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- [00:01]
Rory Stewart
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Rory Stewart
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- [01:59]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome to the rest of this PO.
- [02:00]
Rory Stewart
Politics with me, Rory Stewart and me, Alistair Campbell.
- [02:03]
Alistair Campbell
So Alistair, I think today we're going to focus on two things. The first is the Iran Israel conflict and what's going on there, how the west is responding, how Trump is responding, and what kind of danger this poses to the world. And the second is we're going to look at the recent report after the break on grooming gangs in the uk. What this story is about, the horror of these grooming gangs and what the government's doing about it.
- [02:27]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [02:27]
Alistair Campbell
So Alistair, over to you. Maybe first on maybe a little bit of an update on what happened since did our emergency podcast on Friday. We're now Recording on Tuesday morning what's happened since in terms of the war between Israel and Iran.
- [02:41]
Rory Stewart
I think people understand that this is a, a really huge thing for the world. It's very hard to know where to start. Maybe we should start at the G7 because Donald Trump has dominated it. Day one, the news that came out of the G7 in Canada was Trump arriving and immediately saying it was terrible that Putin wasn't there, which I think took a lot of people by surprise. And then by the end of the day, he was announcing that he was leaving to go back, indicated to get himself more properly, more fully engaged in what's going on between Iran and Israel. I think another place to start, just before we started recording, Roy, I watched Benjamin Netanyahu's interview that he did last night with American tv, ABC News. And whatever you think about the rights and wrongs of what's going on, and we will without doubt come on to those. If you want to see an absolute masterclass in communication in a time of crisis and conflict, you have to hand it to him. The guy is appalling on so many levels. But I tell you, it was a brilliant, brilliant piece of communication. I don't know if you managed to see any of it, Rory.
- [03:49]
Alistair Campbell
I did. I did. You sent it to me and I watched a bit of that.
- [03:51]
Rory Stewart
And what were your impressions?
- [03:53]
Alistair Campbell
So the first thing I think I picked up on that clip that you sent me, it's a 25 minute interview, is that the interviewer begins immediately by saying, I hear Iran is reaching, trying to push for peace through intermediaries. Have they reached out to you? And Netanyahu says no, but I'm not very surprised because of course they want to keep this fake negotiation going while they continue to develop their two existential threats of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons against Israel. And of course, we won't continue to tolerate because we're not at the, you know, whatever it is, we're not at the 12th hour. This is the, you know, this is the very last minute in this whole thing. So, yes, as you say, frames the whole thing like that from the beginning. There's just a quick, quick update for listeners on what's happened. So people who listen to our report immediately after the first strikes will remember that the strikes began with Israel launching attacks which hit the major enrichment facility. That's the enrichment facility at Nantaz, which is where. And we can get into a bit of the technicalities about this, but that's where a lot of the centrifuges for enrichment are located. And then attacks against the most senior figures, particularly in the Iranian military and security. So killing the head of the armed forces, killing the head of the Revolutionary Guard, also killing two senior scientists who do research into nuclear stuff. That was then followed by an Iranian response which hit buildings in Israel. And as of last night, I think the figures were that 224 people had been killed in Iran, 1400 injured, and 24 people had been killed in Israel with 600 injured. And the striking thing is, despite threats from the Iranians, they have not attacked the US and its allies, they've not attacked other Gulf states. So they haven't broadened the conflicts. And I suspect that is because they want to make sure that this is very clearly them acting in self defense against attacks from Israel, responding to what's been done to them, rather than broadening the conflict.
- [06:00]
Rory Stewart
Maybe the way to think of this is that Iran is trying to keep the United States sitting on the fence, whereas Israel is trying to make sure that America is very on side. And the reason why I was so struck by that interview that Netanyahu gave one was he did it with one of the channels that is not Fox News, it was abc, the one that was recently in dispute with Trump. But he had several audiences. One of the audiences was Trump and he was very flattering. He kept talking about Trump's amazing leadership in the first term and the importance of the Abraham Accords. America's with us, Trump is with us. We have no greater ally. Obviously, a major audience was the Israeli people for whom he invoked the spirit. The only mention of Britain actually was when he invoked the spirit of the blitz in Britain. And that was what he was seeing amongst the Israeli people. He had an audience that was the Iranian leadership. And I think this business, this story that's doing the rounds, that Netanyahu told Trump that they could take out the Ayatollah Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, and Trump said not to. I think that is a piece of absolutely amazing psychological warfare. And he continued with that. As you say, he also had these constant framing of this within a bigger battle in which Israel is basically fighting for the whole world. Now, I know that there will be lots of people whose eyes will roll at that, but actually I felt that for those various audiences, he was signaling determination, strength, constantly praising the operation, constantly praising his military and intelligence services who have done a pretty amazing job. And the other thing that made it very, very powerful as a piece of communication. And this just shows you how the agenda moves on. He wasn't asked a single question about Gaza. He wasn't asked a single question about the role of the icj, the International Criminal Court, which has indicted him in relation to Gaza. Not a single question about the United nations or other countries views.
- [08:03]
Alistair Campbell
Do you think this was agreed in advance with abc, or do you think they would have been free to ask those questions if they'd wanted? I mean, because they got a pretty big scoop there. They got an interview with Netanyahu in a hidden secret bunker.
- [08:14]
Rory Stewart
Yeah.
- [08:14]
Alistair Campbell
So presumably the Israelis could say, we're happy to do this. Who can't ask any questions about Gaza.
