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The Monocle Daily
With promises of a short war, how likely is a quick collapse or popular uprising in Iran?
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You're listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on the 10th of March, 2026 on Monaco Radio.
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The United States continues to furnish varying estimates of the length of and reasons for its war with Iran. Colombia elects a new parliament before it elects a new president. And all aboard for Pyongyang on a service where you really don't want to push your luck with the ticket inspectors. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle DAILY starts.
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Foreign.
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Welcome to the Monocle Daily, coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. My guests Tina Fordham and Oscar Guardiola Rivera will discuss the day's big stories. And we'll hear from storytelling guru John Yorke about his long awaited sequel to into the woods, which has become a standard manual for writers of all kinds. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I am joined today by Tina Fordham, geopolitical strategist and founder of Fordham Global Insights, and Oscar Guardiola Rivera, professor in International law and International affairs at Birkbeck College. Hello to you both. Hello. Great to be here. Well, steady on, Tina. First of all, you have both recently been to York and I believe are writing a book. Are those two things related?
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Not in the slightest. But given that, Sorry. Yeah, so no, York was a little celebration after submitting the first draft of my manuscript.
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B
And can you tell us yet what the book will actually be about or is it a closely guarded secret?
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It is not a closely guarded secret. I'm telling everyone, as any author, especially first time author, would do. It's called Mad World A Geostrategy Survival Guide for Leaders. And the title comes from, first of all, the Tears for Fears song, which I'm very fond of, but also because for the last 27 years that I've been advising investors and business leaders about geopolitics. Every time I walk into a room, what is said to me is something like the world's gone mad. You must be busy. But the last year that has been more true than ever.
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And Oscar to bring you in. As we often say on this program, one of the few regrets I have that we do not have a camera in the studio is that listeners cannot be treated to your ensemble. Although indeed you both look spectacular.
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Tina looks fantastic.
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Indeed so. But Oscar, please, if you can even
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try, describe, okay, I'm wearing a jacket, you know, with handbroidered by Navajo kinship all the way back in near Tempe in Arizona.
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I mean, and you're offsetting that with tartan trousers. Is that the Guadiola Rivera tartan you're wearing?
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Absolutely, yes.
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But it's got a wonderfully kind of, you know, rock and roll, rockabilly meets Sid Vicious.
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Well, going on. You mentioned Tears for Fears. I'm going in the harder direction, let's say.
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I'm extremely envious of Oscar, while somewhat uncertain as to whether I could carry off these sort of war bonnet embroidery there.
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Well, I'm trying to appear a very serious international law person.
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Yes, obviously.
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I think you should post a link to the reservations online shop because personally.
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Oh, they're amazing.
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I'd order it straight away.
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Well, we will start with Iran, the war therein and recent messaging by the United States thereon, which has been somewhat contradictory, either as, take your pick, a cunning and subtle psychological ploy intended to discombobulate the enemy or a symptom of the fact that nobody responsible for this undertaking is entirely clear on what they're doing. Last night, US President Donald Trump, possibly with an eye on the stock ticker, said the war was complete, pretty much. Whereas today, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, eager as always to play worse cop to Trump's bad cop, menaced that today would be the most intense day of airstrikes yet. Oscar Trump's statement last night, was he possibly testing reactions to bailing out on this and giving up and going home?
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Oh, yeah, he's moonwalking out of Iran with the oil barrel hitting, you know, first 120, 150, then going down to 80. Look, it was already bad for him when the barrel was $50. That was back when he attacked Venezuela. And a lot of people thought that part of the intention was to reopen the flow of oil into the US So that the prices will drop. Well, now they went up. Not very good if you have elections coming in November. And as you pointed out, yes, discombobulated. That's the word. We're all discombobulated and hexed. Worst cup routine does not make for our confusion. They have no aim. They did not have a name. They did not have an objective. As Gideon Rachmann put it in the Financial Times, operation Epic Fury is beginning to look like epic failure. So they're getting the hell out of there.
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Tina, the markets are up a bit today and the oil prices are down, as Oscar points out, and they're down a bit in the last hour or so, as apparently a US Navy ship has successfully escorted a tanker through the Strait of Hormuz but is that basically all Trump wanted with yesterday's statement?
