← Iran: The Latest
Iran: The Latest
A trip to the Strait of Hormuz & Hezbollah adopts Ukraine-style drone warfare
00:37:09
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- [00:04]
Venetia Rainey
The telegraph.
- [00:10]
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- [01:13]
Adrian Blomfield
I think one of the things I learned is, okay, this is much more complicated. The straight is much more crowded. There's not very much going through the strait, but there's a hell of a lot going across it.
- [01:26]
News Announcer
The United States military began major combat operations in Iran today.
- [01:33]
Donald Trump
President Trump says Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah
- [01:35]
Venetia Rainey
Ali Khamenei, was killed in the attacks.
- [01:43]
Henry Bodkin
The Pentagon is weighing a takeover of
- [01:45]
Roland Oliphant
that island as a way to force
- [01:47]
Henry Bodkin
the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.
- [01:50]
Adrian Blomfield
Iran begged for this ceasefire and we all know it.
- [01:54]
Roland Oliphant
Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do?
- [01:59]
Adrian Blomfield
Come on.
- [02:01]
Venetia Rainey
I'm Venetia Rainey.
- [02:02]
Roland Oliphant
And I'm Roland Oliphant.
- [02:04]
Venetia Rainey
And this is Iran the Latest. It's Wednesday, 29th of April 2026. It's 61 days since the start of the American and Israeli war with Iran and 22 days since the ceasefire was agreed. And it's still holding. We're going to start this podcast slightly differently with three things that you need to know today. So starting off with who else? Donald Trump. He's posted on Truth Social that he will no longer be Mr. Nice Guy in the negotiations with Iran. He wrote, iran can't get that act together. They don't know how to sign a non nuclear deal. They better get smart soon. And that was accompanied by an AI generated image of himself in sunglasses and a suit, holding an assault rifle, surrounded by explosions. So a hat tip there to the possibility of more kinetic action, as we've been calling it, as we've been noting on this podcast repeatedly, three aircraft carriers now in CENTCOM's area of command. So the option for more military reaction is very much still on the table. And that's what Trump is not just hinting at, but directly alluding to there.
- [02:58]
Roland Oliphant
And that hint came as the Wall Street Journal actually broke. The story cited US Officials saying the president had instructed aides to prepare for an extension of the blockade of Iran's ports in a bid to force Tehran to capitulate. I think we've mentioned before this discussion of Iran running out of storage space for its oil, but there is a possible sign the blockade is beginning to bite. So the rial, Iran's national currency, hit a record low on Wednesday of 1.8 million to the dollar, according to currency trading websites. The rial has remained relatively stable in the early weeks of the war, which began on February 28, partly because there's little trading or imports coming into the country. But it began to slide two days ago. It hit that record low Wednesday. That's this morning. And this is according to black market websites. So trading at 1.8 million riyals to the dollar. According to two websites called Bombast and Alan Chandler, when the war began, $1 was trading there for about 1.7 million. Iran officially has a number of fixed exchange rates, but those two websites are generally used as benchmarks for the unofficial rates that people generally use. Experts have warned the fall of the reals like to fuel further fuel inflation in the country, or many goods are imported. For more on this, check out telegraph.co.uk, actar McCoy has been following this story for us, and he's written a piece about that. He's spoken to people in Tehran and his sources have told him that a lot of shops are closed, a real scarcity of goods, prices of really ordinary items, things like eggs, considerably up from where they were before. So a definite sign of economic strain inside Iran.
- [04:37]
Venetia Rainey
That goes to your conversation yesterday with Arash Azizi about how the economics of this conflict will continue to bite at the heels of the Iranian regime and will continue to cause pressure at home.
- [04:47]
Roland Oliphant
Can I flag another economic story that I thought I'd mention? So yesterday we mentioned it just happened while we were recording, actually, that the UAE quitting opec. Now, this is not directly related to the war because the UAE have been thinking about this for some years and it speaks to tensions between them and Saudi Arabia. Our colleague Hans van Leeuwen has written a great piece about this today, kind of laying out the causes and so on. Bottom line, this is just yet another way in which the global economy and the oil market is just going to look very, very different after this war. And interestingly, it kind of reawakens those tensions between the UAE and Saudi Arabia that we thought you'd think had been kind of buried. And there's this common enemy and so on, but no big interesting development there.
