← Iran: The Latest
Iran: The Latest
Iran’s stealth Strait of Hormuz toll plan & how Trump’s war reshaped the world
00:31:57
Loading summary
Transcript63 lines
- [00:04]
A
The telegraph. I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Iran. The Latest. It's Tuesday 23rd June, 2026, day two of the 60 day deadline to reach a final agreement. In terms of the diplomatic news, Marco Rubio is on his way to the Gulf. Masoud Pizachian, the Iranian President, is going to Islamabad. JD Vance and Mohamed Gallabaf, the Speaker of the Iranian Parliament, are both back in respective capitals briefing their respective medias. But at the moment, it's a question of more talking to come, which makes it a good opportunity to sit, to take a pause and to think about where we've ended up. The war itself, for the time being, seems to be over, so why don't we ask that question? When historians write the story of the 2026 U.S. israeli Iran War, what will they say about its consequences? How has it reshaped the world? Who emerged stronger and who weaker? And what chains of events has it set in motion for the rest of the century? I'll be talking about that with Telegraph senior foreign correspondent Adrian Blumfield.
- [01:15]
B
A short time ago, the United States
- [01:17]
A
military began major combat operations in Iran.
- [01:22]
B
Today, President Trump says Iran's supreme leader,
- [01:25]
A
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed in the attacks. The Pentagon is weighing a takeover of that island as a way to force the reopening of the street of Hormuz. Iran begged for this ceasefire and we all know it.
- [01:44]
B
The question before us now is how much more can we accomplish together? Can we turn over a new leaf? Can we change relations in the Middle east permanently?
- [01:52]
A
Does anyone really think that someone can tell President Trump what to do? Come on, Adrian. Welcome to Iran. The latest.
- [02:03]
B
Lovely to be with you.
- [02:05]
A
It's lovely to have you in the studio. We haven't, I think we last spoke to you when you were bobbing up and down in a boat in the middle of the Strait of Hormuz.
- [02:12]
B
Indeed.
- [02:14]
A
Which looked lovely, actually. In fact, I think we're having similar Strait of Hormuzian weather this week in, in London. So you brought it with you. You've, you know, I wouldn't consider you someone who's subject to hubris, necessarily. I don't look at you and think that man is a hubristic person who would challenge the gods and take on tasks that no mortal could reasonably be expected to succeed at. And yet you have taken a stab at writing the first kind of historians look at how the world has changed from the Iran war, which I admire. It's called How Trump's Greatest Foreign policy failure has reshaped the world. It's on the Telegraph website. We can look at it. So I was wondering if I can just. Let's throw it at you. How has, first of all, you're calling it Trump's greatest foreign policy failure. I think we've debated that a lot and it's reshaped the world how?
- [03:13]
B
Well, yes, perhaps it is hubris, certainly. I think hubris is an aspect to this war. I mean, I think we can conclude that Donald Trump went into the war assuming that he would emerge as a clear cut winner. And that hasn't happened. You know, we don't need to relitigate this. Obviously, the triumph in Venezuela, that was not replicated. It is a mess. And I think it's, I don't think there are many who would seriously, despite people trying to present the case who are on Donald Trump's side, I think deep down, few people would say anything other than it has been a mistake because it has not produced the outcome that Donald Trump anticipated and hoped for. And obviously in the long run, historians may reach very different conclusions because we have to see what pans out. This could yet be turn into nothing more than a glorified Panama war footnote in history, or it could be the beginning of something very consequential. So there are things that could yet turn out very differently and we have to see what happens over the peace talks. We've seen a very radical shift now to arguably a much more traditional diplomatic approach where Donald Trump, who is the kind of guy who can pivot one hundred and eighty degrees, may end up with something completely different that may actually end up making genuine progress on the Iran front. Maybe you can bring Iran into the global economy. It's very different. What we're now seeing, you know, we've seen in the past, we've gone from ultimate, you know, absolute surrender, nothing less. We're going to crush this regime to we're now going to give you $300 billion and draw you into the world economy. So we don't know what will change, but we can talk about what is changing in the meantime in the medium term. And I think one of the main consequences that we draw on the piece is ultimately there has been another significant loss of confidence in the reliability, the predictability of the US Administration. And everyone is now trying to navigate how to deal with that. Obviously that was already in evidence, but that has been accelerated. So you look at Israel, which is now in a completely different position to where it was a few months ago, but huge Implications on Israel, huge implications for how the Gulf manages this brave new world, implications for Russia, implications for China, implications for the environment, implementation implications for the global economy in terms of how you now navigate a world of choke points, of supply line vulnerabilities. And I think those are sort of the key areas. Things could change, but those are areas in which there have been changes. And maybe we should take those in turn.
