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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first.
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Broadcast on 14th January, 2026 on Monocle Radio.
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US President Donald Trump tells Iranian protesters that help is on the way. But is it Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers in Washington, D.C. to ask the Americans to knock it off? And why does China's new UK Embassy need to be quite that enormous? I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts now.
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Foreign.
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Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Patty Cohen and Phil Tinline will discuss the day's big stories. And our on this day historical series recalls the flight of the first leader toppled by the Arab Spring. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily.
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Foreign.
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This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller, and I'm joined today by Patty Cohen, global economics correspondent at the New York Times, and Phil Tinline, journalist, documentary maker and author, most recently of Ghosts of Iron Mountain. Hello to you both. Hello there and Happy New Year. You are back, obviously, but neither of you are staying here all this long because you are both, coincidentally and for different reasons, going to Oxford, which is delightful. Phil, why are you going there?
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Well, I'm going to Oxford because a very close relative of mine who is younger than me, you may be divine, who I mean by that, is at university there. And so that needs a certain amount of dad lifting because they don't have lockers. So you have to carry the stuff backwards and forwards every eight weeks.
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Why do they not have lockers? Surely somebody should have thought of this by now. Oxford University's been there for about 1 billion years.
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B
Well, curiously, when I was there, they did have lockers in my particular college. This feels quite granular, but I think the reason is basically to save space to hire out. But you'll have to ask them.
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It's not some sort of like Spartan improving ritual, this idea that lockers are for the weak.
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B
No, this college is a much more recent college than that.
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Okay. Well, I mean, not wishing to sound like a University of Sydney dropout with a massive chip on his shoulder, but if they can't figure out like the utility of lockers, they can't be all that bright.
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B
You may say that I could not possibly comment.
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Patty, you are going to Oxford for different reasons?
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C
Completely different reasons. Yes. Actually, we're having our annual New York Times foreign correspondence get together shebang, where we talk about what's happening in the world and kind of plot out coverage for the following year. But of course, having been through this exercise before, in fact, my first year that I had come here, we came, we had this week long meeting, talked about Penn, everyone did these long story lists of things that we had intended to do. And then two weeks later, Russia invaded Ukraine and everything we did just went in the garbage and, you know, took it from there.
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So how much of the real value of an event like this is not so much the actual formal events, the panels, discussions, et cetera, but everybody getting drunk after hours and complaining about their editors?
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C
Oh, well, you know, that actually goes on all year round. So just to be clear, we don't save that up for a one time a year occurrence. But the most valuable part is because it's correspondents from regions all over who this is probably the only time I get to see them and sometimes the only time their editors actually get to see them in person. So, yeah, that's definitely the highlight.
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Well, we will start tonight in Iran, where widespread protests are ongoing so far as it is possible to tell, and where US President Donald Trump is continuing to threaten to intervene, as is difficult to miss. Within the last few hours, it has been reported that the the US has withdrawn some personnel from the Al Udeid Air base in Qatar as a precautionary measure. Your reminder that the same facility was the target of a choreographed and telegraphed and largely ineffectual Iranian attack last year in order to conclude the 12 day war in a fashion that allowed Tehran to claim a draw. President Trump has also announced that such contacts as existed between US and Iranian officials have been suspended. Patty, always a difficult question to answer, so apologies in advance, but is it clear why Trump has a B in his bonnet about Iran in particular? He has become weirdly obsessed with it in recent weeks.
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C
I mean, it's interesting. That's exactly the question that I have been asking and discussing with my colleagues because it isn't clear. And certainly, you know, on the one hand, we have, you know, a lot of very aggressive American action, you know, in Venezuela and other places. This is at the same time parallel to that, though, you also have this recent national security document that came out basically outlining what the administration's national security policy is. And it very distinctly says, you know, we're not getting involved in nation building, we're not getting involved in domestic politics. So there's a couple of, you know, potential arguments. I mean, one is kind of, hey, can we take out, you know, one of the kind of bad actor regimes that's going on. Clearly the US Collaborated with Israel in terms of trying attempting to take out the nuclear reactor a few months ago. So, you know, I think it's a lot of, you know, also Trump looking, you know, he's kind of on this ride now, on this high of kind of throwing his weight around. And I think this is part of it.
