in and out, it really kind of doesn't have a huge number of legs to stand on when it goes into trying to negotiate the actual terms of this agreement.

Because the US and Iran are saying very different things about this agreement, and many of the important aspects, whether it be Iranian missile and drones, nuclear work, whether it's about support for the militias throughout the region, and also, of course, control of the strait, if that's not in Iran's favor going forward because they can hold over these means to control the actions of the US, then Iran is looking in a very desperate position.

So that's what that was about.

When those attacks sort of took place, then Trump was asked, wasn't he, "Are you gonna let that happen?" And then strikes resumed.

It was almost like whoever was asking that question alerted him to it 'cause he, it felt like he was over it a little bit.

I think he was, but they've gotten so much pushback because of this, right? The finer details of this deal, which involved really Oman and the other Gulf states rather than the US, although the US will oversee the security of this southern lane.

The, the Gulf states are really trying to organize towards their own collective security here, which I'm sure that Trump isn't particularly interested in.

An additional point which is interesting that happened over the weekend is that Israel and Lebanon signed an agreement that effectively allows Israel to try to root out Hezbollah and for the Lebanese government and military to secure that territory so that Israel would not have to return to do that again.

So I mean, a very similar agreement was made several decades ago, and it led to quite a, a lot of trouble because Hezbollah doesn't want Lebanon to be that involved with Israel kind of ensuring each other's collective security.

So that could be a sign of more trouble to come, but it is also a sign that these are entities trying to solve problems in their own neighborhoods in the ways that they can, which is a positive development.