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Alistair Campbell
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Rory Stewart
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Alistair Campbell
That's dedication.
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Gordon Carrera
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- [01:43]
Alistair Campbell
Tariff, Swift installation, no white papers, green papers or red tape required. Welcome to an emergency podcast and I think unlike like Trump Musk, I think that Israel Iran merits US scrambling. And I must apologize Rory. I've. I've done something really, really, really stupid. I've left the uk, I'm in France, but I came without my proper recording gear. So I apologize to you and also to the listeners if the sound is not 100%. We'll do our best, but that, to be frank, is why we're doing this. Recorded going out pretty much as soon as we've recorded it rather than rather than live. Though we did get loads and loads of questions when we announced we're doing this. So here we are. I reckon for around two decades, Bibi Netanyahu has been thinking about this military action to take out Iran's nuclear program. And the consequences immediate are pretty serious and long term, possibly even more so. So what have you made of it so far?
- [03:00]
Gordon Carrera
Well, quick explainer. To help people. So Israel launched a series of strikes on two different types of target. One of them was Iranian nuclear facilities. And there are two major types of Iranian nuclear facilities. It seems as though they hit the Natan sites, but not the Fordo sites. So they did not hit Iran. The massive underground, you know, half a mile underground bunker sites, possibly because actually they don't even have the kit to do that. They don't have the planes and the bunker buses to do that.
- [03:34]
Alistair Campbell
But the Americans do. But they don't.
- [03:36]
Gordon Carrera
But the Americans do and could provide it. The second thing that they did was that they hit most senior members of the Iranian regime, so took out the head of the entire armed forces. So number two in the entire Iranian government, the head of the Revolutionary Guard, the chief negotiator in the Iran Israel negotiations, and a series of nuclear scientists. I think there's so many different ramifications of this. But before we get on to I think what for me are the two biggest questions, which is what does this mean for peace? And related to that, what on earth is the US Doing in all of this? Let's look at it from purely military point of view, from a purely technical military point of view. This was a very, very effective attack. It's something that one of the reasons why many people in the Israeli services objected to these kind of attacks even two, three years ago is they would have worried that Iran would have struck back with ballistic missiles. They would have worried that there would have been attacks coming in from Iranian proxy groups, so Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq. But of course, what's happened since October 7th is Israel has dismantled the Hezbollah groups, taken out most of their, well, their entire, basically missile capacity and their leadership. With this attack with the pages, they've also mounted an attack on Iran, which was now just under a year ago, where they took out most of the air defense systems. And Iran has been been in a very difficult strategic position trying to work out whether if they keep their head down and keep talking and talking about peace negotiations, sincerely or otherwise, whether this threat will go away or whether what they needed to do is put their foot down and push ahead with their nuclear program because they were under existential threat from Israel, and now they've been hit back over to you.
- [05:57]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, you talk about existential threats, and of course, that is the phrase that Netanyahu used in order to explain to the Israeli people why he was doing this. Now, and a combination really, of what they say is their intelligence that this was that the Iranians were within striking distance of being able to, and indeed wanting to use a nuclear weapon against Israel. You know, we have no way of knowing whether that's right or wrong. But secondly, the other thing that happened was, was that the nuclear authorities, the Atomic Energy Authority, International Atomic Energy Authority, for the first time in 20 years, said that Iran was operating in breach of its obligations. And that, I think, was what gave Netanyahu possibly the sort of tipping point in his thinking to say, right, let's go for this. Now, what's fascinating is the extent to which America is or is not involved, because there are very, very mixed signals. And that may be deliberate or it may just be part of the chaos that we've come to associate with the American administration under Trump. One other thing, Rouge, I think maybe just before we really dive into it, I find it fascinating that part of the thinking, if you remember about the episodes that we recorded at the time of October 7, part of the thinking was that Hamas were going for it at that point because they were trying to disrupt progress towards a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And I wonder if part of the thinking here is disrupting the negotiations that are underway between America and Iran, which were due to resume, I think, on Sunday, and the Iranians now saying they won't take part. And I think the other, the other thing that I find interesting in this is so Donald Trump was signaling yesterday that something may be happening. He's sort of signaling that he knew something was coming. Rubio, the Secretary of State, came straight out in the back of this and said, we were not involved in this. But then there was this rather strange. I mean, it is really weird how he operates. One of the first things he did was to phone this CNN journalist down a bash. Now, he doesn't really like cnn. He's always going on about them fake news. But he did have this conversation with her, which she then reported, which indicated actually he was fully behind what was going on. And I wonder whether that sort of. He doesn't want to look like Netanyahu has done this without his authority because that makes him look, look, look weak. But I look. And your point about the effectiveness of the military operation, when this all started, I was up in Paris and I'm now down in the south. And so I've been reading and listening and sort of, you know, one of the most interesting things I listened to was actually a podcast by our colleagues at the Rest is classified, David McCloskey and Gordon Carrera recorded some months ago. And got to hand it to Gordon Carrera, he said that the next few weeks this is likely to come to a head and it's either going to be a deal or it's going to be Israel taking action against Iran. So what was fascinating, they told in detail this story of an incredible operation to take out a guy who was the head of the nuclear weapons program, who was also doubling up as a physics lecturer in university in Tehran. But he was eventually taken out by a. A machine gun operated robotically from a long, long, long way away and assisted by AI. So I think what we've seen, the fact that they were able to name so quickly some of these people that you, the leadership and the nuclear scientists and so forth. Now the question now for Iran, they, as you say, have had their defenses and their attack substantially weakened in recent time in any. So that they can whack off missiles all they want. The truth is Israel's defenses are pretty strong and be able to bring them down. They can't. They're a long way. They'd have to go through, you know, Iraq, Jordan, Syria. They can't really sort of, you can't think of sort of troops piling in on Israel. That's not going to happen. So I think the two things that they're left with, one is sort of cyber warfare. But I imagine that the Israelis are pretty good at that as well. And the worry I have about what's happened today is that what they, the response that they might be tempted to go for is to say, right, well, look, we can't. We did the deal 10 years ago. We did the deal with America and with Britain and France and Germany and Russia and the European Union. We've did that deal. Deal. You keep saying that we've been breaking the terms of that deal, but we've actually launched, you know, nothing substantial against you guys. Therefore, we're going to pull out of our international nuclear obligations and go hell for leather to get a bomb.