- [08:19]
Rory Stewart
They might be able to do that. But I'd be very surprised if ABC would go along with that. They might have done that. And added to which, once you're into the interview, unless you've absolutely sold your soul, you can ask whatever questions you want. So when, for example, he framed it as this is a battle between good and evil, the interviewer would have been perfectly justified to come back and said, yes, but this is also a battle between international law and illegality. And you could have got into that way. So I'd be very surprised. I'd be very surprised, yeah.
- [08:50]
Alistair Campbell
Two things I'd like to get onto. One is the way in which this attack suddenly raises huge questions about what's going to happen in the Middle East. But the second one, which you've tempted me into is this question about this very weird absence of focus on international law. What Israel has done would traditionally have been considered very, very dubious under international law. And in fact, from the point of view of many international lawyers, entirely illegal. And people who want to read the international legal argument, there's a good piece which we can share with subscribers, written in the Guardian by an international lawyer explaining why what Israel has done is illegal under international law. You can also see the statement from the International Energy Authority. So this is the UN's nuclear watchdog saying they are completely opposed to what Israel's done. So in the spirit, Alistair, of disagreeing agreeably, I'm going to make the case for the mullahs. Now let me, before I do this, just put on the record that I do not think there is a moral equivalence between Israel and Iran any more than I think there's a moral equivalence between the US and China. Awful, though, Truly awful. Though the behavior of the US under Trump has been truly awful, Though the behavior of Israel under Netanyahu has been, that doesn't make them moral equivalents. There are fundamental differences. Netanyahu is democratically elected in free, fair elections by the Israeli people. There is a strong independent judiciary. There are changes in government. Iran is not like that. Iran is a proper, autocratic, theocratic regime that funds hostile proxy terrorist groups around the world, oppresses its people, is deeply unpopular. So let me just put that on record. But the point is not moral equivalence. The point is the legal argument. And the question with the legal argument is, is Israel any more justified in attacking Iran in terms of international law than Iran would be in attacking Israel in terms of international law? And what do I mean by that? Well, the argument is about preemption, and the argument effectively is like a bar and brawl. If you think someone's going to punch you, you can punch them. But the only legal grounds for doing that is if you're very confident that they can punch you and that they're going to punch you. Right. They need capacity and they need intent. In other words, if you're going after Iran, you need to prove that they are absolutely either have a nuclear weapon or are about to get it and they're about to fire it at you. Whereas, in fact, the conclusion is that Iran is almost certainly 12 months, very best case scenario from the Iranian point of view, six months after getting a nuclear weapon. And there's so far no sense that there's any plan for them to drop it on top of Israel. Now, let's put it the other way around. Preemption. If you allow preemption of this sort of what Israel's just done, what is to stop Hezbollah and Iran saying, we have pretty good reason to believe Israel's going to attack us, and indeed, they would have been right to say that, because Israel certainly has attacked them and in the case of Hezbollah, basically wiped them out and therefore, in order to stop them back to the bar and brawl and to stop them punching us, we're going to punch them first. In other words, what would be to stop them immediately after October 7th launching every missile that Hezbollah had in Lebanon and every missile that Iran had against Israel, saying, we're doing it because if we don't do it now and if we sit tight, Israel's going to attack us?
- [12:15]
Rory Stewart
Oh, Lord, Rory, I think you've just slightly made the Israelis case for them there.
- [12:20]
Alistair Campbell
Well, what do you mean by that? Because let me sort of get into agreeable disagreement here, because what actually happened after October 7th is that for whatever reason, and partly because there was a lot of US Pressure on them, Hezbollah were convinced not to release what were estimated at about 100,000 missiles which they had in Lebanon against Isra, and Israel went for Them, they were convinced to hold back, and they were told, if you hold back, we'll restrain Israel. Some missiles came over, but many a tiny fraction of what they had. Again, Iran was convinced to stay out of that war. They did not do what Hamas wanted, which was to follow up and attack Israel. And again, they were convinced not to do it because they were worried that if they did it in both cases, Israel would respond with American support. The lesson they will have drawn is that by not using their missiles when they had the opportunity to do so, they just gave Israel time to organize themselves and attack them. So the real preemptive strike to defend yourself, if it's completely justified in international law to attack an enemy before they attack you, logically, they should have attacked Israel before they were attacked.
- [13:25]
Rory Stewart
Okay, I get that. So I fear incoming. I fear incoming messages from those in Israel who tend to criticize us over our discussions, these things. So there's me explaining what an extraordinary piece of communication between Benjamin Netanyahu's interview with ABC was and there's you voluntarily basically saying you're putting the case for the mad mullahs, as Bibi calls them.
- [13:48]
Alistair Campbell
Exactly. And the one thing that is interesting in Israel is that even the most liberal Israelis, even I was talking to Josh Hamill, was just talking about this in relation to seeing somebody who was a Bernie Sanders supporter on the far left of Israeli politics being very strongly in favor of attacking Iran. I mean, the one big consensus in Israeli society is that Iran is an existential threat and should be hit. This is very popular within Israel.
