Jamie Poisson (5:05)

What's the latest on this trade of Hormuz? As, as we're recording this, I believe it's still not open. Trump has told ABC News, quote, we're thinking about doing it as a joint venture, I guess, opening it. Right. It's a way of securing it, also securing it from lots of other people. It's a beautiful thing. I've also seen reporting that Iran is going to demand a toll for every ship that passes through the strait. I. Do you have a clear sense of the plan for the strait here?

David Renney (5:35)

No, because nobody has a clear sense of the plan. And when the Trump administration, led by the president, says that a major achievement of their almost six weeks of fighting so far is that they are going to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, I think that other governments are entitled to say, well, the strait was open before this war. So all you have done after six weeks of extraordinary violence and bombing, is to get us back to somewhere close to the status quo ante. And the problem with that is when they talk about the Strait of Hormuz is now back open, it's not like a garden gate that is either open or closed. What we're really talking about is whether ship owners and ship captains feel safe going through. And until they feel safe going through, they're not going to be able to get captains to agree to sail. Shipowners not going to risk these very expensive, very large boats containing lots of crude oil. If they're tankers, no one's going to charge reasonable insurance premiums to get those boats through. And so although there are a large number of ships that have been stuck the wrong side of the Strait of Hormuz inside the Persian Gulf and who are absolutely desperate to get out because it's costing their owners a lot of money, their crews don't have enough food and water. It's been a miserable situation. We've actually, you know, things keep changing. But the latest report I read said that there had been two ships that exited from the Strait of Hormuz out into the open sea so far, which is actually fewer than we've seen in recent days. And one of the 10 points on the Iranian list said that the strait is, you know, is going to be open for shipping with the supervision. I forget the exact term they use of the Iranian military. And so that goes directly to your point about whether Iran's vision for the Strait of Hormuz is to turn it from an international waterway into a toll gate that they get to charge. We've seen numbers like US$2 million per ship that goes through. And would that be acceptable to the Americans? We've even seen at one point earlier this week, President Trump suggesting that maybe he and the Iranians could do it as a joint venture and they could charge each ship that goes through, because, after all, the American navy might be involved in escorting ships through that strait. And I think for other countries that are, in some cases much more dependent on the Strait of Hormuz, for things like oil and gas shipments than the Americans are countries like Japan, South Korea, India, China, you name it, you get a lot of energy through the strait. The idea that they now go from an international waterway to a toll gate where they pay either the Iranians or the Americans and the Iranians together, that is so far from an acceptable outcome to this war of choice that I think you're going to see a great deal of skepticism and impatience and frustration, if that remains the position.

Jamie Poisson (8:27)

Of course, at this time yesterday, Trump was threatening civilizational annihilation in Iran. What do you think ultimately changed for him?

David Renney (8:39)

I mean, I think we have to hope that he never meant it, that for all his many flaws, he's not, in fact, a kind of genocidal maniac who did intend on exterminating the Iranian civilization. And so you have to assume that it was as much a kind of bellow of frustration that his usual bluster had not worked. And so he was turning the bluster up to 11. The problem with that is that inasmuch as everyone hoped, he didn't mean it. Empty threats that are more extreme than probably anything we've ever seen him. It outdoes even his threats back in his first term to rain fire and fury down on North Korea if they didn't abandon their nuclear program, which also turned out to be an empty threat. He has been very threatening beyond a normal statement. And as I said, they will be met with fire, fury, and frankly, power the likes of which this world has never seen before. Thank you. I think there is a kind of real law of diminishing returns to these threats, to this bluster, because it was, let's be clear, an absolutely monstrous threat, which, if he actually did it, would amount to an appalling war crime. If he didn't mean it, then he looks weak for having made it in public and climbing down. I think it shows that his overall belief has been that the Iranian regime is one that you can bomb it to its senses. And there is very little evidence that that is true in Iran, or indeed, there's very little evidence that in the history of air power bombing a country from the sky is capable of changing a regime. There is very little evidence that that's ever happened.

