I'm John Batchelor. I welcome my good colleague of many years Greg Sc Scarlato, who is my Romanian whisper. He is

Romanian. And we go now to the Black Sea Basin and news in these last days about the Iran war.

You will recall that the President of the United States has asked Europe for assistance in opening

the Strait of Hormuz now shut down

with an act of piracy by the Iranian regime under attack by Israel and the United States for its

war-making and suspect nuclear weapons program. However, the Strait of Hormuz is shut to all traffic,

including one-fifth of the oil necessary to keep the planet

humming along and everybody well-fed. It is shut, and to reopen it needs mine sweepers and

patrolling. The major European powers have said no. That would be the UK, Germany, France, Spain,

Italy. No, they will not assist in patrolling or demining the Strait of Hormuz. As significant in Asia, Japan has also said

it will not send a warship or mine sweepers to the Strait of Hormuz. We go now to the other

parts of the European Union and NATO, Romania.

Greg, a very good evening to last week, the 11th of March, your president, Nikashir Dhan,

told Romania that he was going to allow for U.S. troops and defensive military equipment to be

based on Romanian territory. It was adopted by the legislature with an overwhelming number of

votes. The opposition lawmakers did protest, but they don't have the votes. What this means is

refueling aircraft, monitoring systems, satellite

communication equipment deployed in Romania, according to the president. Within these last hours,

the Islamic government in Tehran, I read from a Romanian insider.com, warned Romania that providing

bases to the U.S. Air Force amounts to participation in

the attacks against Iran. The spokesman for Tehran argued that Romania's support for the U.S.,

quote, would incur international responsibility if implemented.

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