trump administration is preparing to reinstate sanctions against iran and president trump and iranian leaders have spent the past few weeks exchanging threats on social media. cnn s international diplomatic editor nic robertson joining me right now. nic, no accident that iran has chosen the strait of hormuz to flex its military muscle. this is a major shipping area. what is the message being sent? really seems to be the message being sent that if iran so chooses, it can disrupt the world s oil fields. 20% of the world s oil passes through there. it s a major choke point effectively. and impacting one oil tanker, never mind shutting down the whole straits, would put a spike, a nasty spike into oil markets. perhaps trigger higher fuel costs for us. the reality is we don t know why iran has put these military
would be roughly the same amount of water that fills lake michigan. this is an aerial graph of the rift continuing to form and continues to elongate at a rapid pace. especially in the past month or so, we have had this particular region extend by about five to ten kilometers in a short period of time. and it s clearly seen in this visible satellite image. you can actually see how it continues to widen. the issue going forward, a lot of people asking why is this a big deal. well, this is a popular shipping lane, shipping area. and also an area for natural gas exploration. we have ships assigned and you can see the potential problem there floating around. very scary. thank you. and thank you for watching cnn newsroom. i m natalie allen. and i m george howell. the news continues here after the break.
iceberg, it would rifval the volume of lake michigan in the united states. here is another aerial photograph of the 300-foot wide breaking apart as we speak. in fact we have satellite images to prove just that. this has been several years in the making. we saw in november of 2010:crack starting to elongate. in may of 2017, still several kilometers away from actually breaking off. now the latest satellite image shows we have about only three miles or five kilometers of separation of ice holding this together. here is a really interesting time lapse to show the widening gap of the ice shelf starting to break apart. it is only a matter of time. we are literally holding on by a thread as seen with the image here of the actual rift taking place. this is particularly dangerous. natalie and george, this is a popular shipping area for any
its left bow was dented and scraped, they said there was more damage under the water line. ap said that damage to u.s. destroyer suggests that the ship hit is at high-speed. it happened in busy shipping area with fast currents that require, expertise to navigate, the shipping company said that its crew members are safe. they are treating this as possible, professional negligence. rob: okay thank you. all right it is a race against the clock, senate republicans work to finalize legislation to repeal and replace obamacare before their august recess. so what else is on the docket? and trump talking tough on cuba, limits u.s. travel to the island, and other changes, lawmakers from his own party
on secure lines. thank you, nick burns, thank you for the historical perspective. someone who was there at the time. now video in today of what pentagon is calling a big success. the test of a missile defense system that had a mixed record in previous launches sent a clear message now to north korea whose leader, kim jong un, oversaw the launch of a short-range missile into a busy shipping area. he has yet to create a long-range missile that can reach u.s. shores. great minds, mariai shiver. how do you become america s #1?