- [06:23]
A
Let's take those in turn. And I was just going to actually note as you were talking that one of the recurrent themes, I think, of analysis of this war is that it hadn't really changed much because we seem to have been where back at the same negotiations about the nuclear issue and the regime is still there and there's still a Khamenei running Iran and so on. And yet there are these specific points where you think things really have changed, even if it's not in the name of the person running Iran or the nature of the regime. Just take your top points. I think the first section in your piece is really about the Israeli American relationship.
- [07:00]
B
Yes, and absolutely. I mean, this is one of the ironies that you rightly point to because, I mean, we've ended up with an inconclusive war that hasn't settled any of the key issues that may have left things in some ways, you know, obviously a kinetic victory on the battlefield for the Americans. And, you know, American power is not in question. I don't think, you know, American power, America remains the most powerful country in the world. And what we've seen with AI developments of late, that has only been undermined. But the nature of America's relationships with the rest of the world is in question. And that ultimately one of the, I think the big losers in that because of that is America itself. And we can come back to that. But yes, fundamentally, last year I wrote a piece talking about Israel being on the cusp of a golden age. And that was potentially within reach. Hamas had been weakened, Hezbollah had been weakened. Iran's nuclear program had received an enormous setback. You know, a setback that we've not seen. There hasn't been that change in this war. But at the end of the 12 Day War, we obviously saw the destruction of those nuclear facilities that buried so much under the dust. And instead we've seen Netanyahu's dreams turn to dust. There is now a far more tricky relationship with Donald Trump. So, you know, at the start of this war, and which should have been the icing, which should have, you know, could have potentially, if this had been settled Iran, Israel could have finally had this moment where, you know, not only was it the villa in the jungle, as it's always called itself, but the jungle would have permanently been beaten back if Iran had been permanent, if the Iran question had been permanently settled. And for the first time, you had Israel and the US Going to war together. The US has fought a lot of wars since the Second World War with other allies, but this is the first
- [09:05]
A
time and never with Israel. So it was the apotheosis of that
- [09:09]
B
alliance, that relationship, and Netanyahu, in the eyes of Israelis, had delivered this. He could claim he had this special relationship with Donald Trump that none of his predecessors had, and that would build towards his election, his reelection in October. And we've just seen that in the nature of Donald Trump's transactionalism, that Netanyahu has been swatted aside not just as an irrelevance, but as an irritation. And we can hear that in the expletive laced ways that Trump, over the course of this war, has not just spoken to Netanyahu, particularly obviously on the issue of Lebanon, but spoken about him, you know, openly to reporters, saying, you know, I told Netanyahu he shouldn't effing well be doing this. Why is he doing this? Why doesn't he listen to me? And ironically, Netanyahu still does have, I mean, he still essentially has potentially veto powers over this deal because we've got to see what he does in Lebanon. And Lebanon is the big question mark on all of this. Maybe we talk about that, but the warmth has gone. The war in domestic terms, I think, in Israel is being seen as a failure, and Israelis have turned against Trump. So when I was last in Israel, which was just after Donald Trump had negotiated the release of the last hostages and brought about part one of the deal with Hamas, obviously we've never seen part two, or that is still ostensibly under discussion, there were posters everywhere of Donald Trump in Israel likening him, calling him essentially the greatest gentile leader since Cyrus the Great in ancient persia. So for 2,500 years, Donald Trump is now loathed in Israel and he's now an electoral liability for Netanyahu.