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Because there is a way, Phil, that you can intervene in foreign countries without embarking upon great long term and expensive nation building processes. And we've seen Trump remind us of that, not just in recent weeks with the kidnapping of President Maduro of Venezuela or that peculiar sequence of strikes on alleged Islamic State targets in Nigeria on Boxing Day. Would intervening in Iran be in keeping with that strategy of short, sharp shocks and a reminder that it's a little over six years since Trump in his first term ordered the killing of Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in a drone strike. And again, there wasn't that much follow up to that. It was just, you know, one quick hit and let's see where the pieces land.
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B
Yes, I mean, I think if he was to hit the Supreme Leader, that's going to have a rather different reaction. But I mean, you know, the, the history of this obviously takes us back to 1953 when the CIA, along with MI6, is involved in overthrowing the Mossadegh regime. Now, that starts in a more. It's a very different policy that they're intervening in, but that starts in a much more sort of stealthy way. It obviously becomes pretty overt when Mossadegh is overthrown. But presumably the CIA has been obviously not party to precisely what they're doing in Iran, but they will have been, I'm sure, playing some sort of role in this kind of vein. But the difficulty of carrying that through to anything that looks like regime change is pretty obvious.
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I mean, just to follow that up, Phil, the overthrow of Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, I mean, I think it's generally regarded now that we know of the seven decades of consequences since as one of the 20th century's great terrible ideas.
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B
Yes, it wasn't a totally ideal plan. And I mean, the other thing from the 1950s, though, that this reminds me of is what happens in Hungary, because there is this extraordinary radio broadcast at the very end of the Hungarian revolution which basically ends. Help. Help Hungary, Help. And that's after Voice of America and so on have been encouraging people to rise up for the best of reasons. It was a horrific regime, the Hungarian regime. But when Trump says we are going to help you literally using that word help. And then when he's asked what the help is, he's a bit vague. It does take you back to that crunch moment in October 1956 when America has to decide, is it going to basically risk nuclear war by intervening to save the Hungarian rebels or is it going to let them die? And, you know, that's the decision that they're heading towards now.
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Well, I think there's similar parallels as well, Patty, with Iraq circa 1991, when the Kurds of Iraq and the Marsh Arabs in the south of the country were encouraged to revolt against Saddam Hussein in the expectation that the United States would ride to their rescue. And then the United States rather conspicuously did not. But in this particular instance, have we reached a point at which, because I think we got to this point with Venezuela, that this buildup had been going on for so long in the waters of the Caribbean that the United States would have ended up looking somewhat silly if it didn't do something? And given Trump's sort of build up, are we in the same place, is he kind of almost obliged to take some sort of action just because he'll look daft if he doesn't?
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C
Well, but what action are we talking about and what's the end game? I mean, you know, even if you go back to the revolution that brought in the Ayatollah Ayatollah Khomeini back in 1979, there was a clear opposition, internal opposition that was headed by the mullahs against the Shah at that time. But, you know, it's unclear. I mean, this is, you know, these protests or street protests starts about because of just crushing economic conditions that have continued because of American led sanctions on the Iranian regime. But I mean, this is life or death for the regime. I mean, you know, the Khamenei is not going to step down, the guard is not going to suddenly give up power. I mean, so what happens next if there's bombing or what? It's unclear, you know, which I think is the case with a lot of Trump's policy is like, okay, well what happens next? And that is not really thought through.
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I guess Trump's argument or the, the implicit argument against that is that when the United States, Phil, has embarked on great nation building exercises in recent years with some semblance of a plan, the actuality has rarely matched the descriptions in the brochure. Is it by definition irresponsible, if that's what Trump is thinking? Well, if maybe we send up the planes, whack a few regime targets. This sort of helps the process along. We don't really know what happens next, but it's not actually our problem.