- [05:33]
Venetia Rainey
One final thing you should know is that the Israel Lebanon ceasefire is looking increasingly shaky. The Lebanese army said this morning that a Lebanese soldier and his brother were killed in an Israeli drone strike in the Binch Bail district of southern Lebanon. Local media in Lebanon reporting ongoing airstrikes and drone attacks across southern Lebanon. Last night the Israelis carried out a double tap strike in Tyre that killed five. Hezbollah also launched an explosive laden drone that detonated near IDF soldiers, lightly wounding one. And we're going to be speaking more about Hezbollah's adoption of drone warfare later on in this episode. Let's bring in our guests. We're joined by senior foreign correspondent Adrian Blomfield here in the studio with us, who's just come back from the Strait of Hormuz and has brought a hat, not the same hat, but a very good hat nonetheless. And Henry Bodkin is joining us from Jerusalem, our Israel correspondent. Welcome to around the latest. Guys, let's start with the straight of Paul Moose. You've just come back. What like bobbing on those waters that we've been obsessing over for the last few weeks and that has come to control the state of the world.
- [06:32]
Adrian Blomfield
I was slightly skeptical that we were going to find much of interest on the strait because obviously, you know, you can see a lot more in some ways from the satellite data. But I think there is something from actually being on the strait. And we got to the narrowest point of the strait. And so, you know, we went along the Musandam peninsula to the narrowest point which is directly opposite Bandar Abbas. In fact, at night you can see the lights from Bandar Abbas on a clear night. And as we would expect, you could see some stationary ships inside the gulf not moving. They'd been at an anchor. We were in the area for two or three days. So those ships were not, were not moving. The most interesting thing for me was to see this huge cross strait trade of small boats and it's sort of fairly perpetual. But you know, it was a couple of hours after dawn. We were sort of getting towards that narrowest point in the strait and suddenly we had dozens and later hundreds of small speedboats with two or three people in each one bouncing along the water across to us. And I think it showed us Two things. One, this trade and actually you talking about it at the top of the program and could talk about the economic implications of this. But secondly, how very difficult it is to identify, sink, destroy IRGC speedboats that are potentially involved in laying mines. Donald Trump a few days ago, as you've been reporting, said that we'll seek to find and destroy those boats, but when you can hide them in an armada, and we saw 300 over the course of that, there may be more than that over the course of the day.
- [08:18]
Venetia Rainey
There are tons 300 over the course of the day of just like motorbikes.
- [08:21]
Adrian Blomfield
My estimate, I didn't start counting at the very beginning and I realised that was foolish. So I estimate about 300 was the number of boats that we saw going past us over the course of the day.
- [08:33]
Roland Oliphant
Where were they going?
- [08:34]
Adrian Blomfield
So they were coming from Bandar Abbas and they were all. I mean, pretty much all of the ones that we saw were carrying fuel. I mean, this obviously is something that predates the current situation and the implications have actually changed for Iran. The opportunities for arbitrage are incredible because fuel is very, very cheap in Iran. So you can get petrol or diesel on the other side of the Gulf in the uae. In Oman, the price, although it's cheaper than the rest of the world, is still 500% higher, sometimes 1,000%, depending on where they are, because they're fewer subsidies. And as the Iranian real has lost value, those arbitrage opportunities have increased even more. So if anyone's looking for tips on how to make money, go on a boat on the Strait of Hormuz and start smuggling fuel.
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Venetia Rainey
What's arbitrage?
