 Hello and welcome to Days Click. Did the U.S. almost launch a war on Iran? According to media reports, yesterday, the United States defense establishment was entirely prepared for missile strikes on key facilities in Iran. But the U.S. and President Donald Trump withdrew at the last moment. To talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Pogastar. Hello, Prabir. Prabir, so the media reports say that in response to Iran downing a U.S. drone, the U.S. military establishment was completely prepared for a full, at least a limited strike on key facilities. So how do you evaluate this possibility? Was it actually the beginning of a conflict or was it just saber-attling in response to the drone? You know, let's look at the wider context. The kind of sanctions the U.S. has imposed in Iran are actually equivalent to war. In fact, if you look at what the international law says, that these sanctions are in fact acts of war. So let's therefore say that they have been in a tacit war scenario for quite some time. For Iran to have retaliated or not is, of course, an open question. This particular case, the drone, when did it fall, when, what was the actual location, is something we need to discuss later. But there is no question that for Iran and U.S., they have been on a collision course for some time and each is expecting the other to back down. The Trump's argument regarding the sanctions or the U.S. administration's arguments regarding the sanctions is that Iran not only should give up all future nuclear weapon making capability, which means dismantle their entire nuclear infrastructure irrespective of whether it is for peace, for shall we say radioactive isotopes or medical purposes, anything. And it should also give up its missile capabilities, rocket capabilities and should also not support Hezbollah, Houthis or Syrian forces on the ground. So effectively it is to ask Iran to disarm completely and submit, essentially, surrendered to the U.S., Israeli and Saudi forces. Now that's something Iran, 80 million people, it has fought a war with Iraq, supported at the time by U.S. and Britain and France and other powers. So I think that's not likely. In this particular case, when you talk of the conflict with the Trump administration as far as the rest of the world is concerned, we really don't care whether they had a scenario where the defense establishment was preparing for a strike and Trump had actually a given signal or not, had pulled back or not. I think are irrelevant to the rest of us. The question is U.S. has been poised for military action against Iran and Iran has been responding in different ways. Now there have been some argument that they also did launch this tanker, shall we say, sabotage activities. But there's no question that if you see the Houthis stepped up drone attacks, it's very clear that they have got new drones over there. It's quite likely Iran is a source and that is also being directed now at the oil infrastructure of Saudis and also the last one, which was a couple of days back yesterday, that was also at an airport which did suffer some damage and also now it is desalination plants. It's important to understand electricity and desalination are also crucial to Saudi Arabia's infrastructure and 75% of Saudi Arabian water comes from desalination plants, which are coupled with the power plants. So this infrastructure, if it is hit, then it is also catastrophic consequences for Saudi Arabia. See Iran is letting people know that they are not without any, shall we say, capabilities with respect to the sanctions. Without going to war, they are in a position to make this whole, shall we say, sanctions and trying the containment of Iran by Israel, United States and Saudi Arabia. They are willing to make it costly. So their argument is, either you negotiate after removing the sanctions or this state of near war, which you have wreaked upon us, will continue. I think that's a message Iran is trying to send. And of course, this particular case, the drone, the question is not an usual drone. You know, we tend to think of drones which hover on the sports fields, which comes in India also in the marriage ceremonies, taking pictures from there. These are drones which are like toys. This is a drone, which is bigger than a most passenger aircraft. It was flying at 60, it can fly at a ceiling of 60,000 feet and above. It was worth anything between 130 to 200 million dollars, not because that's a cost to the drone, because it packed a huge amount of equipment, which is to take pictures at different spectra and really map out the quote unquote enemy territories, armaments, defensive as well as offensive. So that's the purpose of this drone. So it has a quasi-offensive purpose. It's basically to map out what would be the quote unquote enemies, air defense as well as other forces' disposition. And therefore, the fact it has to come close to Iran's borders. Did it enter the territorial waters, above the territorial waters, something that we can discuss later, but there's no question. These are not friendly drones and they're really large pieces of flying machinery and they're packed with stealth and other equipment. If it falls in Iran's hands, it would really help Iran a lot in learning technologies and it'd be interesting both Russia and China as well. So going a bit further into the drone incident per se, so how do you also see the Iranian act of downing this drone? Because like you said, there's a bit of controversy over whether it was inside the Iranian water space or it was just outside, which the Americans are claiming. So is it also an act to indicate that these are some of the options that we have in addition to of course, say, blocking the state of Hormuz? See, let's look at the path itself. That the drone actually flew in this direction. In fact, it went through the states of Hormuz and was taking a return pass. Now, as we know the nature of this particular global Hawk drone that it takes actually, it has to come quite close to the coast because it takes a huge number of pictures and also maps out the enemy's defenses completely. So the closer it comes, obviously, the better is the resolution. So it was obviously making a pass again over Iran's shall we say or close to Iran's maritime boundary or its coastline. Now, the issue that comes is the Iranians, the Iranians have also shown a drone path. So have the Americans. They don't differ by too much. What the Iranians have shown is when it was going on its return path, it actually veers towards the coast and it crossed into Iranian territorial waters and it was eight nautical miles off its coast. This is what the Iranians have said. The Americans have said it is 34 