- [11:10]
Gordon Carrera
Well, so, yeah, let me come in. You're covering a lot of ground there. You've covered about seven, seven different points. But the. Let's maybe start with that one, which is what's Iran's response? And I think we've got to get away from just Being stuck in the question of the military war. I think one of the problems is that there are two things that nobody really talking about. One of them is the US context, but the other is the bigger question of international law. I mean, there's a tendency amongst commentators, and in fact, actually amongst some British diplomats I've been talking to today, to just see it as a technical, tactical operation. Well done, Israel. Really cool technology, as you said, remembering the robotics thing, remembering Stuxnet, which was this famous cyber attack that interfered with the machinery of the nuclear system, and to ask yourself what options Iran's got. And of course, it's true. Iran has to some extent been exposed as a paper tiger and there'll be a whole debate taking place there. So there's that framing of it. You know, why did the timing come then? What was the nature of the surgical strike? What can the Iranian regime do back? But there's a much bigger question, which is this was in the middle of a peace negotiation and the action that Israel has taken is, to put it mildly, very, very questionable under international law whether they remotely cross the threshold for a preemptive strike. So there would have been, I guess, if we'd been talking about this even three years ago, much more talk about what on earth is going on. How is the world getting into people taking this kind of unilateral action. But it's very interesting how quickly we now almost take that for granted and are into the question of the tech. On the Iranian response, I think just.
- [13:04]
Alistair Campbell
On the Rory, just relieve that point. I mean, you're absolutely right. That is unbelievably significant because we should remind listeners and viewers that Netanyahu is already indicted on allegations of war crimes in relation to Gaza. But the fact that he, I think we said this at the time, but the fact that he can go to Washington and sit down with Donald Trump and talk about all this without that even being mentioned or raised or even part of the debate underlines this notion that we kind of are living in an era of impunity. So Netanyahu, if he thinks he can do this, he will do it. And what's more, they're indicating that this is going to go on for some time. This is not a sort of one day wonder.
- [13:46]
Gordon Carrera
Yes. And maybe just develop that one more point. So I think the important context is to remind people that Trump thought that he was in the middle of a negotiation. He thought that he was going to maybe overly optimistically get a deal out of Iran, as we've talked about on the podcast. Before he's chasing a Nobel Peace Prize. And this was meant to be part of the deal of his Middle east trip. And a lot of his posts on True Social have been directed to Iran. And maybe we'll ask you to talk a little bit more about the old Iran nuclear deal, the jcpo. But having taken people out of that, it looked as though Trump was on track to create a new one. And the idea was going to be that Iran would agree to not build up its nuclear program in return for sanctions being lifted and peace across the region. And Trump had support for this, for example, from other regions in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia is much less worried by Iran than it would have been a few years ago. China brokered a deal between Saudi and Iran. So there was a direction, possible direction, in which Iran was moving to a peace deal. At which point Israel seems to have informed the United States that they were considering a strike. But the nature of this strike appears to have been very unclear to the US which is extraordinary because if you look at the messages that the U.S. state Department was passing to its embassies, which is our best indication on how worried they were and what they were expecting, there were some very, very mixed messages coming out yesterday afternoon. Is this about just non essential staff? Is this about all staff? What kind of threat do we face? Which suggests actually, even as late as yesterday afternoon, they didn't have a confident, detailed view on what Israel was going to do. Trump almost certainly did not want them to do it. And we can come back to that. But the logic of this is if he did allow them to do it, if Wyckoff and Trump thought this was a good idea in the negotiation, they're unbelievably naive, because as you pointed out, this is the end of the negotiation. This is the end of any peace deal. The logical move now from Iran is to accelerate its nuclear weapons program and just back out of the whole thing. So my suspicion is Trump can't, and Wyckoff and their system can't be that naive. They must have seen the risk of this doing. Which raises the question of what on earth is the world that now exists? That Netanyahu, using American weapons, closely allied with the United States, launches an attack that the US President not only doesn't want, but hadn't been informed about in detail, and probably does so because Netanyahu senses that we're in a new world order in which he can get away with these things.