- [09:25]
Adrian Blomfield
Arbitrage is just taking advantage of the fact that you can buy a commodity on one side for a certain cost and then sell it elsewhere at a vast differential. So traders are often involved in arbitrage. I'm not a trader, I'm not an expert, but this is arbitrage par excellence. So the oil comes. These are these barrels, these large containers, these drums of diesel come across going to Oman and the uae, and electronic goods from the UAE go back the other side. There's also some drugs probably involved in that. It's a gray, very much a gray area. And in the past, and I think this is where it comes to, to where this all ties in. In the past, this was a problem for Iran because Iran is subsidizing petrol in order to stop discontent on the streets, to try and bring down prices. It's not a very efficient way of running an economy, but there it is. And what was happening was that all of this oil is, all of this diesel petrol is being leaked to, and it's not just going across the Gulf, it's going to Pakistan, it's going elsewhere as well. So Iran was subsidizing other countries, but there is potentially now, this old smuggling trade is now of benefit because of the reasons that you've been talking about. They're running out of space to store this, and that's where it's going to become more of a problem. So actually, you're now able to leak a bit across. It's not a huge amount. It's only. It's not going to alleviate the problem. But you're Talking potentially about 75,000 barrels a day that is being smuggled out of Iran that might just do a little bit, a few percent in just slowing that looming storage problem.
- [11:04]
Roland Oliphant
You weren't able to get alongside and speak to any of the guys on these boats?
- [11:09]
Adrian Blomfield
We didn't speak to them as they were actually very friendly. I mean, it's mainly Iranians. I mean, they were waving quite cheerfully at us. We've spoken to other people. It was rather difficult. We were operating in slightly tricky circumstances that I won't go into. But we were able to get a sense from people involved in boating and fishing on the lake, so on the strait. And I mean, this is something that has been going on for a long time, but obviously within this fairly innocuous trade, it's okay, yes, it's a legal gray zone, whatever you think on, on that, but it's, it's innocuous. This part of, of the Gulf has always looked towards Iran. You've got very isolated communities who often speak their own language. So, for example, Kumzari, which is Kumza, this isolated town which you can only get to by boat. The, the language is, is much closer to Persian than it is to Arabic. So they, you know, these are very old connections. But within that innocuous trade you have. The IRGC has a perfect cover for its mosquito fleet. And it's very difficult. I mean, I've heard people say, well, you know, just like, start bombing the boats. But the coastal communities in Iran and poorer coastal communities on the other side of the Gulf depend on this smuggling trade. And are you really going to start killing people now? Of course, it is possible with Reaper drones and so on to identify some of these boats. And that is happening, which are the IRGC boats, which are the smugglers boats. But that's a long process. And what's happening from what we understand and from experts we've spoken to is it's very easy. You just take a boat, put some tarpaulin over it, you've got a couple of mines and you just push them off the back of the boat. You don't need specialized equipment. And so we know how hard it's going to be to find those boats. But it's extremely easy from what I've learned and from what I understand, to take the boats out of the coves and the caves on the Iranian coast, blend them in with this huge armada. It's a place of mystique. And actually one of the other things that makes it a little bit more complicated, at least in terms of light of sight, is the topography of the strait. So there is this haze that makes it quite hard to see. And there are several reasons for that. The waters are shallow, the heat is intense and you've got these, I mean, it's incredibly dramatic, the scenery on either side, but you've, you know, you've got the cliffs on both sides and so that traps the moisture above the waves and it makes it actually quite hard to see very far. So visibility is quite often not very good. It'll clear for a while. But that's potentially another complicating factor. Of course there is technology, of course there are drones that can get around this. But I think one of the things I learned is, okay, this is much more complicated. The strait is much more crowded. There's not very much going through the strait, but there's a hell of a lot going across it.
- [14:06]
Roland Oliphant
How far out did you get on your boat?
