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- [00:00]
Alistair Campbell
Thanks for listening to the Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com that's therestispolitics.com that is chaos.
- [00:14]
Rory Stewart
It's chaos which has been triggered by the US And Israel's actions.
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Alistair Campbell
Iran at the moment is whacking off missiles a fairly sizable number of places in one of the most volatile regions of the world. If that was Russia doing that today, we would basically be saying that this is now a world war.
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Rory Stewart
You've got this extraordinary move from Starmer. What I fear he's done is he's managed to piss off both of them. I don't think we've won any credit from the US for doing that.
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Alistair Campbell
But it's not about winning credit. I don't see that it's about winning credit.
- [00:42]
Rory Stewart
No, no, because this is what the national interest is about here. Let's be blunt. The UK is not protecting its citizens by getting involved in this war. The UK is endangering its citizens by getting involved in this war.
- [00:53]
Alistair Campbell
You're being both naive and unfair because it's so easy to sit on the sidelines and say, I wouldn't do that. Welcome to the Rest Is Politics with
- [01:09]
Rory Stewart
me, Alistair Campbell, and with me, Rory Stewart.
- [01:11]
Alistair Campbell
I think it's fairly obvious what we talk about on the main podcast this week.
- [01:14]
Rory Stewart
Rory, what do you think we're going to talk about? Iran. Look, there are a lot of different dimensions. I'd love to know where you'd want to start. So one of them is how different international leaders are responding. So Britain, France, Germany, Canada. Second is what's happening on the ground in Iran. Third is what's happening in terms of Iranian response attacks on Dubai. And fourth, immediately strikes me is the broader story of what Israel is doing simultaneously in Lebanon, Gaza, elsewhere. But what's caught your attention at the moment? Where do you want to start?
- [01:44]
Alistair Campbell
I mean, I think you're right. Maybe the one I would add to that is what this all says about the state of America and the state of American politics and American leadership, especially now that Donald Trump has decided that even Keir Starmer has to get a whacking for not agreeing with every single word that he says and every single thing that he does does. I'd like to start. Roy, do you remember when we interviewed Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State, and I told him during the interview that I told you, because you weren't there at the event that we'd had that question of the audience, which is the greatest threat to global stability, the United States or China? And he looked absolutely gobsmacked that the answer was the United States. Okay, now, if memory serves me right, this was pre Greenland.
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Rory Stewart
Yep.
- [02:25]
Alistair Campbell
And it was certainly pre all this that we're living through now. But I, I wonder what, in a educated audience, the answer to that question in most parts of the world would be right now. Because it seems to me that what has been unleashed. You made this point on the very first episode we did on Saturday about the strikes, that unless you have some sense of clarity about what you're trying to achieve and how you're trying to achieve it, then there is a danger in any of these situations that they go off in directions that you simply cannot predict, let alone control. And I worry that that's where we are right now. And I was actually talking to Alexander Stubb, who is our next guest on Leading next week, and I was talking to him about something this morning, and we're making the point that he's got this thing about, you know, the Global south is where the power is going to come from in the future. We're still very much focused on the. On the west, but Iran at the moment is whacking off missiles at, you know, a fairly sizable number of places in one of the most volatile regions of the world. If that was Russia doing that today, say, to Estonia, Moldova, Lithuania, Poland, we would basically be saying that this is now a world war. Okay? So. And if you just think so, right now you have missiles in, you know, and neither you and I are ever going to say a kind word about the Iranian Islamic Republic regime. But Hexis yesterday said we didn't start this war. Well, no, but this particular phase you certainly did. And the direct response is being the launch of missiles and drones at Israel, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, uae, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, which is the current president of the European Union, and also shutting down the. Shutting down the Strait of Hormuz, through which one fifth of all oil supplies flow. That is chaos. That is chaos in anybody's language.
- [04:26]
Rory Stewart
And I think the first thing to start with is that it's chaos, which has been triggered by the US And Israel's actions. This was not happening last week. It's happening because they chose to attack Iran and kill Khamenei. Now, that's a horrible regime. It's a threat to its people. It's massacred tens of thousands of own people. The Iranian regime is incredibly unpopular. However, it was in the middle of negotiating, and it did not pose a immediate threat, certainly not to the United States. It didn't pose an immediate threat to Israel. Actually, as we've discovered, the ability of the Iranian regime now in the short term to actually hurt people is relatively limited. And one of the reasons why it's not like Russia is that it just can't do the type of damage shot by shot that it could. In fact, the only thing that's actually created this situation is this attack, their decision to launch an attack. Now, this is where you get to these very, very strange questions about what the US Thinks it's doing. So you have that Hegseth statement and again, we'll put, I think in the newsletter some links to, if people haven't seen it, the Hegseth interviews, the Rubio interviews, the Trump interviews, all saying different
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Alistair Campbell
things about what they're trying to achieve.
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Rory Stewart
Exactly. That's exactly my point. Rubio says we're going to continue doing this until we've achieved our objectives. And that's going to go on for a long time. Well, what are those objectives? Right. And you get completely different account.
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Alistair Campbell
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- [05:54]
Rory Stewart
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- [06:04]
Alistair Campbell
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- [06:11]
Rory Stewart
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- [06:16]
Alistair Campbell
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- [06:23]
Rory Stewart
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- [06:31]
Alistair Campbell
Switch to Fuse Energy and save around £200 on your energy bills. Use the code Politics for a free trip subscription. Fuseenergy.com politics just before you leave Rubio, he also said, and I can't believe that he didn't realize what he was saying with this, he said that the reason that the United States got involved is because they knew that Israel were going to attack and they knew that that would mean that America would come under attack as a result of it. We said the other day we thought Netanyahu was maybe driving this more than Trump, but he seemed to confirm that.
