I'm John Batchel, Bill Raggio, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies continue with me,

and we're very pleased to welcome Ambassador Edmund Fitton Brown, former UK ambassador to Yemen,

former UN official to all of these troubled countries.

We go now to the Strait of Formuz.

There is no clarity.

We don't hope for it.

But the Strait of Hormuz is suddenly the

center of all conversations. The reason has to do with the supply chain to planet Earth.

Coming up, we're going to be emphasizing food security, but right now it's energy. However,

it's not solved. It's open or it's shut depending on what hour of the day.

The president himself is making remarks now that this will be the last of the ceased fire.

What comes next is unknown. So we welcome Edmund to help us understand how to frame this story.

Edmund, this was not part of our conversation a month ago

when we started. It was all about the nuclear weapons program, about the bombing underway,

and then suddenly we had a ceasefire April 7th that looked promising, looked like negotiation,

but nothing came of it in Islamabad. We now have had a second opportunity at Islamabad,

and we're told, fog of peace, fog of war, fog of diplomacy, that the negotiation did not begin

because Iran wanted this and the president said that. There is no simple way to characterize

all of this, but your read now on Iran, we established last week that it believes time is on its side.

We established last week that the president is concerned with the markets.

How do you read this week? Good evening to you, Edmund.

Good evening, John, good evening, Bill. It's good to be with you again. I again. I think we, you know, one of the, as we've said before, there is this issue of patience and whether the US has the patience for this campaign. There's no doubt the Iranians have the patience. You know, they are prepared to play this long and they they're very aware of U.S. timetables.

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