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Connect the World

Trump Mulls Extending Blockade as Oil, Gas Prices Surge; New Purported Statement from Iran's Supreme Leader; Tense Moments as Musk Accuses Company of Betrayals; U.S. Tech Firms Plan to Spend Over $700 Billion in AI for 2026; Oil Prices Jump to Four-year High Amid U.S. Blockade of Iran. Aired 9-9:45a ET

Aired April 30, 2026 - 09:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[09:00:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN HOST, CONNECT THE WORLD: Well sources tell CNN, the U.S. President is laying the groundwork to potentially extend the blockade

on Iranian ports, a strategy he hopes will force Tehran back to the negotiating table. The oil price well into triple digits as we hit a key

moment in the trading process amid all this uncertainty.

It is 09:00 a.m. in Washington. It is 05:00 p.m. here in Abu Dhabi. I'm Becky Anderson from our Middle East programming headquarters. This is

"Connect the World". Stock market in New York opens about 30 minutes from now. Futures indicating a better start, despite that, rise in oil prices.

More on that about a half an hour from now. Nowhere to go but up. That is what one oil industry analyst is telling CNN about the future cost of oil

as the conflict between the U.S. and Iran enters its third month. We are seeing extreme volatility in pricing on this last day of April, as

contracts for June deliveries expire and traders move to July.

Right now, we are seeing a lower price, but sees a significantly higher than they were just over two months ago. Of course, earlier, Brent cross

$126 a barrel. That is its highest level in four years, adding to this uncertainty, word that U.S. President Donald Trump has told his war

planners to prepare for a long-term blockade of Iranian ports.

Iran says the Strait of Hormuz will effectively remain closed until that blockade is lifted. Well, the status of diplomacy to end the war up in the

air. Pakistani mediators expect to receive a revised Iranian peace proposal by tomorrow. U.S. President Donald Trump indicated that he'd reject an

early version, which kicked back negotiations over Iran's nuclear program to a later date.

All right, there's a lot of information there. Let's do this story. Do a deep dive on this, covering all angles on this Kevin Liptak at the White

House. David Goldman is in New York, and Nic Robertson is in Islamabad. Kevin, first to you, Trump, reportedly weighing his options. Let's just

discuss what those are at this point as we understand.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Right. And it seems as if the strategy he's currently employing is to try and inflict as much

economic pain on Iran as possible. He's told his advisers to plan for an extended blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.

American officials say that they have seen intelligence that would suggest that Iran's economy could collapse in a matter of days or weeks if that

waterway remains blocked up. Of course, that comes with enormous risks for President Trump himself, just given the volatility we have seen just this

morning in the energy markets, the waning political popularity of the war.

But he is also not closing the door on restarting the bombing campaign, and that is where this briefing today will come in. He's going to hear about

updated plans from his military advisors about potential military action in Iran if the country does not come back to the negotiating table with a

proposal that the president can agree to.

Now, the president, in public, has sounded somewhat wary of restarting the kinetic action portion of this war, of course, that could lead to

retaliation by Iran in the Gulf states, potentially on energy infrastructure. That's something that I think the president wants to avoid.

Of course, he's also facing a war that's extremely unpopular among the American people. It's caused his own approval ratings to plummet and has

now extended well past his own projected timeline of six weeks. We are now in the eighth week. And so, you do see how the president here will have

some decisions to make if the Iranians don't come back to the table with something that he thinks is acceptable.

Now, he did have a discussion yesterday, 90 minutes long, with Vladimir Putin about potentially helping in some way. Putin, according to President

Trump, offered to take shipment of Iran's stockpiles of highly enriched uranium. You remember, that's something that Russia did during the 2015

Obama era nuclear deal to take shipment of Iran's enriched uranium.

Something that President Trump seemed to shrug off yesterday, saying that he wanted Putin to be more focused on ending the Ukraine war.

[09:05:00]

And so even as the gears of diplomacy keep going very, very slowly. I think it's evident that the president is still looking for a relatively quick end

to this conflict. How that happens though still somewhat unclear.

