A (3:07)

Yeah. And he also said that there was some method in this madness because, of course, unpredictability was a useful weapon. But I think there's something. I think we have seen this coming recently. I read something just a few days ago when I was in Ukraine, and it was that some of the kit that has been sent as this build up two thirds of the US's E3 command and control aircraft, somebody said this would totally not be required just for PR in the way that some of the armada might be. I think the other point to make, Rory, is that, you know, one of the things I kept hearing in Ukraine was that these negotiations with Witkoff and Kushner are just fake. They're for show. And you sort of feel it's been the same with this. The Iranians turn up, the Americans tell them to capitulate, the Iranians say no, and they go away. And there was a very interesting. There's this guy, I don't know if you follow this guy, Trita Parsi from the Quincy Institute, who seems to be like Rob Malley, something of an expert on Iran. He is adamant that most of the information flow that goes to Trump about Iran comes from Netanyahu. And he's convinced Trump that one, that Iran is a lot weaker than it was, which is true. It is weaker than it was on the nuclear front. It's weaker economically. And it's just had the biggest demonstrations, probably the biggest demonstrations that we've seen in recent memory, and has persuaded him that a few big hits and a few big threats and Iran will crumble. And Parsi tweeted recently, he said this. Trump's fundamental misread of Iran is that he believed that the. The Democratic leadership would fear all the US aircraft carriers and their firepower, and as a result, opt to surrender. It's the opposite. They fear surrender far more than they fear war. And I think that's an important insight because the way that Trump operates, I mean, don't forget when he did do the launch of the nuclear program recently, he came out immediately, said, it's been obliterated. I saw JD Vanced last week being asked, if it's been obliterated, why do you have to attack it again? He really struggled with the answer. But these attacks are far bigger. These attacks are far bigger. We've already seen attacks on the intelligence headquarters, National Security Council, the Pasteur compound, where it's thought that both the President and the Supreme Leader Khamenei are thought to live. We've seen an attack on the place where the former president is believed to live. And we've also seen the response as well. You know, Qatar says it's thwarted a number of attacks on the American air base there. We've got bases in Kuwait, uae, Bahrain, all being subject to attack. So this, this could go in any sort of really quite dangerous directions. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy.

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B (6:51)

we'll get on to the really big question I think hanging at the back of this, which is how we judge Trump AS and Israel's actions. And we'll get on to the very different responses that are now coming. Some leaders who aren't really saying anything yet. Comments from the eu, comments from Australia, comments from people like Jeremy Corbyn. We can get into all the different ways that you can talk about this, but let's just try to get as far as we can close to the facts at the moment. The first thing is it's extremely interesting how all the news agencies, the world have to scrabble to try to put the information together in real time. So we're doing this live and some of these strikes are still taking place. We know that these strikes in Iran, and we can see this mostly from social media footage, have hit the major governmental capitals, the major cultural centers of Iran and major religious centers. What do I mean, by that, it's hit places like Tehran and Tabriz, which are these huge cities. Tabriz, big city in northwest Iran, Hit Isfahan, which is the great kind of ancient Islamic capital, great cultural capital. And they've hit Qom, which is the seat of the religious authorities and religious leadership. But they've also hit slightly more obscure places, Karmanshah, which is out towards the west, towards Kurdistan. They've hit bits of Loristan, and they've hit bits of the border place called Ilam and Loristan. And then, as you say, there's been these Iranian counterattacks. So Iran clearly has been expecting this to happen and has had presumably set the coordinates of the places it wanted to attack so that they could trigger them as soon as the attack happened. They have attacked Israel, but they have also attacked Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Jordan. And in most of those cases, as far as we can tell from the information as of 11 minutes past 11 on a Saturday morning in Britain, the attack in Bahrain seems to have been aimed at the US Naval base. The attacks in Qatar look as though they were probably aimed, although the Cashres may correct this, at the US Air base. Jordan also, there are US assets on the ground. So it may be that what Iran is trying to do is draw a distinction between attacking US bases in those countries and attacking those countries. But it certainly provoked a massive hostile reaction from the Gulf. Saudi Arabia has put out, and Saudi Arabia, remember, had slightly stepped out of the Iran conflict. China had negotiated a diplomatic alliance between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Most of these Gulf states who had been against the Iran nuclear deal, with the exception of the Emirates, uae, Dubai, that remained very strongly anti Iranian, went a bit softer on. Iran seemed to have concluded that Iran was no longer really a threat. It didn't really have a big nuclear arsenal. A weak regime in Iran was less of a threat than chaos. But those regimes are now very, very angry indeed that Iran, who they felt that they were taking a gentler attitude towards, has decided to strike their territory, whether or not they're going after U.S. assets.

