Hello and welcome to another episode of Realpolitik.

I am your host, Firas Modad.

Today I think we have quite a bit to talk about from the talks that are supposed to happen.

Maybe they'll happen, maybe they won't happen, the possibility of the war resuming,

and a little bit about what our techno future looks like on the back of this war, because that's

quite interesting and it's coming in the context of energy starvation that is being imposed by this war,

and so we're going to talk through all of that

on this show today. Let's start with where we are in terms of the fighting or not so much the

fighting, but with the Iranian blockade and the American counter blockade that is going on right now.

We saw over the weekend a bunch of attacks by the Iranian Navy targeting ships in the Strait of Hormuz

intended to maintain Iran's blockade. This came after Trump had first said that the strait was going to be open, then the Iranians said the same thing.

Then Trump said that, yeah, the street is going to be open, but the blockade on Iran is going to continue until there is an agreement.

And so the Iranians rather predictably responded to that by re-blocking the strait

and opening fire at a bunch of the ships that were passing through.

I think it was two Indian ships and a third maybe cargo ship, two Indian attackers at a third cargo

ship, I think. Because when the announcement that the strait was opened, happened,

a lot of the ships that were trapped in the Strait of Hormuz

immediately decided to make a run for it and tried to cross before it would be closed again.

But in reality, it just never happened. There was no opening

of the strait. There was nothing of the sort. And then a two days later, the United States

blows up a hole in the engine room of an Iranian tanker that was trying to run the American blockade, the counter

blockade on Iran's blockade essentially, they managed to disable the ship by attacking the

...