I'm John Batto with Bill Rajah, my colleague and co-host, and we're very pleased to speak to the former ambassador from the UK to Yemen, a former UN senior official in very much over the whole

of the Middle East and the wars these last years, now dealing with what appears to be competing

threats. The Iranian regime is threatening, crushingly, to respond to an

attack on the petrochemical facilities in South Pahr's field. That's Iran. That's a major

source of income for the regime. The U.S. is threatening much more than that, attacking bridges and power plants,

perhaps something to do with the water structure, but in any event, dual-use technology at best

between the military and the civilians. And both these threats have been issued within these last

hours. So what we need is a war aim that we can hold on to.

This has been achieved go-to-seast fire.

Edmund, the president's speech at the end of March, which was very much the speech we would

have welcomed at the end of February when the conflict began, listed missiles, the

suspect nuclear weapons program, regime change, not determined which one of

those was more important or which one of those was operative. And then the threat over the weekend

talks not about those three, but about the Straits of Hormuz, open or else. What is your best understanding of the U.S. war aim at this point? Does it have one?

Well, John, it's a great question. And we've said this before, when we've talked on air before,

that the U.S. has not clearly articulated its war aims. I think we're all very clear on what the

Israeli and Iranian war aims are, but it's not clear what the US war aims are. And, you know,

some people have talked about regime change. Others have talked about progress on the nuclear

or ballistic missile files. In my view, now that the war

has started, probably the U.S. war aims are extensive. But again, it does seem as if the

president listens a lot to headlines, and he certainly listens to the stock market and prices.

And so we now have, you know, the war aim of reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

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