- [16:35]
Alistair Campbell
And that's why I think, look, I don't know. I'm not inside the guy's head. But I sense from his, what he said, if you go through the tone of his posts and his comments in the run up, it was indicating I'm the great deal maker. I've got Steve Witkoff on the case. We're going to get somewhere on this, okay? The only way that it can be post facto justified by him now saying to Dana Bash and presumably to others, yeah, I'm totally with them, this was a great hit. The only way you can justify that, if he thinks that he can get Iran into a better position, he's now talking about giving them a second chance by now suggesting that actually he's been part of this all along. But that goes completely contradictory to the noises as you say, that were coming out, coming out before I do. There's a problem.
- [17:31]
Gordon Carrera
Alistair, can I just interrupt on that? Because just to push you back on that, I mean, part of the problem is that how can Iran now believe that he can control Israel? Let's say he went back to Iran and said, okay, you get a second chance. If you sit down at the negotiating table, you won't be hit again. Will Iran not think, what do you mean you can guarantee we won't be hit again? What's to stop Netanyahu just continuing to do it? And of course, Netanyahu has said that this is just the beginning. This is going to go on for days and weeks. And probably Netanyahu needs this to go on for days and weeks because he doesn't want to be accused by his own right wing of having mounted one attack which didn't actually eliminate their entire nuclear operations. A lot of their nuclear operations are still intact. Netanyahu sees this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to flatten Iran's nuclear program. So he will continue and he probably, if Trump tries to stop him, it'll be like Trump trying to stop Putin. Netanyahu will know perfectly well that he can ignore him. And Trump won't follow through with sanctioning Israel. So how can Iran trust the US now in this deal?
- [18:38]
Alistair Campbell
Well, they can't. And what's more, they're probably sitting there thinking, well, Israel has given us the opportunity to be able to push back on the Americans without really feeling that Trump wants to sort of go back hard on them. And I think you talk about his obsession with this idea of getting the Nobel Prize, let's be frank. Of the three big foreign policy issues that he said he was going to sort out because he's the greatest dealmaker on the planet, Putin is to use his Own phrase, been tapping him out and that is going nowhere. The negotiations there appear to be going nowhere. Middle east, you know, that's what we've seen in the last 24 hours. Not really going anywhere. Whether we're talking about Ukraine, about Israel, Gaza or now about Israel, Iran. He projects himself as the guy who's got all the power, to use his phrase, holding all the cards, but actually he's the one who's looking a little bit like a paper tiger right now. And I honestly do think, Roy, we've got to go back to this deal. It's almost 10 years ago now and I think you may know more about the deal than I do, but I feel that actually it was a pretty amazing piece of diplomatic work to get that deal done. To have Donald Trump in the middle of his 2016 election campaign just come out and say, it's a terrible deal, I'll get a better deal, I'm going to pull the plug on it and then to do it. I think that is a big part of where we are now today on this issue.
- [20:15]
Gordon Carrera
Let's come back to Iran's response for a second.
- [20:19]
Alistair Campbell
Sorry, do you disagree with that?
- [20:21]
Gordon Carrera
No, I don't disagree with you at all. I think that what you've put your finger on is a lot of things. One of them is that at best, what he tries to do is wait for events to happen and then try to take credit for them. So he tries to cover up the fact that this is not what he wanted, didn't happen in the way that he wanted, by claiming it was his idea all along. But it also suggests that his power is waning, American power is waning, that you don't get to do what he's done, which is say we're not going to be the global policeman anymore. We don't really care about the rules based international order. We don't really care about international security. You don't get to do that without going into a situation in which you no longer have the power to determine events. I mean, why would Netanyahu pay any attention to the US the story six months ago would have been, well, of course he's got to pay attention to the US because he gets all his weapons and support from the U.S. but worse, we've seen with Putin and Putin is much less close to the United States than Israel is to the United States. When Trump threatened Putin with sanctions and said, if you don't, you know, I'm horrified that you made this attack, I'm going to sanction, you don't Putin simply ignores him and just continues. He knows perfectly well that Trump is never going to sanction him. And Netanyahu must know perfectly well that whatever he does, I mean, literally whatever he does, Trump will continue to supply him with weapons.
- [21:48]
Alistair Campbell
There's also something really interesting there about the history of nuclear proliferation that might be worth just a thought thinking about, because of course, you know, my old boss Tony Blair, was very, very centrally involved in trying to talk Gaddafi down from the nuclear, his nuclear weapons program. And eventually Gaddafi did give up his nuclear weapons. And, you know, he's no longer here to tell us whether he thought that was the right thing or the wrong thing, because not long after he ended up dead in a ditch in the middle of a coup, whereas old Kim Jong Un, he sort of heard all the threats and consider all the threats and basically just ignored them. And he's sitting there now. I don't know the extent of his nuclear weapons program, but it's, you know, it's certainly better than Gaddafi's. And so I, this is what worries me about what's gone on. And I'm no doubt we'll get the, the text and the emails from Netanyahu's office saying this is a very disappointing sort of, you know, Western view to take. But I, I can't see any other consequence of this than the Iran thinks. Right, we really have to go for it now because they. There's Israel that sits there saying that we are, we are facing an existential threat from Iran. Now, that is true in that Iran has always said, you know, basically wants to wipe out Israel. And you can see why they're so obsessed about Iran not being able to develop nuclear weapons. But when they are sitting there and this, this attack happens, they having done the deal with the international community that they did 10 years ago, you can see why they might just take a very, very, very different approach.