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B
I mean, I think if the regime stays in power, then that's not going to help the protesters all that much. I mean, what we're talking about by the sounds of it to me, is are they going to try to kind of effectively decapitate the leadership or not? Now, what they did in Venezuela was effectively made a deal with somebody who could step in at least to some degree, hold the line. I mean, whether there's anybody in the Iranian regime who could possibly do that in a deal with the Americans, I would be extremely doubtful given the nature of that regime. And so what do you have after? I mean, you have the talk about the shah son and Iranian population very famously is very young who don't remember the period of the Shah, which wasn't all that great either, talking about bringing him back. I mean, what you would hope would.
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Happen, he's just a made up figure.
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Well, right, exactly. He's been in America for decades. So what you would hope would happen is some charismatic youthful leader would emerge from this young generation which has been so horribly oppressed by this regime for so long. But the chances of that happening when you've got an Internet blackout and in the current sort of massive crackdown seems extremely difficult to see how it resolves.
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Well, staying in the United states, Vice President J.D. vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were today hosting the foreign ministers of Denmark and Greenland, respectively, Lars Locharrasmussen and Vivian Motzfeldt, for what is unlikely to have been a noteworthy jovial get together. At issue, the discussing of the apparently inextinguishable insistence of US President Donald Trump that Greenland should become part of the US despite the demonstrable lack of interest among actual Greenlanders in this proposition. Though the governments of Denmark and Greenland have had their differences over Greenland status, both have reiterated that it is not for sale or for ceding. Denmark has accordingly begun sending troops to Greenland with the expectation that NATO allies will also contribute to an increased presence. Patty, first of all, again, this is clearly one of Trump's obsessions of late. It doesn't go back quite as far as windmills and shower pressure, but it's getting there. Do we get the same sense, though, that part of the reason for this meeting at which Trump has not been present is for Vance and Rubio, and this is possibly optimistic of me, to try and reassure their guests that, look, obviously this is insane, we know it's insane, but we kind of have to go along with it.
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I mean, honestly, I feel like I'm so often kind of befuddled as to give an answer here in terms of trying to get into the rationale or the thinking of the president, which, you know, I think oftentimes defies kind of rationality. I mean, if had to ask me what my gut feeling is in terms of the motivation, I think it's a kind of almost boasting rights, self aggrandizement for a man who clearly wants to put his mark on history. You know, whether it's getting the Nobel Prize or redoing the redesigning the White House or creating a doctrine after himself, the Don Row doctrine in Latin America. And he talked about in a way that you have not heard any American president really in the 20th century talk about expansionism, territorial expansionism for the United States. It's been a while going back to State of the Union and Greenland would be the largest acquisition since the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. So I think it's almost like, hey, naming rights, boasting rights. Because the reality is, as many others have pointed out, the treaty that was basically struck in the 1940s during World War II pretty much gives the US carte blanche to put the military facilities wants to in Greenland. And I think the real question is whether, you know, NATO is going to step up and do something. I mean, Sweden apparently has sent troops to Greenland. France has talked about opening now a consulate there and has said, but I think as been in many cases before, European leaders are kind of on this eggshells. Right? Do we take them seriously? We don't want to, you know, kind of poke the bear and maybe it'll just go. And sometimes, I mean, this is the thing. It's like you were saying, the stuff is so crazy, we don't really mean it. Except sometimes he does.
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These are the dilemmas which will be confronting the leadership of Denmark and Greenland. Phil, they've obviously sent a signal with this troop deployment to Greenland. But is there an argument of, I guess, adding to that a little bit? Should they make it explicitly clear that those troops are under orders to defend Greenland? Should the United States States tried to take it by force?
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I mean, I think they may need to, but I don't think doing that a priori was necessarily the best strategy. I mean, it is a balancing act. It is walking on eggshells. Go on.
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C
No, I was just gonna say, I mean, ostensibly you could have. I think one argument actually was for Denmark's buildup of military force was actually to appease Trump in the sense of him saying, you guys are not defending it. You know, Chinese and Russian boats, which is not true, are surrounding it. And so. So on the one hand, Denmark could say, like, well, here, look, we are military. If you're worried we're not militarily defending Greenland, here we are.