ANDERSON: Thank you, Kevin. Let's get to Nic, just given what we have just heard from Kevin and what we understand to be some options by CENTCOM for

military action, should Donald Trump deem that to be necessary? What are you hearing where you are?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yeah, I think we're hearing trading narratives between the United States and Iran at the

moment, they're both saying each other's blockades. Of course, the Iranian blockade in the Strait of Hormuz can inflict just as much damage or more,

be of more economic pain to President Trump than the U.S. blockade on Iranian ports, they point to in state media, 17 vessels getting out of the

Strait of Hormuz.

And when you listen to what we're hearing from leadership figures, you have the President of Iran today, you know, widely, sort of seen as a more

moderate voice saying that the U.S. blockade of Iran just flatly won't work. And then we've heard today from what ports to be a statement from the

Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.

This is a day, of course, where Iranians are celebrating their victory in 1622 AD from the Portuguese occupiers, which the supreme leader pointed out

that they had done back then. Today, he said there are the sort of greedy foreign countries coming in here, specifically saying the United States.

And pointing out that the place that they will be at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. It goes on to say as well, which is quite interesting that

it's now clear to those countries in the Gulf that having U.S. bases doesn't make you any safer. And I think the sort of tone at the end of that

statement has quite a hard-line kick to it, if you're trying to imagine that there could be a proposition coming from the Iranians in the next

couple of days that could be satisfactory to President Trump.

And the last line doubles down on what we heard from Iranian officials before which is that Iran should have a new administration over the Strait

of Hormuz, which the supreme leader, if it was him, writing this says, will bring great economic benefits to his nation. That does not sound like

compromise.

Of course, this could be messaging for domestic audiences, but in the context of what both sides are saying, it feels like the potential for

whatever may come from the Iranians, if and when it comes, is hardly going to meet and match U.S. expectations.

ANDERSON: Nic, thank you. I want to bring David in at this point, having just sort of listened to what we've just heard, both from Washington and

Islamabad there. I want to concentrate, just for the moment, on these oil prices. WTI, the U.S. benchmark, just lower than 105 Brent trading at just

under 114.

David, what do you make of these moves, these levels on oil prices at this point, and why?

DAVID GOLDMAN, CNN BUSINESS SENIOR REPORTER: Well, oil is trading and the last day of the contract, you mentioned this at the top, and I think that

it's really important to remember that there is very thin trading happening on the last day of the contract.

Investors have moved on to future contracts because this one that's set for delivery starting tomorrow, really isn't the focus for investors right now,

and so when you have one weird trade, it can send prices up or down significantly, and that's what we saw overnight, oil went to $126 a barrel

for Brent.

But now when the hedges come back in, the ones who are actually receiving the oil for delivery, they can add a little bit of a reality check into the

markets. But just ignore all of that for a moment. I think the really important thing, especially for folks that are watching this, is gas

prices, because that is a useful fuel that you and I can actually use to fill our cars.

And those in the United States are rising very, very rapidly. Just in the last two days, we've gained 12 cents. And to put that into perspective, we

fell 12 cents over the course of two weeks when we first thought that the war was going to end. And so, it can take a very, very long time for gas

prices to come down, but they can rise very, very quickly when they think that the war might continue.

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And so that's the danger here. Is that gas prices could continue to gain significantly and very, very sharply over the next few days, and the damage

is done. It could take a long time for that to come back down on the back end.

ANDERSON: Yeah, fascinating. All right, good. Thank you. Thank you to all of us. For more on the wider ramifications of the conflict, what's going on

around this region, what might happen next, let's speak with Firas Maksad, Managing Director for the Middle East and North Africa, the Eurasia Group.

Very happy to have you in town today and therefore with his on set. Look, where do you see this brinkmanship going? We are, you know, we're seeing a

lot going on, a lot being messaged in Washington by the Trump Administration, by Donald Trump himself, and out of Iran at present. What

do you make of what we're seeing?