- [23:29]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, and 10 years ago, the world was different in two key ways for the Iranians. The first is that they believed then that they were actually quite well protected by all these proxy militia groups all the way through the Middle east who would strike back at Israel if anyone hit them. And they also had much more confidence in their own kit and their own missiles. Secondly, 10 years ago, the regime was already unpopular, but it was nothing like as unpopular as it is today. And a nuclear weapon is an answer to those two problems. A nuclear weapon is the one way that you can guarantee that nobody attacks you without having a proper missile system or proxies. And a nuclear weapon is also Something that you can have without public support. It's not something like a big national army where you need the whole population on your side. You build a nuclear bomb, it's quite suitable for an increasingly unpopular, marginalized regime. The question of course is can they build it? I think there's no doubt at all they will now build it, or I mean, maybe a little doubt. Things in geopolitics are very weird and things could change and there will be a small minority of people within the regime who will say, let's give up this nuclear program, let's go to Trump, let's have peace, let's have sanctions lifted. It's the better way to go. But I think it'll be a small group. Most of the regime will feel that actually for a whole series of reasons, including their very strange objectives towards Israel, that what they need to do now is get their nuclear bomb. The problem though is that clearly they are very, very deeply infiltrated, as you pointed out, by Israeli intelligence. And Israeli intelligence is demonstrating, as they did with Hezbollah in Lebanon, their incredible ability to pinpoint so many key figures so quickly. So I don't think Israel can actually kill enough people and bomb up enough to actually delay it that long. I think in the end Iran will be able to sort out its internal security and in the end it will be able to push. But it may have put it back by one or two years. And I think from the Israeli point of view, they've always had a tendency to think, well, we're not going to worry about the medium long term. If we can hold people back for one or two years, if we can, in this horrible phrase, mow the grass. Who knows what will happen in one or two years.
- [25:55]
Alistair Campbell
I just remember when you were speaking there, I just remembered that on the day, I think it was on the day that the deal was done, it was certainly around that. This is back in 2015, Fiona and I were out. We were at dinner with Christian Amanpour and your good friend Jamie Rubin, with whom you had such spirited exchange on podcast. But the other guest there was, was John Soares and his wife Shelley. And I can remember John being absolutely, he was just, he was saying this, this is kind of the best news for the world. This, this, this deal is just like the best news for the world. The fact that this been, we've been able to pull this off and really get the Iranians agreement on capping enrichment and low uranium stuff and, and, and, and actually taking some of the facilities out and yes, lifting the sanctions now it's true that there were at the time American Republicans saying this is giving them far too much and they can't be trusted, etc. Etc. Etc. But the deal did seem to be holding for quite a while. And so I, I just think that we're now in a place where, as you say, trust broken down, Israel feeling emboldened, although they will still want the Americans to be on side, not just through providing military support, but on side politically as well. And I think the question the Iranians now have is whether they even need to think about the short term retaliation. We have this assumption. I mean, they sent these 100 drones over and it seems the Israelis have sort of taken them down. Do they really need to think about that? I think they probably just need to sit tight and play a long game.
- [27:41]
Gordon Carrera
Well, let's take a break there and just come back to some of these issues after the break. This is an advertisement from BetterHelp. In politics, we often talk about strength. Projecting strength, holding strength, never showing cracks. And that idea seeps into everyday life, especially for men. Pressure to perform, keep things together, carry on. But bottling things up doesn't always make you strong. I think, as we all know, it can make you actually very bristle, trying to be strong over time and that can lead to burnout or worse. Whereas being honest with yourself and others and doing something about it and talking can help lift some of these crazy weights, give some perspective, build resilience, help you to cope when life feels overwhelming, when you can't always be what you're trying to pretend to be. So BetterHelp has over 5,000 therapists in the UK. It's the world's largest online therapy platform serving over 5 million people globally. And it works with a 4.9 rating in the App Store based on 1.7 million reviews. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a diverse variety of expertise. Talk it out with BetterHelp our listeners get 10% off their first month@betterhelp.com RestPolitics that's BetterHelp.
- [29:07]
David McCloskey
Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.
- [29:10]
Kevin McCarthy
And I'm David McCloskey, CIA analyst turned spy novelist.
- [29:13]
David McCloskey
Together we're the co hosts of another goal hanger show called the Rest is Classified where we bring you the best stories from the world of secrets and spies.
- [29:22]
Kevin McCarthy
We have just released a series on the decades long battle between the CIA and Osama Bin Laden. And this week we are stepping into the devastation of the 911 terror attacks. To understand how Osama Bin Laden was able to carry out such a plot right under the nose of the CIA.
- [29:38]
David McCloskey
It was a moment that changed global politics forever, shifting the focus of spy agencies away from nation states towards hunting for terrorists and understanding the extremist ideology that drove them.
- [29:50]
Kevin McCarthy
We will then go into the decade long man hunt for Osama Bin Laden, which culminated in a dramatic raid at his compound in Pakistan in 2011 which killed the world's most wanted terrorist.
- [30:01]
David McCloskey
So if all of this sounds good, we've got a clip waiting for you at the end of the episode.