A (10:09)

Yeah. Now, Rory, I'm doing this live podcast with you. If I was doing it with our American counterpart, Mr. Scaramucci, and I were to ask him the question, how much do you think Wag the Dog is being brought into the equation? What do you think you would say?

B (10:25)

You'd say 100%. This is all about the Epstein files. That's why Hegseth is going to war with Anthropic and OpenAI. And this is why they're attacking Iran. Go on. Tell us about that, then. Give us the Wag the Dog.

A (10:36)

Well, Wag the Dog was a film starring Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, I think. And basically what happened was the American President was caught up in a big sex scandal, I think, just getting up to the election, and his kind of Alastair Campbell figure guy called Conrad, he somehow constructed a fake war, would you believe, against Albania. So America went to war with Albania to stop this. So Wag the Dog basically means where bad things are happening. You create something far bigger so that the world stops talking about the bad thing and they start talking about the thing you want to. Now, I don't. In that I don't minimise, by the way, how awful the Iranian regime is and how Iran has been seen as a threat by all sorts of countries for a long, long time. But it does seem sort of the timing, you know, he's. We've had Trump just on his State of the Union address, longest in history, and didn't go down terribly well. His ratings are really, really poor right now. And there's a couple of historic tweets. Rory, October 9, 2012, from Donald Trump. Now that President Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin, watch for him to launch a strike on Libya or Iran. He's desperate. Now, you can often work, I've said this before, you can often work someone out best by how they attack their opponents. And then this one, a year later, November 2013. Remember, I predicted a long time ago President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly, not skilled. So, you know, I think that given what we know about Trump, what we saw in Venezuela, what we've seen in some of the other operations he's done, there will be a pretty powerful political motivation. And what that leads me to worry, in fact, it puts people like Yum in a tricky spot. We'd loathe the Iranian regime. We'd long for it to be gone. But when you are highly suspicious of the motives, unsure whether this is thought through, you do worry that this could go any which way and it'd be hard to work out the truth because Trump's going to declare huge success whatever happens.

B (12:43)

Yeah, well, I think if you look at these statements coming out from those leaders that have already made statements, you can see that fundamental challenge. On the one hand, the Iranian regime is abhorrent, lost profound credibility, has been killing tens of thousands of its own citizens. It's weaker than it's ever been. It's in a situation in which, for the first time, really, you have the Middle class and upper middle class Iranians now combining with the Bizaris and more of the urban poor and even some of the rural poor to rise up against the regiment. And a real sense that it's in the end states. We've talked about the fact that Khamenei is 86 years old, the supreme leader. So horrible internal repression. And of course Iran is a state which has had these proxies. So it's had in Syria and in Lebanon and in Yemen and Iraq, militia groups, guerrilla groups, missiles destabilizing the the region, attacking American bases, attacking Israel, et cetera. And it had a nuclear program. So that's the. Iran is an evil regime that kills its own people and it's a threat to the world. And then you've got the other side of it, which is firstly, where is the international law in this? How do you think this through in terms of a. To be pretentious, a rules based international order. Right. The basic lessons we thought we drew from the Second World War and even from the First World War and the whole existence, the United nations, etc. Was about having rules. Yeah.

A (14:33)

Or even from the American Constitution, because the American Constitution says only Congress can declare war. And Trump actually called this war today. Now, before he's been a bit careful on that. He's not talked about war because that is the American Constitution. But what he's showing yet again is he believes he can do whatever he wants regardless of the American system and regardless of the United nations or indeed his allies. It's not clear to me how many others. I was reading Der Spiegel this morning. They said Merz had been informed and Merz is due to go to Washington this week. I don't know whether the Brits were informed. I don't know whether. I just don't know, but I don't know. Have you seen anybody outside the kind of really obvious ones like Israel? Have you seen anybody openly endorse this so far? It's interesting.

B (15:22)

Yeah, Albanese. Anthony Albanese. So it's been really interesting. I mean, I was just noting down a little bit of this stuff so you get the full range. On the one hand you have Jeremy Corbyn coming out saying, as you can imagine, this is illegal, unprovoked, unjustifiable. These are rogue states breaking international law. So that's the classic position of the European left. And then on the other extreme you've got Anthony Albanese. And Anthony Albanese says Australia stands with the brave people of Iran in their struggle against oppression. And then it Talks about the Iranian regime's ballistic missile and nuclear programs, support for armed proxies, brutal acts of violence and intimidation, attacks on Australian soil, human rights. And it then says, we support the United States acting to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. We're closely monitoring the situation, we're upgrading travel advice, but it's very, it's the closest. No, but compared to the other world leaders.