FIRAS MAKSAD, MANAGING DIRECTOR FOR MIDDLE EAST & NORTH AFRICA, EURASIA GROUP: Becky, the posturing is to be expected on both sides, and we're

certainly seeing a lot of posturing. The reality in Washington is that the president is in a de escalatory mode. This is really being felt at the

pump.

Gas today is at $4.30 it's crossed the crucial $4 mark in the U.S. It's a psychological threshold. The polls are very clear he's using, he's losing,

I should say, support amongst those crucial independents, because it's a polarized environment. The Republicans are supporting him.

Democrats are against him. It's the independents that counts, and he's not doing well in that either. And where in the spring now usually is in the

U.S. understood that where you are in spring is what's going to manifest at the ballot box come the midterm elections in November.

So, the president is in a de escalatory mode. If I am an Iranian decision maker, I've proven to be quite resilient. 12 feet tall right now, you've

withstood the global superpower, Israel included, and you're still standing and firing ballistic missiles, but you probably do understand that you're

probably very close to the point of maximum leverage, you want to convert that at the negotiating table.

So, the negotiations are ongoing, despite the fact that these two parties are not meeting in Islamabad. What I worry about is the Iranians

overplaying their hand. They are astute negotiators. They can smell weakness. They understand the president's vulnerability given the elections

up ahead.

And what we saw with the last offer that they put on the table, they essentially took the nuclear file entirely off the table. Just lift your

blockade and we will reopen the straits. I worry about that being the position moving forward that will quickly devolve into a conflict if that

does end up being the position.

ANDERSON: Trump has two key dates to my mind, May the 14th, his China trip, and July the 4th, celebrating 250 years of independence. And he wants to be

shot of this.

MAKSAD: Yeah.

ANDERSON: Well ahead of July the 4th, for sure. But by this trip to Beijing as well. And he's going to want to take some sort of win with him to

Beijing, and this region will also want to see more than just the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, won't it? And let's talk about this region,

because you've said, and I agree with you.

I think it's pretty clean, de escalatory mindset at present, and mood, this region is really split about what it wants to see next, what the end to

this war should look like at this point. Let's just discuss.

MAKSAD: Yeah. Becky, as you know, I was in Riyadh two days ago, stopped by Doha on the way here today, we're in Abu Dhabi, very different

perspectives, where we are today in the UAE, tip of the spear against Iran in terms of the position. Others more de escalatory hedge in looking for an

understanding.

Ultimately, I think what the region has to grapple with, is any deal that the president signs on to will probably be a framework agreement around the

nuclear issue, the enrichment, the highly enriched uranium that will probably go outside of Iran, I should say, and the freeze on enrichment.

The Americans have said 20 years, the Iranians have said five somewhere in the middle, that we can have an agreement. The challenge for all those

countries is we're not talking about putting a cap on ballistic missiles, not the range, not the number. We're not talking about Iran scaling back

its support or ending it to the proxies in the region.

Those issues are going to be left to the countries of the region to deal with.

ANDERSON: And this is a neighbor that isn't going away, and the threat from that neighbor over the last eight weeks has been completely clear. The UAE

has just announced this week that it will exit OPEC and OPEC + as of tomorrow. And whilst that was an economic decision, a policy decision, they

are determined to have us understand.

I think most people will, you know, who know this region, know there's some politics involved in this as well.

[09:15:00]

You told the FT, quote, that the message this about -- this message this might sound to Saudi Arabia, some of the political differences have been

amplified because of different positions on the war in reaction to the Iranian threat, with the UAE doubling down on the U.S. and Israel, whilst

others are diversifying and hedging.

Can you just give us a sense, having been in Riyadh, you're here today, what this sort of rift, if you will, between the UAE and Saudi really looks

like.

MAKSAD: Well, first, this is multi-faceted. And two days ago, this played out on the stage of the Gulf Cooperation Council, the GCC, the UAE had its

foreign minister there. The Omanis didn't even show up. And so, if you have the UAE the tip of the spear against Iran on one hand, supported by the

U.S. and increasingly Israel, Oman is the other side of the spectrum.