Jamie Poisson (10:38)

You mentioned before the US Is kind of claiming victory here. I was just watching Pete Hegseth do that in a press conference. But in your estimation, who seems to have the leverage in this agreement, and who do you think has satisfied more of their strategic goals here?

David Renney (10:55)

I think it's very clear that a clear loser is the United States. It chose this war against the better advice of its allies and friends. And it has not ended with its initial war aims being met. It has not eliminated Iran's nuclear program. It has not captured or taken out Iran's highly enriched uranium. There was initially talk of completely destroying Iran's missile program that could threaten countries as far away as in Europe. Iran is still capable of firing missiles and has been proving that. But today there is not peace. In fact, the country I'm in, the uae, says it continues to take incoming fire from Iran ballistic missiles and drones. Kuwait reports the same and the irgc, the regime is taking credit for allegedly attacking Israel and Saudi Arabia overnight. And so now we see language, as I say, depending on the day of the week. Recently we saw the Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying that the aim, one of the aims when it came to ballistic missiles was to take out a significant percentage of that ballistic missile program. But right now our focus is on the destruction of their ballistic missile launchers, their ballistic missile stockpiles and their ballistic missile manufacturing capability, as well as their one way attract drones and their navy because of the threat it poses to global shipping. They wanted to completely neutralize Iran's proxies in the region. Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in the Palestinian territories. And let's be clear, Iran has been doing enormous damage with those proxies. Those proxies are terrorist organizations that cause a tremendous amount of damage. No one should weep for the idea of trying to eliminate the existence of those proxies. But it turns out that they have not also been eliminated. Actually, Hezbollah, even though Israel is bombing it again today, remains a live force in Lebanese politics as well as an extremist organization. And so there is a real sense that America's the very clear loser. But it's very hard to know whether Iran will end up as a durable winner. I think that their economy has suffered tremendous damage. They have lost an enormous number of their top leaders. They have won by not being defeated in a very kind of bleak way. The Iranian people are absolutely unambiguously losers in this. Not only are they being bombed by America and Israel, but they also remain in the grip of a regime which does not have majority support, as far as we can tell, in Iran, which was willing to kill thousands of its own people when they protested in January of this year. And you know, thousands is the Iranians own admission, tens of thousands by some cats. And so a wicked murderous regime remains in charge. But it has demonstrated that it has, to your point about leverage, its grip on the Strait of Hormuz turns out to be an extraordinarily effective stranglehold that it does control one of the great chokeholds in in energy supplies, shipping supplies in the world. One further miscalculation from the Americans. Donald Trump seemed to have this belief that the American oil price was not necessarily affected by what happened in the Strait of Hormuz, because not that much oil, or if any, reaches American consumers through the straight of Hormuz and America is a net oil and gas exporter. But someone needed to explain to him, and clearly failed, that the world oil price affects America too. That the oil price is global and that America will be affected by the global oil price. And that is why Americans are paying a lot more for their gas at the pumps. And that is clearly one of the biggest drivers of Donald Trump's desire to bring this war to an end.

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Jamie Poisson (15:12)

If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they mean, missed the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen, on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts, I want to put to you an argument from military thinker and author Robert Pape, and he has been talking a lot about the fact that he feels that this conflict has turned Iran into a fourth center of global power alongside the us, China and Russia. As you've just said, he knows their control over the Strait of Hormuz

David Renney (16:08)

and

Jamie Poisson (16:08)

thus international oil production, the global economy, but also the fact that they were able to survive the use of overwhelming force from the US and Israel. He refers to this as a structural shift in power. I mean, what do you make of that assessment?