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Rory Stewart
Well, there seems to be very little doubt in this. There's a good New York Times piece interviewing lots of people in the White House. Essentially tracing this decision back to a visit from Netanyahu. And the story is Netanyahu's been pushing Trump for a long time to do this. We've been saying on this podcast that we've been expecting Netanyahu to do something again against Iran. He's been obsessed with the idea of taking out Iran for 40 years. And this will have seemed to Netanyahu as the greatest opportunity he would ever have, because it would be the most friendly American government he could ever have. So he wants to strike Iran. Iran has never been weaker, and America has never been more supportive of Israel. So why would Netanyahu not do it? Also, he's got, you know, this may not be the major thing driving him. I think he genuinely believes that taking out Iran's capacity is his historical legacy. But it's also true that he's coming up for an election, and he has turned around his political fortunes partly through this momentum of military operations again. But it's not very surprising to discover Rubio saying this, because what do we know about the last American attack on Iran? Well, effectively what happened that time is that America again was in the middle of negotiating with Iran. Israel attacked. The initial instinct seemed to have been from Trump to criticize Netanyahu. And then he changed Nadaim and said, well, if Israel's going to do it anyway, why don't we join in and get the credit for it? Launched this great operation, and within about 48 hours, it flipped from, I'm telling Netanyahu not to do it, from, I'm going along with him to do it. So I think, yet again, that that seems to be a big driver. Obviously, they can't quite stop there, because, as you say, there's a contradiction in Rubio's statement. Rubio says, you know, we've got these clear objectives, and we're going to continue till we've completed their objectives. If the objective was just, we don't want to be embarrassed by Israel doing something without us, so we'll come along with them. Well, that objective's been achieved. So what are they doing now? What are they trying to do? Rubio tells us what he claims they're not trying to do. He says, you know, it'd be lovely if there was regime change. But that's not what this is about. This is about their ballisticness cells. Right.
- [09:03]
Alistair Campbell
With Trump, it was before, right?
- [09:05]
Rory Stewart
And then you get all these other statements. I mean, Hex's speech is worth watching because it's a very odd speech. I mean, it begins with a. The first Line is a blatant lie. We didn't start this war. Well, obviously they started this war. Right. There's no sense at all. And the Pentagon itself has now there's something odd happening inside the US Administration. The Pentagon then itself briefed out against the US Cabinet saying there was absolutely no evidence whatsoever that Iran was about to launch an attack against the United States. That wasn't the reason why this thing happened. Right?
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Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
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Rory Stewart
So Hixter says we didn't start this war. And then the speech is very odd. Sometimes he sounds like a news anchor, sometimes he sounds like a mid level American officer giving a rah rah speech to his troops. And sometimes he sounds like a kind of high school debater taking an extremely unpopular weird position for the sake of a debating championship. Just putting one side of the case.
- [09:58]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. As he spoke, and particularly when he's doing the Q and A and sort of attacking reporters for daring to ask him questions. I sort of felt Michael Gove on steroids. I felt Michael Gove in there. You're right. It was a sort of debating thing. I'm not saying that Michael Gove isn't a lot cleverer than, than Pete Hegseth, but let me just read you a few of the things he said. And I think one day we may hear these words at a tribunal in an investigation into this war. Regardless of what so called international institutions say. Right, so called international institutions. So that's a way of saying all you lot bleating on or clutching pearls as he called it, about international law. We don't give a shit. Okay. Regardless of what so called international institutions say, Europe, United nations, the whole lot of you, fuck off. No stupid rules of engagement. No nation building quagmire. No democracy building exercise. No politically correct wars. No stupid rules of engagement. I'm not sure if it's the same in the United States, but I'm pretty sure that in the UK we'll come on to why Keir Starmer said he wouldn't take part in this first phase of this. I'm pretty sure you have to have clear rules of engagement. If you're the military, you have to know what you're fighting for. You have to have clarity about the rules of engagement. So no, what he's basically saying is that all rules of engagement are stupid. All rules of engagement, we can do what we want.
- [11:22]
Rory Stewart
It's mad. I guess the most his defenders might say is that it's rhetorical exaggeration and he doesn't mean it. But as a statement from a US Secretary OF WAR it's mad. I mean, we've had these things called rules of engagement since the Middle Ages. I mean, that's what actually the whole of chivalry was about, was development, rules of war. Right in the middle of the English and French tearing bits out of each other, they began trying to set rules. They don't always follow them, but they set rules about what you did with combatants, with civilians under siege of population, what warfare was about. Right. What's the Nuremberg Trials about? The Nuremberg Trials and what are the Geneva Conventions about? I mean, all these things are about the same thing. They're about trying to define something very difficult. Right. I mean, you can understand why people get frustrated with it and annoyed with it. Yes, war is about killing people and you're doing something very difficult, which is trying to say, yes, it's about killing people, but within certain conditions and laws, certain kinds of things you don't do.
- [12:17]
Alistair Campbell
That's why he says so called international institutions. So when you mention this Convention and Vienna this and Geneva that and San Francisco that, these MAGA people or the Hexad people, they just roll their eyes and basically say, you're weak, lily livered. And the insults, I think it's probably worth just briefly coming to the kind of insults of allies because we've seen this before. We saw it most horribly when Trump said, yeah, they'll say they sent a few to Afghanistan but they never went to the front line. He had to row back on that. But Hickseth was talking, I think he had Britain in mind when he said, you know, when our traditional allies are wringing their hands and clutching their pearls, then Donald Trump, I mean, as if you'd think he was busy, right, to have time to talk to the Daily Telegraph and the sun, two kind of right wing propaganda rags, and basically attack the British Prime Minister knowing that the right wing propaganda rags will absolutely love that. And I'd love to ask them sometimes because they keep asking us, whose side are you on? I'm on Britain's side always. Whose side are they on? Anybody who damages the current British administration. You know, we talked to Gavin Newsom on leading this week and I thought he and Mark Carney, I think they are showing the way in how to deal with this guy. I think Kiir really does have to stand up to this. I felt when he slagged off Sadiq Khan in front of Keir Starmer a while back, Kiir pushed back a little bit. He said, he's a friend of mine, but I actually think he needs to Be told in terms, stop fucking interfering in other countries politics. We don't do it to you. If you want us to do it, then actually we all get together, we can do you quite a lot of damage because he is now treating everybody with contempt unless they are absolutely slavish to his agenda.