And from where I stand, the GCC, politically is dead. It's over as an entity that can bring and coordinate the politics of the region together.

It might go on and survive as a cultural entity, economic cooperation, but I don't see the GCC being a function, political entity from here on, at

least.

The Saudi and UAE relationship also, there's a personal dimension to this, but there's certainly a strategic one, whether it's on Israel or Iran, the

two sides are making very different bets, on Iran, Saudi Arabia is maintaining the relationship. Its view is that Iran is a neighbor that

needs to be --

Ministers of the two countries continue to talk on a semi regular basis to manage the differences. Not the case here with the UAE, where, in fact, for

the first time, Israelis defending an Arab country here in the UAE.

ANDERSON: How do you explain that deepening relationship with Israel? Look, I mean, the Abraham Accords were signed back in 2020. We are seeing the UAE

deepening its ties with those who came to help, as it were, and, I mean, quite sort of negative, and sort of yeah, I mean, putting their sort of

hand up to those who didn't. I mean, how do you read that U.S., sorry, UAE- Israeli relationship at present?

MAKSAD: It's very simple for the decision leaders in Abu Dhabi. It's a policy of, what have you done for me lately? We all remember this crucial

promise by President Sisi of Egypt. He said in Arabic -- the time it takes for me to be to show up and defend the GCC if Iran does, in fact, attack.

The Egyptian, the vaunted Egyptian air force was nowhere to be seen. The Israelis, I'm told, showed up without asking. They simply said, we are

sending and we are showing up. And that's left its mark. So, I think while those decisions and that cleavage in the region have been taking place.

And you and I spoke about this on the show back in January, the two emerging blocs, while those differences existed before the war, there was a

sense that maybe the common threat from Iran. All these countries will bring them together. In fact, I think it's only bringing them further apart

because they are posturing and taking different positions in dealing with it.

ANDERSON: Can I just get your take on what is going on in Lebanon at present?

MAKSAD: I get to Lebanon next. It's a very fragile ceasefire. We have a president in the White House that is animated by the idea of yet another

country joining the Abrahamic Accords achievement, he believes he deserves a Nobel Prize for, but the reality is that the fragile Lebanese political

construct does not allow for the Lebanese President to be standing shoulder to shoulder with Bibi Netanyahu in the White House anytime soon.

The president, because he wants to see that has put the kibosh on the Israeli Prime Minister, not allowing him to attack deeper attack Beirut to

the southern suburbs in Dahyeh and Hezbollah understands that it's been telegraphed and has taken advantage by firing not only against Israeli

occupation in Southern Lebanon, but into these northern communities In Israel, that is a pressure cooker.

Bibi cannot take that for too long, and I worry about that ceasefire completely coming apart as a result of that.

ANDERSON: -- catch up with you, once you've been in you've got a real measure of what the thinking is. That always good to have you.

MAKSAD: Thank you.

ANDERSON: Thank you very much indeed. Well, sources tell CNN that the Pentagon's estimate of how much the Iran war has cost to date could be as

much as half of the actual figure. The Pentagon suggests $25 billion has been spent, most of which was on munitions.

One source says the cost could be closer to between 40 and 50 billion, accounting for the rebuilding of U.S. military installations and replacing

destroyed assets.

[09:20:00]

Well Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declined to say if the $25 billion dollar figure included repairs to U.S. bases. He's back on Capitol Hill

today to testify in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee. More on that as we get it with some testy exchanges in a trial that could reshape

the future of artificial intelligence.

More on how this rivalry between tech giants Elon Musk and Sam Altman is now playing out in court.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDERSON: Well today, Elon Musk returns to the stand for a third day in his ongoing lawsuit with OpenAI in a California court. Musk accusing the

company of abandoning the organization's original nonprofit mission in court on Wednesday, he said he was quote full for helping fund the company

in its early days.

The tech billionaire co-founded OpenAI as a nonprofit in 2015 contributing what he says, well, it was at least $44 million in its first years, see

split from the company in 2018. Let's bring in Shelly Palmer. He's the CEO of The Palmer Group and Professor of Advanced Media at Syracuse University.