- [14:16]
Rory Stewart
I'll tell you one thing I did see this week, which I'd be interested in your take on whether you think that the Americans and the Israelis care about this. It was a huge survey by something called Arab Barometer, which tries to assess public opinion across the Arab world. And interestingly, obviously, lots of hostility to Netanyahu over Gaza, lots of hostility to America. Basically, though, accepts the right of Israel. Most respondents, he says, recognize Israel's right to exist. But what has happened is that the favorability of United States, Britain, France is seeing a very, very, very substantial decline across the Arab world. I mean, really big numbers. So, I mean, I just don't know whether the politics of this in the region, we don't maybe understand the extent to which it does matter in this context. The Arab Barometer's headline was, you know, it was the sort of. The unspoken piece of this jigsaw was street Arab opinion about where this was going.
- [15:18]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, I mean, it is incredible. The change that's happened, I think. And I think there's also a sense of. I was just watching Obama's 2008 speech to AIPAC, to the Israeli lobbying organization in the US in which he proclaims that the total, unbreakable, unquestionable US support for Israel. Whether a Democratic candidate like Obama 20 years later would talk in that language after what's happened, that's what I'm not quite sure. I mean, is what's happened in Gaza actually in the end going to be something that in the longer term will make it more and more difficult for people to stand up and say what Obama said in 2008, which is effectively, there is nothing that Israel could ever do. They could do anything. Almost by implication, they could drop a nuclear bomb on someone. We would still support Israel to the end.
- [16:07]
Rory Stewart
Just give you one point from this, one point from this survey. 84% of Kuwaitis said they've boycotted companies that support Israel. 62% have made donations to support the people of Gaza. 40% say they've shared pro Palestinian messages on social media. 22% have participated in public activities in solidarity from Gazans. And of course, in a lot of these countries, protest is kind of, you know, quite difficult to organize. So I do think that is one thing that doesn't get much play, which we should occasionally keep our eyes on, is what real public opinion in the Arab world is saying. The other point, which I think it wouldn't be unreasonable for people to make, is if it is so abhorrent, the idea that another country, Iran in this case, should have a nuclear weapon. Why does nobody ever question Israel's possession of nuclear weapons? That seems to me to have been not even a part of the thinking here.
- [17:01]
Alistair Campbell
I know this is really getting into dangerous ground, but again, would it have been legitimate for Iran to attack Israel at the moment when Israel was developing its nuclear weapon? Would it have been legitimate if they had got information that Israel was about to create a nuclear weapon to attack those facilities before that nuclear weapon was created? Would it have been legitimate for Pakistan to launch attacks on India when India was building its nuclear weapon, or for India to launch attacks on Pakistan when Pakistan was building its nuclear weapon? Would have been legitimate for the west to attack China when China was developing its nuclear weapon? Would it have been legitimate for China and Russia to have attacked Britain and France when they were developing their nuclear weapons? Are we in a world where we're saying that anybody developing a nuclear weapon is fair game and can be attacked, or are we saying if our enemies develop A nuclear weapon, they're fair game. But if there are allies, it's absolutely fine.
- [17:57]
Rory Stewart
The answer to the question ought to be resolved by international law. I think the problem that we're wrestling with here is that the international institutions have been deliberately, fundamentally undermined. We've talked a lot about how the United nations has become virtually dysfunctional because the major powers, the five permanent members, Russia and China, veto anything that America and Britain want to do. And now America undermining the United nations basically, from day one, from Trump, term two. He wasn't that fond of it in term one, but undermining it term two. And then the other two, of course, are the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice. So the, the post war, the Second World War, the post war order has been eroded. And by the way, I think Trump welcomes that. I thought it was fascinating yesterday. Let's just wind back a little bit to the G7. We'll come back to Iran, Israel, but just think about this. He goes to the G7. America is clearly the biggest power within the G7. And literally the very first thing he does is to complain that Russia was expelled. And he doesn't set the context of the fact that Russia invaded Crimea and that led to the expulsion. He basically just said it really pissed off Putin. Brackets unspoken. So no wonder he's going for Ukraine. And then day two, let's be honest, why has he left early? He may argue because Iran, Israel, he has to get more involved, et cetera. The truth is, you can do that from anywhere. Yes, it's better if you've got the people in the room, but you've got the communications. You can do it from anywhere. I think he was deliberately saying, you lot don't matter as much as I do. I think he was saying that I'm here for a bit. I'm causing you a bit of grief. I'm now going to go, I'm going to say nice things about you all as I go, but frankly, for the rest of the day, you're going to sit around thinking, what should we talk about now? So I think it's a deliberate undermining of any international institution so the nation state can behave with impunity.
- [19:57]
Alistair Campbell
So I've talked a little bit about the legal question. There's an ethical question, obviously, it's a moral question about when it's legitimate to do things and when it isn't. But there's also a practical point. Many listeners will strongly support what Israel did and will be strongly opposed to Iran. And let me Again, re emphasize the Iranian regime is a horrifying, illegitimate regime hated by the vast majority of its people, imposing extremely repressive theocratic vision of the world through a horrifying police state. I know that I walked across Iran, I was sometimes arrested or detained six or seven times in a day by different types of intelligence and security forces in Iran. It's a very sinister country. But the practical problem is that if you say international law doesn't really matter. So we don't care what the International Criminal Court says, we don't care what the International Court of Justice says, which is effectively what Israel is saying about rulings on what they're doing in Gaza. Right.
- [20:58]
Rory Stewart
And the West Bank.
