Ashley Perry on the Houthis and Bab el-Mandab

Transcript

MEF speech-to-text, word-timed; edited only to withhold private names and to correct misheard public names, in square brackets. Timecodes are source time; each opens the source at that second.

Perry relays a viewer's question, then answers.

1. 19:22"Shipping through the Bab el-Mandab, uh, strait being significantly affected yet?" I
2. 19:26think it's starting to be affected, but obviously, if the, if the, um, if the, uh,
3. 19:32the Houthis do actually, uh, conquer it, then it will be affected.
4. 19:37And basically, it means that Iran will then be able to affect, uh, even greater
5. 19:42shipping routes because Houthis are Iran at the end of the day.
6. 19:46And what this probably is, is a play by Iran.
7. 19:49Not probably, it is a play by Iran to basically put more and more pressure, uh, on
8. 19:54international shipping lanes, on trade, um, perhaps punish, uh, President
9. 20:01Trump at the midterms because they know how much, um, the price of oil is going up,
10. 20:07and that means the price of gas is going up, something that President Trump very much
11. 20:11tried to get under control, and now it's back over a hundred dollars a barrel.
12. 20:15Uh, so things are not looking good. So if they do conquer, uh, the Bab el-Mandab
13. 20:20strait, then certainly there can be no, or it's significantly less likely
14. 20:27that, uh, President Trump will be able to get the price of gas down, uh, before the
15. 20:31midterms, and that probably will have a significant effect on those elections.

Views expressed are the speaker's own.