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Rory Stewart
Let's move on to that. The second elephant is the very, very disappointing response from all the other international leaders. So Mark Carney set us up in Davos for an idea that we were going to try to think about what it would be to have a foreign policy and a agreement of middle powers independent of the us that we weren't just going to be the tail of a Trump dog. What that was supposed to be, I thought, was that we were going to develop some forms of kind of strategic vision. We were going to decide what our threats were, we were going to decide what our principles were, we were going to build our own defense capacity together, and we were going to take a view on the world. I mean, maybe not always the same, but roughly speaking, the hope is Canada, uk, Europe begin to speak with something more like a single voice. And of course, what we've seen with this Iran adventure is the most humiliating mess which will be absolutely feeding Americans who think we can be completely ignored and we're so pathetic that we couldn't organize the piss up in a brewery we've seen. Canada came straight out of the traps with a much more supportive statement for what Trump was doing hours before the European leaders spoke. And as far as I can see, I have no idea, but I can see no evidence at all that Mark Khan even picked up the phone to find out what the British, French or German position was. He was on a completely different time zone and immediately put out a reaction which fundamentally seemed to say, Iran is an evil regime. End of. Then we had this very interesting statement that came out joint Britain, France, Germany, which was a bit more promising. Sounded like the E3 had finally got their acts together and they were setting out a relatively thoughtful, cautious, principled view, which included references to international law. And this was on Saturday. And the European Commission seemed to be roughly on that side too. Fast forward 24 hours, the whole thing falls to pieces. You've got this extraordinary move from Starmer which, you know, whatever the details, the legal position seems really weird. It looks like he took a risky decision on Saturday to step against Trump and say he thinks this war is illegal and reckless. And then on Sunday his position shifts slightly and he says actually UK bases can be used for whatever reason. Seems something pretty Miraculous, Right? He manages to piss off Trump on Saturday and then piss off most of the left on Sunday.
- [16:24]
Alistair Campbell
Well, no, I don't think it is right. Because I think what he said was, when he said, we will give the Americans permission to use two bases, Fairfoot and Diego Garcia, it was in relation to defensive operations. When you said you can use them for whatever you like. Now, Trump may decide the that's the green light so to do, but that's not always agreed.
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Rory Stewart
If I said that he said he could use them whatever he'd like. I don't think I did say that. I apologise, but I think it's a really weird bit of political signaling.
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Alistair Campbell
Okay.
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Rory Stewart
If your view on Saturday is we're not joining this war and there are very good reasons not to join this, well, let me put one of them. If you start getting involved in this war, you become a legitimate target for Iran and Iranian terrorist attacks against Britain.
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Alistair Campbell
Since when they fired drones at an RAF base in Cyprus.
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Rory Stewart
Exactly. You start saying, we're gonna be part of this war, even if it's only for defensive operations from two bases, you've blurred that line. Suddenly, maybe suddenly Britain's security is now more at risk.
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Alistair Campbell
Okay. I actually do think there is a logic to what he did. And actually, if you think about the history of US UK relations, the relations between presidents and prime ministers, and you've been critical of Kiyr trying to be too close to Trump. I've tried to kind of maybe understand it. I thought he was very clear that he doesn't want to say the words. And I heard Darren Jones being interviewed this morning. They're desperate for him to say the words. We think the initial action was illegal, by the way, which clearly they do. What they've said was they have been given advice by the Attorney General that there was no legal basis for the UK to take part in that initial attack. Okay. They think there is a legal basis to take part in defensive operations or where UK interests have come under attack, which they have. And so, look, I think this underlines just how bloody hard this is logistically, practically and politically. But I actually hope. My hope out of this is that because I watched a lot of the statement in Parliament yesterday, and I think. I don't know if you saw it. I think if you had, you'd have felt actually Keir Starmer was really pushing back at the Americans in a way that thus far he has not. He was essentially saying that, and he didn't want to say in these terms, but essentially he was saying that so far as he is concerned, the UK will not take part in military action that it does not believe to have a legal basis. And Rory, look at the reaction there's been. Look at the reaction there's been from Trump. Why has he phoned up the sun and the Telegraph?
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Rory Stewart
Yeah, well, that's why. I think it's the worst of all worlds.
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Alistair Campbell
Well, maybe.
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Rory Stewart
I think it's really bizarre. I think people were quite proud of him on Saturday, actually quite proud of Metz on Saturday. I mean, there was a brief moment when it looked like at least Britain, France and Germany were taking what I think is the correct position, which only the Spanish government has really laid out, which is you can say this is a really evil, horrendous Iranian regime, and you can also say this is an illegal, reckless war that we want to have nothing to do with. So that's the correct position, I think. Right.
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Alistair Campbell
Yeah, that's. You hold on.
- [19:15]
Rory Stewart
Pretty close to that on Saturday and then on Sunday. Right. We come back to Starmer in a second. I mean, I think at the very least, it's a communications disaster. Whatever else it is. I think most people in Britain who on Saturday were thinking, thank God this guy stepped out of the war, then think on Sunday, oh, my God, Starmer's changed his mind. Now we're involved in this in some way because we're allowing him use as bases for defensive operations and now we're legitimate target for the Iranians. Suddenly you've gone from Saturday where reform of the conservatives are saying you're weak and Lily lived to saying at last Starmer's got with the program, better late than never. Thank goodness he's now letting the bas.
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Alistair Campbell
They're really not saying that.
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Rory Stewart
That's what they were saying on Sunday. That's what they were saying on Sunday. And now by Wednesday, it's all shifted again.
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Alistair Campbell
Okay. No, but I do honestly, I think you're too close.
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Rory Stewart
I think literally everybody that I've spoken to over the last few days just thinks Starmer is in a complete mess.
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Alistair Campbell
No, he's in a bind, which is a different thing. I would say that I think you are showing the difference between being commentator and player. Keir Starmer is having to make the actual decisions about this. Let's take Sanchez. We're going to be speaking to Sanchez quite soon now. I agree from the precision that you and I laid out on Saturday, his was the clearest. And you and I can both say, yeah, I want to hear that. What happens in the next few days if in Dubai an Iranian missile lands on a five star hotel and a Spanish football team gets taken out. Okay. You've got to think through where you might need these alliances. You have to play a little bit shades of grey. I think Keir Starmer on day one, on day one, I think he pushed the boat out as far as he's pushed it thus far. Basically saying to Trump, there's no legal basis, we're not taking part. Okay. That's quite a big message to put out when you think of the history of the us, UK in these war situations. Day two, when you've got drones flying at Cyprus and you've got the Cypriot president phoning Keir Starmer, saying, what the fuck is going on here? And they're the current President of the European Union, I think that does change things a little bit. And you have to adapt to that. You can say it's a communication. If there was a communications issue, it is that he, if you like, he communicated both with the same sense of gravity and the same tone for them.
- [21:34]
Rory Stewart
What's the result? Let's step back for a moment and say. Let's say we're thinking about UK national interest.
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Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
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Rory Stewart
The UK national interest basically in this is you don't want to be making an enemy of the US because the US can make life very uncomfortable for you.
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Alistair Campbell
Correct.
