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- [00:04]
A
How can we make heads or tails of where the Iran war is headed and when it might end when Donald Trump changes his strategy with whiplash speed? One minute the American president says he'll drop more bombs on Iran just for fun, the next he decides to lift sanctions on Iranian oil and says that he's having productive negotiations with his enemy. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris, and you're listening to the MORNING Edition from the Age and the Sydney Morning Herald Today international and political editor Peter Harcher on whether this war will lead us all into a recession and what Trump said the other day that reveals how much political trouble he's now in. It's March 26th. Welcome back, Peter.
- [00:54]
B
It's a pleasure to be here, Samantha.
- [00:55]
A
Okay, can you just start off by I guess, getting us up to speed with how out of control this war has become since Donald Trump said that he was confident of defeating the Islamic Republic in four days, according to a recent report.
- [01:10]
B
Yes, his four day outing, which he at one point called an excursion now into its fourth week, went from being what he thought would be an easy toppling of the regime and an easy conquering of Iran, has now turned into, well, at the economic level, the greatest disruption of global oil supply that the world has seen, which is cascading through economies everywhere, pushing up prices and therefore inflation, but also leading to the concern that this burst of inflation could be followed by an economic downturn, perhaps a global recession. While in the meantime the Israelis have continued the assault, of course on Iran, but equally because Hezbollah, the Iranian sponsored terrorist militia in southern Lebanon, had started firing missiles at Israel. So Israel took the opportunity to launch a major war against Hezbollah and is now in the process of clearing about a 30 kilometre wide buffer or deep buffer zone into southern Lebanon. And almost a million people have been relocated to take them out of the, out of the fire zone. And at the same time, the Iranians struck out in what I've called a doomsday retaliatory series of strikes where they've essentially just hit everything and anything that not only belongs to Israel or bases that belong and other assets belong to the US but also at their Gulf Arab neighbors, damaging some Gulf Arab oil production in the process. And that's at the end of this conflict. The world will continue to feel the effects, largely based on whether more oil production, infrastructure is destroyed both in Iran and in the Gulf states. And what happens to the control of the Strait of Hormuz. Donald Trump has made the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, which the Iranians have closed to inflict maximum economic damage on the world as one of his primary goals. The Iranians say they're not going to relinquish that now. They're going to keep that as a permanent choke point and exercise control at their leisure. But we don't really know what Donald Trump's purpose is because it changes sometimes hourly. He started out by saying in January that he only wanted freedom for the Iranian people. And then he's escalated and de. Escalated through all sorts of. There's a columnist at the Financial Times in London, Edward Luce, who describes it as the Trump Armageddon Takeo or Taco Shuffle, meaning he shuffles between threatening Armageddon to Taco, and Taco being the acronym for Trump Always Chickens out, which was coined months ago by another FT columnist, Robert Armstrong. So in between, for example, last week on Friday at US Time, Trump said that he was going to give the Iranians 48 hours to totally open the Straits of Hormuz or they would be devastated and he would wipe out iron, obliterate all their power plants and they'd have zero electricity the very next day. The very next day, Saturday at US Time, he then announced that they were having productive talks with the Iranians and gave them five days to reach a negotiated settlement. But of course, the Iranians claim that there were no talks and still remain no talks of substance between the two countries anyway. So what is his aim and purpose in the fourth week of the war? We still don't know. And he is still trying to find a mechanism for negotiating with the Iranians and he's still trying to find, more to the point, I suppose, for the global economy. He's still trying to find a way of dealing with the oil shipment problem, something which he obviously failed to plan for. And the final thing I'd add is that while on the one hand we have this Taco attempt by Trump at negotiating, we also have another Armageddon type scenario developing, which is we have now a group of a constellation of US Forces heading towards the Middle East. We have a Marine Expeditionary force of around 3,000 US Marines being relocated from their base in Japan, as well as airborne paratroopers heading to. To the Middle East. The Pentagon says it's simply giving the Commander in Chief options for possible future developments, but we don't know. I mean, does Trump know? Lord knows. But it does create the potential that Trump could deploy those troops, most of which should be in place by the end of this week to try to remove some of the Iranian armaments, which allow them to control access to the Strait of Hormuz or perhaps to conduct other operations against the Iranians, none of which we are yet advised of.
- [06:26]
A
Wow. And so are you watching all of this and feeling as I have been, which is that this is either A, already spun out of control or B, is in danger of spinning out of control. Because we know just with regards to the escalations of what's happening in Iran, hitting the Gulf states nearby, that for instance, a Qatari facility, an energy facility, was hit recently. And they've said, well, this is gonna take three to five years to fix, you know, so is this already sort of spinning out of control? And I guess from the geopolitical perspective, but also just from the financial perspective, I know that I saw that there was this expert, Jason Bordoff, and he told the New York Times the other day, he's the founding director of the center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University. And he said, if this goes on, we haven't seen anything yet in terms of how high energy prices are going to go, even if this war goes for a few weeks longer. So are we just sort of at a tipping point of things getting really bad, both geopolitically and financially?