- [30:13]
Gordon Carrera
Welcome back to Restless Politics special on the Israeli strikes against Iran today, 13 June 2025. So I think the next question to ask is a question around narratives or stories or legitimacy. I mean, a lot will come down to a fight between Israel and Iran on how this is perceived. If you are Israel, you will be saying these were surgical strikes, this was an existential threat. And you will say if somebody says, well, what about international law? You'll say, well, Iran didn't really care about international law. There'll be a lot of what about, what about Iran? Right. If you're Iran, you are already saying, and you could see it, this is a gross violation of international law. This is a disruption of the peace process and they killed civilians, women and children is one of the narratives that's coming in. The problem that both Iran and Israel face is that neither of them are in an environment where the world is inclined to be very well disposed to believing either of their narratives. For Israel, the problem is that much of the Middle Eastern street is profoundly alienated and many people will see this in the light of what Israel has been doing in Gaza and see the bombing in that same light. And of course, they're not helped by the fact that their ally Donald Trump is not exactly the flavor of the month for many, many people around the world. Iran, on the other hand, is a deeply illegitimate theocratic military regime where the vast majority of their own population are against them, where Gulf Arabs have no time for them, where most of their neighbors are running away, and where their only real allies at the moment are China and Russia, partly because Russia's relying on them for a lot of its supplies of drones and a lot of the smuggling into the economy. So in this war of narratives, I can't really see either side coming cleanly out, winning over public opinion.
- [32:23]
Alistair Campbell
I even wonder if they care about that. Does Netanyahu right now? I think he cares about Israeli public opinion. I thought that he really cared about American Political opinion. Now, it may be that the Republican Party actually comes out very, very strongly. The Republican senators and congressmen come out very, very strongly in favor of what's going on. But I think that will be mixed. I'm not convinced that Iran cares that much about international public opinion. I think you're right that they probably worry a little bit about China and about Russia. But I think what they will try to do is present themselves as a victim that's been hit, and that justifies what it does in the future by portraying itself as the victim of what they will say is an illegal aggression. And I think that Israel, the narrative that he will care about is whether he can persuade people that this had to be done now because it was a chance and possibly the last chance for the world to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. That's where the narrative seems to me. But I'm not convinced that either really care about what international opinion says.
- [33:41]
Gordon Carrera
Last point for me before we go to questions. Firstly, there's a loss of logic which will be driving Israel to do much more of this. They may not, but it's going to be difficult for Netanyahu to stop because, as I said, it isn't finished that job. And he said he's going to do more. And if he doesn't do more, he's in a very vulnerable position in relation to Iran and its nuclear programs in the future. The second point is the Iranian regime will be like headless chickens. They've lost a lot of their most senior people. They've lost the head of the army, they've lost the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the two biggest institutions under the Supreme Leader. And as they cast around, one of the problems is that they will start improvising and you may well find terrorist attacks happening. One of the few things that the Iranians have got in an asymmetric fashion, if they can no longer fight a conventional military war against Israel, is they have a lot of terrorists. Hezbollah has deep roots in Latin America. You can expect potentially to have a lot of attacks on Jewish communities in Latin America and Iran striking back through terrorist attacks on Israelis worldwide.
- [34:50]
Alistair Campbell
You see that Israel is shutting down embassies and consulates around the world, presumably because he thinks that some of them may be subject to attack and also sending a message to Jewish people, as it were, not to display their Jewishness in public. Which I was surprised at that. I was surprised at that because maybe that's him preempting the sense of Israel being the victim. You. You have got a sort of weird victim oppressor thing going on both sides here, which is, which is going to make it hard, it's going to make it hard for the, for the public, of our public, for example, to make sense of, of what actually, actually is going on. I, I see there was just my final point for good questions where I see there was a, a three way phone call between Metz, Macron and Starmer. But I think where the British and European energies should go are actually towards this business about the power, the authority of the international nuclear authorities, the International Atomic Energy Authority. I think they need to be bolstered, they need to be strengthened. Because if we end up with a place where Iran just says don't care what you say, don't care about your inspectors, don't care about your authority, then I think we are into a pretty very, very dangerous place.
- [36:12]
Gordon Carrera
Okay, here's a question from a listener, Florian Van Kitters. To what extent do you believe the timing of these events were driven by military opportunity and necessity versus an attempt to shape the political narrative and intention? So let me frame that for you. What you might say is it's quite difficult at the moment to make sense of Israel's strategy because half doing this doesn't make sense. Stopping and allowing the negotiation to continue doesn't make sense. So one way of looking at it is that this is a great deal to do with Bibi, his coalition, the way in which Netanyahu wants to show himself as a strong man and the opportunity that he's been provided by Donald Trump, who gives the impression that this is the one chance that an Israeli government's going to do to do this stuff without the US Objecting. So what do you make about the balance between political opportunism and military necessity?