- [20:59]
Alistair Campbell
And the West Bank. So the attempts to try to investigate what they're doing in terms of international law and the West Bank Gaza is completely rejected. And the US agrees with that. If you take that line, that makes for a much, much more dangerous world. Because of course the obvious point is when your allies are doing it, when Israel's doing it, when the US is doing it, it all seems fine. But what happens when everybody else starts doing it? So remember the last people to claim preemptive rights under, I think it's Article 50 of the UN defending themselves to justify an attack were Russia against Ukraine. That's what Putin said to the UN he was doing. It's what Lavrov said in his speech. He said Ukraine poses an existential threat to Russia and therefore we are invading Ukraine. What will then follow on from that? Well, look at Africa. Ethiopia's got a long standing claim to help itself to Eritrea. China obviously has a big claim to Taiwan. Right. And that's just the beginning of things. If you completely give up on the idea that there's rules based international order, if everything just becomes might is right and if you think that your neighbour is any form of threat to you, the only question is not should you do it, but can you do it? Which is where this debate is. And look, this isn't just the us, this isn't just Israel. There was basically as soon as Israel mounted this attack, the response from France and Germany was immediate condemnation of Iran, immediate condemnation of Iran. And I think Australia, our friend Albanese's government came out and said that everything that Israel had done was in accordance with international law. I don't know any international lawyer who believes that. At most they'd say it's ambiguous. The law of preemptions is getting dubious.
- [22:40]
Rory Stewart
The only leader of the G7 countries that came out critical at all of Israel was the Japanese. The other thing I think is worth just reminding people because of course, unsurprisingly, a lot of the arguments that we're now having were the arguments in a way that we took for granted at the time of the Iraq war. Now, I know that people who thought we did the wrong thing will roll their eyes at that because. Hold a minute, you didn't follow international law because lots of people believe that. But actually, if you go back to that time, both us and the Americans, admittedly under some duress, were absolutely determined to try to go down the United nations route. And the argument, it is true, one of the arguments that we used at the time that we believe that there was a genuine threat from Saddam Hussein, continue to develop weapons of mass destruction, and we all know that what flow from that. But that was one of the arguments. So ultimately that went to the argument of regime change. Okay. And what you have here is essentially there has been no attempt to keep the international community on board. There's not even really we still don't fully know whether Donald Trump gave the green light to this or not. We both think that he probably didn't and that he's had his hand forced by Netanyahu. And I think again, going back to this interview, if you want to see somebody who's absolutely putting drive and conviction at the heart of everything he says it is there. Meanwhile, there's an issue 20 odd years on where we still debate it, still get criticized for it and so forth. But just to go into it' Israel. So you mentioned what's happening in Gaza. I think it was last January 2024 that the ICJ, the international court of justice, found evidence of what they called that Palestinians in Gaza were at risk of genocide. And they set out a number of measures that they asked Israel to implement to prevent that from developing. They didn't do it. May last year they issued another ruling ordering Israel to halt the military operation in Rafah and also calling on them to allow unimpeded access for humanitarian organizations to get into the Gaza Strip. And then another advisory opinion, I think that was in July, certainly sometime around the summer. And then eventually that led to the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and the then Defence Minister Gallant. Now they all failed. So what you see now, and this is my point about why this interview is so kind of of interesting, that's probably the first time that ABC have done a long interview with Netanyahu since any of this. But none of it got raised. None of it got raised. Whereas I guarantee you If Tony Blair or I were doing an interview with most media organizations now about the Middle east, at some point we would get asked to justify what we did 20 years ago.
- [25:33]
Alistair Campbell
So I think you've made a very interesting point, which is that whatever went wrong 22 years ago, the debate was still absolutely enmeshed in questions of international law. It was presentations to the Security Council, it was endless consultations with lawyers, endless attempts to try to make as strong a legal case as possible. Now, people would say you pushed it too far. That legal case didn't quite add up. But my goodness, that was the focus. An enormous amount of energy went into it because people still believed in a rules based order. What's interesting now is that the last group of people who should believe in this, which is the Europeans, seem to have abandoned it. I mean, that's the very sad thing. It's not that Europe has much influence. It's not that Europe has the power to affect what happens. Israel's not going to listen to Europe. But just as in the early 1940s, there were very few liberal democracies left in the world, and those liberal democracies kept making the case for democracy through the Atlantic Charter and other things. So too, at a time when the US and many of the major players, the most powerful power in the Middle east and others, give up on international law, Europe should be trying to continue to keep alive the lonely case that there could be a rules based international order, that international law matters. And that's why France and Germany's betrayal is so extraordinary and so kind of, of troubling and shocking. Meaning that actually it's only really, as you say, people like the Japanese, the UN itself, which continues to talk this language, and the Norwegians, who continue to be very clear and consistent on this stuff. But what on earth has happened to France and Germany?
- [27:14]
Rory Stewart
Look, I think particularly for Germany, it will take an awful lot, I think, for the German political establishment to be critical of Israel. And it's interesting you put France in the same category because of course France Macron is somewhat Persona non grata with the Israelis at the moment, because he is the one who's pushing the European calls for the recognition of a Palestinian state, not least applying the logic that we all keep saying there should be a two state solution. Well, that means you have to have two states. And I think the other thing that relates to this, which I don't know, I didn't see much coverage of this in the uk, but I'm in France at the moment and there was a fair Bit of it. I think the other thing that will have really pissed off Trump is Macron going on his way to Canada, to Greenland and doing a big visit with the Danish Prime Minister and talking about how Europe will always stand up for Greenland. Now, I would put that in the category tick. Very good thing for Europe to remind America that Greenland is part of the European Union through Denmark. Where I agree with you is that I think that given that Netanyahu doesn't listen that much to European leaders, given that Trump doesn't want to be even involved really in discussions other than the sort of transactional ones that he enjoys, I would like to see the European leaders and via the G7, stress the importance of international law. And what was interesting there was, I don't know if you saw, there was a sort of six minute doorstep that Donald Trump did with Keir Starmer, where they were talking about the deal, this trade deal, and it was another, it was extension of the one that we thought had already been done. And there was this rather embarrassing moment, moment at the start, because Donald Trump, who loves opening his folders with his big signature, he opened the folder and all the papers fell out, which was peculiar.