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B
Which is Trump's least worst argument. Right. Of course, that the Europeans have hitched a free ride for 80 years, which is fair enough. But the China thing points us something quite interesting, I think, because if you look at what happens with, and stay with me, this link works. If you look at what happens with the tech companies when they're challenged on regulation, they will always say, you can't stop us because China will beat us. That argument is a very Silicon Valley argument. And if you look at some of the stuff that's circling around, the more sort of geopolitically imaginative, let's say, corners of Silicon Valley. There's a brilliant journalist at the Bucks County Beacon in Pennsylvania who reports on this all the time, and great authority on Bluesky. But one of the arguments they're constantly talking about is this idea of creating these things called charter cities, freedom cities. And there is talk of a sort of neo feudal tech city being built on the Greenland coast. There is this clear sort of ravenous appetite in certain wealthy minds in Californ to look at spots on the map that you could go and do the kind of expansionism you're talking about. But it's a very strange project to have found its way to the presidency. But of course, as we know, Donald Trump is not a million miles from the tech barons in terms of funding, in terms of crypto, in terms of J.D. vance himself.
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But could Denmark and possibly its allies, Patti, call Trump's bluff here? Because if they do send these forces with either an implicit or explicit suggestion that their job is to defend Greenland from the United States if it comes to it. And granted, we've talked so many times about where the limits of Trump's base's enthusiasm for his obsessions might be. But would even the MAGA headbangers be able to entirely cope with the optics of Danish, French and perhaps British troops killed by Americans fighting over Greenland.
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I mean, it's really, you know, I know you kind of, in scenarios, you have to kind of think through, well, what would happen. It's really almost impossible for me to picture that coming to pass to me, the, you know, but if there is, let's say, short of actual military intervention. But if Trump keeps pushing this, I Mean is basically this the breaking point for NATO? Are all is, you know, I mean it would all of the NATO countries basically, right? I mean or are they going to say like ah, who gives a shit about Greenland? You know we really care about Russia and we rather you know, Poland and, and Lithuania and Latvia and other countries is that really what they care more about? So I think that's really the question. To me it's kind of the political question. I mean by definition it would seem to be the end of NATO but.
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B
The United States would have to declare war on itself according to the treaty. So fairly untenable position.
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I have had a look at the treaty Article 5 is frankly hazy on what happens if one member of the alliance invokes it against another because nobody.
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Had ever envisaged that that was actually could happen.
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Well the whole point of NATO was to keep America. It was Ernie Bevin's role in the genesis of it, right, to keep America involved in Europe so it doesn't disappear off into isolationist madness.
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Well here in London meanwhile, approval is expected early next week for a vast new embassy for the People's Republic of China. The complex will consume some 20,000 square metres of prime real estate adjacent to the Tower of London, a considerable upscaling from China's present townhouse on Portland Place. Considerable disc disquiet has been expressed about the proposal, not least from a cross party cohort of MPs unconvinced of the wisdom rather of ceding such a chunk of the UK's capital to a country whose concern for Britain's best interests cannot be assumed, still less the degree to which such a leviathan would not be used as a base for pestering London's considerable populations of Hong Kongers, Uyghurs, Tibetans, Taiwanese and indeed Chinese. Phil, this would be the biggest embassy in Europe operated by any country. Is it clear why China thinks it needs all this space?
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B
No, not to me. But the thing that strikes me about this is the massive irony that this is the Chinese state, which we read about in Dan Wang's breakneck as being this super efficient entity that builds things very quickly coming up against the British.
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Planning system which is immovable force meet right or unstoppable force meet immovable object indeed.
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B
I think there's an announcement today, yesterday that the train line from Liverpool to Manchester, which was first mooted in about 17th century century, you know, maybe finished when I, you know, if I'm, if I live forever, you know, when I'm about 350 so you know, the idea that they've been delayed since 2018, which is regarded as this sort of politicized horror on the part of Beijing, mate, welcome to London.
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There is a policy, though China does seem to have Patty, of just building obnoxiously large embassies. I remember years ago in Cape Verde visiting the Chinese Embassy in prior, which I think was the second biggest building in the city. This absolutely like, enormous, unmissable thing in the heart of downtown, and asking the ambassador, sorry, how big is your staff? And he said something like 12. All of whom basically had a floor each. I mean, how much of it is the cosmetics? It's like, here we are.