David Renney (16:24)

So I am not based in the Gulf, I'm not in the Middle East. My colleagues who are based in the Middle east, they're very clear this is a real loss for the United States. But they are very cautious. I note in our meetings and our sort of online conversations, they're very cautious about saying that this is definitely going to be an enduring win for Iran. The Iranian economy was on its knees before this war began. The Iranian economy remains on its knees. They have rampant inflation. They're still subject to very severe sanctions. Those sanctions are not going away anytime soon because they are still not in compliance with their obligations under the Non Proliferation treaty. The the UN's own atomic watchdog, the IAEA, is very clear that Iran's nuclear program was enriching and building enrichment sites in a way that could not be explained by a peaceful program. And they had questions to answer and were failing to give access. And so because of that, the sanctions will remain in place. And that is really crippling for Iran as a normal, viable economy. Now, there are people inside Iran linked to the Revolutionary Guard who are making a lot of money from smuggling. But to your point that Robert Piggs pointed that this is the emergence of a fourth major political power because of that chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, I guess you can certainly concede that the Americans were taken aback. At least President Trump and his inner circle were taken aback by the importance of that chokehold. Though any number of American military plans going back decades choke the importance of the Strait of Hormuz as a starting point. And so there is a certain amount of frustration and forehead slapping going on in Washington at the fact that President Trump didn't believe that. The Iranians have also shown that beyond their control of the Strait of Hormuz, their missiles and drones can cause really serious damage and disruption to their neighbours across the Persian Gulf. The Gulf Arab states, countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, particularly the United Arab Emirates, which has been really pounded more heavily than any other. And that has really shaken a story that seemed to be one of the great kind of strategic business stories of this decade, that the rise of places like Dubai or Abu Dhabi kind of, they were the kind of the archetypal 21st century story of these sort of transactional entrepot that were friends with America and China and Russia and the global south all at the same time. They were the perfect place to invest. They were these kind of financial havens full of expats living the kind of the good life. That entire business model is clearly now enormously challenged by Iran's ability to hold them in threat with missiles and drones. But does that mean that Iran is now somehow on a Sort of par with America, China and Russia as a great power. I have to say I'm very skeptical one, because, as I say, its economy is absolutely on its knees. And also, countries do have some options. I think you're going to see every single Gulf oil and gas producer building more pipelines, running not into the Persian Gulf, but across to the Red Sea on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula. Because there is another exit from the Arabian Peninsula. Not everyone can use it, but you can do it. And I think that if they turn the Strait of Hormuz into a toll gate, that is an extraordinary cost to impose on international shipping. And you will see international shipping adjust. Not perfectly, it can't perfectly. But it is very hard to imagine that a country of Iran's size and dysfunction and economic weakness is going to end up being able to hold the entire of the rest of the world and the global economy to ransom. And for that situation to last indefinitely.

Jamie Poisson (20:06)

I wanted to ask you specifically about China. You have such a command over that subject over the country. There is reporting that China has been exerting influence over Tehran in the lead up to the ceasefire agreement. The front page of the magazine that you work for, the Economist, features an image of Chinese President Xi Jinping smirking, and an image of Lika yelling, donald Trump. And the headline reads, quote, never interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake. What can you say about China's strategic position here? And I guess a role that they have played.

David Renney (20:42)