A (16:30)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

B (16:32)

It's a pretty full throated condemn Iran, we support the US and there's no anxiety. Now. Kaya Kallas, who's the EU foreign leader, says this is an evil regime, missiles are a threat to us all. But calling for a cool head. Von der Leyen is closer towards the international law position. She says maximum restraint, protects civilians, fully respect international law, which is much closer to coded language for we're really worried that the US and Israel are again acting completely outside international law. And despite the fact that she agrees the Iranian regime is evil and dangerous, she also thinks that we have to think about the presence of the whole international system. But at least when I went on, there is a deafening silence from Keir Starmer's Twitter account and Macron's account. Neither of them have been tweeting about this at all.

A (17:24)

The only thing I've seen from the UK is a line from, I'm guessing number 10. The UK did not, or this may be a reporting of it. The UK did not participate in the strikes. Keir Starmer will convene a COBRA meeting this morning. That's the Cabinet Office briefing room A where they have these sort of national security meetings. UK government statement does not endorse the US operation. That's the reporter saying that. And the quote was this. Iran must never be allowed to develop a nuclear weapon. That is why we have continually supported efforts to reach a negotiated solution. Our immediate priorities, the safety of UK nationals in the region. We will provide them with consular assistance available 247 as part of our long standing commitments to the security of our allies in the Middle East. We have a range of defensive capabilities in the region which we've recently bolstered. We stand ready to protect our interests. So there's no mention there of support or otherwise of this specific action. And don't forget recently, I mean, I don't know how true this was, but there was quite a sort of kerfuffle with your old leader, Boris Johnson, condemning Keir Starmer for reports that Britain had not allow some of its bases to be used for some of the military options that Trump was trying to get off the ground. So that looks to me like.

B (18:38)

Yeah, and. Well, that sounds like. Let's just. On that. I think that's really important because that implies that the UK have been anxious about the legal implications, the US launching attacks on Iran and middle negotiations, and therefore have been reluctant to allow the US to use the UK bases. And if that's been going on for a few days now, not surprisingly, when the US launches those attacks, the UK will still have that position. Can we just step back for one second just to remind people a little bit of the big picture here? And the big picture basically, is that if you'd been talking about this under Obama or Biden, so let's say we went back four years, eight years, 10 years, 15 years, there would have been three worries. Number one, international law, you're going to get Congress. Domestic law is Congress, you get Congress voted internationally, you're going to get the UN to vote for this. And what are your grounds? So you can only do this stuff in international law if there's an imminent threat to you, much as, I guess, I suppose it's a stupid analogy, but I suppose you're only really allowed to punch someone on the face in a bar if they're actually picking up a bottle to swing it at you. You can't say, I think he might in the future pick up a bottle, so I'm going to smack him in the face.

A (19:54)

But interestingly, in his State of the Union address the other day, Trump said Iran was about to develop ballistic missiles that could hit the United States, whereas the Defense Intelligence Agency's own assessment, the last one, says that's not true. So I wonder whether he was actually trying to sort of generate the sense that we are about to get hit,

B (20:16)

trying to set that stuff up. Yeah, well, so there was the legal argument, but I think probably the two stronger arguments why people didn't do it in the past were, firstly, that they were very worried about Iran's proxies, this very powerful Hezbollah force in Lebanon, which had about 100,000 missiles targeted at Iran and the Houthis and the Shia militia. And secondly, that they were very worried about the potential response from Iran itself, its own missiles, the way it would accelerate its own nuclear program, the way in which it would unleash war in the Middle East. And what's changed over the last two years is that Israel began to be much, much more aggressive and take much more risk. So we first started covering this when they attacked an Iranian consulate and killed Iranian diplomats in Syria, which was a change, because actually, the Iran Israel conflict really since 2019 was a sort of shadow war. There were cyber attacks, there were a few assassinations, there were attacks on ships, but there wasn't anything absolutely open. Then there was the Israeli attack which wiped out the whole of the top of Hezbollah. This was people remember, this was the pagers and the radio attacks where 1500 of the top people of these Iranian proxies in Lebanon were killed. Then there has been the change in Syria. So Amod Al Shara, who we interviewed is very much part of the anti Iranian force. Iran was backing Bashar Al Assad, the old ruler in Syria. And the whole infrastructure of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in Syria has collapsed as Ahmad Al Shah has taken it over. So Iran suddenly finds itself without its proxies. And then the next thing that's happened is that the Israeli strikes against Iran, of which this is the third major sequence, have revealed a real weakness at the heart of the Iran Iranian system. It turns out that the anti missile defenses that Iran has simply weren't good enough. A huge amount of the satellite and interception infrastructure, in other words, Iran's abilities to scan the skies, see these missiles coming in, has been taken out. The nuclear program has been set back a long way and Iran did not actually react very powerfully the last two times. And the Iron Dome which protects Israel held. So the big change to finish this long speech is that Iran, which was seen as a very dangerous power that could cause mayhem if it was attacked as recently as two years ago, is now perceived, at least by US and Israeli policymakers as being a sort of paper tiger, militarily very weak, a regime about to collapse. And therefore they don't think that they're taking too much risk in attacking Iran. This episode is brought to you by Aura Frames. Now, it's Mother's Day coming up and an aura frame is what I'd call a proper upgrade from the usual Mother's Day flowers from the gas station.

