Topics: Strait of Hormuz, Iran war, Royal Commission into antisemitism

CHRIS KENNY: Now let's go to the Middle East, and Iran has offered to reopen the Strait of Hormuz if the US lifts its blockade and ends the war. That offer has been swiftly rejected by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. Have a listen.

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[CLIP STARTS]

MARCO RUBIO: What they mean by opening the straits is, yes, the straits are open as long as you coordinate with Iran, get our permission, or we'll blow you up and you pay us. That's not opening the straits. Those are international waterways. They cannot normalize, nor can we tolerate them trying to normalize a system in which the Iranians decide who gets to use an international waterway and how much you have to pay them to use it.

[CLIP ENDS]

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CHRIS KENNY: Let's bring in Dave Sharma here on the desk, Shadow Assistant Minister for International Development and former diplomat. Good to talk to you again, Dave. Surely the Americans cannot backtrack on any deal with Iran unless there is an elimination of the nuclear weapons program, having come this far.

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DAVE SHARMA: I think that's right. I mean, the point of the war, the point of the conflict was to make sure that Iran could no longer threaten its neighbours with nuclear weapons, with ballistic missiles, support to terrorist groups. Iran's basically saying, hey, let's just go back to what the status quo was before. There's a reason the United States did not allow that status quo to endure, and I don't see how they could possibly accept what Iran is proposing now.

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CHRIS KENNY: And elsewhere we see that the squeeze the US has put on Iran seems to be working. Apart from the direct economic impact, I read that because it can't get its oil exports out, it's having to slow down production. It's filling up all of its storage, essentially clogging up its whole oil infrastructure, which puts the pressure on them to release valve, an enormous economic strain on them.

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DAVE SHARMA: That's right. And once you turn down production at some of these facilities, you can't just turn them back on. Exactly right. You have to sort of decommission them and then recommission them. I think that's right. I mean, the big loophole that Iran was exploiting in the early sort of first month of this war was that no other country could get their oil to market. Iran was still getting about 1.5 to 2 million barrels of oil a day and selling it at twice the normal price. So they are a net beneficiary of this conflict. What this blockade has done is say Iran has to pay the price of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz as well. And I think that's helped level the negotiating field somewhat.

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CHRIS KENNY: So we'll await the next moves there. I wanted to get your thoughts on the Royal Commission into antisemitism and the Bondi attack. We're only days away from an interim report. How can we have any plausible report out of this Royal Commission when we haven't had any public evidence, any public examination so far?

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DAVE SHARMA: Look, I think an interim report is important. Anthony Albanese announced this as part of it, and I think to the extent it can allow things to be identified that can be addressed now, including any potential glaring failures that you should come to terms with now, I think it's important that we do get that information sooner rather than later to allow us to act on them. But I think it's important that the interim report doesn't seek to make judgments about more fundamental issues like the uprise of antisemitism in society until a lot of this information has been publicly litigated.

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CHRIS KENNY: A lot of that is linked, I would have thought, to any assessment of the authority's response because we had so many public warnings, and it would worry me greatly if any interim reports tried to give some sort of clean bill of health or pardon, if you like, to our intelligence authorities? Because we all know from what's public now it was an intelligence failure, a security operations failure, given that these alleged gunmen had been identified, were being watched by ASIO. We know they're watching a lot of people, but they've obviously slipped through the net. They were allowed to get firearms, travel to a terrorism hotspot and come back again. They were missed. And missed badly?

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DAVE SHARMA: Well, by definition, a terrorist attack occurring on Australian soil is an intelligence and security failure. I mean, that's the purpose of these agencies, and I think those agencies would accept that. Look, I think we do need to get to the bottom of what caused this and who's to blame. My expectation would not be that the interim report is going to give anyone a clean bill of health. Maybe I'm wrong. It would concern me if they did. I don't think we're in a position where we could do that. My sense is the interim report will identify some perhaps some early steps that can be taken to make sure we don't deal with this again, but also canvass some of the larger issues it will be addressing. But look, I'm not sure, and I'll have to wait.

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CHRIS KENNY: Yeah, we will wait and see. Thanks for joining us, Dave. Appreciate it. Dave Sharma there, Senator for New South Wales.

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[ENDS]