- [37:04]
Alistair Campbell
Well, he would argue that the military that you don't get more military necessity than you're fearing that your greatest enemy is going to get its hands on nuclear weapon and use it against you because it exists to wipe you out. That does rather go against the whole argument about nuclear deterrence that, you know, I mean, and added to which, as we've already discussed, Israel remains a pretty formidable military force on pretty much every level. I think there is part of him that will he doesn't want to be. We're talking here about somebody, we've said for many, many times on the podcast, he's a great survivor. He's somebody who was under real pressure because of domestic politics, then under real pressure because of October 7th happening and him at that point being seen as a weak leader, if you like, who allowed that to happen in relation to Gaza, has been absolutely, it seems to me, pretty oblivious to the international condemnation that has grown over the way that he's conducted that operation. And where you made the point that he'll feel that he has to keep going with this, that is a sort of mirror image of what's happened in Gaza where the military objective was to take out the leadership of Hamas. It's hard to see that he didn't do pretty considerable damage to Hamas, but then it went on and on and on and on, and it's still going on now. And now with this one, you know, taking out the, is he taking out the entire nuclear program? Is he taking out the bits that he can take out now? But then he's going to try and persuade the Americans to help him with the bunker busters and the stuff that we talked about earlier. So I think it's a combination of those things. I think it's him using the argument of military necessity, which I don't know if he fundamentally believes it, but he clearly gives the sense that he does, alongside his own political position being a lot weaker than sometimes he would like us to think. Here's one from, I guess that's the question there from Anne Dunn. Is Benjamin Netanyahu attempting to launch a war in the Middle east to save himself from national and international scrutiny? Well, listen, he's going to get lots of national and international scrutiny, but so to say, I don't think, no, I don't think that is the reason for this. I think you have to, even with people like Netanyahu, let's take it at face value, let's have the argument of face value for now about whether the threat, he sees the threat from Iran as real. However, I honestly, to go back to a point that we've discussed before, I think there is a real problem now with the believability of both of these regimes now. And that's a bad place for Israel to be in. And I honestly do think they would do themselves a lot more good if they actually change the way that they communicate, change that he's, he's actually, to be fair, he is better at it. His communication is better either than the people who communicate on his behalf, often the sort of third party voices and the proxies, or certainly than Ben GVIR and Smotrich, who've got such an aggressive way of communicating. But he and the defense minister, I think could, they're going to be the guys that we're going to hear from Most from that in the coming days and weeks. I think a better tone wouldn't do them any harm at all.
- [40:41]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, I mean, one question, which is an interesting one, is if it's not driven by the opportunity provided by Trump, or maybe driven by a desire to derail the peace process, because it's striking that it's happening right in the middle of the peace negotiation. And it's happening includes killing the Iranian chief negotiator in the peace negotiation. So that's one possible motivation. But if you're right that it's done for genuine national security reasons, the question that people will ask is, but Netanyahu, you've been saying for 20 years you've wanted to do this. You've been saying for 20 years this is an existential threat. Now he will say, well, that's because of all the stuff I've done over 20 years to keep it under wraps. If you're on the other side of the argument, potentially John Soares's colleagues putting together jcpoa, they would say, no, no, no. The reason this hasn't happened for 20 years is that the world created an environment where Iran didn't feel that it needed to accelerate its nuclear weapons program. Partly it didn't feel it needed to accelerate its nuclear weapons program because it had all these proxies like Hezbollah, which protected it, which meant it didn't need to do it. And now actually, and this will be the great historical question, if Iran now ends up with a nuclear weapon, to what extent will Netanyahu carry the blame for that from future historians? And how will one get to the bottom of that question?
- [42:05]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, one of the things I read on the way down from Paris was from Kenneth Pollock. Do you know Kenneth Pollock?
- [42:12]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah, yeah.
- [42:14]
Alistair Campbell
Was CIA and also a member of the National Security Council. And he wrote a pretty long read, which we should put in the, in the newsletter. Really kind of interesting piece. But I'll just read you the last, the last sentence. Israel may have succeeded in setting the Iranian nuclear program back in the short term, perhaps a year or two, only to ensure the threat of a nuclear armed Iran. Not long thereafter. It kind of goes to what both of us have been, have been saying, really. And so I think that's what makes this such a kind of difficult strategic moment for all of the major powers and not least the United States. There's a question here from Isla Trip plus member, despite only declaring knowledge of the strikes, do you think that Trump was involved due to him since using Israel as a threat to get Iran to sign A nuclear deal. I mean, that, again, goes to the heart of something we say. What, you know, I said, Roy, I, I thought this was post facto rationalization. What's your view? I mean, we don't know, but is your.
- [43:15]
Gordon Carrera
I think this, I think all the indications are this is not what Trump wanted, and it happened in a time, in a way that Trump didn't want. I mean, there's another question from Elsie. Do you think the US Will secretly be happy it's happened? If so, why? I mean, the only way in which Trump is going to be happy it's happened is that it, I suppose, gives him an excuse for why his peace negotiation failed. You can say it wasn't my fault Israel bombed the nuclear weapons program, but then he's got to be clear on whether he asked them to do it or whether he didn't ask them to do it and whether he knew they were doing it and let them. Them do it or didn't let them do it. I think fundamentally, in relation to Elsie, there isn't any upside, really, for the US in the long run. Listeners like all of us, I guess we are frogs and boiling water. We're not understanding how quickly and fundamentally the world has changed. I mean, remember in the last few weeks, we, we were also on the verge of a major armed confrontation between Pakistan and India where planes were being shot down. I mean, this is a very, very, these are the beginnings of an indication of what happens as the global world order disintegrates. The canaries in the mine are those first movements by Putin going into Crimea, going into Ukraine, then we have Israel, Gaza. But increasingly now, what we're going to find, I think, is that the US has lost any ability, any leverage. And it's lost it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's lost it because of this taco point that Mooch keeps making, which is that Putin has suggested that you can do what you want, and Trump won't respond. But the second, bigger point is that there's no.
