00:00What are your thoughts? Is the U.S. going to get militarily involved in this conflict?
00:07Thanks very much for having me. And evidently, that's the question all analysts and observers are asking themselves at this moment.
00:17What I can tell you is that at control risks where our analysis of U.S. intent to become involved has shifted quite a bit over the past few days.
00:28We used to assess that the White House and Trump in particular were particularly concerned about keeping a non-interventionist approach in policy and keeping that dealmaker ethos.
00:43But we have significantly raised our probability of the U.S. becoming actively involved.
00:51There could be different manners in which it could become involved, but some higher level of offensive involvement does seem increasingly possible going forward.
01:03And if it does go forward, how unprecedented would that be?
01:06Truly unprecedented. It's a word that has been used over and over again in the past few days.
01:15And it feels like it's appropriate each time we've seen the region essentially reaching levels of tensions that hadn't been seen in decades probably.
01:26And U.S. involvement directly in the conflict would undoubtedly shift the balance of power at the geopolitical level for the region for the decades to come.
01:43Iran has said it would retaliate against U.S. military action if any were to happen.
01:49How exactly might that play out?
01:50This is something that we're keeping particularly close tabs on at control risks.
02:00It's Iran's most effective response in terms of trying to rein in Israel, in terms of trying to convince the U.S. to back down.
02:14It would probably be expanding the scope of targeting.
02:17And should U.S. bases located in the region be involved in such targeting, which they most certainly would be,
02:29then you could imagine Iran starting to strike U.S. bases in the region.
02:37And those strikes would likely be targeted precise, but that would certainly indicate quite a whitening of the conflict.
02:45And on top of that, you could start seeing Iranian efforts to impact energy prices,
02:54cause more of a global consequences for the escalation in response to the escalation.
03:03And then that could play out with transit of tankers in the Gulf, for instance.
03:07Indeed. And of course, the real key question is here, as we're now in this seventh day of this growing conflict,
03:14how far is each side truly willing to go?
03:21So you have quite a few parties involved at this stage.
03:25The two main ones at this moment are Israel and Iran, and I think it's worth considering Iran's perspective first in this respect.
03:35And from Israel's perspective first and from Israeli perspectives,
03:40key goals that need to be achieved before any sort of de-escalation can even be considered
03:46will include a very, very significant degradation of Iran's offensive capabilities,
03:54and especially its ballistic missile program,
03:58as well as guarantees that the nuclear program has been set back at least several years.
04:05And so for that reason, we do assess Israel to keep on targeting Iran for at least the next few weeks, most likely.
04:17In terms of the other actors, it largely depends on what the U.S. will decide in the next couple of days.
04:26In the event of the U.S. military involvement, then we do see Iran as increasingly likely to expand the conflict
04:37and go with a last-ditch attempt at re-establishing deterrence and pushing where it hurts,
04:44and that is oil prices, especially considering that many, many Trump voters polled recently have indicated
04:54that they weren't particularly in favor of increased involvement in the conflict.
04:59So that might be one avenue for Iran to respond.
05:04Victor, thank you for that. That's Victor Trico speaking to me from London.
