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Hello and welcome to NewsHour from the World Service of the BBC coming live from London.

This is Owen Bennett Jones.

So the Iranian blockade of the strait performers Hormers is now being followed by an American

blockade, but they have very different purposes. The Iranians want to show that they have

leverage over the global economy. The Americans want to show Iran that the US can block two key

sources of revenue for the country, the money charged to ships that it was allowing through the strait,

there's talk of two million dollars a ship,

and that Iran will not be able to export any of its own oil.

And one of the questions now is,

will that blockade turn into more missile exchanges,

or will it just stay on the seas?

Earlier today from the White House, Donald Trump had this to say about the blockade.

Right now there's no fighting. Right now we have a blockade.

They're doing no business. I didn't like seeing boats come out if they were doing business with Iran,

but if there weren't, no boats came out. So now, Iran is doing

absolutely no business, and we're going to keep it that way very easily. Don't forget, their Navy is

gone, their air force is gone, their anti-aircraft is gone, their radar is gone, and their leaders are gone.

Well, our diplomatic correspondent is Paul Adams, and I asked him just how much traffic is going to be affected by this

new US blockade? Well, the traffic has slowed pretty much to a trickle as a result of the Iranian

blockade. Interestingly, just over the weekend, just ahead of Donald Trump's announcement,

there was a bit of an uptick. There was a feeling that in the light of

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