- [14:08]
Adrian Blomfield
So we went all the way round to Kumzar. So we're keeping along the strait and then we could only go a couple of miles out to the edge of the corridor. So you've got the Musandam Naval base, which is where the Omanis keep an eye on the traffic. And they're not just Omanis in there, they're obviously British officers in there because of the historic relationship. I mean, you know, the reason why Britain has such a presence in Oman is the Strait of Hormuz because Britain and Iran, in fact side by side, fought with the Omanis to put down a Moscow backed rebellion, the Dhofar rebellion in Oman in 1970. If that hadn't happened and the rebels had won, potentially the Soviets would have had control of the Strait of Hormuz. And some people say that the Cold War may have turned out rather differently. So the Strait of Hormuz has been vital and Britain's sort of historic role in Oman is connected to that slightly different story. This is a place full of intrigue, a place full of history, and a place which is obviously this sort of geopolitical flashpoint.
- [15:11]
Venetia Rainey
What do you make of Trump's comments that he's going to extend the naval blockade and just keep squeezing the Iranian economy? How much longer can this straight or Hormuz blockade on a blockade continue, do you think?
- [15:23]
Adrian Blomfield
Well, I mean, I think that's the $64,000 question, isn't it? And people give different answers. I mean, how long can the Iranians hold out? So everyone is looking at the storage capacity. But even when you get beyond that, I mean, look at Iraq, which has reached storage capacity a long time ago. Bahrain, Kuwait, they're all struggling. So just because you reach that point of pressure, that doesn't necessarily mean that Iran yields. I mean, obviously the Iranian regime is going to be sensitive to a population that is deeply stressed. And obviously there were those massive unrest in January. But my feeling from the majority of experts and analysts and diplomats that I've spoken to is that they think that the Iranians will hold out for a few weeks, possibly a few months, because they know that the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has diminishing returns. And while for a while they can maybe shut it on and off, over time it will become less and certainly in the future as new pipelines are built, that's going to take time. But the leverage is now. And if Iran surrenders that leverage now, it's got fewer cards to play in the future. So my guess is that they're going to hold out. And I don't think this is going to be resolved quickly, but we often see that received opinion is wrong. So let's wait and see.
- [16:48]
Venetia Rainey
Henry, I was going to ask you, what's the coverage like of this Strait of Hormuz side of the conflict in Israel? Is it seen as as important as it is here in Europe?
- [16:57]
Henry Bodkin
No, it's not seen as important in Israel at all. I think it's viewed as a competing issue with the nuclear issue on Trump's agenda. It's the nuclear issue which the Israelis care about more than anything. And the worry is here sort of quietly expressed, as with all worries regarding the US That Trump becomes too obsessed with that, that resolving the Strait of Hormuz crisis becomes the big end in terms of this conflict with Iran rather than ending Iran's nuclear program. That's kind of the main context in which the Straits issue is viewed In Israel. There's been some interesting briefings around and I've spoken to some security people in the last couple of days that actually the Israelis would now prefer a stalemate, a stalemate in brackets and will go again at some point later in the year or next year or even the year after than a bad deal. There's real worry that the White House might cut a bad deal to end the straits crisis that doesn't address the nuclear issue. And I think part of the worry about that is the fact that there are increasing reports suggesting that the Israelis are just not in the room really when it comes to these negotiations with Iran. They don't know what the American thinking is. Some officials think that's partly a, a punishment by the Americans for not successfully toppling the Iranian regime and for kind of maybe in the Mossad briefings and everything suggesting how doable it was and that not happening. I don't know to what extent that's true. But the Israelis are certainly not in the kind of inner sanctum of American thinking. And they are very worried about a bad deal to resolve the Hormuz crisis. And at the moment they would rather just a stalemate and have the ability to go again in the future then a deal that binds their hands but doesn't deal with the nuclear issue.
- [18:55]
Roland Oliphant
Henry, could I ask you a bit more about these Mossad briefings you're talking about? So there's been a really interesting flurry of reporting just over the past 24 hours out of Israel. And a few journalists seem to have been briefed apparently by Mossad. One of them is Nadav Ehl, who put up on his own website and of course, Ronan Bergman, the legendary security service focused journalist in Israel. He was writing for ynet. And they've both basically appear to have spoken to sources in Mossad who've kind of basically said, yes, we had a plan to topple the regime, it could have worked, but Donald Trump got in the way and stopped it. It seems to be partly a response to this New York Times report earlier this month which said that the plan to deploy Kurdish forces to invade Iran had been blocked by Turkey. And the briefings that seem to be coming out that I read yesterday, late yesterday evening, really citing Israeli sources, I presume people inside the Mossad have basically said, yes, that was the plan and suggesting that you can't blame us for it's going wrong because you got in the way and stopped us from actually trying that.