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So, listen, Trump loves to be able to show that he can move the market. And markets are very much primed for what is known as taco. Trump always chickens out. So the Trump taco trade, as it is called, was confirmed in that respect. But as you put it, and I have to say I too have been using the expression bad cop and worse cop with regard to Trump. And Hegseth, you know, hegseth just keeps piling on the pressure. And indeed, today was the most intense day of attacks. And yet markets, at least oil markets, took some comfort in the fact that they think it's going to be a short operation. But if I can say Trump doesn't hold all the cards here, and this is something that I think oil traders are underpricing, Iran has real cards to play.
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Well, yes, the enemy gets a vote, as somebody once said. On that thought, Oscar, do we suspect to the extent that there was a kind of plan in play here? They were rather banking that by now the regime would have imploded and the people would have risen up.
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I have the peculiar suspicion that Trump liked what happened in Venezuela and thought he could pull it off again and found out that strategists do say a plan or in this case, lack thereof, does not survive first contact with the enemy. Indeed, the enemy had cards to play, still has cards to play, and that has produced the taco effect that we heard before.
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Tina, to understate the case wildly, Iran and Venezuela extremely different places. Were they perhaps did Trump, who obviously personalizes everything himself and I think saw perhaps some sort of kindred spirit, not unreasonably, in Nicolas Maduro, who had attempt, attempted very much to personalize the regime himself. Did he make a mistake in thinking that Iran was the same sort of setup? We take out one man and perhaps a chunk of his family, and we solve the problem.
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So in political science terms, there are personalist regimes. Chavez, Maduro's predecessor, very much personified that Putin is also heading a personalist regime. But if you take China, for example, and Iran, you may have autocratic regimes, and they're not democracies, although Iran does hold elections. The difference being that that decapitation strike approach, eliminating the top leadership, isn't going to produce an organic grassroots revolution. And, you know, I'm sitting here with a Latin American expert. You know, we can both talk about the history of America's failed attempts at, you know, dozens of attempts, both clandestine and more overt at regime change. It rarely works. But Iran has a succession plan that's reportedly four men deep. So they're not going anywhere just yet. The Israelis, however, seem to be making it, making the conditions such that there's no one to run the country. So let's see how long Motaba Jr. You know, remains walking the earth versus receiving his heavenly reward.
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Well, on that subject, Oscar, as of this broadcast at least, the new Supreme Leader still has not verifiably been seen in public. And obviously he has his reasons for that. But is that going to be sustainable? Because at some point, serious questions are going to be asked. Is he actually still with us? And certainly if I was running information ops for either America or Israel right now, I would be massively doing my best to amplify the suggestion that we've got a bit of a Weekend at Bernie scenario going on here.
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I mean, sometimes you have to wonder if the Iranians were, you know, playing a joke on their enemies. Replace a Khamenei with a Khamenei and that would indeed, he has produced a certain. Of course we know that Khamenei has a target on his back, so he's not going to be just walking around. As for the regime's sustainability, it's a difficult question. We all know that the regime is, you know, to say that it is not popular is an understatement. Having said that, this kind of attack produces almost always the opposite effect, which is, well, we don't want. We might not like the government, but we don't want our wannabe liberators to bomb the hell out of us. And therefore, whatever strategic gain was suspected by both sides, particularly the Americans, is really not there. It's very unclear. As for the Israelis, well, they can cope with just producing chaos, but not the Americans.
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Just finally on that thought, Tina, because this is something I have been wondering about. And spoiler alert for this weekend's foreign desk. We will be getting into this further. Is it clear that the US And Israel are actually fighting the same war here? They're on the same side. But we have heard messaging from various American voices the last 48 hours, actually saying to Israel, could you please stop blowing up their energy infrastructure? They're going to need it to rebuild the country. Whereas Israel might actually prefer that Iran is not rebuilt.
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Israel's objectives are quite different from the United States. I mean, Trump likes the idea of being the hero. You know, after Venezuela, it could be Cuba, it might be Iran. And so, you know, bad guy removal efforts underway. Israel is quite happy with a scenario of Iran as a failed State and unable to, you know, project kind of damage and destruction beyond its borders. Netanyahu has been obsessed with this objective for 24 years and he's got a green light. They're going to go for it. But Trump does worry about the oil price, but as I said, he's not in control of all of the levers.
