"The sort of immediate and urgent crisis is Iran, and it's not the nuclear program, it's the strait," Council President and CEO Leslie Vinjamuri tells Bloomberg. "He will be seeking to see whether China will do anything to help unlock that."
"I think for the US president, the number one thing is really the Strait [of Hormuz], not the nuclear issue," said Council President and CEO Leslie Vinjamuri while discussing the stalled peace talks between the US and Iran on the Bloomberg Surveillance Podcast.
"I think all parties would like to see some regular traffic through the strait," Council President and CEO Leslie Vinjamuri says. "The problem is that even if we get there, Iran is still going to have this . . . this incredible tool that it can play."
The Iran war may have been the catalyst, but the UAE’s decision to leave the oil cartel is the culmination of years of geopolitical divergence with Saudi Arabia.
Ariane Tabatabai, the Council's vice president of research on security and defense and senior fellow on the Middle East, joins the podcast to talk through the week's biggest national security stories.
"Iraq is so dependent on their exports leaving the Persian Gulf," says Council Lester Crown Senior Nonresident Fellow Rachel Bronson. "I am really worried about unintended consequences."