Joins me now live from New York. Good to have you. What do you make of what we've heard today? Do you think Elon Musk's lawsuit has any real merit?

SHELLY PALMER, CEO OF THE PALMER GROUP: You know, does it have real merit? The these are triable issues. Of fact, he's looking for $130 billion and he

wants Sam out, and he wants Brockman out as well. And he also wants to force this company to unwind. And he wants it to go from the for-profit

organization back to a nonprofit organization.

In other words, he'd like to dismantle his competition. As you said, he says he's put in $44 million and they turned it into $800 billion, is that

jealousy? He says he funded a charity and they turned it into a for-profit company. You tell me, if it has merit?

ANDERSON: I will reserve judgment on that. During his testimony yesterday, Elon Musk said this about AI quote, it's like, if you had a very smart

child at the end of the day when the child grows up, you can't really control that child, but you can try to instill the right values, honesty,

integrity, caring about humanity, being good, essentially.

What do you make of that as a sort of analogy, coming as it does, from Elon Musk?

PALMER: Wow. I don't even know where to start. So, when you train a model, a large language model, like Grok his model, or like chat, or like GPT, the

GPT family for ChatGPT. First thing you do is you take all the available data and then you have a North Star. So, for OpenAI, the North Star was a

safe for work.

Let's get to AGI as soon as we can. However we define it, that was what they wanted to do.

[09:25:00]

So, the first thing. They did was they had to filter the whole internet for the safe for work stuff. So, they took out all the porn, that's probably 50

percent of the internet. Then they tried to remove as much hate speech as they could. That's another, I don't know, third. So, they're working with a

smaller data set, and that model becomes biased to be safe for work.

Elon took everything in the history of the universe, ingested it into rock didn't take out the porn didn't take out. The hate speech got completely

different, like, which one is right, which one is wrong. These models are biased in a very specific way. Elon tried to make unbiased and OpenAI tried

to be safe for work.

Everything Elon just said flies in the face of what he's actually doing with Grok and the guys at OpenAI are doing their very best to make

something good for everybody to be able to use. So, I don't buy that pitch in any manner, shape or form.

ANDERSON: Well, OpenAI, the guys that OpenAI are trying to make some money out of this business. And what do you make of how they are doing at this

point?

PALMER: So, look, their path to profitability is pretty suspect. You know, let's take Elon and just put him on the side for a minute. Because

basically what they're saying is, hey, Elon, you quit and now you're mad that we're successful. Are they successful? To your question, most of their

users, like on the high end of 90 plus percent, do not pay anything to use the service, and it is very expensive to run.

They are burning cash, billions and billions of dollars per month, so they're -- They've not been able to figure out advertising, and I don't

think they're going to be able to figure that out anytime soon, but they're working on it. They've hired some very good people, but advertising in the

context window, that's going to be a very hard sell to people who are used to having that environment be pristine.

And as far as commerce is concerned, Anthropic has done an incredible job. And also, when you look at Google and you look at Microsoft and even AWS,

they have the harnesses that big corporations need to use for security purposes, where OpenAI is just starting to build them all.

So, Google's got infrastructure. They don't have Microsoft, Amazon have infrastructure. They don't have -- they have completely -- and those other

companies have complete advertising systems, very mature in place. It's going to be very hard for OpenAI to find a path to profitability and

advertising.

And it's going to be look at the rate they're burning cash. It may be hard for them to find a path of profitability even at the enterprise level.

ANDERSON: Well, let's have a look at some numbers for OpenAI, this week, of course, AWS and OpenAI announced an expanded partnership. You wrote, OpenAI

is on pace to burn 25 billion this year against a 30 billion revenue target. The AWS deal expands surface area for revenue, but it does not fix

the math.

Let's also take a look at tech earnings as a whole here, largely strong. We see some premarket prices here. This is U.S. tech firms plan to spend over

$700 billion dollars this year on AI, mostly data centers. What do you make of these massive tech investments, and what do you think when you consider

sort of AI, second, third, fourth quarter, 2026, and beyond at this point?