- [28:52]
Alistair Campbell
And then Paul Kirstama had to then bend over and pick it up, which looks a little bit sort of strangely deferential. Would you in that situation have leant over and picked it up or would you have allowed Trump to pick it up? Should the British Prime Minister be sort of kneeling down to pick up the bits of paper that Trump is dropping? Is that the right look? Would Mertz have done that?
- [29:09]
Rory Stewart
I would.
- [29:10]
Alistair Campbell
I don't think Matz would have done that.
- [29:11]
Rory Stewart
Well, put it this way, there's Trump and there's Keir Starmer. Trump opens the folder, the papers fall out. It looks a bit embarrassing, especially when he says this very important document, there's nothing on it. I think what I would have expected is that one of the Prime Minister's or the President's team would immediately have shambled, run across, crouched down so that they couldn't be identified too readily, picked up the papers and allowed the two leaders to carry on. But I think the point I was going to make is that, that the, the questions that were being thrown essentially were all about Iran, Israel, with the occasional one about Britain where he did his old stuff about I love Britain.
- [29:47]
Alistair Campbell
Blah, blah, blah, which he called the European Union.
- [29:49]
Rory Stewart
Which he called the European Union. Yeah, that was a bit of a problem because I don't know if, if you know that, but we left the European Union June 20 after 2016 referendum. But I think that what I'd like to have seen was Keir Starmer interjecting himself into some of the questions about Iran and Israel. And simply, you know, all he had to do was to say, you know, we're committed to de escalation. As you know, there are concerns about the importance of the rule of law in this. I mean, he didn't need to do it in a way that sort of pissed off Trump too much. But I agree with you. I think that this is what has happened as a result of Trump very powerfully and successfully establishing this notion of a different form of diplomacy, where essentially it's all, all between nations. And I think that's the other reason why he left early. You could see the pictures at. And I know that place because I was at the G7 in 2002 in Kalinaskis. And so that you have this table just with the seven leaders, plus the two from the European Union, Von der Leyden and Costa. And Trump just looked really, really pissed off to be there. He hates it when other people are speaking. And fair play to Carney. I don't know if you saw Carney basically called a hawk to the. The sort of meandering ramble that was going on. He let him have a go about Putin. You could see his face going, where's this going? And then once he started to get into immigration, attacking the blue states and all this stuff. And Kylie just stood up and said, right, I'm exercising my right as the chair of the G7, according this to a halt. Trump did look a bit pissed off. But I think he, over time, I.
- [31:21]
Alistair Campbell
Think he respects that, but he doesn't like it.
- [31:23]
Rory Stewart
He does. You could tell he doesn't like it.
- [31:24]
Alistair Campbell
Let's just, before we go to the break, just come back to the fundamental framing. I mean, I've been talking to many, many who are experts on this and in the region, including, I want to pay tribute both to my conversations with, but also what I've read from Rob Malley, who was Biden's negotiator, to my friend Gerard Russell, our friend Gerard Russell. But let me absolutely emphasize that what I'm saying here is my views, not theirs. They've been very kind in challenging me and informing me, but these are my views, not theirs. One of the things that they've reminded me of is that There have been four big questions for 20 years, 25 years, because we've been discussing whether or not Israel should attack the Iranian nuclear sites for 25 years. And they're the same four questions, but now they're going to be resolved. And what are those four questions? Number one, will Iran abandon its nuclear program or will it push ahead with it?
- [32:17]
Rory Stewart
I think it will try to do the latter.
- [32:19]
Alistair Campbell
Very good. Number two, will it force them to the negotiating table, or will it make them back off the negotiations?
- [32:25]
Rory Stewart
This is where I was rather taken by the way that Netanyahu framed it. He said, they don't want to sit at the negotiating table, they want to blow it up. And he said that they want to pretend that they're coming to talks whilst continuing to develop nuclear weapons. So I think that depends on whether America does fall off the fence or not.
- [32:40]
Alistair Campbell
Very good. Three, will it rally the Iranian people against the regime or will it strengthen nationalist support for the regime?
- [32:47]
Rory Stewart
Very hard for us to know, but our mutual friend Justin Forsyth, who supports the opposition against the regime in Iran, he sent me some very interesting videos of some of the protests that are going on, particularly when people are getting arrested. It's very, very hard to know, but I think you were right when you said earlier that fundamentally, this is a deeply unpopular regime. So I suspect any rallying to the flag will be staged.
- [33:12]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, finally, can Israel do it alone? Can it take out the nuclear program alone, or is it going to need US support to do it?
- [33:19]
Rory Stewart
Well, they say the guy from the International Atomic Energy Agency says that the big place, Fordo, is kind of half a mile underground, and there's only one piece of weaponry that can take it out, and the only people who have it is the United States. So that would probably be. No, I guess the. The other question that relates to that is whether Iran politically loses its will. But I think the dangers of us thinking that they might is that that leads them straight into regime change, and that is the thing which terrifies them even more than the bombing.