- [11:14]
A
So from Cyrus to. In your piece, you say Judas, but that's more of a Christian allusion.
- [11:20]
B
Well, yes, it doesn't quite work, but,
- [11:22]
A
you know, I mean, Cyrus famously freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon when he, when he conquered. Yes, Babylon. So a huge, A huge tribute. And then, so the question is, I was writing about this actually over last week for the weekend's paper. I was speaking to people in Israel about this. And I suppose the question was that I had was, is this a Netanyahu problem? Just because he's almost every American president he's worked with, he's ended up rubbing up the wrong way. Republican, Democrat, whoever. He just seems to really annoy them. In fact, I think he was banned from the State Department by James Baker years ago when he was deputy ambassador or something in the early 90s. So he does annoy American officials. But is this a personality rupture between Netanyahu and Trump or is this something deeper, something that changes the nature of the Israel America security relationship? And it seemed to me, I don't know what you think, but some of the Israelis I was speaking to were saying were worried that it is that
- [12:24]
B
they were briefly aligned on this. And don't forget, at the start of Trump's presidency, there were these moments of tension, particularly because Donald Trump seemed to be looking towards the gulf more than to Israel. And on that front, first foreign trip, Trump swung through the gulf where he was fated, and he didn't go to see Netanyahu. So there was concern. And of course, with someone like Trump, it's very unpredictable. So they may well find common cause again in the future. But the thing is, I think Donald Trump has been burnt by this and he is pivoting. So there will be resentment. And Donald Trump holds grudges. I mean, look at his relationship with Zelensky, which dates back to the whole Hunter Biden saga.
- [13:14]
A
Do you think that remarkable US Israel relationship that's defined things for decades in the region and has defined Israel's security for so long is now in jeopardy?
- [13:25]
B
I think it is potentially in jeopardy. So this is the thing it goes beyond. And this was already the thing, because on the one hand, when this war was underway, you could see this very close bond between Netanyahu and Trump. But on the other, you could see the separation of American politics or the American political view from Israel. So you have this Pew poll which shows for the first time a dramatic shift. So 60% of Americans with a negative view as Israel with a negative view of Israel. But you're seeing that politically. And there's always been criticism of the way in Israel, of the way Netanyahu hitched his colors to the Republican Party. So he had already alienated a lot of Democrats. And at the same time, because of the nature of American politics, MAGA politicians have also turned against Israel. So that is, those are significant breaches which a lot of people I've spoken to in Israel are concerned about and it's hard to see those being breached even being referred to.
- [14:31]
A
That is a very serious potential turning point in the systemic, potential major turning point in the era defining Israeli American relationship. Next on your list. You've already kind of talked about America's relationships with the rest of the world, but you talked a lot about China. I think.
- [14:49]
B
Yes, there's the Gulf states as well, but I mean, let's have a look at China. So there are two things that, you know, it's not a direct link. These are indirect consequences. So the first is on the military side. So we are now 15 years into the pivot to Asia and American pivot to Asia. The American pivot, yeah. Barack Obama I think, which happened under the Obama administration. Officials in the Obama administration I've spoken to on this, you know, they're at pains now to say that that was not about turning their backs on Europe. It was about trying to draw away from the Middle east and focus on China and on, on building those key relationships with, with what they like to call allies and partners in, in Asia. And that has been a slow accretion both in terms of military hardware and in terms of diplomacy. So, you know, what we saw is obviously the American Americans have been sucked back into the Middle east in dramatic fashion. In dramatic fashion.
- [15:57]
A
So much for the, they got out of Iraq eventually, they got out of Afghanistan in paid a cost for that and now back they are again.