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A (26:14)

Rory, what do you know about channel 12 in Israel?

B (26:18)

No, tell me about channel 12.

A (26:20)

Well, I don't know anything about channel 12 because what I'm saying is just that somebody just sent me a a social media post quoting Israel's Channel 12 reporting Israeli officials believe that Khmer, his advisors and those responsible of the nuclear program have been assassinated. I have no idea if that is true or not, but I and I well, let's.

B (26:42)

Let's stop on that for a second. I mean, let's. So, I mean, this is worth doing, given we're doing this live and you've just heard this life. Okay? So let's, let's, let's, let's take that seriously. We don't know whether it's true or not, because in the past, we've heard people have been assassinated who've turned out not to be. And sometimes it is true, but let's say it were true. That is an immense change. Khamenei has essentially run Iran since, well, now, for decades upon decades. The first phase that you remember of Khomeini really came to an end in 89. And everything we know of Iran, the second Islamic Republic since 1989, has been under the control of Khamenei. And this man, 86 years old, is a true believer. He's not somebody that was likely to flee to Russia or head off for this loot. He's somebody who, to the end, believed strongly in the nation state of Iran, in the sacred resistance, the fight against the US And Israel. And he is the absolute linchpin of that part of the regime. Now, there are other things underneath him. There is a huge Revolutionary Guard infrastructure. There is a basich militia which is set up throughout all the villages and towns of Iran, and then there's the military. But removing the Supreme Leader right at the top is essentially like removing Putin or removing Saddam Hussein or removing Gaddafi. I mean, you're removing the person who has been personally responsible for running this autocratic regime. Now, what does that then mean?

A (28:19)

Yeah, yeah. Now, the only thing I'd say about that, Rory, I think that's right, but I think the comparison with Putin is not necessarily accurate. I think Putin is an absolute dictator. I think Khamenei is the supreme leader. But I read somewhere recently somebody said it's less a pyramid structure and more a series of pillars that's sort of going in different directions. And I think a lot will depend. Let's assume for the moment that this is true. And as I said, I hate talking like this because we're talking about sort of hugely consequential global event that we're getting from one person on a train on his way to a football match telling me, has seen on Twitter, but that you've then got the Revolutionary Guard. That is, as we said the last time we talked about this, the rgrc. The last time we talked about them, we talked about they basically control the economy as well as the politics of this. So the question then would be, does, if he were to get to be wiped out, does that then lead to a power struggle to replace him, which cements those kind of pillars and their power structures, or does it lead to real change now? And this is going to be so complicated. When we were in Munich at the security conference, Roy, I was talking to this European diplomat and we were actually talking about all sorts of different things. And along came our friend Justin Forsyth, who later introduced my friend to Reza Pahlavi, the, the, the son of the

B (29:50)

Shah, who I also spoke to. Yeah, yeah, so I spoke directly to the son of the Shah.

A (29:55)

Yeah, so we both, we were both, we were both chatting to him and he was saying that, you know, he was feeling more confident. They've had these massive rallies around Europe and he's been out on social media today saying that the time to return to the streets may be approaching. Military are there to defend the people, not the regime. Pleading with Trump to avoid civilian death and pleading with people to stay safe but be ready is essentially saying that the regime is crumbling. May or may not be true. But interestingly, the diplomat who was just, you know, I think quite pleased to suddenly be meeting the Shah's son, as we were just having a chat about this and the other, he sent me a message this morning. I'd love to know your reaction to this, he said. And so it begins. You recall my concern that starting a war is easy, controlling it, ending it, much harder, if at all possible. The Iranian regime is evil. Yet I'm taken aback about the hubris and ease of the decision to attack. The world is becoming unshackled and our most atavistic instincts unleashed, all the while backed by unprecedented technological ability. I fear we're entering an age of impunity and suffering with no one in control. How long will it take to temper the human condition once again and who is going to do it? And I kind of feel there's a lot in that. When this happens, Trump, he stands up there with his USA baseball cap and he kind of, you know, just talks as though he literally owns the world and he's carrying it on his own shoulders and he doesn't really know what's going to happen. Bizarrely, when the news broke this morning, this was happening. I'd been in bed wallowing in self pity with man flu. And as you do in bed, Rory, I was reading the latest edition of, of Foreign affairs magazine and I was actually reading a piece by this guy about Iran. He was called Benham Ben Taleblu. And he's the senior director at the foundation for Defense of Democracies, which I think opposed the jcpoa. So he's probably, you know, very, very anti Iranian. But he set out, it was a really interesting, thoughtful piece and it was setting out how America, with the support of the Iranian people, could bring down the regime. Okay. But as I read through it, I thought, God, this is bloody complicated. This could go any which way on the route from A to B. Yeah, yeah.