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Well, to Colombia now, which voted yesterday in a parliamentary election, obviously important in and of itself, but also keenly scrutinised ahead of the presidential election on May 31, which will choose a successor to the term limited incumbent, Gustavo Petro. Preliminary results suggest that Petro's left wing bloc did OK and are expected to be among the biggest contingents in the Chamber of Representatives and probably the biggest in the Senate. Local rune readers and beard scratchers believe that the overarching trend is one of polarisation as voter voters depart the centre ground in both directions. If that is the case, Oscar, do we see this as more a vindication or repudiation of Petro?
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It is a vindication, no question. He got more seats in the Senate from 17 to 25 and close to a majority in the lower chamber, almost 40, 42, 45, depending on where the final numbers fall. So this is very clearly a vindication of his project. His popular parody index personally is on the app. His candidate, or the leftist candidate, Ivan Cepeda, is first in pretty much all the polls. And although it is not going to be easy, it is never in Colombia. Alvaro Rivabe Velez has still plenty of popularity. This is the former president, you know, the former far right president of Colombia, who is really behind the current candidate of the right and the far right. Paloma Valencia still holds some cards, but it is very clearly a vindication of the left and it does seem as if they have momentum behind their sales. The difference between the parliamentary elections and the presidential elections is that in the former you always have a bigger abstention, close to 40, 45%. That's a lot of abstention. Whereas in the presidential elections, people do go and they vote in bigger numbers. That might make the chances of the left even better.
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Tina, is it plausible that we may have seen and may yet see again in Colombia what we might think of as the Donald Trump effect? That is a manifestation of his peculiar genius for getting left and centre left incumbents re elected?
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This is exactly what we were chatting about in the Green Room because we saw it with Mark Carney, who stood up up to Trump and got a walloping great victory.
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We saw it in Australia as well,
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in Australia and we're about to see it later this month with the Danish snap elections where Mette Fredriksen's party was trailing. So it's not, I would not read it as a vindication necessarily of anything apart from the fact that nobody likes being pushed around by Donald Trump. And so, you know, you get a positive boost in the polls and in Latin America.
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Oscar, I'm going to go ahead and take a wild guess that the thought of being pushed around by the United States displeases people more than in most places.
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It does. But it depends. I mean if you look at Argentina or Chile actually aligning with Trump does serve them very well because these countries are pretty different. Let me put it as bluntly as I can. Argentina and Chile tend to be more white oriented, pretty, pretty, you know, race conscious, let's put it that way. In places like Colombia. And you know, this is a self criticism, Latin Americans are there racist region. You have a polarization between the right wing candidate who happens to be the great granddaughter of a hacienda plantation owner who went after the indigenous peoples from whom the vice presidential partner of the leftist candidate come from. That's, you know, it's a stark, a differentiation as you can get which goes into the kind of long history of the conflict in Colombia. That's why I spoke of a vindication, because there is a longue dure dimension to the elections in Colombia. And what you're seeing in Colombia is numbers of peoples, indigenous peoples, black peoples, women and others who had been actively excluded by means of force until very recently. And that explains the re accommodation of the left in the country in a sense. This is a pretty of a pretty unique phenomenon to this country.
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Tina, given what we were talking about, the history of obviously Latin America being shoved around by the United States and recent events in Venezuela. How nervous should people in Colombia and the wider region be about recent American chat about Cuba, which they have started on even before they're finished doing whatever it is they think they're doing in Iran.
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I mean, I almost can't believe we're having this conversation, by the way. You know, the kind of instrumentalization of American power in a way that we haven't seen for a long time. And I'm old enough to remember Iran Contra and you know, Nicaragua and Ortega and all of this stuff. So Cuba is on borrowed time not only because of Donald Trump though, also because Cuba's patron Russia is not able to, you know, its security guarantee, such as it is, isn't helping. It didn't help. Venezuela isn't helping Iran not going to help Cuba. But again, you know, what's one of the common themes across our conversation? The United States underestimating the kind of blowback, the, the unintended consequences and focusing on, I mean, Donald Trump doesn't. We know he wants to win, we know he wants it to be clean and quick. In the case of Venezuela, you know, it was done at the top. Very limited loss of life from his Cuban security retinue, reportedly, which suggests there was inside cooperation. Not sure they're going to get that in Cuba.