- [16:04]
B
I mean, it's astonishing. You know, you mentioned hubris at the time. This is, you know, I mean, you know, hubris has been punished in that respect. But we also saw the drawdown of hardware, of aircraft carriers, of anti missile batteries, of satellites, you know, intelligence personnel from the Indo Pacific theater to Central Command, which the US Central Command which oversees the Middle east. And the concern from Americans who follow Asia that I've spoken to is that that's not quickly going to be reversed because I mean, CENTCOM Central Command is notorious for. Once it gets things for not letting them go, it gets what it wants and it doesn't let it go because it can rightly make the argument that the situation remains incredibly volatile. So allowing that hardware to go back could undermine the deterrence. So this PISA deal has got to be reinforced by military deterrence of Iran. Of course, one of the things that Iran has asked for or one of the parts of this deal is a withdrawal of U.S. forces over the next 30 days. And we don't really know what that means, but that is a concern. It's also the message that it sends to Asian partners and allies of the United States is that again, you know, that US Commitment is variable. It's not dependable. So how do they therefore start to think about their own relationships with China? And, you know, this is the ironic thing. I mean, you know, one of the consequences if we talk about the Gulf later is that the Gulf may have to look now for a closer relationship with Iran than was the case. I mean, you know, there had been before the war, there had obviously been some coming together that may be accelerated. But do you now make nicer to China because you can't rely on the United States? So those are those potential consequences.
- [18:16]
A
We're going to take a short break. When we come back, Western historiography began with a Persian war. So what would Herodotus make of this one? Welcome back. This is Iran, the latest. With me, Roland Oliphant. I'm speaking to Telegraph senior foreign correspondent Adrian Blomfield. I want to go back to your favorite holiday venue, Straight of Hormuz, because I suppose one of the questions is about navigation and what happens. I want to take the opportunity to read out some news essentially. So this is question about the future of the strait and the Americans saying it's going to go back to free navigation. The Iranians, Mohammed Calabouf, who got back to Tehran last night from the talks in Switzerland, has been talking to State TV saying, absolutely not. No, we're going to maintain Iranian sovereignty of the strait. And this is the thing that really gets me. So Lloyd's List have got hold of a terms and conditions document issued by the Persian Gulf Strait Authority, which is the organization the Iranians set up to govern this claim of sovereignty over the strait. And essentially what they're saying is, and they haven't imposed a fee, but what they have said is you are going to need mandatory insurance to sail through the Strait of Hormuz. Now, we will issue this mandatory insurance free of charge. However, the small print makes very clear that we do reserve the right to impose a charge at a later date, in which case you will have to pay a fee for passing through the strait. Therefore, this is a technical way of doing it. It does look like this is going to happen. I don't see how the Americans avoid it. But the Iranians seem determined to impose that fee and change things. I mean, is that inevitable in your view?
- [20:03]
B
I mean, I think yes, because this is the chief weapon and this is, I think, the biggest disaster of this war in terms of those consequences, is that in the past, the idea of a Closure of the state of Hormuz was always theoretical. And despite what people say, a lot of people, including I rem people like the late Anthony Kaldesman at csis. Brilliant man. But he always said that it would be impossible for the Iranians to close the Strait of Hormuz because the Americans are too powerful. And that has proven not to be the case because of asymmetrical warfare and all of that. It's now happened, and the Iranians are not going to surrender that lightly. And even the fact that it's just the threat is there holds. One of the people I was speaking to for this piece, Kurt Campbell, who was the deputy secretary of State under the Biden administration, called it. There will be this. The Strait of Hornet mews will remain a Damoclian sword over the global economy. And things are already changing. The Iranians are looking to the fact that we've seen the use of tariffs. So there are checkpoints that are now basically choking off global supply lines. The Chinese can use rare earth minerals as a weapon. The US Uses tariffs as a weapon. The Iranians will say, well, we're going to use the Strait of Hormuzzi as their weapon. You know. Yeah, I mean, that's. That is crumbling before our eyes. So I think that. Yes, you know, and obviously this is the fudge because, you know, under unclossed, under global maritime, international maritime law, you cannot charge tariffs to go through service fees or insurance.
- [21:55]
A
Mandatory insurance. Is there. They're finding a way of doing it.
