I'm John Metz with Lance Gatling of Nexiel Research. He's in Tokyo.

And looking at diplomacy,

the new Prime Minister, Takichi Sinai, is very busy. She's continuing diplomatic efforts,

wrote his reports, to ensure the passage of oil. What does that mean? She's spoken with the president of Iran, Massoud Pasekian, whom we have reason to believe is a diplomat first and a decider second.

He is not one of the five men who were IRGC affiliated who are making the command decisions about open or close the straits of our moves.

We come now, however, to not just the diplomacy

of Japan, but under Takichas and I. Either you say it's a re-arming, a reawakening, a new hawkish stance

towards the threats from the People's Republic of China. Lance, we talk about this routinely as the crisis in the Middle East changed any of the

thinking about facing up to China.

You're all vulnerable out there in the East Asia for the Straits of Hormuz.

Does it make China more or less dangerous from the Tokyo point of view?

What changed the Japanese way of thinking recently was more Ukraine than it has been Iran

and the blockade of the Straits of Hormon.

Certainly that got their attention, but remember that the Japanese don't share such a boundary,

such a large boundary with the People's Republic of China, but they do share a substantial border with Russia in the northern territories,

where the Russians occupy what the Japanese still claim

is their territory.

And these are not insignificant island.

These are the main island is larger, four times the size of Okinawa.

And Okinawa is certainly important.

And the northern territories have lots of resources and fisheries.

So they have eyed that with a lot of alarm, the activities of the Russians, the aggression against Ukraine.

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