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And yet, very briefly and very interestingly, USA Today put out this news about a potential agreement between Cuba and the US of A that allegedly is being worked out by Marco Rubio, which would,
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that would make him a hero.
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But this is the interesting thing. This would leave the Castro family inside the island, while perhaps allowing for
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the
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current President to go. But this kind of thing that looks a lot more like what happened in Venezuela is already ruffling loads of feathers among anti castrist Cubans in Miami Dade, precisely the constituency of Marco Rubio. So actually, I'm pretty certain we're going to see something very interesting in Cuba, a deal.
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Trump would love to preside over a deal. And he does worry, we know, because he says it, that he, he does worry about post Iraq, kind of the, the Ba', Athist, you know, cleansing, not leaving anything in place. So that would be very appealing to him. And you know, who wouldn't like Marco Rubio presiding over a deal like that? J.D. vance, who we have not seen. We have not seen.
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B
The little buzz has been curiously quiet to North Korea, which is once again a plausible ambition for some train travellers. The rail link between China and North Korea was a casualty of COVID 19. But six years since the last train rumbled across the Sino Korean Friendship Bridge, linking Dandong and Sinuju across the Yelu River. Service is to resume four times a week in each direction before too many listeners start packing their bags. However, for the moment at least, tickets are being sold only to Chinese people working or studying in North Korea or to that meager coterie of North Koreans permitted to venture beyond their country's borders. Oscar, if they were to broaden the ticket allocation somewhat, would you be tempted?
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The World cup is taking place in Mexico this year. I'd rather go there, but that's just my bias. I'm not sure I'm going to head on to North Korea, although I have to say, when I was reading the news, I was like that, that would, it would be interesting to go there.
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I would be fascinated to do this, Tina. I do like a slightly zany niche train trip, and this is a collector's item.
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I love train trips. But as I just said as we were discussing, my train trip was to York and to the National Railway Museum, which was full of the glories of Victorian industrialization. So that was good enough for me.
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Is this a big deal, though, Oscar, beyond the fact of the train service being renewed? I mean, the obvious hook here is the fact that it will be involving crossing the Sino Korean Friendship Bridge. Is that bridge now also metaphorically operable?
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Well, it is important only insofar as North Korea had taken a bit of a long time to reopen that route. I mean, China was ready to do some before, and as we all know, North Korea had been making certain overtures towards Russia. So to reaffirm or reassert this sort of support or entendre between North Korea and China is of some significance in the region. Other than that, yes, let's not entice our listeners to pack their bags and go there too quickly.
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B
I mean, Tina, not that the Chinese Communist Party would ever admit it in public, but surely they regard North Korea as at least as terrific a pain in the neck as everybody else does. I mean, is there any, at this point, value to North Korea existing as far as China is concerned?
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North Korea, its main importance to China is that in that it doesn't collapse and cause, you know, millions of impoverished, starving people to flood over its borders. It has been interesting that you know, normally when they want attention, they start firing ballistic missiles. So that hasn't happened. That would be the last thing that we need.
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Oscar, just finally on this one, South Korea has said we will. This is just a great, a great bit of diplomatic placeholder. We will continue to closely monitor related developments. Does that translate broadly as this is the aboriginal, absolute least we can possibly say if we have to say something?
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I think the line was great. I read it exactly like that. We have nothing to say about this. So, yes, we'll watch out.
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Well, South Korea, meanwhile, and there may be a parable here for the relative luxury engendered by capitalism has time to worry about the etiquette attending, bringing pets into cafes and restaurants. A revision to the Food Sanitation act has taken effect, which means that while it is in theory easier to take whatever the Korean equivalent of Fido is to the local diner, proof must first be provided that the creatures have been appropriately vaccinated and once inside, that they be appropriately restrained by means of cage carrier designated Space or leash harness. There have been fracas, if that is indeed the correct plural, reported over the new rules and some businesses have simply declared themselves no pet zones rather than deal with the admin and refurbishments. Tina, as a general principle are you in favor of domestic pets in eateries?