- [21:57]
B
Well, indeed. And, you know, there had been talk of others doing that in the past. You know, I mean, one of the ways that people I've spoken to about controlling or tackling that Russian shadow fleet would be by imposing environmental checks and fees passing through the Strait of Denmark. So, you know, because that could have
- [22:17]
A
been the Strait of Denmark, is interesting when people say, like, you can't, you know, no one's ever charged fees. Denmark used to charge fees for centuries.
- [22:23]
B
Yes.
- [22:24]
A
In the Strait of Denmark. And it was a major source of revenue and disappeared in the 19th century.
- [22:28]
B
Yes.
- [22:28]
A
But this, it's not like this hasn't been done before.
- [22:31]
B
No. And, you know, I mean, obviously the legal landscape has changed, but there are ways around it, you know, without using the word toll. So, you know, this is a toll in all but name. And this is part of the brave
- [22:46]
A
new world we're going into.
- [22:47]
B
Yeah. And you can see that the Americans will accept that because, you know, Trump and Vance, they're dressing it up behind verbiage. But, you know, There has been a dramatic shift. They've seen that the war has failed and they are now trying something else. And they can't admit that because they're getting criticism. You know, I mean, you hear some ludicrous talk. I mean, I heard Lindsey Graham talking about how Iran is now defeated. We're going to see countries rushing into the Abraham Accords and we're going to see the opposite of that. I mean, we're seeing the Middle east splitting into rival factions, a desperation to try and reduce dependence on the US which is not going to be possible. But one thing that we're going to see is countries seeking to make more common cause with Iran and using money to do that than to trust Israel.
- [23:38]
A
I wanted to get you to talk about the environmental knock on effects of this, which I think are really interesting and I know it's too early to say, but we were just having a conversation before we came on about this. There are aspects to this war. A possible consequence of this could have real global knock on implications there. Just lay that out for me.
- [23:58]
B
Yeah, and I don't think that's going to go away because I mean, there's this assumption now that the Strait of Hormuz is open, that things will go back to the way they were. But everyone is going to look now at that route through which 20% of the world's oil and gas passes with suspicion. So we've seen Southeast Asian economies and of course that is the region that was worst hit by this massive.
- [24:27]
A
As we've reported on the podcast.
- [24:28]
B
Yeah, we've seen them switching to coal.
- [24:30]
A
Power. Going from gas to coal.
- [24:33]
B
Going from gas to coal. So countries have been forced to re. Embrace the dirtiest form of energy. So I mean, I think just looking at that there's going to be. That's obviously disastrous if you're looking at it from environmental concerns. And I don't think that there's going to be a rapid switch back because a lot of shipping companies are going to be delighted that they can get their ships out, although not everyone can because there's still sea mines there. But how quickly are they going to send those ships back into.
- [25:04]
A
We've talked about it at length that it's not flicking a switch. It's going to take some time.
- [25:07]
B
No, it's going to take some time. So countries are going to have to, particularly those that were most dependent on that region are going to have to look to diversify.
- [25:16]
A
Ironically, a war that has massively disrupted hydrocarbon supplies has somehow turned back the clock on the fight against carbon on
- [25:26]
B
the one hand, I mean, there is a potential silver lining and we've seen that with the way China is embracing renewables. So, you know, as the cost of that comes down, you might see, you know, so this could be the last trumpet blast of the dirtiest coals. If part of that transition to energy security in which countries can, you know, because this is the argument that you make, you know, we now, Ed Miliband
- [25:54]
A
is already making in Britain and there
- [25:56]
B
are issues around, but, you know, you have to. Political issues I won't get into. But if you want to have energy sovereignty, people can't shut off. Those renewable. You can't shut off.
- [26:08]
A
And you just can't trust. You can't trust oil the way you used to.