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Rory Stewart
And you don't want to be making an enemy of Iran because Iran can cause chaos in the British streets. So you make your call. Right. It's a very difficult call.
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Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
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Rory Stewart
But what I fear he's done is he's managed to piss off both of them. I'm not sure he's taken a position on the us, which he hasn't turned around by his decision on Sunday. I don't think the US particularly thank him for having come out, said their wars are legal.
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Alistair Campbell
No. Trump says he took too long.
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Rory Stewart
Then on Sunday said, by the way, you can use my airfields for defensive purposes. I don't think we've won any credit from the US for doing that.
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Alistair Campbell
But it's not about winning credit. I don't see that it's about winning credit.
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Rory Stewart
No, no, because this is what the national interest is about here. Let's be blunt. Right?
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Alistair Campbell
Right. So you see, the UK is not
- [22:25]
Rory Stewart
protecting its citizens by getting involved in this war. The UK is endangering its citizens by getting involved in this war. In what way are we making the United Kingdom safer by making ourselves part of a coalition against Iran?
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Alistair Campbell
Well, one, we have not joined that war against Iran. But when you have upwards of more than a quarter of a million people, Brits in that region. You are going to have to deploy some British assets to be part of an operation to take out the potential threat against them, and that's what they're doing. I don't.
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Rory Stewart
I don't even understand this. What are you saying? Have we joined it or not? Are we fighting or aren't we? What are we doing?
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Alistair Campbell
We've had.
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Rory Stewart
I mean, you seem to be suggesting we are fighting. We're not joining the coalition. We are fighting.
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Alistair Campbell
We're not together.
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Rory Stewart
What are we doing here?
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Alistair Campbell
They've got Rory. I think you're being honest here. I think you're being ridiculous on this. I think you're so determined basically to say that the position that you hold, which is we should have nothing to do with this, is so right that anybody who disagrees.
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Rory Stewart
It's the Spanish position. It's the correct position.
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Alistair Campbell
That is the Spanish position. No, it's the correct position. In your view. It's your view that it's correct. Okay, you're not the Prime Minister. You're not the Cabinet, having to sit there thinking, okay, first day. We are pretty clear there's no legal basis. But we don't want to say that because that's going to piss off Big Donald in the White House, but we're not taking part. That pisses him off anyway. Okay, but it pisses them off maybe a little bit less. Day two, they actually feel, not least when they see drones coming in on Cyprus and they then see, I just listed 14 countries where they're whacking off missiles. Britain cannot just sort of sit that out. It's doing so from a defensive perspective. I was in Ukraine last week, right? We talked about Ukraine. I'll tell you one place where this is going to do real damage to our relations with the United States in relation to Ukraine, because oil, the oil price is going to go up because that's a real factor. Trump probably won't have thought about it, but it's going to go up and Russia is going to start to make more money. At some point in the coming weeks, we're going to have to go back to Trump and say, please don't pull the plug on the intelligence. What Sanchez has done is quite easy for Sanchez to do, I think for the British Prime Minister or the French president or the German chancellor. We'll see what Mertz says in Germany today. They are riding quite a few horses at the same time. And the clarity that you're calling for, I think is totally naive.
- [24:43]
Rory Stewart
We're not going to agree on Starmer because obviously you have a very different position on this. I think he's made a huge mistake, and I think he's ended up in the worst of all worlds. I think he's pissed off both the US and the Iranians with very little benefit for Britain. And I don't think Britain will be safer as a result.
- [24:56]
Alistair Campbell
We've pissed off the Iranians for the entirety of our existence. I wouldn't worry too much about that. Where you're right is he doesn't want the Yanks to be falling lowers, and he doesn't want the Iranians to be whacking off missiles. And if the Iranians saw an opportunity tomorrow to take out a few Brits somewhere, they would do it. British forces have to be alive and alert to that. Our intelligence agencies have to be alive and alert to that. And if something happened in the next few days. Rory, if something happened that hit Britain's interest. You just watched the avalanche against Keir Starmer.
- [25:28]
Rory Stewart
And how will his decision to let the Americans fly from Diego Garcia make any difference to that?
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Alistair Campbell
I don't know that it will. I don't know. Because, you know, we'll have to see.
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Rory Stewart
Well, you seem to be suggesting somehow that's relevant to the question of how we respond when Iran attacks British troops. I just don't see why he needed to do that.
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Alistair Campbell
Look, he's asked first time, he says no. He's asked second time, and he says yes, for these limited purposes in which we're going to be participating ourselves. Defensive operations against threats to us. Right. You felt you don't want to see that There may come circumstances where that becomes the right decision, not the wrong decision. It's not black and white, this.
- [26:06]
Rory Stewart
I don't think any of these things are black and white. We're just saying they are. You're saying there's one reason, but you're defending him. You're defending him. You're defending him very strongly here. Alistair, you're not saying it's a difficult decision. I am saying I might not have made it. You're giving us the talking points, essentially. That's their view, right?
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Alistair Campbell
No, no, Rory, don't insult me.
- [26:22]
Rory Stewart
Well, let's hear some criticism then. If you're seeing good.
- [26:25]
Alistair Campbell
Rory, we're having an agreeable disagreement because I think you're being both naive and unfair. You're being naive because it's so easy to sit on the sidelines and say, I wouldn't do that. I'd be like Sanchez.
- [26:37]
Rory Stewart
Why is that? Naive, Alison. What's naive? Let's just follow this through, okay?
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Alistair Campbell
I've explained to you why I think he's naive.
- [26:43]
Rory Stewart
You make a big call on Saturday, it's a difficult call. It's a principal call. You hold to that call, you hold to that call. And a drone comes into Cyprus, you hold to that call. It's not that difficult.
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Alistair Campbell
And then something else happens. And then something else happens. And then something else happens.
- [26:58]
Rory Stewart
Look, if events change. If events change, maybe you have to change your mind, but you don't have to do it on Sunday.