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C
I mean, I don't really know that. I guess my question is, in terms of opposition, is it so much to the size of it and, you know, the critics have said it's going to be this kind of nest of spies, or is it really more fears about the actual infrastructure and its proximity to important cable lines or whatever that people that critics fear would be susceptible to Chinese intelligence and infiltration? And so those seem to me kind of two different points. And the size of the embassy in one sense to me seems much less important than the. Then the question of does this in some way give the Chinese a kind of step in. In terms of surveillance of British intelligence or communications or whatever?
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I mean. I mean, it's obviously going to be a nest of spies, Phil. It's an embassy. I mean, that's basically at least part of what they do. This line which some people, as Paddy points out, have raised. There's this idea that there's going to be a concealed chamber which is somewhere near ca, which carry data in and out of the city of London. Does this sound to you like plausible grounds for concern? I'm not really sure anymore that that is how data is harvested.
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In terms of the techniques, I don't know the answer. But in terms of the sort of level of concern, I mean, you know, it's not the first time spies have dug tunnels to get. To get data, I guess. I mean, Berlin and so on. Bromwell Maddox of Chatham House, who will know these, the Internet says far better than me, has said that she would be much less concerned about the cables than she would be about the people in the building and what they're doing. I mean, you do have this set of. I think it's over rooms in the basement with extractor fans. The idea being this is presumably going to set up sort of data centers or whatever to suck data out of the cable. I mean, I don't know whether that's practical or not. I would be slightly skeptical. But I do think, to be more sort of serious about it that the, from the point of view of Chinese distance and all the minority nationalities that you listed and Taiwanese people and Hong Kongers, I do think the idea of this presence in the middle of our capital is something that we should, you know, empathize with them in taking very seriously. I mean, we had a case in the consulate in Manchester about four years ago of, you know, a dissident being basically dragged onto the consulate grounds and beaten up. This is not something that we should be in any way relaxed about.
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I mean, would there be costs, really, Patty, just telling China, no, you can't. Especially if, as Phil suggests, that could be occluded behind a certain amount of like, come on, this is the United Kingdom. You can't build anything here famously. I mean, we can't even, even refurbish our own Parliament House.
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C
Yes. You know, it's all kind of this dance in terms of what else. If you deny China this, what else could it. How would it retaliate in ways perhaps that are unconnected? So just to use another example, certainly when it came to kind of trade issues earlier this year, China withheld critical minerals that kind of paralyzed the automobile industry in Europe for a while. And so there are obviously cards that China has that it could play. But whether this is something to go to the mat over, I don't know. I mean, they already, right. They already bought the spot for like 300 the land for like $300 million back in 2018.
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B
And certainly the critical minerals thing is also another reason Trump talks about Greenland, right?
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C
Yes, absolutely. Maybe China should build the embassy in green. You know, that would just solve the problem.
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A
There we go. But to the question now of credit, where it is due in broadcasting, listeners who stick with the Monocle daily right through to the end, and why would you not, etc. Will know that each show closes with an acknowledgement of the show's producers, researchers and studio engineers. And properly so as without them, this would just be a guy muttering to himself in a dark room. And I do enough of that at home. However, modern streaming services offer us the option of skipping the end credits to television programs, perhaps ensuring audience retention, but depriving the creators of due recognition. And Phil, this is where we do some seamless cross promotional pluggery. You have written about exactly this for the Monocle website, in fact. So what is your basic problem with the end credits being ended?
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B
Well, it's Partly, I think, because I was a radio producer myself for 20 years and I did get a little tiny credit at the end. But very often the person who got the credit was, and I'm sure in this case it would be entirely proper, the person who was sometimes reading out a script that I had, you know, researched, gone to the library, written up myself, and they would get the credit.
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But to be clear, you're not bitter.