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I am not. And living in Britain and living in a very dog friendly part of London near Primrose Hill Park. I'm afraid that dogs are all around me, everywhere I dine.
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Do people bring them into cafes and restaurants?
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They do cafes and restaurants and the owners of said establishments actually seem to invite this by putting, you know, dog food bowls and water bowls out in front. It's a scandal.
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Oscar, your views on this.
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I love the fact that the butcher on my West Hampstead main street puts out a plate of water and so on and so forth. Like you, you know the pets are everywhere and I have an 11 year old daughter so I cannot say otherwise on radio that then they're lovely.
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B
But I did want to hear if there is a wider lesson, Tina, in governments just simply not thinking about how rules and regulations which may make perfect sense to them are going to be interpreted in the real world. And I speak here on behalf of the many millions of residents of these islands who will recently have received correspondence from the Inland Revenue proposing exciting new schemes for making their lives even more annoying. Do they just sort of assume that this will make as much sense to normal people as it does to the people writing the regulations?
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Well, as someone who's trained in foreign policy analysis mainly, but in policy analysis you are absolutely right that there is very little thought given to the implementation or to unintended consequences. And bureaucrats, you know, gonna bureaucrat, they love passing laws. I was thinking when you were talking about this story that South Korea also has I think the world's lowest birth rate. So I suspect that people's pets are extremely important to them. And I also recall that their last president was he not, you know, rather unceremoniously removed and put in prison. So I think the stakes are high for getting it wrong in South Korea. I think that should be rescinded.
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C
Two out of three Korean families have pets.
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B
Oh they do, they do. Well researched, well researched. But I mean just a final meditation on that exact point, Oscar. Why do governments continually fail to learn how many people either simply do not understand the rules they are proposing, will not engage with them or in many cases, you have some businesses like these many Korean cafes just say, yeah, we're just putting up no pet signs because we cannot be bothered with Any of
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this, I want to say because they don't go to the same restaurants that the rest of us do. You know, this is the obvious lesson of living in a policy bubble. I mean, how you don't consider the fact that for a restaurant to try and verify the vaccine license of a petty is a nightmare. But that's classical, that's classical bureaucracy, practice. Let me channel my inner David Graeber here. You know, these, these kinds of rules very, very often turn into dystopia.
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B
Oscar Guardiola Rivera and Tina Fordham, thank you both for joining us. Finally, on today's show, everybody enjoys hearing stories. Few are much good at telling them. A little over a decade ago, the screen rate screenwriter rather and producer John Yorke attempted to figure out which stories work and why and how. The result was into the woods, how stor and why we tell them, which has become a sort of manual for aspiring and actual storytellers. John has now written Trip to the Moon. Understanding the True power of Story. I spoke to John at Midori House earlier and began by asking whether this sequel was more about the practice than the theory.
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D
Sort of. I mean, the way I divide it myself, if into the woods is about structure, then this is about power, really. So you put the two together is what will make a perfect story. I think that was the thinking behind it.
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B
How much of a function of the structure is the power though, as. Because in this book you do go through real world examples from all sorts of fields from politics to religion to culture to elsewhere. Does it all keep returning to those principles that you explored in into the Woods?
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D
Pretty much, yes. Yeah. I mean it is. I mean the two are obviously very interlinked. But the way I divide it, you know, I think if you, if the story itself is the weapon, then the structure is the weapon delivery system and those two things together unite in perfect harmony, ideally to create a tool of great power, which you see. I mean, the reason I wanted to go into the factual world is because there's so many extraordinary examples. If you're just looking at Donald Trump, you say, why do people vote for him? There are lessons there to bring back to fiction.
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B
Well, on that subject, I did turn first to the chapter on the power of political narrative, A Face in the Crowd. And you begin that with a famous speech delivered by Ronald Reagan in 1964. This was, I guess at the outset of his venture into politics. He it's his a time for choosing speech in support of Republican candidate unsuccessful Republican candidate Barry Goldwater. But as you see it, why was that particular speech, something of a watershed in political storytelling.