- [27:03]
Alistair Campbell
Okay? Okay, you can say that. Let me tell you why I think it's naive. Because I think Sanchez's position is easier to take than to see through. If and when we've started, we started this podcast talking about how unpredictable this now is and about how dangerous and how difficult it is. There will come a point through the next one weeks and months where we will need all sorts of different allies in this equation. We will need the French, we will need the Germans, we will need the Americans. At some point, I think you are wanting. I've said this the last time we talked about this. You're wanting the Hugh Grant moment where he basically says what we say, trump, you're an evil bastard. Go away. Leave us alone. I'd like to hear a bit of that. I'd like to hear a bit of that. I said to you, I wish he would have absolutely called him out over slagging off Sadiq Khan. I wished he would say when he came out against what Trump said on Afghanistan. I would like Keir Starmer to have done it sooner and to have done it harder. We are not in the same position that we were. I guess the reason I'm defending. I'm not doing the talking points. I'm defending him because I think he's in a really, really, really tough spot at a time when most of our media and most of the opposition. I think. Let me tell you, Rory, I think Farage and Badenoch have made a massive mistake, in my view, by not giving any thought other than the idea that Trump may be right. You think Trump has to be wrong. I'm saying if you are the British Prime Minister, you have to weigh things up in the round. You're going to get attacked, whatever you do. And I think you're being very, very unfair in saying that he got it right day one, got it totally wrong, and he's ended up in the worst of all worlds. Let's see where it goes. And I think if you read Hansard from yesterday, you would have a sense of somebody who reacted in the way that he did. Day one, thought about it a bit more. Day two, I think was in a better, more rounded position. And that's what we saw yesterday.
- [28:56]
Rory Stewart
Well, Alistair, listen, that was quite a tough, difficult conversation where maybe we weren't always. Certainly I wasn't always modeling the best example of disagreeing agreeably for which apologies. So let's take a little break. In exchange, Alistair, I want to do a little plugging for you, which is you're doing a great show with Anthony Scaramucci in Belfast. So while we take it down a turn or two, time for a quick break and encourage people to get some tickets. A couple of tickets still left for the Belfast show, which should be fantastic.
- [29:26]
Alistair Campbell
That's on Friday, Dublin's on Thursday. Massively sold out with a huge waiting list. Belfast, you got half a front row left. So see you there. And the link is in the description.
- [29:43]
Rory Stewart
Okay, we're clearly not going to agree on Starmer's decision. Metz, I think that is even more disappointing, shocking. I mean, Metz has come out in a statement and a speech essentially saying we shouldn't worry too much about international law. That's a catastrophic thing for the Chancellor to say because what is our position on Ukraine, what is our position on Greenland? It's about international law. International law is messy, sure, it's hypocritical. There's always a conflict between morality and international law. There's always rail politic, there's always this kind of stuff. But it embeds the basic idea, which is that you cannot just get out of bed in the morning and say this is a nasty regime and therefore I'm going after it. And it embeds an idea that you need to be cautious and we can get on to talking about what we think is going to happen in Iran after this. But many, many of the scenarios are horrendous. And it's extraordinary that with this opportunity which I felt existed for these middle powers to actually articulate a non Trumpian foreign policy, to really explain what their worldview was, we have the German Chancellor essentially saying that international law isn't that important.
- [30:56]
Alistair Campbell
I will agree with you on that. And I did think his statement was off and I also think it was probably because as we speak, I think he's in Washington now and he's going to be first the first world leader to sit down with Trump since this thing hole happened that may have calibrated. Add it to which Germany is, as we've said many, many times on the podcast before, is always instinctively way, way closer to Israel than a lot of other European countries are. Not least Spain that we've talked about. I think that this point, though, about international law, David Wolfson, Shadow Attorney General, he wrote A Long Peace, and he hits back at Keir Starmer, Richard Herman, the Attorney General's position that the first. That if the UK had been involved in the first wave, that that would have somehow been against international law. And he said some really interesting things, what he said. And when you read the argument in full, he's using his interpretation of international law to say why it would have been perfectly justifiable for the UK to be involved and we should have been involved. That's the Conservative Party position. It's the Nigel Farage position. And he says international law ought to provide a mechanism to restrain and, if necessary, end despotic and tyrannical regimes such as that in Iran. If the doctrines of international law prove unable to restrain Iranian terrorism and mass murder and tie the hands of democracies while forcing them to stand and watch Iranian atrocities, international law will have failed. And what that says to me is that on any side of these things, you will find people who will use their interpretation of international law to suit a political position. Okay. We got accused of doing that in relation to Iraq and paid a very heavy political price for it. I would argue that he's doing something very, very similar with this.
- [32:39]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. Well, on Wolfson, I think it's completely shocking that a shadow Attorney General can take that position. I mean, international law ought to provide a mechanism. Well, it either does or it doesn't. He then goes on to say, if the doctrines of international law prove unable to do what he wants to do, then international law will have failed.
- [33:01]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. So he's the Mertz position.
- [33:03]
Rory Stewart
He then says the inherent right to use force in the face of an imminent attack from a hostile nation. What is that imminent attack?
- [33:11]
Alistair Campbell
There wasn't one.
- [33:12]
Rory Stewart
So the whole point about the judgment on that is you need to show that it' sthey have the capacity to do real harm, and they're about to do it. It didn't meet that evidentiary standard.
- [33:22]
Alistair Campbell
I totally agree. I totally agree.
- [33:24]
Rory Stewart
I can't understand how someone as distinguished as David Wolfson can end up taking this position. It's completely bizarre. Literally. There's not a single international lawyer in the world who can make an. Trump isn't even attempting to make an international legal argument. Israel isn't even attempting to make an international legal argument. So why is Wolfson making it for them.
- [33:46]
Alistair Campbell
Because what he and Farage and Theiss and Badenot, what they are doing is saying international law isn't like other sorts of laws where it's clear or it should be clear. It's really complicated. It's very, very political. It's how we interpret it. Give you another example, paragraph 5 of his statement. The UK and also the US is permitted under international law to use force to aid another state which is enacting in self defense. So he's trying to say America's under attack, which is you and I. Let's not fall out again. Rory, you and I agree there was no self defense going on here. This was a war of choice. He then goes on. Moreover, the UK is under an obligation in international law to prevent genocide, not just to stop it. Stopping an ongoing genocide is required, but it necessarily means the action was taken too late. And as I read that, I thought, bloody hell, he's basically saying Iran wants to commit genocide against Israel. Okay, we had a discussion a few months ago about whether Britain actually was not fulfilling its international obligations in relation to the prevention of genocide in Gaza. And so the point I'm making with this is that everybody's just making this about pre existing political positions.
- [34:59]
Rory Stewart
It's so weird. I mean, David Wolfson, I think, was on record saying the accusation of genocide and the notion that she should be stopping Israel in Gaza because of genocide was completely unfair. And now he's using the same term that he said was dangerous, too vague, shouldn't be applied to Israel's actions in Gaza. He's applying it to the Iranian regime. I really don't understand what's going on in his head at the moment.