B (32:15)

So I think this is the key. You are essentially, when you're doing this, you are stepping into a completely black room with no idea whether there's a step underneath you or whether you're going to plummet 100ft down. You may get away with it, you may not. Right, so what's the most optimistic scenario? Which Israeli and US planners will have. Their most optimistic scenario will be the Iranian people are completely fed up with this regime. That when Khamenei and the top leadership falls, the Revolutionary Guard ambassador will be unable to hang on to power. The army will maybe be a more neutral force, more sympathetic to the calls from Reza Pahlavi. He himself might even want to feel that the, the military has some residual loyalty to the old shah. But in any case, that Iran, this is the optimistic story. Iran has a very strange, strong and long tradition of parliamentary engagement going back to the beginning of the 20th century. And that there are this highly educated progressive population, particularly in cities. And that what will happen is that it will be like 1989. The old leaders will be kicked out. And this is the very optimistic scenario. Elections follow and sanity returns. On the other end is, well, let's lay out some different scenarios. Number one, top leadership maybe is taken out, but a new form of top leadership takes over, which could either be a new strong man taking over, head of the Resurrection Guard, or could be just a military coup, a military general taking over. And then the Iranian people are going to be very, very angry because tens of thousands of people have been killed by those figures. And they're not going to be content with a Venezuela situation where you just remove the top person and leave the rest of the regime in place. In which case you have continual killing in the streets. Or you have, let's craft another possibility. You have an anti regime government takeover. So maybe a technocratic US backed government takeover, in which case you might have the former regime elements, the people who were lined up with the old regime starting their own insurgency. That's the Iraq problem. Right. The Ba' Athists are kicked out and then you have all the former Sudan loyalists mounting a 10 year insurgency against the government. As with many of these countries, you could also imagine a scenario of big divisions which are ethnic and sectarian. So the Kurds, western Iran, very, very badly disposed towards the regime. Completely different political views, heavily Prosecuted now for 40 years and very, very interested in separatism. The Baluch down in the southeast on the Pakistani border again, could kick off. Now, somebody listening to this is going to say, oh, well, that's this typical. I mean, certainly Boris Johnson listening to me would be like, well, this is the normal rubbish that you get from these kind of Foreign Office ra. When are you going to just call out the fact the regime is evil? Fine. I honestly do think that anybody who thinks they can predict which path this is going to go is confusing themselves. We know so little about Iran. We've got so many of these countries wrong. We got Afghanistan wrong, we got Iraq wrong, we got Libya wrong, we've got Yemen wrong repeatedly. So they may be lucky. But even if somehow, by some miracle, Trump and Israel triumph and Boris Johnson writes the article he wants to write saying yet again that doomsayer liberal bedwetter was wrong and it all worked out beautifully, it will be, in a sense, because they were lucky. Anyone who thinks they can predict the directions, they're taking, risk, huge risk.

A (36:16)

Well, on prediction, while we be talking, Rory, our hard working dragging them out of bed early in the morning to set up a live podcast team doing a bit of polling of our listeners and viewers. Will Trump be successful in establishing regime change in Iran? Our viewers and listeners think no. 80%. Yes, 20%. Will there be a full blown war? Yes. 55. No. 45. Will Keir Starmer join the US and Iran? No. 84. Yes. 16. Will the Iranian people rise up against the regime in the week of these strides? Yes. 41. No. 59 on the coup point. Rory, when you were speaking there, I was sort of trying to think what would a Venezuelan equivalent be? So Venezuela, he goes in and takes out Maduro and we all think this is going to be the unleashing of sort of, you know, great democracy uprising in Venezuela, because he's got no interest in democracies, actually wants to be a dictator himself. So Delcey Rodriguez does a deal, stays there, carries on. I guess the closest exact parallel to that. Is this too harsh on Delsey Rodriguez might be if actually they take out Khamenei and some of the top dudes and then actually a version of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps just takes over.

B (37:32)

Yeah, well, I think there would be a. I mean, the one Trump narrative we've seen before, which could definitely play well here is a military general takes over who says, we made a mistake having a nuclear program. We're going to get rid of our ballistic missiles, but I'm going to run a military dictatorship. I'm going to open up oil for American oil exploration companies and Trump will say, tick, tick. What does Trump care about? He wants to be able to say no nuclear weapons, no threat to Israel and great commercial opportunities for the U.S. and as you say, he seems to think that it's easier to deal with old fashioned dictatorships than with democracies that might in an annoying way be vote in governments that might be opposed to the United States. So I would have thought there would be a strong temptation from the kind of hard realist edge of the Trump administration to say we don't have any views on whether or not Iran has a democracy. All we care about is that it's not threatening our ally Israel, and that it gives us commercial opportunities. Now the problem with that, of course, is that that is not remotely acceptable for the Iranian people who've just seen tens of thousands of their citizens machine gunned in the streets over the last few weeks. They are not signing up for a world in which a new military dictator takes over. And so I think the level of rage and antagonism in Iran towards the United States, towards Israel, and of course towards their new government is something we're massively underestimating. So I don't think that's an easy thing to pull off.