- [33:49]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. Just to replay that back to you. So the most optimistic scenario, which of course, has always been the view of people in Israel and people in the US who support attacks, is Israel will destroy the nuclear weapons program. Iran will then abandon its nuclear weapons program. It will then come to the negotiating table, and the people will turn against the regime. The pessimistic view is they'll fail to take out the nuclear weapons program. It will just make Iran accelerate its nuclear weapons weapons program. It'll strengthen nationalism in Iran and make it more difficult to get a deal. Let me just one final thing before the break. I've been listening so that you don't have to, to Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk. So I'm trying to get my finger on the MAGA podcast crowd.
- [34:31]
Rory Stewart
They're not happy.
- [34:32]
Alistair Campbell
They're not happy at all.
- [34:33]
Rory Stewart
And nor's Tucker Carlson.
- [34:34]
Alistair Campbell
This is a really interesting problem for Donald Trump. So there are people like Lindsey Graham, the Iran hawks, Israel supporters on the traditional Republican right who are very excited by this. But basically, MAGA is isolationist. Charlie Kirk is saying 90% of his listeners are horrified by this. And the Steve Bannon thing I listen to, essentially what he says is, yeah, it's like Ukraine. If Israel wants to do this, they're welcome to do it, but they can do it on their own. We are not going to be sucked into this war. And Charlie Kirk says, you know, Persia's a great power. They've got huge weapons. This will be loss of faith. And essentially they portray any pressure on Trump to support Israel as being driven either in Charlie Kirk's word, by war contractors and either defense industry trying to make money, or if you're Steve Bannon and his crowd, they say it's the UAE and the Gulf paymasters of Mike Pompeo bribing the Republican right to get involved. So from the MAGA crowd's point of view, they think, oh, my goodness, here we are. This is another Middle Eastern war that we don't want to have anything to do with. Israel's playing us for fools. They're dragging us in. They're forcing us to get involved in something that's their business and not us.
- [35:44]
Rory Stewart
Well, Trump was asked, I think, at his doorstep with Keir Starmer, he was asked about, and it just shows you the sort of ridiculousness of the American political ecosystem that he wasn't asked about Lindsey Graham or anybody on the other side of argument. He was asked about what Tucker Carlson said. And he was very, very dismissive of Tucker Carlson. He said, I don't know what Tucker Carlson has said, but he should maybe try and get himself a job on a decent network and then people might hear him. So he was back to play the reality TV string puller. But I think it's true. I think he will be very, very wary because it's not as if he's got a united MAGA Republican Party picture on this. It's very, very divided. And the other thing that he'll be absolutely eating away at him all the time is this thing that he made such a big thing of. No war's ever going to start on my watch. And, you know, he's the piece he's going to be. He actually said at the when he was won the election second time around. History will see me as a great peacemaker. Well, you know, as we said on the emergency podcast the other day, every single war that he's been involved in or that he's sort of related to at the moment, and this, by the way, this is why he should be very wary of trying to give the impression he can solve all this on his own. Far better if you can build international alliances. This is the point you made to Kevin McCarthy. People should really listen to the interview we've done on leadership with Kevin McCarthy, the former speaker, because albeit he's absolutely sort of putting the Trump line in a way, you made that point to him that, you know, America spent decades building up alliances and it's destroying them. And ultimately that is not good for good for America. We're going to be talking about this for quite a while. Netanyahu was asked on that interview how long he thought he'd go on for, and he obviously said it'll go on as it needs to. But the feeling you get is that they have got a plan here. This is a very, very well thought out military plan. And back to your point about would the Iranians have been justified to attack the other thing, it's clear this has been planned over probably years. This has been years in the planning and certainly the detailed planning that's now been put into place that was not done overnight. This has been a pretty extraordinary operation. And the other thing that I think the Iranians to going are be terrified of is that so much of this has been down to Israel's extraordinary special forces, which of course reputationally took a massive hit on the back of October 7th. But, you know, as I say, Netanyahu wasn't even asked about all that.
- [38:12]
Alistair Campbell
Well, let's take a break and then we'll come back to Talk about the UK.
- [38:21]
Rory Stewart
This episode is sponsored by NordVPN.
- [38:24]
Alistair Campbell
Now, Alistair Online privacy. My new pretentious idea is a bit like democracy. You trust it's there until one day it's not. And by then, someone's already reading over your shoulder.
- [38:34]
Rory Stewart
So yet again, you bring the comforting touch of Orwellian dystopia to lift my challenged mood. But of course, you're right. As always, Rory, with our protection, your data is wide open. Emails, passwords, even your browsing history.
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Alistair Campbell
Which is why I use NordVPN. It encrypts your connection, hides your IP and blocks trackers all silently in the background.
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Rory Stewart
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- [39:07]
Alistair Campbell
One account covers up to 10 devices, so that's your phones, your tablets, your laptops or whatever else you use. Alistair to track focus groups at 3 o' clock in the morning.
- [39:15]
Rory Stewart
So whether you're traveling, working remotely or just logging on at home, Nord keeps you secure, quietly, reliably, exactly when it matters.
- [39:23]
Alistair Campbell
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- [40:56]
Gordon Carrera
Hello, I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.
- [40:58]
David McCloskey
And I'm David McCloskey, CIA analyst turned spy novelist.