- [35:25]
Alistair Campbell
No, I think what's going on is that his party, the Conservatives, who are in this sort of existential battle with reform, have decided that we, the UK should have been in lockstep with the US from the word go. Now you and I disagree with that, right? And so does Keir Starmer, even though you don't like what he did on day two, but they've made that decision now, as it happens, just to go to the politics of this. I think they've made a terrible mistake because even though I will get my usual suspects, including the person I live with saying, you know, for God's sake, she's bad to say Rory was right and I was wrong. But I think the fact is. Don't look so pleased about that, Roy.
- [36:08]
Rory Stewart
The fact is Fiona, it's Fiona whose views I'm interested in really, as Long as she's on my side, I don't mind too much.
- [36:14]
Alistair Campbell
No, Fiona. Fiona's views aren't dissimilar to yours. They're not dissimilar to yours. Is that. And she was angry on the second night when that statement was made. I would have liked to have heard Labour people out today attacking Donald Trump for saying what he said about Keir Starmer. And I'd also like to hear Labour people attacking those media outlets that are so gagging for the Labour Prime Minister to be slapped down by the American President. I think what Newsom said, if without Murdoch there is no Trump. What Trump says about the way he and Hickseth yesterday, the way that I hate the way they do it, but I think the public know that there is something wrong in the way that really difficult, complicated government positions that a Prime Minister has to take kind of on the spot, surrounded by millions of views and Twitter and all this stuff that at least give them a bit of credit for trying to think through things through when they're fast paced and incredibly complicated. That's all I'm saying.
- [37:19]
Rory Stewart
One of the things that I think would help with this is if we really got to a stage where Britain, France, Germany and goodness knows, maybe Canada began to develop a bit of joint thinking. And the reason they need joint thinking is they need to work out what threats are really happening. Well, for example, I could imagine a conversation between Britain, France and Germany saying to the U.S. listen, you told us that you couldn't afford to defend Europe because you needed to focus on priorities elsewhere, in particular China. We're a little puzzled that you told us the reason you couldn't support Ukraine with Patriot missiles as they were so precious and you needed to keep them all for China and now you've apparently blown them all up. Not blown them up, but used a fair quantity of them in a war of choice against Iran. But our view is that the real threat to our security is Russia. Iran hasn't taken 20% of the territory of a European state. Iran hasn't ended up with 1.2 million casualties. We're focused on Russia, thank you very much. And actually our view is that this war against Iran is wrong. It's going to drive up oil prices which will help Russia, as you pointed
- [38:28]
Alistair Campbell
out, which you already asked.
- [38:30]
Rory Stewart
It's going to use up American money and missiles which we were hoping to purchase for the Ukrainians, which is going to help Russia, et cetera. So that would be one type of argument. You do your threat assessment, you work out where your priorities Are, let's say it's Russia. Second thing you might do is you might develop a view on the world. What do you think about international law? Maybe take the Wolfson view, Maybe you take whatever view. It doesn't really matter. Thirdly, work out how much you can depend on the United States. What kind of relationship do you want with the us? Are you going to have to make your own Patriot missiles or are you going to continue to buy them? Two perfectly valid views. One of them is actually the US in the end is always going to send us these things, so we don't need to make them. But nuclear weapons. We've just had this announcement from Macron about the French nuclear shield.
- [39:11]
Alistair Campbell
Huge news.
- [39:12]
Rory Stewart
So even if we start spending hundreds of billions more on defence, we're not going to be able to spend that money. Well, unless we have a joint threat assessment. Money on defence without a shared view of where the threats are is money wasted. That could be. What's our relationship with the us? What do we think about the Middle East? What do we think about Russia, Ukraine? So I think what would have helped here is if we'd had a sense, not that all these guys were surprised and had to respond on the hoof. Right. One of the defenses I've heard for Canada is, of course, we didn't call them what we're supposed to do. We were suddenly surprised. We were surprised. For months now, a massive American fleet has been sitting off the coast of Iran. Israel has been pushing for intervention in Iran. So I could imagine Europe, Canada having a really strong, clear joint position weeks in advance, signaled to the US weeks in advance. So that if you have a situation where the US doesn't consult its allies, barely informs you of what it's doing, doesn't go to the un, doesn't go to Congress, you come up with a clear joint statement saying we're with you or we're against you. I would suggest we're not with you. But anyway, whatever it is, and not get this sense that everybody's thrown off balance and changing their position every. Whatever. I don't want to get dragged Astama again. But certainly with Metz, the position is very odd. Certainly with Carney, the position doesn't really seem to track with the Stabos position. I mean, I don't get what's going on with these people.
- [40:39]
Alistair Campbell
No. And also with Metz, I think I sent you a clip. He was speaking at a party congress over the weekend and he does a very, very good impersonation of Donald Trump. What did you say? 60%. I don't believe it. He was basically suggesting that you can only deal with Donald Trump, a bit like Scaramucci says, you have to show him pictures. And he was going to show him graphs. He was trying to explain. He was explaining that immigration is falling in Germany by 60%. So that was him the day before, taking the mickey out of Donald Trump. And the audience was lapping it up, as you say. The next day he comes out with this statement, essentially saying they can do pretty much blank check. We'll see what he says in Washington today. I thought the Macron statement, by the way, got a lot less attention than I thought it would.
- [41:25]
Rory Stewart
This nuclear thing. Incredible. Yeah, incredible.
- [41:28]
Alistair Campbell
They're changing the nuclear doctrine, they're increasing the number of warheads in direct response essentially to the fact that China is getting more and more nukes, America is behaving in a much more irrational way. And then there's all this talk about whether other European countries will be able to, will be protected by that shield, et cetera. So I thought that was one of the most underreported significant developments of the week.
- [41:53]
Rory Stewart
Can I just finish on the Macron point? Because there was something interesting there that I thought. I mean, it was incredible. It was staged with the French President flying in on a helicopter with two French jets alongside. The speech was made in this massive kind of James Bond style building and he's announcing the French nuclear territory. The implication was going to cover Poland and Germany. It was the biggest news and he'd presumably been planning it for weeks. Would there have been an argument for not doing it right at the very start of the Iran war, when every news station is only covering Iran doesn't really feel that it has much bandwidth for this and delaying it a couple of weeks?
