All right, Alexandra, let's do an update on what is happening in the Middle East and specifically

what is happening with the situation with Iran, the escalation into a conflict with Iran.

And it looks like the U.S. was preparing for the Iranian retaliation by moving warships and U.S. military assets into the region,

but now it appears that the U.S. may be pulling back some of those military assets, perhaps

a signal from the U.S. a belief from the U.S. from the Pentagon that Iran is not going

to retaliate any time in the near future? What are your thoughts on what's going on?

I found this. What has happened, actually? What has been pulled back, actually, from the region?

This is the most interesting story because, in fact, what happened is that following the events of the

Islamahania assassination in Tehran and following all the threats from Tehran for massive retaliation,

which, by the way, continue. I checked before we did this program what the Iranian media is saying, and they're still talking about Hania, and they're still

talking about the fact that Iran will retaliate one day when it is ready and when it's positioned to do so. Anyway, immediately after that,

the United States again moved massive assets, military assets to the Middle East on at least

the same scale that it did in the spring, when it was widely talked

about. We did programmes about it at the time. And as it has done on previous occasions, since the

current crisis began following Hamas's attack on Israel in October last year. So we have had two

carrier groups, two aircraft carriers with all the accompanying warships from the US Navy,

patrolling the Gulf of the man within close range of Iran itself.

And that was an enormous commitment of US naval power.

And it meant that the US wasn't able to deploy a carrier group to the eastern Pacific.

So that for a time, throughout this period, the US had no military asset, no carrier group

to confront China, how the Chinese actually planned, which of course they don't

have any such plans, but had the Chinese actually planned to start something in Taiwan or the

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