- [07:23]
B
It's already way out of control in the conception of Donald Trump, who as we said, thought it would be a four day bit of recreational fun for him. He has told us that he didn't expect that the Gulf states would be attacked in such a wanton way by the Iranians. Thousands of missiles and drones launched at all the major Gulf states with the UAE bearing the major brunt of. He certainly didn't expect a global oil crisis which he, together with the Iranians, of course, and the Israelis between them, have successfully engineered. That was not part of the plan, I'm sure. And this probably helps explain why Trump, between Friday last week and Saturday completely reversed his course to escalate and suddenly he's negotiating. Because it was on Friday that the US markets, not just the oil price rising, but the share market, took a tumble, taking the cumulative US share market losses to over 5% since the war began. And that seems to be a sensitive point for Trump. The 5% loss mark also triggered his withdrawal, or at least his partial mitigation amelioration of his so called Liberation Day tariffs last year. So it seems that that unplanned consequence, unintended consequence, was persuasive in moving him to de escalate, as well as the fact, of course, that a lot of American drivers will be very unhappy at paying Higher gasoline prices for sure.
- [08:59]
A
And really, this brings us to your latest piece because you have just written that, you know, finally we know that Trump doesn't. He simply doesn't know what he's doing. And I've gotta start with one sentence that you wrote that I must say, sort of made me chuckle, though this is obviously far from a laughing matter. You said Trump said he'd been surprised to learn how big Iran's navy was. Seriously, Unquote. Now, you very rarely use sarcasm, Harcher, so can I read from this that you are genuinely surprised by the level of ignorance on behalf of Donald Trump with regards to this war?
- [09:35]
B
Well, it was either evidence that he really hadn't done even the most basic homework in assessing his enemy before launching into this war, or that he was feigning indifference as if he didn't really care. Either way, it's the height of irresponsibility to launch into a major globe altering war without either doing the homework or having concern for the consequences
- [10:03]
A
after the break.
- [10:04]
B
Well, this is a redefinition of the term regime change. Of course, if it weren't so serious, it would be absolutely hilarious as maybe as a TV spoof, a satire on ignorance and willful negligence in the upper echelons of global power.
- [10:29]
A
And so walk me through the other evidence as you see it, that the most powerful leader of the free world just simply does not know what he's doing in prosecuting a war against Iran, which, of course, we know many of its predecessors wanted to do and didn't do because of what they deemed as just risks that were way too high.
- [10:49]
B
Well, I might pick you up on leader of the free world. The free world, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, no Longer includes the U.S. according to the Economist Intelligence Unit, there are only 25 full democracies left on Earth and the U.S. is not one of them. In fact, none of the international democracy indexes rate the US as being a full democracy any longer. A combination of Donald Trump's denial of an election loss, his assault on the court system, his assault on civil liberties, the ICE raids Trump sponsored, and a whole panoply his assaults on the media in the U.S. so whether he's the leader of the free world is now, I would suggest, in contention.
- [11:35]
A
Fair point. So very powerful, not necessarily upholding democracy as we know it.
- [11:43]
B
Yes, so that's right. And that again will be tested when Trump's term expires, his commitment to democracy, and we know from his own mouth that he prefers doing business with autocrats and dictators. And tyrants than to Democrats. And he's shown contempt for Democratic allies, as we know we have from a Brookings Institution fellow in the U.S. a Turkish expert, that Trump had told the Turkish government of Erdogan that they should relax, they shouldn't be anxious because the war would be over in four days. So that seems to be the mother of all miscalculation in this war that then led to other failures. For example, the failure to plan for the oil supply. There was no plan. And as we say, you know, in the fourth week of the war, he is still groping around trying to find a way to cope with the disruption to oil. He hasn't got one, and he should have thought of that.
- [12:41]
A
And we know from assessments from previous people who have worked in the defense community and in previous American administrations that this had been war planned to the hilt. Right. Like they'd all taken it as a given that this is what Iran will do, it'll close the straits, and that's why they didn't do this.