- [42:28]
Alistair Campbell
Possibly. Yeah, possibly. I mean, the only thing is, I wonder whether it had already been planned. And I also think that in France it was kind of wall to wall. It's seen as. And I think in Germany as well, I mean, we, we do have a. Such a sort of inward looking kind of media here and of course America is even. It's even worse. But. No, but I thought that was really, really significant. And by the way, I agree with you, we're both friends and fans of Mark Carney. I think he's great. But there was something slightly going against the tenor of his Davos speech in the way that Canada reacted this, this week. I thought the closest it got to was day one, the E3. There was something. We said that on the podcast on Saturday. There was something in that Initial statement that felt like, these are serious people taking this seriously. They're not going to slag off Trump. They're all sitting there thinking, christ, what's the guy going to do next? This is going to cause chaos. But since then, I agree. I think it's become much more nation by nation. And the other reason why that happens is because, and this is the nature of the globalized world, every country in the world has people who are kind of flying in and out of Dubai who are now stuck, and they've got families and friends and media saying, you know, what are you doing to help us? I just heard this morning that the Australian military headquarters in the Gulf has just taken a couple of drones. So this is the point. This is going to go in any which way. And I think until it becomes a little bit clear, we haven't even got on. I'm sorry we got so dragged into this sort of row about here. We haven't even got onto what's actually going to be happening inside Iran and where that might lead. We haven't got on to how Israel now moving further into Lebanon, basically saying that they're entitled to do that because Hezbollah have been whacking off a few missiles at them, again in breach of the deal that was done.
- [44:13]
Rory Stewart
We've got quite caught up in this question of international law and international reactions. But the heart of this, of course, is what's happening on the ground.
- [44:22]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [44:23]
Rory Stewart
You've talked about Dubai, which will be terrifying for people living in UAE. It's also terrifying for the government of UAE. I mean, that's a government that has spent 25 years pursuing a development model which is about providing safety, technology, low tax, predictable life for expatriates. It's a very expatriate place. And suddenly that whole model is under sustained fire.
- [44:51]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [44:51]
Rory Stewart
And it's really exposing how potentially vulnerable someone like the Emirates can be. I mean, it doesn't have a big military, it doesn't have a big ability to defend itself when these things happen. But let's just do a run for a second. I'm hoping. We talked a little bit about Karim Sadajpur perhaps coming on the program, but I sent you something that he'd written.
- [45:12]
Alistair Campbell
I saw it. Yeah.
- [45:12]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. I thought it was quite interesting. What Kareem is saying, he's a big, big Iran expert, is that he thinks that what may happen is that it may feel a bit more like Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He points out Iran's actually only had four leaders in 100 years. Two Shahs. Khomeini. Khomeini. That everything may collapse and there may be chaos. But what happens if it's like Russia is the Soviet Union collapses, you then have seven, eight years of chaos and then a new sort of nationalist strongman emerges. And he thinks there's quite a lot in the Iranian structure, the paranoid systems, oil, oligarchs. The reason why he's a bit gloomy about people who think that this is going to be great for the human rights, the Iranian people, or it's going to end up with liberal democracy, is because he can see structural elements which suggest that you could end up with an Iranian Putin at the end of this.
- [46:03]
Alistair Campbell
Is that sort of what we were saying the other day when we thought we went through the four possibilities of what might happen? I think you and I both coalesced around the idea of a military dictatorship that was less interested in exterior world, are much more interested in internal power. So that, I guess you might say that's an early stage Putin as opposed to the Putin that developed. We were being critical earlier about the way that perhaps the middle powers, as Mark Carney calls them, hadn't sort of thought through. Right, well, what are the what ifs? We've all been saying that this, what's just happened, might happen. If Netanyahu and Trump get together and they whack out Khamenei, what do we do? Okay, you do get the feeling that if that discussion hadn't happened amongst those powers, that it had certainly happened amongst the Iranian regime. So, as we said on the podcast on Sunday, a lot of them got taken out.
- [46:51]
Rory Stewart
Well, there was this amazing moment just quickly on that, where Trump seemed to say that he'd been given a list of successors, his sort of Delsey Rodriguez figures in Venezuela, the kind of deputies who were going to take over, but unfortunately he killed them all by mistake. So he isn't quite sure who's supposed to be taking over now.
- [47:06]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, if you think about their response, I mean, it has been quite strategic in its own way. I mean, it looks chaotic because it is whacking off missiles here and there, everywhere. But what is the strategy? At the heart of it, I think it is to have the effect that they're having, which is to drive the oil price up very, very high, which to get these nations in the Gulf that Iran thinks have much more influence upon Trump than Iran ever does and certainly than Europe seems to be able to do. So the Saudis and these guys actually say, come on, Trump, this has got to be over sooner. Rather than later. So I think there is a sort of method in what they've been trying to do. Do you know the other thing that's really surprised me in recent days, Rory, is. I mean, I've got the scars of several sort of military situations, but if we go back to the early days of our time in government, the Kosovo war, every time there were kind of civilian casualties, there was a big debate about it. There was political pressure over it. You had a situation the other day. I watched the footage this morning of the funeral of some of these 175 kids or, well, people, including a lot of kids who were killed with this school that was bombed. And I've not even seen that on our media. It was just a kind of online thing that I saw somebody had posted, really kind of.
- [48:27]
Rory Stewart
You know, it's completely horrendous. And as you say, that was not true in Kosovo. I mean, there's been a sort of. There's a real sense of a decline, and I'm afraid Gaza is part of that.
- [48:36]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah.
- [48:38]
Rory Stewart
I mean, there's also been not that much coverage. I mean, just you mentioned Lebanon, but essentially there's been another incursion into Lebanon. Hezbollah struck Israel. Israel struck against Hezbollah. I was talking to someone who's in Gaza today. I hadn't got the facts that effectively the border's now closed with Gaza, so food is not going into Gaza at the moment.
- [48:55]
Alistair Campbell
They've opened it again this morning, apparently. No, yesterday was horrific.
- [48:58]
Rory Stewart
But then again, international NGOs, international NGOs struggling to operate. Many of them basically can't do anything in Gaza at the moment. The technocratic committee that's meant to be running Gaza is apparently basically sitting in Egypt. So, yeah, we're not hearing much about that either. And I wonder whether that isn't something that kind of worries me when you talk about this, which is that, God forbid, these kind of middle powers, Europe, Canada, the uk, end up in a world where they start talking about international law and the strong not bullying the weak, but they mean it only in relation to them, that they don't really end up applying that to what's happening in the Middle east. And they start treating that as though it's kind of the law of the jungle.