- [20:07]
Adrian Blomfield
And I don't know if I can jump in with the other factor in this. I've Been speaking to some Israeli contacts in recent days, and they remind me that when Netanyahu came and made that presentation on February 11th in the White House, the Israeli position was not to go until May or June. So they wanted it held off much more. So they felt that the Americans went early. And so I think there seemed to be some irritation that Trump went on a different timeline to them. Is that something that you've picked up on?
- [20:39]
Henry Bodkin
Certainly at the, at the beginning, of course, the conversation was about how brilliantly Israel had taken out Ali Khamenei and that you couldn't hold off when you had intelligence that good that placed him in a vulnerable position and that justified the whole decision to start when they did. Look, I mean, Mossad, it's been very well known here since probably before the start of the war that Mossad were giving thumbs up from a long way out, that this could be done, that regime change could be done. So that's now put the Mossad in a slightly embarrassing position. Obviously, it's not beyond Benjamin Netanyahu to have quietly briefed that, you know, he was told it could be done and then it wasn't. You know, he's not averse to throwing his security officials under the bus if he needs to. So I don't think it's surprising that we've got some counter briefing coming from them. I don't know to what extent this relates to Mossad's plan of how they could achieve regime change, because, of course, we don't fully know what it was. But, I mean, there was some real grumbling on weeks 2, 3, 4 of the war about Israel having its hands tied on hitting some of the power plants, some of the domestic energy infrastructure sites, certainly after they worked for that oil refinery or that oil installation near Tehran. And the White House kind of then disavowed that and said, well, we didn't say yes to that. And there was a lot of discussion at the time in Israeli security circles saying, look, this is part of it. This is not just us being nasty to the enemy as a whole. This is part of the regime change strategy, is to get the lights switched off, is to create a real sense of degradation and desperation among the population, but also panic among the regime. So perhaps that's what these anonymous officials are referring to, or perhaps other things that Trump told them they couldn't do.
- [22:35]
Venetia Rainey
The other key element that we haven't mentioned that was allegedly part of the Israeli plan was to unleash the Iranian Kurds based in Iraq. And we heard lots about that at the beginning of the war and it never fully came off. They appeared to be raring to go but were never given the green light by the Americans. It sounds like so clearly lots of pieces of the puzzle that will become clearer, I guess, as the weeks go by and more reporting emerges. Let's take a short break now. Coming up afterwards, we're going to look at how Hezbollah is adopting drone warfare in southern Lebanon.
- [23:10]
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- [24:19]
Venetia Rainey
Welcome back. You're listening to Iran, the latest. I'm in the studio with my co host Roland Oliphant, our senior foreign correspondent Adrian Blomfield. And down the line is our Henry Bodkin in Jerusalem. Henry, let's turn to some of your reporting now. You've written a piece about Hezbollah adopting FPV first person view drones against Israeli troops in southern Lebanon. Now this isn't the first time that they're using it. You date it back to March 2024, I think, but they are being adopted almost daily now and they're starting to cause the Israelis real problems. Just tell us about the reporting that you've been doing.
