"The leases that were implicated in the CFIUS review were for American terminal operations. Hence, an "asset"
There are 2 asset groups you are discussing here. One is the terminals themselves. These are American assets, but these are not the subject of the discussion.
The second is the lease of operations, which is an entirely different asset group. This second asset group was owned by the people who had the lease, that was P & O, which was what the discussion is about, and it was British owned not American.
The fact that there is a lease or rental agreement creates assets seperate from the original assets.
Everybody who looked at the deal understood that immediately, so the issue was whether such a distinction had any real practical and enduring seperation or enhancement for security functions that we could rely upon. The disagreements revolve around that very thing. And the consensus was that there was a real problem with this. The deal was killed.