PALMER: Every hyperscale just told the market they're going to build out and they're going to -- in an accelerating pace. They're not going to slow

down the component costs. They're basically showing up in the CapEx line. You could see that in the earnings calls and free cash flow is going to

compress.

I don't think they're going to be that sad about that. And look, they're making a trade. It's not whether AI -- is going to pay back or not. They're

just trying to figure out who's going to finish the build out first and who's going to win this bite. You know, they're committed in every way you

can say possible.

Look at the money, as you just pointed out, it's what small countries spend annually. These are insane numbers that people almost can't comprehend, but

the stakes couldn't be higher. At the moment, AI, as we understand it, large language models and reasoning engines and suspected even upcoming

world models need massive amounts of compute.

And remember, the velocity of data is increasing and will always increase. There's no version of tomorrow where we have less data than we have today.

And the job of every data center, the job of all AI, is to turn that data into action. So, we're going to need these tools. We're going to need the

data centers.

They are absolutely right to build them. People who think that this is going to be a glut or whatever. This is the interstate highway system. It's

going to go in fits and starts, but it's what we need for a world that is data driven, and they understand that, and they're building it.

ANDERSON: Data centers, of course, ended up on lists from the Iranians as targets over the past eight weeks.

[09:30:00]

It was an interesting development, and really sort of, you know, prove to us where we are at in the first quarter of 2026. I think the bell is about

to ring. Our viewers will hear that. But I just want to keep you for this, the blockade in the Strait of Hormuz and its link to AI chips, with the

global semiconductor supply chain exposed to disruptions in this region.

Shelly, how concerned is the AI industry, if this conflict, or should it be, if this conflict drags on?

PALMER: Global supply chain is impacted. I think everybody is equally concerned about how long this goes on. There's no good coming of this.

Certainly, it's going to have an outsized impact on transportation. It's going to have an outsized impact on supply chain across the board.

We all data centers, all AI companies, all of us need so much that is based on the processing of crude oil. It's hard to imagine even just carving out

the AI industry. This needs to stop as soon as it can for every reason in the world humanitarian, but also economic. This is devastating to the

economy, and it's going to continue to be. Let's hope it ends soon.

ANDERSON: It's good to have you, sir. Thank you very much indeed. It's not often we do politics with Shelly Palmer, but it's good to get your insight

on that, because it is massively impactful what is going on in this region for the global economy. Thank you, sir. Still ahead, we're going to head

back to Wall Street after global oil prices briefly surged to a four-year high. More on that is after this.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDERSON: All right, let's see our stocks are getting on a couple of minutes into the trading day, it is Thursday. And the stock markets are all

higher by about a third to a half of 1 percent. Wall Street investors are tracking oil prices. Brent crude did briefly rise to its highest level

since 2022.

It is now trading at the following we've got WTI. They're down about one and three quarters percent. 105 Brent offer there by about three and a

quarter percent, 114 and change. Meanwhile, new data released in the last hour shows that the U.S. economy picked up steam in the first quarter of

the year, just as the Iran war got underway, with growth up sharply from the last three months of 2025.

Right, let's have a look at both those oil markets and what these GDP numbers might be telling us. Eleni Giokos is on oil. She is in Dubai.

[09:35:00]

Matt Egan joins us from Washington. Eleni, let's start with you. We do know that there's probably very little volume in the oil market, and it's the

reason why we're seeing quite significant swings at the back end of what is our futures contract here. But we have seen some very specific news. The

UAE's moved to leave OPEC tomorrow.

ELENI GIOKOS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah.

ANDERSON: It isn't clear until the Strait of Hormuz is fully opened, of course, and tanker traffic returns to normal. What the impact but might be,

but what are we expecting?

GIOKOS: Yeah, I mean, there's a lot happening. You're right to say low volumes as June contracts come to an end today, we're heading into July

contracts. I think by the end of all of this, everyone's going to become experts at what we see in the oil markets, in the futures, and what they're

telling us.