- [24:50]
Henry Bodkin
This is really, if any proof was needed, the demonstration that the lessons of Ukraine, tactics of Ukraine are pervading across this war we have now in the Middle east particularly, I think because not just we have the first person view drones and they were documented as being used a bit in 2024, but they weren't central at all to Hezbollah's tactics then. And now they are and quite interestingly, not since the very Start since Israeli troops went over the border in the first week of March. And those early reports seem to be line of sight missiles, anti tank missiles, few mortars, that kind of thing. But later on in the month, and certainly in this month, the use of first person drones really seems to have escalated. And as you say, daily or multiple times per day. And the parallel with Ukraine is compounded by the fact that it's not just these FPV drones, but Hezbollah have seemed to be increasing the number of fiber optic controlled drones. So not radio controlled. And that's a response to the countermeasure. Right? So you can jam, as we've seen in Ukraine, you can jam radio controlled drones. And obviously the Israelis have that equipment on their tanks and their vehicles and with their mobile units. And so a lot of these hits in recent days have been the fiber optics. And that reflects the Ukrainian experience. You know, you get over the countermeasure with a new, a new technology. In this case, kind of going backwards technology. You know, how it seems very kind of backwards to have a, have a flying vehicle that needs to be connected by a wire, but it's unjammable. A security source used the term grim determination to me today to describe the kind of the atmosphere among the IDF in southern Lebanon. It's turned grim. You know, the Israelis, they took casualties from the start. I mean, I think about 16 or 17 troops have died now, but a lot have been injured. But they took the territory. They got up to the litany. And this was supposed to be the bit where particularly under the guise of this ceasefire, which we can discuss more in a bit, discuss the politics of that and how it relates to what each side can do. But under the guise of the ceasefire, this is where they're supposed to be getting on with the gazification. And that's the Defense Secretary's quote of southern Lebanon, razing basically all these Shia villages to the ground, depopulating the area. I mean, the population apart from the Christians have already left, but stopping them coming back, making sure they never have anything to come back to. And yet these soldiers who are way out of sight of Hezbollah, you know, in the valleys or just too far back away from the edge of the buffer zone, they're very, very vulnerable now because these drones, even the fiber optic control ones, can strike pretty much anywhere in the security zone and they're sitting ducks.
- [27:52]
Venetia Rainey
There's some video footage going around from the Lebanese village of Taipei involving an evacuation. Can you just walk us through what we can see in the footage and what's happening there.
- [28:01]
Henry Bodkin
So you see a Black Hawk helicopter appears to be on some kind of even ground near this village or this town. There's a medevac going on. So there's a bunch of IDF soldiers loading a stretcher onto the chopper. We think that's the stretcher containing a sergeant called Edan Fuchs who was hit by a drone earlier that day. He later died of his wounds. The main footage is from, I think probably the helmet camera of a soldier who's not involved directly holding the stretcher. He's standing maybe 20, 30 meters back from the Black Hawk and he suddenly jerks his rifle up to the sky and a few soldiers start running and jumping for cover. Others don't know what's going on. And then there's a. You see something coming out of the sky very quickly and it explodes just behind the helicopter. That's a fiber optic operated FPV drone. It didn't actually hurt anyone in the end that the helicopter then takes off immediately. I mean within a second I'd say of that explosion going off. And I mean if it had got the stretcher party or the helicopter itself, it would have been a bloodbath. And I've seen people, experts questioning whether these medevacs are even viable anymore, given that. I mean that might be a slight knee jerk reaction, but it just shows that it's kind of leveling the playing
- [29:26]
Adrian Blomfield
field a little bit. I was recently with a unit trying to shoot down particularly these fiber optic drones, Ukrainian in Kherson with Ukraine. So you can adapt to that measure. So you know the FPV drones with the fiber optic hair son is strewn with these little wires.
- [29:45]
Venetia Rainey
Yeah, because just to explain to our listeners, it unspools a fiber optic cable, doesn't it, that can take a certain
- [29:49]
Adrian Blomfield
amount of distance also it can unspool for 20 miles. And now one of the most effective ways of doing that is because you've got this huge threat spectrum from different types of drones. So getting those ones, you basically have to shoot them down. So you know, a more primitive form of warfare to bring down a more primitive form of threat. And so I guess that will see that evolution and it's going to be interesting to see the high tech IDF having to move in a different way to respond to that new threat.