kilometers away from the nearest coast point of Iran. Now, it's not very clear from this statement whether the mean as measured from the drone to the ground or measured horizontally, what this 34 kilometers are, but assuming that it was 34 kilometers measured horizontally and not in this particular taking height into account, which will actually reduce the horizontal distance quite a bit. But assuming that it was really a horizontal measurement, it would still make a difference of say about five to six kilometers. That would be five to six kilometers or four to five nautical miles outside, three to four nautical miles outside Iranian territorial waters, which is real 12 nautical miles. The interesting part is if you take what the Iranians are saying, then what it would seem to show that it was veering towards Iran's territorial waters because only that explains how they have got the debris of the drone in their territorial waters. They have said it was shot down at eight kilometers, eight nautical miles above Iran's, I mean, eight nautical miles distance away from the coast. So it is well within their territorial waters. And they have said they recovered also drone, the drone parts of the drone, drone, drone debris. It would also be explained if the American map is correct that it was actually veering towards the Iranian border, Iranian coast, when it was shot down. So that will also explain the trajectory and why the drone debris fell inside. So I would say that looking at all of this, the more important picture for us is not exactly where the drone was shot down. It is also the fact the Iranian air defense was able to pinpoint a drone which was at a distance of 60 feet or above in terms of height, 60,000 feet and above at a height of 60,000 feet and above and also able to shoot it down. So this is not a minor issue because the reason that these drones, the reconnaissance drones or this kind of spy drones fly at this height is because they are supposed to be immune to surface to air missiles. The fact the Iranians could shoot it down, that is also significant because it shows that they have really maybe the S 300s, the Russians have given them or they have bought are important here. They have really good air defense facilities, radar facilities, they have pinpointed where it was, and they have been able to strike it with a missile. So I think those are do also show that this capability today, if there is a war, certainly the Iran can be bombed back to storage. That's possible. But it will come at a huge cost to the Americans, to any other forces that are alive with them. Certainly it will mean serious damage to Saudi Arabian infrastructure because of the Houthis who are also fighting a war in Yemen against Saudi. So they are delighted to have a go at the Saudis at the moment. And if they have drone equipment of the quality that Iran can deliver, and if they've just got a small sample of them, it will really devastate the Saudis, Saudi infrastructure. Saudis have proved to be very poor fighters. So that doesn't help them too much. So I think this is something that makes it clear that Iranian capabilities are not going to be like Iraq's. They have a much bigger country. They have much more resources. They have had more time to prepare. And their offensive capabilities are significant enough for causing damage to Americans and their allies in the region. Right. And although we have discussed this before, it might be good to once again take a look at what would be the immediate impact in terms of Iranian responses to, say, an US assault, for that matter, and how would this affect the global situation. So as we have discussed earlier, that the biggest oil choke point in the world is the states of Hormuz, where as we can see, you can see the line of tankers that flow through the states of Hormuz. You can see the amount of oil that flows to it. The choke point that it is 90 million barrels per day is a flow of oil through states of Hormuz. The three countries directly affected by this, four actually, is India. It has huge oil imports, and it gets it from the states of Hormuz because Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, United Arab Emirates, most of their oil ship takes place to the states of Hormuz. So that is one. Then you have China, Korea, Japan. All four countries are going to be affected and affected severely if this attack takes place, the war takes place. If the war takes place, let's be very clear, oil shipment from this area is going to stop because infrastructure, the pipelines as well as the tankers, they are not going to flow through that. It's very easy to sink one tanker, one or two vessels, and the states of Hormuz, then it will become impossible for next few months. India gets 70 to 80% of its oil through the states of Hormuz or countries which are in the littoral states of the states of Hormuz or the upper regions of the area. So if states of Hormuz close, we are going to see a huge crisis in India. We are going to see actually rationing the oil. It's not going to be so easy to supply for rest of the world to supply through tankers around the Cape and bring it to India. It'll happen, but it'll take time and it's got a huge extra cost. The price of oil will go through the roof, but the sheer availability, suddenly losing 80% of the oil is a disaster. I think this is something that is going to be true also for China. It's going to be true for Korea. It's going to be true for Japan. China at least has access to Russia, has access to overland also to Iran, though the pipelines are still in the process of being made. But I think that this is going to be a global disaster of a major variety. And you can see oil prices go up to as I said, $200, $300 earlier. You also see certainly a global recession. So all of this put together, I think we are being very in a very bad place for any war to break out of this. I think so is globally the global economy at the moment. It's not doing particularly well. The last thing I'll say is I have not understood why other countries are still muted in their response to what is happening because it affects them directly. Why is India, Japan and Korea, which are supposed to be close to the United States, not saying don't do this. Russians have said, we have Putin who has said this is a catastrophe from the world. The Chinese Prime Premier has said also that it's going to be a catastrophe. But the European Union and countries like India, South Korea and Japan, they are sort of muted protest, muted statements. I just don't understand because they're all of them going to be vitally affected by this. Thank you very much. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching NewsClick.