So the role is interesting. So in the last few days, the reporting is that they did put pressure on the Iranians and they are the largest buyer by far of Iranian oil. So they do have leverage over the Iranians. Although when you go to Beijing, where I was based for many years, until about a year and a half ago, when you go to Beijing, and I was just there a couple of weeks ago, they will consistently say, oh, no, no, we don't have that much control over the Iranians. They're difficult people to deal with. You know, we're disappointed by how they're behaving, but they are being bullied horribly by the Americans. We absolutely deplore what the Americans and the Israelis are doing, but don't expect us to be able to make them do what we want. We don't have anything like that degree of control just because we buy their oil. What does seem to happen is that certainly the Iranians were pushed. You know, Pakistan hosting these talks, is also a close friend of China. It would make sense for the Chinese to be pushing the Iranians behind the scenes and saying, look, you really do need to go to these talks and see if we can get the strait reopen. Not least because China is a massive, it is the world's largest importer of oil and a good chunk of that oil comes from the Persian Gulf. And they don't want to live in a world of very, very expensive oil and they don't want the strait to remain closed. So they did have reason to push the Iranians to come to the table. The COVID story that you describe was actually from last week and it reflects a visit that I paid to China with some senior editors where the consistent message was that China thought that America was making a disastrous blunder and that this was a sign not of American strength but of American decline. That this was a kind of a declining aging hegemon lashing out and making mistakes, and that China was going to sit back and not do very much to intervene and certainly not take any risks and certainly not do very much to help America off its own kind of mistakes. There's a caveat to that though, which is that the Chinese are connoisseurs of power. And even as they were telling us that they thought that Donald Trump was making appalling strategic blunders that in the very short term made China look good, made America look bad, and that was probably cynically a win for China. They were very concerned about a long war that was going to raise those energy costs. But also they were exceedingly shaken and impressed by some of the firepower that was being used by the American and even the Israeli military. And in particular some senior retired PLA had been saying behind closed doors in Beijing that the pla, the Chinese military was really needs to study things like the use of artificial intelligence by the Americans to target, to wire together, to network all of their systems, that that kind of display of high tech weaponry that we saw from America and Israel, China was studying that and actually was quite shaken by the fact that it seems to be far more advanced and sophisticated and effective than the systems that China currently has.

Jamie Poisson (23:55)

You know, Iran and the US now have, well, really days, right, to kind of strike some sort of real deal here that I, I guess would hopefully lead to some kind of lasting peace. I believe the original Iran nuclear deal took two consecutive years of concerted negotiations between Iran and the US to reach an agreement on. The Iranians have accused the US of using the pretense of negotiations as a front for violence. The US has accused the Iranians of playing games. And just given this history, how Much trust do you think there is that these talks will be happening in good faith?

David Renney (24:36)

I think no one trusts anyone. It would be very strange if they did. I mean, I don't think the Iranians ever really trusted the outside world particularly. But the original deal that Donald Trump walked away from, the one that was brokered by Barack Obama In 2015, the JCPOA, a comprehensive long term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon. This deal demonstrates that American diplomacy can bring about real and meaningful, meaningful change. Change that makes our country and the world safer and more secure. That was based not really on trust. It was based on a mixture of sticks and carrots and a lot of verification by outside inspectors from the UN Atomic Energy Agency. And the carrots were things like lifting sanctions and allowing more money to flow into the kind of battered Iranian economy. That was the deal that Donald Trump said was the worst deal in history that he walked away from. But he didn't put anything in place that was going to constrain Iran's nuclear program any other way. He put his faith in maximum pressure, sanctions. And then listeners will remember, in the summer of last year, basically joined in an attempt to bomb the Iranian nuclear program out of existence and certainly succeeded in causing severe damage to the Iranian nuclear program, but did not eliminate it. And in particular, as we've said, didn't eliminate the 440 kilos of highly enriched uranium which are still sitting, most of it deep underground in tunnels in places like Natanz. And so you say that we have, we can count the days down now of how much of this two week ceasefire is left. I think we've learned now from bitter experience that counting days based on a Trump ceasefire or Trump deadline is a kind of fool's game. That these deadlines come and go and they change. And two weeks in particular is one of his favorite numbers, which seems to mean nothing at all. But the ceasefire has really resolved almost nothing at all. There is just an infinite gap between the Iranian position, which is recognition of its right to enrich uranium, control of the Strait of Hormuz, the withdrawal of American troops from bases in the region. It is very hard to see President Trump giving those up. It is very hard to see even now his allies in the region, in the case of Qatar and the uae, home to American bases, that place like Bahrain, home to an enormous American base. They are very, I think, very, very upset and angry behind closed doors with America for starting this war with so little strategy behind it. But they are also, I think, very clear eyed that Iran is an enormously dangerous neighbor that is willing to really cause them enormous damage. And so at least in the short term, they may have to double down on their security relationship with the United States. That there is no better source of the kind of weaponry and the kind of support they're going to need if they're going to try and keep themselves safe from Iranian attacks. Now, does that last forever? Do the Gulf Arab states start to look for other alternative sources of defence because they're not sure that America is the reliable ally that they once hoped? Sure, I think you can see that. You can even see them cutting deals with the Ukrainians. To look at some of the Ukrainians anti drone weaponry that they've honed in their war with Russia, it's fascinating. But if Iran's demands include the Americans leaving the region, leaving the region on their own, I think not only would that be hard for the Americans to swallow, I think it'd be very hard for those Gulf Arab allies, which are important allies and business partners and energy suppliers to the West. I think they would be very, very anxious about that. And so it is good news that fewer bombs are falling today as we speak, but the gap between these two countries is as wide and as painfully wide as ever.