- [30:22]
Roland Oliphant
Yeah, I think it's noticeable. They've jumped the evolution, haven't they? It was the Ukrainians and the Russians who worked out fiber optics has an answer to electronic warfare and Hezbollah have just picked up at that point instead of Running through the evolution themselves. Henry, have you got any idea where they're getting them? Are they self manufactured by Hezbollah in Lebanon?
- [30:40]
Henry Bodkin
To a large extent. You can self manufacture these, theoretically. We know they have all sorts of Iranian stuff. You know, I mean, they have shahed drones. Hezbollah does. And the key thing to remember is that, I mean, obviously they're an Iranian proxy and they have been for years. But since their leadership was really taken apart in autumn of 2024, the IRGC went in to not just mentor, but really to take control of the group. So, I mean, there's a much more, you know, they sent in dozens and dozens of officers to take command of Hezbollah units and rebuild them. So the Iranian direct control, the Iranian direct influence is that much closer. So if this is stuff that Iran has, then the likelihood is that Hezbollah can have it too.
- [31:26]
Venetia Rainey
Henry, given the increasingly active pace of facilities between the Israeli army and Hezbollah, how much longer can this ceasefire hold out with Lebanon saying, oh, well, we can negotiate while Hezbollah continues hostilities and the Israeli army saying the same?
- [31:39]
Henry Bodkin
The Israelis are deeply annoyed about this because basically this ceasefire turns on its head. The advantage they had after the last ceasefire. After the last ceasefire in November 2024, they basically developed a status quo where they could hit Hezbollah more or less anywhere. I mean, not in Beirut on the whole, but without being accused of breaking the ceasefire. Because they could say, we are responding to ceasefire violations by Hezbollah and Hezbollah did not shoot back into Israel. Right. So it was a great time to be on the Israeli side in that sort of shadow conflict across those 18 months of so called peace.
- [32:13]
Adrian Blomfield
Right.
- [32:14]
Henry Bodkin
So this ceasefire, which is forced by the Americans, has, as far as the Israelis concerned, turned down its head. As far as they're concerned, Hezbollah are just going for it with their attacks and they are having to be very restrained. They did launch one strike up in the Bekka over the weekend, I think, but, you know, they're not hitting Beirut, which is what they want to do. And I think it's, you know, as long as they don't hit Beirut, then everyone can pretend that there is a ceasefire happening and these Washington negotiations can carry on. So the IDF are not enjoying it one bit. But strategically the Israelis think it's worth it because they believe in, or at least hope that their great friend in the White House, Donald Trump, has their back with the bigger picture, which is the nuclear demands from Iran. So they're happy to let things carry on a bit messily in southern Lebanon for a while to come if they think Trump is going to force the issue with the Iranians on nuclear and
- [33:09]
Roland Oliphant
on the question of Trump and the nuclear file. Mr. Trump had some interesting things to say about Charles III position on the Iranian nuclear fire, which isn't something we will often hear Buckingham palace talk about in public. Here's what Mr. Trump had to say.
- [33:23]
News Announcer
We're never going to let that opponent, ever. Charles agrees with me even more than I do. We're never going to let that opponent have a nuclear weapon. They know that and they've known it right now very powerfully. But our countries have stood together, defiant and triumphant, against the forces of communism, fascism and tyranny.
- [33:46]
Roland Oliphant
The context of this is obviously the British establishment pulling out all the stops to rescue the relationship with the United States. David Blair, our chief foreign commentator, has been writing about this today and just a quick extract from his analysis. The phrase chief diplomat is often used to describe the Foreign Secretary or in the American context, our ambassador in Washington. However, the King's speech to Congress reminds us that Britain's real chief diplomat and the one who can be relied upon to never put a foot wrong, is our sovereign, who is cheered to the echo by America's entire political leadership. I suppose I'd kick things off by pointing out that Iran should not have a nuclear weapon is an entirely orthodox restatement of a long standing British foreign policy position. If Charles said that he's not going
- [34:34]
Adrian Blomfield
off piste, I mean, I was more struck by what I thought was a gentle pushback by the King in his speech to Congress because obviously Britain's reluctance to join the US in the fight in Iran has caused tensions and the King talking about the way NATO rode in alongside the Americans after 9, 11 and in Afghanistan was telling. And also a reminder of his own naval service. Given how rude Mr. Trump has been about our navy, there's some criticism, I think not everyone would agree, that the two aircraft carriers are quite bath toys, but nonetheless, I think there were just a few pointed pushbanks and I think that, you know, the couple of Those looking at J.D. vance behind the King, I thought the couple of times, just possibly he was rising to his feet in applause with a degree of reluctance.