A (39:02)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there we are, Rory. We're both looking for a quiet weekend. I was looking to get rid of this post Ukraine, whatever it is, and you've seemed to have a skiing injury. Raise your hand again. I.

B (39:14)

You've got. What have you done? Not a very interesting. I was ski touring and as people know, what you have to do is you have to click around the back of your bindings and I managed to cover the snow in blood. Trying to flip it around. Now, let's just quickly just go through some of these comments.

A (39:31)

Oh, real comments. I didn't know that.

B (39:33)

Yeah.

A (39:34)

Oh, great.

B (39:34)

I like this leftist idiot. Switching off Keir Starmer voices. Stop supporting Ukrainian Nazis. Okay, all you two care about is finding a way to smear the motives of Trump.

A (39:52)

All our friends are out then.

B (39:53)

So that's. Yeah. Oh, there's a lot of comments.

A (39:57)

Thousands of comments. Oh, God.

B (39:58)

Okay, so I think let's just take that on for a second. How would you. If you Were, I don't know, Keir Starmer, for example, make a speech to the people there who say we're just a bunch of useless lefties who aren't condemning the Iranian regime enough and we just want to smear Trump. I think what you have to say is, listen, the Iranian regime is a horrifying, horrendous regime that's machine gunned tens of thousands of people on the streets. I, I would say to this person challenging me, have spent, I guess, much more time in Iran than they have. And my experience being detained by the Bastij militia on the Revolutionary Guard was extremely unpleasant. I got a sense of a, a totalitarian regime, people living under fear, massive underdevelopment, a very, very angry population. And this is going back even 20, 25 years. And it's a regime that's been in place nearly 50. And it's also true that this is a regime that has destabilized the region, fired missiles around. So I would be incredibly happy if this regime was toppled and a liberal democratic government emerged in Iran and all the incredible potential of this educated, vi huge civilization was released and stabilized the world. But Trump does not have a good track record on doing these things carefully and responsibly. There is no sense at all that he's answering the question of what happens the day after. What is the nation building? How do you get the government going? How do you get the economy going? And secondly, the risk is here is not being properly analyzed. Let's talk through the risk. What would it mean if there was civil war? What would it mean if there was a military coup? What would it mean if another Iranian Revolutionary Guard takes over? What does it mean if Iran starts not just firing ballistic missiles at the Gulf, but starts doing much nastier terrorist attacks around the world in revenge? So somehow we have to find a way of saying, I totally condemn the Iranian regime, but what Trump is doing is reckless, stupid, ill planned, and has a very, very high probability of going wrong. And even if he gets away with it, it'll be through fluke, not judgment.

A (42:11)

I don't think Keir Starmer can say the last bit of that. I think he can say a lot of the first bit about Iran and what we think about that. But I think maybe the way to phrase it is that, look, Iran is an issue and a country that has bedeviled presidents and other world leaders for decades now. And it is probably only if we do have some kind of joint, cooperative approach to this that we can make real progress. I mean, the truth is that the deal that was done was a very, it was a pretty good deal. Trump hated it because it was done by Obama. But, you know, I just think that that is part of the problem. We're dealing with somebody who feels that everything has to be about him. And Rory, I've been. We're getting hundreds of comments in here, but you read out some of the negative ones about the from, you know, people who I suspect there's quite a lot of bots going on here. But here's one from Fam Geyser Australia. Netanyahu is only interested to stay out of jail, which means he has to continue in the state of the war. Conflic same for Trump. The Epstein scandal continues. Distraction helps somebody else. Paul Ingram Operation Nonce Distraction self. You know, so there's a lot, it's all very, very mixed. But I think that, look, I think one of the. I was thinking about this when I was thinking about the by election yesterday and all the sort of, all the kind of the relentless commentary that flows from this. You get so many people saying so much stuff about anything that happens in the world. And I think that when something like this happens, it really is important that world leaders kind of do step back a bit and actually I think, say what they really think. I'd love to hear you mentioned Albanese when you first mentioned Albanese. Oh, God, no. Surely he's not going to come out and say, yeah, we totally support this and blank check. And I don't think that's what you're saying he's done. But I'd really like some kind of honest calling out of this by all of the world leaders, really, because we're entering a world at the moment. That friend of mine from the Diplomat talked about impunity. We are entering a world where leaders can do what they want. And then if they have the base and they have the media control that they have, they then just create a new narrative if it goes wrong.