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B
About this in any way. You're talking like I've emancipated myself from it now after. No, but I do think that there's a couple of things. I do think that giving people due acknowledgement for their work and just noticing that that work exists. I'm not suggesting people should sit there and earnestly take notes of all the credits. Just notice that people did the work. It's also how we think about, about, you know, how the world functions. That actually it's not just the people on screen, it's the stuff behind and what goes on behind the scenes. It's not generally a shadowy cabar rubbing their hands and plotting to take over the world. It's for hard working people trying to get a problem fixed. I also think there's something about the sense of an ending. There's something about. I mean, Mad Men was. I mentioned it in the piece. Mad Men was wonderful at this. Matt Weiner would choose songs to go at the end of episodes, which just work beautifully for you to just take a second and just absorb what you just watched. Partly the show was so subtextual and complex, you kind of had to. And then watch it again. But just having that sense of an ending, rather than hurry on to the next thing, hurry on to the next thing, you know. The other thing it points me to is the way that optimization is so kind of embedded in our lives now. The idea that if you can just design a system to work perfectly for one variable, in this case keep the eyeballs on the screen, everything else can just fall by the wayside. And I think we should be a little bit more aware of that as a kind of basic part of the wiring that we're presented with all the time.
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A
Patty, are you an end credits watcher?
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C
I'm sometimes an end credit watcher. But I wanted to pick up on two things that you said. So one has to do with transparency. And it's interesting to me. I've been at the New York Times for more than 25 years and have gone through several iterations of what the standards were. And there was a time for many decades where there was an emphasis to only have one byline on a story. If you had two people, you really had to make the case. And three was kind of unheard of. And then there were several incidents, one terrible one, involving the New York Times of a reporter that had made up stories. And it became this issue of transparency, who is really responsible? And so we've now gone the other way, which is not only every single person is listed on the byline who has written the story, but then at the end it will also say, you know, this person from Bangkok and that person from Hungary and that person, you know, from India contributed to this story. And the idea part of it is like, particularly at a time when trust in the media is low, it's like showing you again the behind the scenes. This is how the news, it's made. You know, we're there. And part of it is to say we're there on the ground. This is where we're getting the information from. And these are the people there who know it. And you can look up their background and see what they know. The second point, I guess is maybe a more almost, I don't know, existential issue is we're moving into this transformational period of AI and artificial intelligence. And it seems to me human creativity and human creation is being devalued more and more in terms of what we can produce. And so the fact that, that the hands behind that there's actual, as you were saying, human beings who are creating something. And it's a good reminder of that and that perhaps we should value something that is created by a breathing, living, thinking person as opposed to something that can pop out of an algorithm or some artificial intelligence technology?
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A
I could scarcely agree with all of that any more than I do. But that question of a accountability. Phil, is there also an element whereby not just end credits, but credits on anything become more important the more that the news agenda is driven by accounts on social media platforms which are often not merely unaccountable, but just completely anonymous. And yet they are given extraordinary prominence by proprietors, one in particular. And you, you have absolutely no idea where any of this is coming from. Whereas in what is sneeringly referred to as legacy journalism, it is accountable because someone does have their name on it.
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B
I think it's a win win. Right. You get both to do the transparency that you were talking about, Patti, but also, you know, the media environment for young journalists, especially because of AI, but for all sorts of other reasons as well. Everybody here is very well aware of, you know, is very precarious. If you're a young journalist, it is hard and having your name on your work helps and I think that's good. And it's completely cost free. Why not do it?
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Phil Tinline and Paddy Cohen, thank you both for joining us. Finally, on today's show, our weekly on this Day historical series. Actually, I think it's fortnightly, but whatever, maybe it should be weekly. I'm going to ask someone about that reminds us that when it comes to leaving a position of absolute power, timing is everything. It is not easy recognising the precise point at which one's welcome has been overstated. It is even harder if one is in a situation one finds agreeable, the guest room of a fortunate friend with ocean views or a professional sinecure which delivers a reasonable living and the respect, grudging or otherwise, of some wider world. But knowing when to quit is a valuable skill and in no walk of life more valuable than that of the tyrant. Tyrant has less reason than most of us for wanting to hang it up. Tyranny, if one is not ethically tormented by the idea of ruling by fear, is a pretty sweet gig. Palace limousine with flags on the bonnet, posters of your beaming visage upholstering the capital city open ended remit to wreak vengeance upon one's enemies. Salary constrained only by the limits of what you can filch from the state treasure. Your cowed and obedient people may even put your picture on postage stamps and banknotes. However, history is littered and lamp posts adorned with dictators who neglected to get while the going was still good. Among those who learned this lesson the hard way, Italian despot Benito Mussolini, Bombastic Mussolini, the sawdust Caesar comes to his.