- [41:02]
Gordon Carrera
Together we're the co hosts of another goal hanger show called called the Rest is Classified where we bring you the best stories from the world of secrets and spies.
- [41:11]
David McCloskey
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.
- [41:27]
Gordon Carrera
It was a moment that changed global politics forever. Shift Shifting the focus of spy agencies away from nation states towards hunting for terrorists and understanding the extremist ideology that drove them.
- [41:39]
David McCloskey
We will then go into the decade long manhunt 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.
- [41:50]
Gordon Carrera
So if all of this sounds good, we've got a clip waiting for you at the end of the episode.
- [42:01]
Rory Stewart
Welcome back to the Reciprocities with me.
- [42:03]
Alistair Campbell
Alistair Campbell and with me, Rory Stewart.
- [42:05]
Rory Stewart
And Rory, let's talk about grooming gangs. I was very surprised when I heard that while he was flying to Canada, Keir Starmer had told the traveling press that he was going to be going, the government was going to go for a full national inquiry into the grooming gang scandal because, of course, the government line up to now has been best done locally, no need to do it nationally, etc. And what had happened was that he had read every word he said of the report that he'd commissioned a few months earlier from Louise Casey. Now, I know Louise Casey from some of the work that she did for us when we were in power and she is a formidable woman and she's not somebody who will kind of give you a glossed version if she finds something that's truly awful. And she actually said herself in an interview. I saw that when she started out, she, she actually supported the idea that this was probably best done locally. But the more she went into it, the more she realized this was way worse than she thought, that there had been institutional failures at virtually every level and that therefore there has to be a national public inquiry into the whole thing. And this is something that lots of people have been arguing for for some time. I think we have seen some pretty horrific opportunism by your old party, the Conservatives, who, who sort of sat on this for year after year after year and are now sort of saying, Keir Starmer should have done this when he came into office. But it's clear that this is going to, hopefully, at the end of this, a proper understanding of why all this stuff happened and what more needs to be done to stop it. But it's a terrible, terrible, terrible indictment. Yet another one of the British, of the British state.
- [43:44]
Alistair Campbell
Absolutely. I mean, if, if I know we've got a lot of younger listeners, if you're listening with young children, you might want to turn off the section that's following, which is going to be graphic. But I think it's important for adults to understand the nature of what's going on because there's been so much jargon and obfuscation in this debate. So I think it is worth explaining in detail what actually we now know has been going on and actually many people have known for a very long time. Andrew Norfolk, Great Times journalist, 2012 now sadly died, was the first person to do really major reporting on this. Then there was the J Report and then there have been other reports leading up to this Casey report. So I think what was explained very, very powerfully in the J Report on what happened in Rotherham is that we're talking here about children who have been raped with multiple attacks, trafficked, abducted, beaten, in some cases set alight, threatened with guns. Louise Casey has emphasized that this is multiple men on separate occasions beating and gang raping children, often children in care, children with physical or learning disabilities. And that the cycle by which it happened often began with people approaching people in parks pretending to be their boyfriends, giving them gifts, winning them over in what appeared initially quite gently and quite quickly became drug and alcohol addiction, then violence, then coercion, then trafficking. And there are various other elements involved in it, such as the use of taxi ranks. But that's the reality behind what's called child sexual exploitation. And Louise Casey again is very, very confident that overwhelmingly the people involved in these group based child sex exploitation rings were predominantly Pakistani males.
- [45:37]
Rory Stewart
And just to go through some of the sort of big points that she makes, and it's about 200 pages, the whole report. And you know, as I would expect from Louis Case, it really doesn't hold back and it's, and it's very, very clear and clearly written and persuasive. So she talks about huge data inefficiencies so that actually the phenomenon of grooming gangs wasn't really captured in the police systems. Recurring systemic failures, what she calls is repeated cycle of scandals and public outrage leading to bursts of government activity, but no real improvement. And this is the one, I think, where we get to a sort of cultural issue. Persistent denial and obfuscation, refusal fully to acknowledge what's going on. And in particular she emphasizes this point about authorities being worried that they'll be accused of being racist if they identify the point you've just made about predominantly Pakistani backgrounds. Then there's this other issue, talks about the adultification of child victims. And this is where children under 16 are being perceived as more mature and capable of consent than they are. One of the recommendations is that anyone who has sex with anybody under 16, it is rape, lack of accountability, group thinking, the taxes that you mentioned. And then I guess what it also does is call into question the deeper problems with the with the functioning and the capacity of our policing and criminal justice systems more broadly.