But it is really fascinating to also look at what's happening down the line, and I want to quickly touch on that, because Goldman Sachs had said

for the fourth quarter, they're anticipating oil to hit around $90 a barrel, bringing that up from $80 a barrel initially.

But if you look at the numbers in between, Becky, we're still anticipating around $100 a barrel for the next few months, and that is basically

signaling that we are going to see the status quo remain. In other words, no traffic through the Strait of Hormuz. And you're right to say about the

UAE ending this 60-year relationship with OPEC, which has been, you know, de facto affecting oil prices for many decades.

And really important in terms of sort of adjusting output, what happens when the UAE really does start, you know, pushing out full capacity of 5

million barrels of oil per day? Well, that's the big question. That will only happen once the Strait of Hormuz opens up. We have seen the closure

and the double blockade affecting all Gulf states, frankly.

And these numbers are going to be important one thing get back to normal, hopefully that will happen very soon, but another 1.5 million barrels of

oil per day into the market by the UAE that would account for around 1.5 percent of global supply. The experts that I've spoken to say that will

help soften the market.

So that's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. But even OPEC has signaled that they're planning to increase output to try and bring some

normality back. But frankly, a lot of the big players within OPEC are frankly, you know, as trapped into the Strait of Hormuz.

So, who knows what will happen there? But I think the political undercurrent is very important, because we have no timeline right now, and

the numbers are really signaling how is serious this energy crisis is that is affecting everyone. You've got two countries, Iran and the United

States, with maximalist demands and approaches and collateral damage right now, frankly, Becky, is the global economy.

ANDERSON: Yeah, absolutely. Well, we've seen the forecast from the IMF for the impact on the global economy. And they don't read well, apart from for

the United States, that economy grew a 2 percent pace in the first three months, Matt, we've seen the IMF growth forecast.

And frankly, the U.S., was at the top of that. You know, there are those you saying the only economy that seems to be winning out of this war, is

the United States. What are these latest numbers? Tell us about the underlying momentum this, of course, before the full impact of the Iran

conflict set in.

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well Becky, this shows that the economy was growing at a pretty solid pace during the first three months of this year.

I mean, 2 percent that's not gangbusters growth, but it is a major improvement from the increase of just half a percentage point for GDP at

the end of last year.

Now, one of the reasons why GDP bounced back is just that mechanical rebound in federal government spending, you get any time that there's a

reopening from a government shutdown. Remember, there was a record long government shutdown at the end of last year, and so federal government

spending, as was expected, really rebounded.

But it's not just about the government shutdown. It's also that businesses are spending gobs of money on the AI boom. Business investment really

surged during the first quarter. Business investment on equipment in particular, went up by the most in a year. And before that, you really got

to go back to the .com era for stronger numbers in terms of business spending on equipment.

And of course, that really just shows how much money companies are spending on those AI data centers. That's one of the other factors here. But another

thing that we're seeing is consumer spending. Consumer spending did hold up during the first quarter. Again, not gangbusters, but pretty solid.

But clearly the AI boom is carrying some of the weight of this economy. Now, to your point about timing, this really only measures how the economy

did during the first three months of this year, so it's only reflecting one month of the war in the Middle East. This is a rear-view mirror looking

number, right?

And the question is, how does the U.S. economy and the world economy hold up, given the fact that energy prices, as we're just discussing with Eleni,

remain very high.

[09:40:00]

And the fear the risk here is that consumers in the United States are spending so much money on gasoline that it slows down the overall economy.

So, the bottom line here is, the longer that the energy crisis lasts, the bigger the risk to the U.S. economy and the world economy, Becky.

ANDERSON: Good to have you, sir. And Eleni, thank you. You're watching "Connect the World". There is a lot more news ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ANDERSON: LIV Golf, is looking to restructure and is seeking new investment after it was announced that Saudi backers are pulling funding from the

league at the end of the season. Amanda Davies has more on that in "World Sport". I'll be back with more news in 15 minutes.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[09:45:00]

(WORLD SPORT)

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