- [45:10]
Alistair Campbell
Also underlined by the issue of China.
- [45:12]
Gordon Carrera
And tariffs underlined by China and terrorists. You also, though, I think another, bigger point is that when you've no longer got an idea of what America wants, what is its global order? What are its values? Is it in favor of peace? Is it in favor of international development? Is it in favor of international law? Is it in favor of international security? Does it want to defend international borders? Is it on the side of the west against Russia and China or not? If you can't tell those kind of things America can't exercise global leadership because any kind of leadership, even in a small organization, certainly in a government, requires everyone to understand roughly what the plan is, what the values are, what the strategy is. And the world doesn't know what those things are anymore. They have no idea what the rules are, what you can do and what you can't do. And therefore, how on earth is America supposed to control the world? If I was operating in eastern Congo, if I was China looking at Taiwan, if I was the junta operating in Myanmar, if I was the fighting parties in Sudan, if I was UAE supporting one of the fighting parties in Sudan, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, I would conclude that we're in a world in which there is no policeman and no policeman's ever going to turn up, and therefore it's going to get more and more dangerous more and more quickly. And we're just the beginning of the this.
- [46:34]
Alistair Campbell
And if you, if you think about what's just, you know, this is what is so scary about the world right now. So you've got climate, you've got climate change going on and that's kind of just fading into the background. Two days ago, we were all talking about the protests in Los Angeles, and yesterday you had a situation where an elected senator gets basically hand shoved to the ground and handcuffed because he had the temerity to try to ask a question of the Director of Homeland Security who was sort of, you know, pushing this idea that.
- [47:12]
Gordon Carrera
It's an absolute unbelievable vision, Alice, isn't it? Because if you think about, I mean, just, just for British listeners, or indeed most European listeners, if a member of Parliament turned up, let's say, I don't know, during a Conservative government, Angela Rayner turned up or Jeremy Corbyn turned up and started heckling a Tory minister. Yeah. I mean, ultimately, I suppose some polite person in a sort of funny House of Commons robes might try to take you out in the way that Alex Salmond or Michael Hasseltime were reprimanded for picking up the mace or interrupting the budget, but being pushed on the ground and handcuffed. I mean, the guy, this is a senator. He's one of the most senior people in the entire American. There's only 100 senators and he's the senator of the largest state. Right?
- [48:00]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [48:00]
Gordon Carrera
I mean, how is it conceivable that you. And he's not a threat to anyone. Look at him, he's a relatively, you know, he's not in his first flush of youth. So why is he being handcuffed because.
- [48:14]
Alistair Campbell
We'Re in the era of performative politics where essentially, as we keep saying, it's about the next episode, it's about the next storyline. So the storyline a couple of days ago was Trump warns Israel, you know, tells BB don't do it, warns Israel to make it, tells Iran to make a deal. And then within 48 hours, both of those storylines have gone. So tomorrow we've got another storyline. The storyline tomorrow is going to be this ridiculous military parade where you've seen, while, you know, you've got this stuff happening in Los Angeles and you've got the, the, all the stuff happening around the world. And tomorrow Donald Trump is going to be essentially presenting himself at a military parade like a sort of, you know, pound shot Putin King, Kim Jong Un. And so people look in on that. This is where I think this, this erosion of their soft power and the authority they have. And I, I, you know, the fact. So for example, this morning, you know, you wake up, the big story is that Israel has launched this attack. Then within not very long time, it's all about the response from Iran and then it's the reaction around the world. But then straight to the top of the news goes what Donald Trump's reaction is. And his reaction comes in this strange sort of, this social media post that is full of kind of the usual sort of insults of his own opponents, so forth. They're losing moral authority. And to lose moral authority at this time I think is a really, really dangerous thing to do. And the other thing we should say, Roy, yesterday we might have imagined this would have been the case in a, in a, in a, in a sort of a calmer, more settled world a while back. That plane crash yesterday in India would have dominated the news for days and days and days. And yet here we are, 24 hours later, we're talking about something completely different. And who knows, we could be talking about something different again tomorrow. So the instability of the world, I think, is what Trump is not helping.
- [50:22]
Gordon Carrera
But the one that maybe I want to finish on is to come back to what it means for Iran and what it means for this very, very unpopular regime. Are the regime going to be able to use it to build up a bit of nationalist support by claiming that they were attacked in an unprovoked fashion? Are they going to find actually quite a lot of their population exhausted, saying, oh, goodness gracious, stop these international adventures. All you do is get us in trouble and we're being humiliated. You're an embarrassment. You can't even defend us and will there be ultimately some regime change in Iran, as people have been talking about for 20, 30 years? If it happens, would it be replaced by a military regiment? And if it's a military regime, it would be a nationalist regime which might say, look, Iran doesn't have anything to do with the Arab world. We should be looking east and northeast towards Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, not worrying about what's happening in Israel, Palestine, which they're worried about actually, purely for religious reasons, not really for ethnic Iranian reasons. My guess for all that, and then I'll hand back to you, is that, unfortunately, the likelihood still is that Iran, and again, it's only a 60% likelihood in a world that none of us can now predict, will probably stumble along, stumble along somewhere between Iraq today and Syria under Assad, a place increasingly poor, increasingly affected by sanctions, increasingly dependent on smuggling, and the regime holding on. And I think you're right, pushing ahead as fast as it can insofar as it's able to, given these hits with its nuclear weapons program. Over to you.