- [47:01]
Alistair Campbell
Well, here's. I mean, you talked about capacity and I was reminding myself, myself of some of the figures and they're absolutely staggering. There are in each year group about 700,000 people in the UK, so there would be, for the sake of argument, something in the region of 4 million people aged between 11 and 16, rather than, they say the youngest cases were 11. The total figures for child sex abuse in the UK is estimated to be 500,000 cases a year, half a million cases a year. People think that 10% of children are sexually abused. Of those, 150,000 cases are recorded by the police. Of those 150,000 cases recorded, about 13,000 go to prosecution. There are about 10,000 convictions every year. This particular subgroup, which is group based child sexual exploitation, you get about 700 convictions a year. So this is a subset of this much bigger thing. And this is one of the complaints that Louise Casey makes, which is that one of the reasons everybody says the vast majority of offenders are white, or they point out that 39% of suspects are aged between 10 and 15. So they're young men aged under 15 themselves or aged under 16 themselves. It's confusing a whole series of different things. So nearly 40% of these offences we're talking about are online offences and they're bundled in with not online offences. So every possession of an illegal image online is specified by the police as an offence. And that makes it very difficult to compare what's happening in Britain to any other jurisdiction, because nobody else counts it in this way, measures it in this way, so it's almost impossible to work out. This is about 15% of court time at the moment. Very, very large amount of court cases, very complex cases, because they require DNA and forensic evidence. But let's step back to the bigger picture. While the police are dealing with that, that they're also dealing with 250,000 burglaries, 500,000 shoplifting offences, 4 million fraud offences, 150,000 robbery offences. And in this case, the prosecution rate on child sexual offences is much higher than it is with things like burglary. So burglary, about 4% go to charge and 56% of those burglars who are convicted then reoffend within two years. So there's a massive systemic failure in the entire justice system. And I guess if you were to talk to a police person, they would say that you can only really understand because from the surface you're like, what on earth was South Yorkshire doing? Why were they not catching all these cases? And they would say because at the same time they're under pressure from the government and indeed from Robert Jenrick and many others to say, why are you not on top of shoplifting, why are you not on top of fraud, why are you not on top of cybercrime, why you're not of on top on burglary, why are you not on top of robbery, why are you not on top of knife crime? And the question is, where do you put those resources now? I think there's a total consensus now that a lot of those resources need to go into group based child sex exploitation and national task force going after this very particular type of crime. But this particular type of crime There are about 700 convictions a year compared to a prison population of about 87,000 people and about 200,000 people on probation.
- [50:16]
Rory Stewart
But that shift that is clearly coming comes in part because of what she describes as this sort of years of denial and obfuscation. But I think she was right to call out the way that the Tories handled this in Parliament yesterday. Yvette Cooper stood up and essentially made an apology on behalf of the state and of the failures that had been made then Kemi Badenoke immediately stood up and politicized it in a way that, given most of this happened on the watch of the Conservatives. I think she should basically take a look at herself on that one. Just very briefly before we close, let's just go through some of the main recommendations in the report. So one of them we both mentioned, this is the thing about anyone who engages in penetrative sex with a child under 16, that is rape. Other stuff, make the collection of ethnicity and nationality data for all suspects in child sexual abuse research. And I suspect this is for the inquiry into the drivers of group based child sexual exploitation, including social media, cultural factors and group dynamics, and then also greater, more rigorous standards on the licensing and regulation of taxi drivers who were often involved. And I don't think we should, you know, taxi drivers get a bad enough press as it is. We should point out that these are relatively small numbers of taxi drivers, but in these communities where this has been, this has been rife.
- [51:35]
Alistair Campbell
And of course, the other obvious thing to point out is that this is horrifying evil men. But it's a very, very small number of the men in Britain and a very small number of the men in the Muslim and Pakistani communities. And that's important because of course, as we'll get onto in tomorrow's Question time, when we talk about extremism. The image that Muslim men have come to our countries in order to rape white working class women is right at the heart of all the far right language and of course is what's got Musk involved in this and US attacks on Keir Starmer and the rest is the idea that somehow we've enabled a mass invasion of people who are raping women. What we're talking about is very, very evil men. And yes, absolutely, predominantly from one ethnicity. And clearly a very strong cultural element going on within that ethnicity. And that's why Louise Casey wants to focus on the ethnicity because it would help you to track it by understanding that this is something that was happening amongst a group of Pakistani men. But you also have to point out that it would be the most incredible libel to suggest that this was somehow the normal behavior of Pakistani men. And indeed it's the attempt to do that by people like Tommy Robinson that's causing a lot of the hate and extremism in our society and many others.
- [52:53]
Rory Stewart
Well, as you say, question time tomorrow we're going to talk about this, the violence in Ballymena, because we didn't have time to talk about that last week. We're going to talk about this very interesting German intelligence service report about the rise of the far right. There's actually a lot happening with the Democrat, the murder of the Democrat politician Melissa Haltman in Minnesota. A lot of feedback last week about our discussion on immigration. Not all of it very flattering, I was to say. And also I don't know whether you knew Blaze, Rory, but I know Blaze.
- [53:24]
Alistair Campbell
Q has become c amazing.
- [53:26]
Rory Stewart
So we'll talk about, we'll talk about the new head of MIT as well.
- [53:29]
Alistair Campbell
Very good. Looking forward to it.
- [53:30]
Rory Stewart
See you soon.
- [53:30]
Alistair Campbell
Bye. Bye.
- [53:31]
Rory Stewart
Bye.
- [53:35]
Gordon Carrera
I'm Gordon Carrera.
- [53:36]
David McCloskey
And I'm David McCloskey.
- [53:38]
Gordon Carrera
Together we're the co hosts of another goal hanger show called the Rest is Classified.
- [53:42]
David McCloskey
Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on.
- [53:47]
Gordon Carrera
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, these things, but they're never actually executed. They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they?
- [54:01]
David McCloskey
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.
- [54:13]
LifeLock
Yeah.
- [54:14]
David McCloskey
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 9 11.
- [55:20]
Gordon Carrera
If you want to hear the full episode, listen to the rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts.
- [55:32]
Rory Stewart
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.
- [55:53]
Alistair Campbell
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 interest by going to goal hanger.com right now. That's go H-A-N-G-E-R.com see you there.