India, March 27 -- I have just been as close as I could get to the nerve-centre of the US-Israel war against Iran - the very edge of the Strait of Hormuz. This was in a fishing village called Al Jeer, which is in the northern-most part of the Ras Al Khaimah Emirate, next to the Musandam Peninsula, on Oman's border with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Musandam Peninsula's cliffs form the south wall of the Strait of Hormuz and, in the words of a mariner who accompanied me, where we stood was "the tip of Hormuz, as near to it as possible".

We were tens of kilometres from Hormuz Island. Right in front of me, visible to the naked eye, was a line of ships stacked up along the horizon, stranded like thousands of others in the Persian Gulf. ...