SPECIAL REPORT: Re-Escalation Of War With Iran Spinning Out Of Control? | Ryan Bohl

**Ryan Bohl** (0:00)
We've entered into a battle for influence over Hormuz, whose rules does international shipping have to live by? Is it freedom of navigation as the US is pushing for, or is it Iran's tolling system and its pre-approved routes?

**Adam Taggart** (0:19)
Welcome to Thoughtful Money. I'm Thoughtful Money founder and your host, Adam Taggart. And I'm moking you back here for yet another special report on the situation in Iran with RANE's Mideast geopolitical analyst, Ryan Bohl. Ryan, thanks so much for joining us again.

**Ryan Bohl** (0:36)
Thanks for having me, Adam.

**Adam Taggart** (0:37)
Well, Ryan, we had a nice little break there where it looked like maybe things were going to start calming down. And then, of course, we're back to kinetics now. And I appreciate you coming on when I reached out to you here on short notice.
I just want to give folks kind of an update on where we are. And I guess at the kickoff here, let me just start by asking, I think, the question on most people's mind, which is, okay, where are we right now? I mean, does the MOU, is that still even relevant or has that just been torn to shreds and we're back to fallout war? Or may diplomacy actually cool things down here again in the near term?

**Ryan Bohl** (1:17)
Well, let's start off with some of the geography of the violence that we're seeing so far, because it is different than at the height of the war in March and early April. So far, the Emiratis have been left out of it. The Qataris have only had limited interference. Bahrain and Kuwait and Jordan are where most of the Iranian attacks have taken place. There's a reason for that, which is that they are the front line for the American military campaign against the Iranians right now.
Kuwait is the largest US. Army base in the region. It's where a lot of the missiles being fired into Iran are coming from. Jordan is a major air base, and Bahrain is the headquarters for the 5th Fleet. It's important to see that within that geography of it's a military to military conflict, rather than what we saw in March, which was this expansive campaign by both sides to try to destroy as many targets as possible. It was a region-wide conflict, it involved the Israelis, it even involved the Gulf Arabs at a certain point. We have a different box right now, but it's an incredibly unstable box, it can fall apart at any moment. And the Houthis, as of today, have said that they're going to get involved with the blockade against the Saudis. So it is growing, but we're not as bad in terms of our geography as we saw in March. Now that question of the MOU, does it still apply?
Remember, an MOU is just a memorandum of understanding. You and I could come up with an MOU over what to decide to have for dinner right now, and whether or not we actually follow through with it, there's nothing binding about the nature of MOU. And they're often used in diplomacy as a starting point for more serious negotiations. This one was negotiated with an interest towards conflict management, of ending the overt shooting between the two of them, and resolving essentially nothing. Because especially this one part called Article 5 was very contentious between the two, where the Iranians seemed to believe that it was going to give them some influence over the Strait of Hormuz. The Americans seemed to believe that it was going to be a mechanism to get the Iranians to give up their influence over Hormuz in exchange for sanctions relief. Neither of them really wanted to push it at that moment in June, when this is being negotiated, because what they wanted to do was stop the shooting, and the destruction, and the climbing of the escalation ladder, and then they were going to come to it later. It turned out the Iranians were dead serious about their influence over Hormuz, to the point where they resumed attacking civilian ships that were going outside of their so-called pre-approved lines that they say are allowed under the agreement. That's what put us back into this conflict, that we've entered into a battle for influence over Hormuz. Whose rules does international shipping have to live by? Is it freedom of navigation as the US is pushing for, or is it Iran's tolling system and its pre-approved routes?
That is what shipping has to do. And so that's where we're climbing the ladder. That's part of the reason the geography isn't as bad as it was in March. This isn't a campaign to overthrow the Islamic Republic. It's a campaign by the Americans to restore freedom of navigation in Hormuz.