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B
End in the gutter, fitting climax to.
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A
A life of treachery and double cross. Romanian autocrat Nicolae Ceausescu, the deposed Romanian.
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B
Leader, President Ceausescu and his wife have been executed. State television tonight announced. A military tribunal found them guilty of genocide and undermining the national economy.
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A
King Louis XVI of France and Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, who was born in the Schonbrunn palace in Vienna in 1832, son of a Habsburg archduke and died 34 eventful years later in front of a firing squad in Kerataro City. The second of two emperors of Mexico to date to have met with such a fate. Which may explain why nobody has seemed much interested in applying for the position since. But pretty much every unhorsed dictator who has ended up in front of a barracks wall or move, mounting knees, a tremble, a scaffold or consigned to the clink, has reached that unhappy past because they misjudged the opportunity to scarper. On this day 15 years ago, just such a dilemma faced President Zin El Abedin Ben Ali of Tunisia. Ben Ali was a former soldier, diplomat and spook who'd been appointed prime minister in October 1987 by 80 something former President Habib Boguiba, who by then had been running the country for 30 years. Ben Ali wasted little time in knifing his elderly patron. He had barely been in the Prime Minister's long enough to figure out how to get an outside line when he contrived to have Bourguiba declared incompetent. Not altogether inaccurately, in fairness, Ben Ali was installed as president in his stead. Around 23 years years later, on December 17, 2010, a young fruit seller named Mohamed Bouazizi set himself alight in the town of Zidi Bou Zid in protest against the corruption of local police. Rarely has the action of a hitherto anonymous citizen had such seismic consequences. Bouazizi's sacrifice inspired a wave of revolutions which consumed not only Tunisia, but much of the Middle East.
- [35:39]
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East.
- [35:39]
A
It would become known with what would prove misplaced optimism as the Arab Spring. But on the afternoon of January 14, 2011, Ben Ali was not thinking that far ahead. It was decision time. The night before, Ben Ali had made a televised address to an increasingly restive nation promising to do better accountability, prosperity, liberty and so forth, and to not seek re election. I'm speaking that everyone understands. I'm speaking to you because the situation needs radical change. Yes, a radical change. I've understood your message. It was probably worth a try. But it only convinced the demonstrators already thronging the streets of Tunisia cities that Ben Ali was on the ropes. Government buildings and police stations were besieged and or ransacked, as were the homes of Ben Ali's extended forces family. Sensing that he had lost control of the country and fearing that the same could be said of factions of Tunisia's military, Ben Ali decided that the moment had arrived. The nine car presidential convoy bolted for the military airfield at El Oina, where Tunisia's presidential Boeing 737 was ready for takeoff. At around 6pm Ben Ali, his wife, two of their children, their future son in law, a pair of Filipino nannies and a butler decamped Tujeddah. Ben Ali never returned to Tunisia, not least because a Tunisian court sentenced him and his wife to 35 years each on a variety of picturesque corruption charges. He died in Jeddah in 2019, aged 83. He always insisted that he never intended his departure from Tunisia to be permanent and that the plan was to return to continue ruling once tensions had appeared debated. Recordings of calls he made during the fateful flight seem to bear this out, even if his interlocutors may have believed on the quiet that he was kidding himself. On arrival in Saudi Arabia, however, Ben Ali was reminded that even if you do time your run with sufficient acuity that you escape with your life, dictatorship is is an all or nothing business. A couple of hours after landing in Jeddah, the aircraft's pilot, Mahmoud Chakruroo, decided, as many of his fellow Tunisians clearly had, that the jig was up. He called his boss at Tunisair and asked if he could bring the plane back without its recently mighty passenger and duly received permission to abandon his head of state. Shakuru later said he regarded Ben Ali as akin to a captain who had abandoned his vessel. In the melancholy twilight of exile, Ben Ali might have reflected that this was at least preferable to going down with the ship. And these are the end credits. Pay attention. That's all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Paddy Cohen and Phil Tinline. The show was produced by Monica Lillis and researched by Anna Lang East Maynard. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
- [39:29]
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Sam.