I'm John Batchel with my colleague Michael Berns-Belhoover Institution.

We're observing a crisis, a global crisis,

a wider war global crisis. Iran, in its defense, has chosen to make war on commerce. That means

the Strait of Hormuz. I have this quote from Martin Wolf's column in the Financial Times today.

Michael and I recommend you follow Martin Wolf very carefully in these next weeks.

Martin Wolf points to Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, which is a very successful hedge fund.

Ray Dalio says, in the case of this Iran war, there is near universal agreement that it all comes

down to who controls the Strait of Hormuz.

And Martin Wolf adds, at the moment, Iran does. So long as this is true, Iran is winning.

Michael, that's a tough version of the war we're seeing. But the Strait of Hormuz, now that I've

studied it in old maps and new maps,

has always been the same, extremely narrow, especially for those big draft ships, the tankers

and the freight carriers that get through. And right now, even the U.S. Navy cannot guarantee

the Strait of Hormuz. As long as Iran controls that, is the crisis going to remain?

Is that accurate? Thank you.

The crisis is going to remain worse of all.

It won't even end if we free the state of Hormuz, because the state of Karmouth is a very narrow choke point to exit from,

and it is just 21 miles at the narrow point.

And there are only two lines to go through each, one inbound, another outbound, two miles

wide each, which means that only 100 ships a day can go through, of which about 20 large oil and gas tankers.

Then if you open the Strait of Hormuz, the Iranian regime is gone, the war is over, there is still a traffic jam.

It will take days, I would say weeks, to clear it up because there were so many ships.

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