B (44:23)

So, Alistair, I think this is one of the most worrying things of the whole thing, which is the way in which the engines of the way that populism works, the way that social media works, the way that this kind of post truth works, all increases the chance of conflict. Because if you are Trump or you're Netanyahu and you're effectively running a sort of reality TV show where what you're trying to do is unsettle your opponents, throw everybody off balance by creating a new headline every day, bombing another country is almost the best headline you could ever get. I mean, You've pointed this out when you've said this ends with people dropping nuclear bombs around because the mechanism of politics isn't anymore. It's not Cameron against Blair or Gordon Brown, Right? This is not people talking about

A (45:21)

whether

B (45:21)

we're going with sure Start programs for early education or whether we're going to be reducing spending on policing or invest more in devolution. This is a type of politics which is all about the big radical play. We're sending ICE into Minnesota, we're dropping bombs on Iran, we're challenging the Constitution. And so I think that you and the people who are responding, who are talking about the fact that you've got to look at Wag the Dog, you've got to look at distraction, you've got to look at court cases. And the reason why that's problematic is the Iranian people are the victims here. It's not really about Iran. It's not even really about the threat that Iran poses. Because, in fact, actually, paradoxically, the reason this is happening is because it turns out Iraq is much weaker and less threatening than people claimed two years ago. In fact, the only way in which you'll. Iran, sorry, Iran is much weaker and less threatening than it was two years ago. In fact, the only way in which Iran is going to damage anybody is going to be in response to these attacks. It's not that Iran was on the verge of launching these attacks unilaterally, but there's another point, just to give you another thing to chew on. Christa Hexhund says millions of refugees coming to Europe because of Trump. So remember when the civil war broke out in Syria, smaller, much smaller place than Iran, I guess probably about a quarter of the size in terms of population. You ended up with 3 million refugees going to Turkey, a million to Lebanon, a million to Jordan, Ukraine. I can't remember what statistic you gave us when you were in Kyiv this week, but 4.7 million in Europe.

A (47:04)

Yeah, 4.7 million in Europe. Yeah.

B (47:06)

Okay. Now, Iran is a gigantic population, right? It's a bigger population than Britain. You really could end up, if this thing goes wrong, with tens of millions of refugees on the move.

A (47:18)

And this despite the fact this is in the comments from Dee Mulcahy. This was Trump in June 2025. I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success. Iran's nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated. So we'll get a version of that tomorrow. Today or sometime tomorrow anyway. We'll doubtless be talking about this again. On Tuesday, when we record the main podcast, we'll probably talk about the byelection as well, but there we are. Bloody hell. What a world. What a day. What a world.

B (47:56)

Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, I think we just keep coming back to your point about politics. I mean, there's a guy called Time Lord Jenkins who sort of echoes your anxiety. He's on the other side to you, but this is what you're dealing with. He says, I'm not a fan of Trump, but at least he's someone who's actually doing something rather than sitting in constant conferences saying a lot and doing nothing. It's this very odd world that you want to say rationally. Yeah, but what's he doing? I mean, the mere fact that you're doing something rather than sitting in a conference is not great if what you're doing is causing chaos. I used to hear this a lot with Boris Johnson. At least he's not sitting around. At least he's taking risk doing something. But if the risks are reckless and the actions are profoundly damaging, and someone else has just said, what does it matter if there's a civil war? Well, it matters. There's a civil war if it ends up with tens of millions of refugees. Apart from the incredible suffering the Iranian people themselves.

A (48:51)

There's another thread in the comments. Roy CJ Kill cgkil Wonder if this is linked to the rumored executive order to bring in wartime powers on voting. Jim G6458 Trump will use the war as a distraction and as an excuse to stall halt elections. And there is something odd, given that he made such a big thing about the forever wars and his constant bleating to get the Nobel Peace Prize. He clearly loves standing up there and saying, I've launched a military attack.

B (49:27)

Very weird. It's very weird. I was looking at the notes that I was taking in October during, when he was running Kamala Harris and all, the number of times he said these were stupid wars, he was going to stay out of war, he wasn't going to launch any wars. I actually took a note saying, I was just looking. I have these stupid books. I take the notes in which you remember, will this mean that he won't strike Iran? Because a lot of the language then was very much, I'm not the guy that does that kind of thing. We're now in a very different world where this guy's moving for turtles. And you can see this breaking the MAGA coalition. You can see Tucker Carlson and people coming out saying, going, what on earth is Going on. I thought you were meant to be this kind of isolationist who didn't want to get into wars. Why exactly are you picking these fights?

