伊朗核设施新动态与红海局势升级引发市场担忧

Joyce, that was Ray Takeyh. He's a senior fellow from Middle East studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. And, Ray, it's great to have you with us. I I I my ears perked up when I heard that he said he was talking with the Houthis. The Houthis called us. And I just wanna get your reaction to what the president said this morning in kind of a broader sense, What the Houthis involvement in this conflict says about its direction?

Well, the Houthis, of course, can shut down their Red Sea traffic. The administration's perspective had been that by having some sort of a US Navy convoys around the Oman Corridor, having the East West pipeline, and having the Red Sea traffic, that essentially stabilizes the oil markets at at a fairly high level, but it still stabilizes. That was its version of victory over the past couple of weeks, and the Iranians and the Houthis have managed to disrupt that narrative in a radical and dramatic way.

So it is a very it's a profound setback for the administration and the narrative of success that it was that was conveyed. I mean, the Houthis are not new. The conflict in Yemen is not new. It certainly predates this conflict between The US and Iran. Why now? Why are we seeing a spike in these attacks? What opportunity do they think they have a window for here? Well, into one of the mysteries of the Middle East, of which there are many, is the relationship between Iran and the Houthis.

It's how directly are they involved with each other. The Houthis have a mind of their own, and they have been struggling in Yemen for a long time and have managed to, of course, have some very important strategic victories recently. It appears to me that the relationship between the Islamic Republic and the Houthis is much more significant than we think, and the Houthis will engage in battlefield conflict on behalf of the Islamic Republic when that is necessary.

So that relationship is not a loose alliance as it was perceived, but it much might be quite a tighter one because of the exigencies over this happening in The Middle East today. Bloomberg has been reporting there's going to be a meeting and unlikely good on Monday between Gulf nations and Iran, and then I'm curious of how you think about that particular diplomatic track going forward here. We've been watching the BRICS summit unfolding in New Delhi over the course of of the morning.

Of course, Iran is present for that as well. Is is Iran in a position where it could be susceptible to encouragement to back off or or move away from from this act of conflict? Well, what Iran has been trying to do for the past six months is to create a new tributary system in the Persian Gulf, essentially becoming the dominant power in there, which means these lesser Gulf states would have to actually pay tribute to Iran.

Now some of them already are. Otherwise, they stand to be attacked and, of course, controlling the Gulf traffic. So this is not gonna be a dialogue about how to come to some kind of a cooperation, but it's about the Iranians essentially saying to the Gulf states that we are the dominant power here. We can control your economy, and we can essentially shut down the traffic through The Gulf and in pipelines that The United States is promising you that it will protect.

So this is likely to be a different conversation given some of the battlefield victories that Iran has had and maybe some of its recent moves about shutting down the traffic and attacking Saudi oil fields oil pipelines is a prelude to this summit meeting and some of the demands that the Iranians are likely to have. Ray, to your point, it's always been a a point of contention, how much command and control Iran has over its various proxy groups.

But, you know, with Iran under pressure, with the decimation of the senior leadership of the IRGC, we have seen the capacity of Hamas, of Hezbollah, really degraded, recently. Why has that not also been the case with, the Houthis? Well, because the Israelis are decapitating the Houthis the way they did in their near abroad, in the border states of Lebanon and Gaza. The the the demise of, Hamas and and, actually, the military destruction of Hezbollah has been a relentless Israeli campaign.

But Israelis have demonstrated they don't have that cross regional ability to essentially do the same thing in Yemen. And the Saudi military has been incapable of dealing with Houthis in a significant way. And Houthis are much stronger actually at this point because of every geography, their alliance with Iran, and so on. I wanted to ask you about something we hear often from the administration, from the president in particular, and that is that Iran's in a very weakened position.

The economy is under extreme pressure and and duress, and we're getting to a point at which that's no longer tenable. I I'm curious from your perspective if if it does feel like the the country's in a position where it is especially vulnerable, and it might be subject to some sort of change from from the status quo, the stalemate that we've seen over the last few months. Well, there's no question that the Iranian economy is depleted.

That is acknowledgment of the Iranian state itself, which reports about 80% inflation rate. And, of course, the infrastructure destruction, the embargo, and so forth. But I think too often, we have, in the West, draw a line between economic distress and strategic acquiescence. Namely, if a country is experiencing economic decline, it will change its strategic priorities. That actually has not been the case. It wasn't the case with the Russian Federation, and it hasn't been the case with the Islamic Republic.

We have essentially overvalued sanctions and economic pressure as a coercive tool, and that's why we're seeing this imbalance. The Iranian economy is depleting, but its aggression is increasing. There's that inverse proportion that we can't explain. Because in the western mind, if your economy is going down, you need to make some adjustments to bring it up, and that essentially means coming to terms with your adversaries abroad.

That has not been the case. Second of all, when the February two thousand twenty six war began for the Iranians was an exponential war. It was a war that they could not lose. And therefore, they're coming into this with a determination to sacrifice. At this point in The Gulf, in the case of Iran war, it is not who can inflict more pain. Obviously, The United States can do so. It's who can endure more pain, and the Iranians are determined to do so.

Whether they're miscalculating, whether they will essentially be overwhelmed by popular insurrection, those are risks that they have to take, of course. But, essentially, that's where we are today. Ray, I apologize. We've only got a little over a minute left, but we did wanna ask you about some new things folks are seeing, at something called Pickaxe Mountain, which is an Iranian nuclear facility. The UN atomic watchdog says they've observed construction activity, roads for heavy trucks.

There's there's things happening there. How significant is this, and how much visibility does the international community have into what's going on? Pigax Mountain has been something that the IAEA has been concerned about for a long time because it has not have access to it. If the Iranians are their nuclear program in Pigax Mountain, that is both an obvious target for attack, but also not very vulnerable because how deep it is.

So it is a very disconcerning development and essentially negates another one of president's claims that the Iranian nuclear program has been all but obliterated.