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D
There's a number of reasons. It's partly subject, partly delivery, partly the way he delivered it. I mean, the subject, basically what I'm arguing in the book is this is the birth of neoliberalism. This is the moment where the first person able to articulate the principles that government is the enemy takes the national stage. And he's doing it in support of Barry Goldwater. And Goldwater is notoriously unsuccessful. But it is at that moment that the nabobs in the Republican Party look down and go, we have our man. This is the next President of the United States. And at that point, it seems almost impossible because Lyndon Johnson has just been elected on, I think, the biggest majority in US history. Everyone is saying the Republican, Republican Party is dead. Yet I think you can trace from Reagan's words, you know, a very clear path all the way through to his election 12 years later.
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B
Because what's interesting, I guess, in the current context is as you point out, what Reagan was saying. We've heard any number of variations on the theme, and it is always the we are under siege, our way of life is threatened, it's them against us. And obviously this was phrased rather more genially and eloquently by Reagan than by many since. But why do you think that still works, the underdog shtick, even when it is troweled on by literally the most powerful individual on earth, as we see day in, day out? Because this is Trump's whole thing. I am persecuted, they're all out to get me, woe is me, et cetera. Why do people believe it?
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D
Never underestimate the desire to blame somebody else for your own problems, as my wife will tell me. So I think that's you universal. And particularly in times of hardship, times of stress, when international or local situations seem impossible to navigate, you just seek a scapegoat. And I think that's universal throughout history. But what's interesting about Reagan was the way he did it, but also his personality, the way he allowed it to sort of lock into first a very small section of people, but then the way he allowed it to grow. Because he was an immensely appealing character and he was immensely non threatening to a large amount of people. You know, he's that thing of, when you hear him, he's very folksy, he's very genial, but there's a rib of steel there as well. And that combination, that ability to say, I'm like you, I like you, or I was a Democrat, you know, he's holding people's hands and saying, I'm your friend, I'm not here to threaten you. I'm not here to tell you you're wrong. I'm here to hold you hand and take you on a journey towards the light.
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B
But have we learned since, and not just in politics, but other contexts, and this may perhaps be a function of the times, who knows that a pessimistic story is more powerful than an optimistic one? Because Reagan always presented as an optimist. It's morning again in America, light on the Hill, etc. Trump's whole thing, and that of conservative nationalist populists all over the world of the last century or so has been we're all done, doomed.
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D
There's an argument for that, but I think even with Trump, the message is drain the swamp. It's Make America great again. So you infer from that.
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B
There's a call to action.
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D
There's a call to action. And it's a really interesting parallel with the weak. Keir Starmer got into power in the uk, he made a speech and the speech was, everything's going to be terrible. And at that moment I just thought, it's all over. What you have to do is say, look, everything is going to be terrible for a real reason. And if you follow me, I will lead you through that horror to broad, sunlit up plans. Once again. The most important part of the Labour Party narrative is entirely missing, you know, and that means you just hate him.
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B
There's an interesting digression attached to this in the book where you do kind of point out that a slogan can still be a story short though it is. The exemplar you advance is labor in 1945, in this case, country under Clement Attlee. Now Win the Peace, which is a fantastic piece of copywriting, as is Make America Great Again, or indeed Take back control. Is there a thing whereby maybe parties of the left and center left tend not to be as good at writing slogans? And I realized I've just described Clement Attlee, but I'm talking about in the more modern context because you do compare and contrast Make America Great Again with whatever Hillary Clinton's was. I was just gonna say so hopelessly woolly, though. I reread that chapter again this morning. I'd forgotten it.
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D
No, I think there's a truth to that. I think labor can be quite puritanical, the left can be quite puritanical. And because they're suspicious, because they see it as emotional manipulation. And of course it is emotional manipulation. That's the point, you know, you have to manipulate emotion to make a story work. A story is a unit of knowledge that requires emotion to make it really fire.
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B
That was John York speaking to me at Midori House earlier Trip to the Moon. Understanding the True Power of Story is available now. That is all for this edition of the Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Tina Fordham and Oscar Guadiola Rivera. Today's show was produced by Tom Webb and researched by Annelise Maynard. Our sound engineer was Christy O. Grady. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time tomorrow.
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C
Thanks for listening.