- [51:57]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I, the other thing we haven't talked about is the impact that has already been on the oil price, which is always, you know, very, very important factor that every government in the world takes a look at, because it has an effect on them, whether they're all producers or not. Instance of all, surge, price surge, but then shares dropping left, right and century. People worry about a, a broader enduring conflict that leads to a rise in inflation and yet another energy shock, as we're just about recovering from the energy shock of Russia and Ukraine. And actually, one of the scary scenarios that Ken Pollock wrote about in his piece in Foreign affairs was whether Iran might try and close the Strait of Hormuz and affect oil prices and global supply that way. So, look, I think we've probably, I don't know whether we've helped people understand or whether we've just sort of scared people even more. It is, I think it is a genuinely, it is a genuinely scary moment for the world. I think Netanyahu is a man on a mission. The mission is survival, but the mission is also, this is him doing something that he's wanted to do for a very, very long time. And Rory, we regularly applaud long termism, but just it comes in many, many ways. And some of them applaud more than others. And I think it is slightly exposing Trump as somebody who talks the language of strength and deal making and negotiating. But if you look at the, the, the areas that he came in saying he was going to sort I think it's hard to make a case that he's, that he's succeeding on any of them right now and that will embolden America's opponents rather than strengthen them. So I think this is a scary time and it's going to give us lots and lots to talk about in the days ahead.
- [53:59]
Gordon Carrera
Well, thank you, Alistair. And we'll see listeners again on Monday for our leading interview with Kevin McCarthy. So that is the former Republican leader of Congress, speaker of Congress, and he is an extraordinary insight into the world of Donald Trump, how you defend Donald Trump because he was the man who could have impeached him and didn't. He's the man who criticized January 6th and then became his friend again. He's charming and he's also a sort of slightly terrifying glimpse into the world of American politics today. So look forward to people listening to that on Monday.
- [54:38]
Alistair Campbell
So if you want to hear that. And by the way, an awful lot has happened even since we spoke to him because things are moving so fast in the the States right now. But he is a fascinating interview. He's also got very good hair, which Rory sees as a very important factor in modern politics. If you want to see and hear him, just search the rest. Is politics leading wherever you get your podcasts or you can go and get it on YouTube.
- [55:03]
Gordon Carrera
Bye bye, bye.
- [55:09]
David McCloskey
I'm Gordon Carreran.
- [55:10]
Kevin McCarthy
And I'm David McCloskey.
- [55:11]
David McCloskey
Together we're the co hosts of another goal hanger show called the Rest is Classified.
- [55:16]
Kevin McCarthy
Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on.
- [55:20]
David McCloskey
When I look back on it now, you still see that, you know, there's plans, there's memoranda, there's notifications, there's all these things, but they're never actually executed. They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they?
- [55:35]
Kevin McCarthy
I'm a little bit of two minds on this because I agree with you that the theme of this episode really is a series of missed opportunities to get Osama bin laden prior to 9, 11.
- [55:46]
Gordon Carrera
Yeah.
- [55:47]
Kevin McCarthy
But we should also note that once Tenet and the CIA understand that Osama bin Laden is coming for us, in particular after the East Africa bombings, there is a push to improve our collection and our understanding of Al Qaeda pretty significantly. I mean, there's a bunch of human sources who get recruited in this period. There's a lot more technical collection. Alex Station is beefed up to more than 40 people. There's a bunch of connections with foreign partners on Al Qaeda that hadn't existed before. I mean, Interestingly, there's a PDB President's Daily Brief in December, December 4th of 1998, which is titled, quote, Bin Laden preparing to hijack US aircraft and other attacks. And so there's a lot of strategic warning, I think you could say, about what Al Qaeda is up to. And yet there's an inability, I think, to translate that into practical efforts and operations to stop these attacks and just stop Al Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 911 if you want to hear the.
- [56:54]
David McCloskey
Full episode, listen to the rest is classified wherever you get the your podcasts.
- [57:06]
Alistair Campbell
Right. Well done everybody who's still listening, because that means you've listened right to the end of the episode. Thank you. Very impressive. But can I ask you something? Did you hear an advert on today's episode and did you think, you know what? I'm sure the listeners would rather hear about my brand rather than all these other things they're promoting. Well, you could be right, but there's only one way to find out.
- [57:27]
Gordon Carrera
That's right. You could be the next NORDVPN or betterhelp. Put your brand in front of millions of like minded listeners by advertising on the Restless Politics and other shows across the Goal Hanger network. So who a Goal Hanger? Well, they're the company behind this very show and if you're in the market to increase the value of your brand, they want to hear from you. You can register your or your company's interests by going to goal hanger.com right now. That's go H-A-N G E R.com see you there.