Jamie Poisson (28:18)

And what about Israel in all of this? There is, of course, lots of reporting about how Israel convinced the US to enter this war. New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan wrote about this really high level meeting back in February where Netanyahu pitched Trump on attacking Iran in the

David Renney (28:38)

White House Situation Room. That's quite a kind of cinematic scene they describe.

Jamie Poisson (28:41)

Yeah. In the Situation Room. Israel and the US certainly share many strategic objectives, though they are by no means identical. You talked before about how Israel doesn't think that the ceasefire applies to Lebanon and is hitting Lebanon incredibly hard today. So. So what role do you think Israel has to play in this moment of detente?

David Renney (29:08)

So Israel could certainly play wrecker if it resumed fighting. I think you have to assume that it would be very difficult for Israel to defy Donald Trump and to attack Iran when Donald Trump did not want them to. There's the practical reality that Israel is dependent on a great deal of military aid and diplomatic support from the United States. And that's always been true. I think there's also the unique detail that Bibi Netanyahu, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, who has developed over the years an extraordinary skill of undermining American presidents by going to Washington and talking to people, particularly on the conservative right in Congress. Or elsewhere in American politics. He can't get to Donald Trump's right. Nobody can get to Donald Trump's right. And so Donald Trump is, I think, uniquely able to brush off that kind of political pressure from Netanyahu and the Israeli government in his own politics. In America, there's plenty of voices on the Republican right who are very unhappy with Israel right now. I think I am wary, though, of when I was in Beijing, one of the most common things you would hear from scholars of the Middle East, Chinese scholars of the Middle east, was that Israel was this kind of shadowy puppet master that had somehow tricked a kind of blundering, ignorant old man, Donald Trump, into a war that he didn't even understand. I think that's a caricature. Netanyahu's greatest power over Donald Trump, I think, is that they see the world in fairly similar ways, not identical ways, but they do fundamentally have a similarly hawkish view that the only language that the Iranian regime understands is violence and force, and that enough force will make them buckle, and that they might buckle rather fast and kind of weirdly naive is the wrong word, but this weird belief that if you just decapitate the Iranian regime, that somehow, like a monarchy, you take out the top leaders and the thing will fall apart. Whereas every expert on the Middle east would say that the Iranian regime had been planning for years to withstand a decapitation because they knew that was one of the things that might happen to them, and they decentralized power so that they wouldn't be taken out by a decapitation strike. And so I think it's more that Netanyahu and Trump, they are more aligned than you might like to believe. And I'm wary of this kind of the idea that somehow Israel is the puppet master that has kind of led a completely bamboozled Donald Trump to do things that he didn't want to do.

Jamie Poisson (31:35)

That seems like a good place for us to end today, David. Really, it's like a pleasure listening to you. Thank you so much for this.

David Renney (31:43)

Thank you very much for having me.

Jamie Poisson (31:52)

All right, that's all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thank you so much for listening. Talk to you tomorrow.

David Renney (32:08)

For more cbc podcasts, go to cbc ca podcasts.