- [26:12]
B
You can't. So, I mean, that is potentially one area. And I mean, it's interesting to see because obviously this is already happening in China. And you saw the reason why. I'm sure this has been discussed as well. The reason why oil prices didn't go through the roof is because China had those massive inventories that had that huge buffer. But, you know, China in all of this didn't touch its strategic energy reserves. And that's in part because, you know, it's. It's demand, it's reliant, it's. Its reliance on those old fuels is already shrinking, you know, because of its electric vehicle market and so on. Obviously that doesn't affect some of its factories and the like. China will be careful about how it rebuilds its buffer. But yes, you could see that. And of course, there are going to be political arguments about how you can do that. And that doesn't necessarily mean that everyone has to rush to embrace net zero on energy security grounds. But that does enter the equation. And yes, that return to coal power is something environmentalists will certainly be concerned about.
- [27:21]
A
Indulge me a little bit. In a bit of my own hubris, a bit of rhetorical hubris, it occurred to me as we sat down that, you know, we're talking about history and history. And the first historian, of course, was Herodotus. I would call him the first foreign correspondent as well. Cause if you read the histories, mostly he goes to places, he talks to people, he asks them what happened and he writes it down. Yeah.
- [27:45]
B
In many ways more a foreign correspondent than a historian. I mean, there's some very dubious historical claims in there. The kind of stuff that only a foreign correspondent.
- [27:54]
A
Well, the more archaeologists dig up, the more they think he was telling the truth and he got it right. But he Also, we're going slightly off topic, but he always cites his sources, Herodotus. So when people turn around and say, like, oh, Herodotus lied about slaves building the pyramids, he didn't. He sources it. He went there and he spoke to people and that's what they told him. Herodotus wrote about a Persian war. The father of Western historiography begins with a Persian war. What do you think he would make of this, this Persian war?
- [28:22]
B
Well, I think, again, we started with reference to my hubris. This is again, I mean, you know, that's the word that would be running through this. And to a certain extent, why did the Persians come a cropper? And that was because of imperial overstretch. That war, as it was presented, was also one of democracy against tyranny. And I think in America, you might try and see people trying to, you know, and as I think we were discussing before we came on the air, the Americans always like to see themselves as the inheritors of the Athenian mantle, but, you know, of Greek democracy. But in many ways, this would have been an inversion. So Persian hubris arguably replaced by American hubris and those sort of ideas of competing values. I mean, of course, Herodotus spoke quite respectfully of the Persians, but those ideas of democracy versus tyranny, I think now break down because it's not.
- [29:30]
A
It gets framed in that west versus East, Persia versus the west kind of way, doesn't it? Easily slips into that old framing.
- [29:38]
B
Well, you know, I mean, I think, yeah, Donald Trump likes to think so. I mean, he always talks about how he's fixing wars that have gone on for 4,000 years. I mean, I'm not sure to what extent Donald Trump, who. I mean, I don't know what his reading habits are. We know he's read his own book. I think he once cited it as his favorite. He says he loves the Bible without showing much evidence of having read it. So I don't know whether he's an assiduous student of Herodotus or Thucydides. I mean, there was obviously a suggestion that perhaps he wasn't even aware of the relevance of the palace of Versailles, which is not a place that exactly has a great reputation for producing lasting treaties. And, you know, there was the irony of him signing that. So, yes, I don't think, you know, he's going to have drawn particular lessons. But I guess the main thing is that imperial hubris and overstretch is a theme of global politics and global warfare that has indeed stretched back to the dawn of recorded history. And that is something that we have not yet been able to move on from as a global society.
- [30:54]
A
It's a very nice point to leave it at. I've had conversations about Herodotus with Iranians. Turns out in Iranian schools you're taught that Herodotus got it all wrong. Actually, we won, right?
- [31:05]
B
Well, there you go. There are always multiple ways of looking at history.
- [31:09]
A
Quite Adrian Blomfield, thank you so much for joining us on Iran the Latest.
- [31:13]
B
It's been a pleasure to be here.
- [31:17]
A
Iran the Latest is an original podcast from the Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Roland Oliphant and Venetia Rainey. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Iran the Latest in 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 correspondents on the ground, sign up to our new daily newsletter, Cables via our website or listen to our sister podcast Ukraine the Latest. We are still on the same email address battlelinestelegraph.co.uk or 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. Sam.