- [12:58]
B
Yes. And Trump, even if he didn't know that, even if he didn't bother to inform himself of previous planning and war gaming, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs came to him, we know from reporting in the Wall street journal, and said, Mr. President, the Iranians could close the Strait of Hormuz. We should plan for that. And he dismissed it and said, the war will be over so quickly that they won't have time. We also know that his expectation, or at least his stated expectation, that the regime could fall and he wants regime change in Tehran directly contradicted the advice he got from the US Intelligence community. We know from reporting by the Washington Post that the National Intelligence Council, the peak analytical and advisory body in the American system, had told Trump that there was little chance that an aerial bombardment of any intensity, even great intensity, would result in the regime falling. So he'd been advised that he should have anticipated the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. He'd been advised that it was unlikely that the regime would fall. And yet he waded into this war regardless, shocked that the Iranians would close the strait, shocked that the. Apparently shocked that the Iranians were launching war, which continues to this day, against Gulf states as well as Israel and US Bases. And so now overnight, I heard him saying that there was regime changed because I changed the regime. Well, this is a redefinition of the term regime change, of course. Regime change means one regime is removed and another takes power. This just, I mean, really, if it weren't so serious it would be absolutely hilarious as maybe as a TV spoof, a satire on ignorance and willful negligence in the upper echelons of global power.
- [15:00]
A
Yeah, I mean, it certainly makes my mind boggle. Which brings me to my next question, because you make the point in your piece. Great powers are prone to great delusions. So I really wanted to ask your opinion because you've been covering geopolitical struggles and megalomaniacs, it has to be said, for decades. So where does Trump sit, do you think, in comparison with other delusional leaders? Does he set a new benchmark, or is he, you know, perhaps par for the course?
- [15:27]
B
Well, as you say, I mean, I did write that, that the great powers are prone to great delusions. I also called it the Icarus syndrome. Flying too close to the sun, overestimating your own abilities and greatness, and seems to affect their brains. All that heat from flying so high. The other recent example, ongoing example we have, is Vladimir Putin, who thought that his war against Ukraine would be over in three days. And the Pentagon agreed with that assessment. And we're now into the 50 year of that war. Senior officers in the Russian military were packing their dress uniforms and medals for the victory parade through Kyiv that they were expecting to occur within a week. So that's another example of a leader who overestimates his own power and greatness, underestimates the enemy, partly because of their worldview that they're so exceptional and so powerful. I'm sure there are many more through history. I mean, famously, the general expectation in World War I would be that it would be, quote, over by Christmas, unquote. And, of course, it stretched on for four years and became, to that point, the most devastating event in human history.
- [16:45]
A
Okay, so there you have it. We know that powerful leaders have made epic mistakes that have had horrible consequences for countless humans in the past. But I just want to wrap up by asking you, Peter, whether you think where America is at with this war and the consequences. I mean, obviously, the financial consequences to America are just being seen, but we know that this war is not popular in the United States. Do you think that this is holding a mirror up to Americans in terms of who they voted in? Because you make the point in your piece, Donald Trump just does what he wants, and it kind of comes with a history. Right. You make the point in your piece that he once said, well, he can do whatever he wants to women and get away with it, and he basically has. And of course, now he's doing this, and it seems to be with the same sort of cavalier, merciless sort of perspective. Do you think Americans are looking at this and it's giving them something of a shock or not?
- [17:41]
B
We know that the war itself is unpopular according to American Opinion polling. We know that the increasing pain at the petrol bowser is the main point of pain in the US but we also have yet to see any real collapse in his overall approval rating. And Republicans, broadly speaking, continue to support the war. So it may yet cause a reassessment of Trump by the remaining roughly 40% of Americans who approve of the job he's doing. Maybe not. It may simply be that they have so invested themselves and their expectations, futures and Personas in Donald Trump that that is unshakable. I don't know. But Trump certainly knows that this is a political problem for him and that manifests most clearly, I thought, what, 24 hours ago or so when he was sharing a platform with his so called secretary of war, Pete Hegseth. And Trump, in the course of talking to the audience about the war, turned to Hegseth and said, I think you were the one who first said let's go get Iran. That pass hospital pass to Pete Hegseth by Trump, I think told us a great deal about how he understands the political appeal of this rather random, still unexplained and disastrous misadventure.
- [19:10]
A
Absolutely, Peter. Well, thanks again as always for your time.
- [19:15]
B
Thanks a lot, Samantha.
- [19:25]
A
In other news today, renowned Australian designer Lee Matthews has faced a public examination in the federal court over the liquidation of her fashion company and restructuring of her businesses, which denied a London based creditor More than $2.7 million. And after the tragic death of married at first sight relationship expert Mel Schilling on Tuesday, associate professor Graham Newsted, medical director at Bowel Cancer Australia, told our mastheads that though people in their 30s and 40s don't think about bowel cancer, bowel cancers in people under 50 have been increasing. You can read more at theaid.com au or smh.com au Today's episode was produced by Chi Wong. Our executive producer is Tammy Mills and our podcasts are overseen by Lisa Muxworthy and Tom McKendrick. If you like our show, follow the Morning Edition and leave a review for us on Apple or Spotify. Thanks for listening.