A (50:09)

The last poll I saw on, somebody sent it this morning. The last poll I saw was 20% support for military action against Iran. That's amongst Americans. And there's another. Somebody's pointed out that he called it. I should have clocked this. He called it a major combat operation. That's got a ring of the special military operation of Vladimir in Ukraine.

B (50:36)

Sorry, Final, final thing. Just before I let you get back to your sickbed. We've talked about how as the old rules and the old order collapses, conflict becomes more likely. But one of the things that's quite difficult to explain to people is that you can't necessarily predict, region by region, exactly where that conflict's gonna break out. What you can say is that the trend is clearly, for the last few years, every year you end up with more conflict, more refugees, more internally displaced people. But we are not yet talking about Ethiopian troops massing on the Eritrean border. We're not talking about what's happening between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Now, the point is that let's take the Pakistan Afghan border or the Ethiopian Eritrean border. These are borders like the Russian Ukraine border. These are contested borders which were created with people drawing lines on maps at different times. And therefore, there are populations on either side of those borders that think they should be in a different country. It's true for all Iran's borders. I talked about the Kurds, the Baluch make the same comment about people up in Azerbaijan in relation to Iran. Right. So what we're seeing in Pakistan, Afghanistan, is a huge chunk of the Pakistani population in Khyber Pakhtunwala, what used to be Northwest Frontier Province are Poshtu. Who see them call themselves Afghans. And I remember President Karzai used to be kind of greeted by these tribal chiefs, people waving Afghan flags when he landed in Pakistan. Right. So the Pakistanis are now bombing Kabul and Kandahar. What's this about? Well, this is about the collapse of a world order where people said, listen, these borders are borders. Doesn't matter how they were created. It doesn't matter who's on the other side of the border. The safest, the most peaceful thing for the world is to say we're going to leave these borders in place. And that's why Trump allowing Putin to steal chunks of Ukraine, threatening Greenland, refusing to provide security guarantees for NATO, and now getting involved in these illegal strikes, Venezuela, Iran, is so dangerous because we're just seeing the beginnings, from Ethiopia to Pakistan, of what could bubble into almost every continent in the world.

A (52:56)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, there we are. It sort of all fits with themes that we've been wanging on about for some time, but it's. It's pretty alarming stuff. We'll see where it goes. And I suspect you'll be in a very different place even by Tuesday.

B (53:10)

Okay, well, speak on Tuesday and hope you get better yet. Your voice sounds much better. Yeah, it's better.

A (53:16)

I'm getting there. Yesterday I talked to a friend of mine who's in the military who has been on that train a lot, and he says he never gets ill, but he does the sleeper trade there and back. It's a problem. Anyway, there we are. I'll be fine, Roy. I'm going to be very brave. I'm going to be very, very brave about it. Okay, See you later. You be brave with your finger as well.

B (53:39)

Yeah.

A (53:39)

My daughter.

B (53:39)

What somebody called.

A (53:40)

Posh injury.

B (53:41)

Listen, somebody also asked, what's this picture in the background? The picture in the background is the mother of. Of my father's Chinese teacher. My father studied Chinese in China before the revolution, 1945. And that's his Chinese teacher, who was already 80 in 1945. That's his mother, and she was the wife of a senior Manchu official in the 1860s, 1870s.

A (54:04)

I've got nothing quite as dramatic as that, unless you count. If I just dip down my shoulder this way, you'll be able to see there the boots I wore when I played with Maradona. Oh.

B (54:18)

Oh, my Lord. Listen, Alistair, I didn't want to say this.

A (54:21)

Signed by Maradona and Pele.

B (54:23)

Oh, that's amazing. But you just provoked me, though, because I saw our mutual friend Damian Lewis two days ago.

A (54:29)

Oh, yeah. Oh, did he just turn?

B (54:33)

He said to me, listen, you know I love Alistair, but I've got to say, when he was selected as left back and I was right wing, I felt pretty lucky.

A (54:42)

Yeah, he was lucky. There's a truly horrible picture of him gliding past me and really looking like I'm old, tired. And anyway, I don't care. I still mention Maradona every day of my life. You've got your dad's Chinese teacher, I've got my Maradona boots, you know. See you soon.

B (55:02)

Bye. See you soon. Bye. Bye. Bye. Did Vladimir Putin interfere in the US 2016 presidential election? I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist. And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. And we are the hosts of the Rest Is Classified.

A (55:23)

And in our latest series, we're going

B (55:25)

deep inside the 2016 election to reveal the true story of whether the Russians helped Donald Trump take the White House. This is the unbelievable story of how Russian spies first hacked and then leaked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, how

A (55:41)

Julian Assange got involved with Putin spies,

B (55:45)

and how 2016 marked the point that the world changed forever. Get the full insider scoop by listening to the Rest Is Classified. Wherever you get your podcasts,