- [35:30]
Henry Bodkin
Well, the bell was. The gift was very. Was an elegant pushback, if anything, wasn't it? The bell from HMS Trump, the submarine that fought in the Pacific in the Second World War. I know that goes back to the Second World War, but it's just a further reminder that Britain does and has fought alongside the Americans. The fact that they managed to find a bell from a ship with the President's name on it is quite fun.
- [35:53]
Adrian Blomfield
Yes. And we'll fight with the Americans when the chips are down. But the subtext is that doesn't necessarily mean that we'll do so in a war of choice. Just like America didn't fight side by side with Britain during the Falklands.
- [36:06]
Roland Oliphant
He said, if you ever need us, give us a ring. Which is in the dad joke level of humor, I think. The other point, I thought, because this is really about how the Iran war has split or damaged the Western alliance. Right. And the other, I thought, very telling thing that Charles said in his speech, he referenced his mother's Queen Elizabeth's first visit to the United States as Queen and said something along the lines of, I'm paralysed. My mother, who also had to kind of put the special back in the relationship after a disagreement over something in the Middle East. And he was, of course, referencing the Suez crisis, which was, of course, a catastrophe from Britain's point of view and a really serious rupture between the United States and Israel and France and Britain, who all conspired behind America's back in that instance. I don't know. Does it mean that this crisis, that the transatlantic alliance does survive this particular round?
- [36:58]
Adrian Blomfield
No. I mean, I think it's something that will patch things over for a little while. Personally, I don't see one, one royal visit, as much as it might be dazzle a US President who likes to be bedazzled, I can't really see that it undoes some of that damage. One quick final point on, you know, I've just come, I've been in the Strait of Hormuz. Before that, I was with the Ukrainian navy in the Black Sea. And in both, we're just seeing one of the most astonishing evolutions in the history of naval warfare, really, since the Dreadnought. And I've just come back from listening to the first Sea Lord giving an address to Gwyn Jenkins, and I thought, you know, how does Britain. He's talking about, okay, there's going to be a hybrid navy, uncrewed vessels, crude vessels, we're going to be able to take on the threat. But the threat that now faces us and we've seen from these two wars, is that on the one hand, you've got to fight a conventional navy, and on the other, you've got to now face these asymmetric threats. And we've seen a Mosquito fleet hold the global economy to ransom in the Strait of Hormuz, and the Mosquito fleet push the Russian Navy, the Black Sea Fleet out of much of the Black Sea. So all of those old certainties are gone. We're just seeing the history of warfare, certainly on the sea, but everywhere else unfolding at breakneck speed in front of our eyes.
- [38:26]
Venetia Rainey
We'll leave it there. Adrian Bromfield, our senior foreign correspondent, and Henry Bodkin, Jerusalem correspondent, thanks very much for joining us on Iran the Latest.
- [38:33]
Adrian Blomfield
Thank you, thank you.
- [38:35]
Roland Oliphant
We'll be back tomorrow. Until then, that was Iran the Latest Goodbye.
- [38:48]
Venetia Rainey
Around the Latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Venetia Rainey and Roland Oliphant. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following around the latest on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it helps others find the show. For more from our foreign correspondence on the ground, sign up for our new daily newsletter, Cables, or listen to our sister podcast Ukraine the Latest. We're still on the same email address battleionselegraph.co.uk where you can contact us on x. You can find our handles in the show Notes the producer is Peter Shevlin. The executive producers are Venetia Rainey and Louisa Wells.
- [39:33]
Adrian Blomfield
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