- [49:38]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, but that's what the global south says that the international order has meant for quite some time. I think the other thing that that's starting to come through in. I said to you the day I've been following the Israeli media quite closely, and I don't know, do you think I Think Israel probably has a greater stomach for a much longer fight than America does. And you really get the sense that Netanyahu has got the bit between the teeth in a pretty alarming way. I don't. Sorry. I sent you a couple of things this morning. First was a piece in the Guardian about the Americans using AI, which is now faster than humans. And the reason is to get through the kill chain faster. That sent me a bit of a chill alongside a piece that somebody sent me which has this in it. A combat unit commander told non commissioned officers at a briefing on Monday that the Iran war is part of God's plan and that President Donald Trump was anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon. And Mark is returning to earth. From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military have been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. That sort of reminds me, I mean, once you start saying the whole war is a religious one, remember the trouble George Bush got into to talk about a crusade? This is way more explicit. And again, we're not, it's not even on the news. It's just like, I don't know, it's all very, very alarming.
- [51:08]
Rory Stewart
We haven't talked much about what Israel's objective here is, but Netanyahu seems to be coming pretty close and Yelpid as well, to suggesting this is fundamentally from Israel's point of view. They're going to continue until this regime change. But there's another part of the security establishment that I think tends to see it more in the terms in which they would perceive operations in Syria, Lebanon, which is kill the leadership, get rid of their weapons capacity and not worry too much about what kind of political or economic state's left behind in Iran at the end of this. It's also worth bearing in mind if we talked about this a little bit, another reason why people in the region are very troubled and confused. So these Gulf countries, as we said, uae, Qatar or any of these countries, are very aware that they're quite small, very wealthy states. They're very small, they're very fragile. And one of the reasons that some of them were trying to convince Trump not to do this is they were happier with what they felt was an Iran that had basically no longer had a path, credible path towards nuclear weapons, no longer had much air defense, no longer posed much of a threat to the region because its proxies and Lebanon exile had been degraded. So they thought better to contain it, leave it alone, these are all bad worlds, but the least bad world was, leave Iran alone, because at least it's not going to kick off and create regional chaos. Now the regional chaos has started. They're now torn between two positions. One of them is, can we please stop this? Right, because our own cities are now being attacked. But on the other hand, because their cities are being attacked, they feel they need to do something in response against the Iranians. They then. They're worried Israel's becoming a regional hegemon. And then you get a lot of the stuff from Middle Eastern media is now retweeting a former Israeli prime minister who said, Turkey's the next Iran, and then in the same breath mentioned Qatar as a state answers to terrorism. So then there are going to be some people in these states who are like, well, wait a second. If there's no process with Congress or international law, what happens if suddenly they decide that we are a threat that can be attacked or our regime can be changed?
- [53:17]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah, but don't worry, Roy. Melania was at the United nations banging the gavel.
- [53:21]
Rory Stewart
You see, that's another one. Can I just. To finish on that one. I mean, I saw that, and I initially was like, is this AI? And then we've entered a world where I don't know anymore when I see this stuff whether this is an AI joke or whether it's real. It was real. Was it? Melania Trump was actually presiding at the
- [53:35]
Alistair Campbell
UN because she cares about violence against this and that and the other. But just the other thing about Trump. So I watched the thing where he. You know, we had four American servicemen killed on the first day of all this. Okay. And Trump's first public appearance was in this big, grand room in the White House, and he was presenting the Medal of Honor to troops who'd served in Afghanistan. He very, very briefly mentioned these four guys and sort of said, it is what it is. Kind of is what it is. There's gonna be more of this. It is what it is. It was so kind of lacking in any sort of empathy. He then talked about how he'd been trying to get a Medal of Honor
- [54:16]
Rory Stewart
for himself and how he deserved it.
- [54:18]
Alistair Campbell
And he deserved it.
- [54:18]
Rory Stewart
And he wondered whether he could do it because he deserved it so much.
- [54:21]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then started talking about his bloody ballroom and the goal. And these drapes. I chose these drapes myself. This is on the day. This is his first public utterance since this whole thing kicked off. And he said, I love gold. I've always loved gold. Look, at these. These drapes. I chose them myself. If you peek through those drapes now, you're going to see a big hole. It's going to be a big, beautiful ballroom. It's going to be the biggest, most beautiful ballroom in the world. I mean, it's. It's sick. It's sick. Final point for me, Rory, unintended consequences. Did you know 13% of Chinese oil all comes from Iran? So they're going to be looking at that very, very carefully. India said, if you remember, we've talked before about how India relying on Russian oil and helping the Russian war effort by so doing. So they agreed with Trump to cut back on Russian oil in exchange for tariff relief. So they switched to Saudi Arabia and the uae. How does that look for them now? And how does it look for the 9 million. You know, there are 9 million Indian workers in the. In the Gulf sending home remittances. Huge part of their economy.
- [55:36]
Rory Stewart
Yeah. And people aren't talking enough about refugees. I mean, you quite rightly told me off because I went on the Today program yesterday and didn't plug the podcast properly. But another thing you could have told me off for is that I mentioned Libya, and I probably didn't think enough about the fact that people can barely remember what happened in Libya because it's 15 years ago now, but just a memory of it, just to remind people very quickly what happened, there is something that, on the surface, feels a bit like what's happening in Iran. A decision was made to go after Gaddafi, and Gaddafi was killed. And then basically Britain, France, and the US stepped back. They didn't really want to get involved in nation building, and they sort of thought it would be enough to topple the leader, and then regime change would follow and good things would follow. What actually happened? This is the Arab Spring, obviously. What actually happened is civil war in Libya, Libya being broken into two hostile states, and then weapons pouring into all those countries that we've talked about in Sahel, Mali, Chad, Niger, and probably most dramatically, ultimately Sudan. So a lot of these heavily armed Islamist militias that have emerged and that have destabilized that entire region were powered by what was happening in Libya. So the reason I, you know, I shouldn't explain this more, but the reason we need to think a little bit about Libya is not that Iran is like Libya, but one thing that is worth thinking about is what happens to neighboring states when a country starts collapsing and what happens to refugees. I mean, again, Syria, what happened in Syria? 6 million refugees start moving. And that, of course, is where the far right parties in Europe draw a lot of strength. So, you know, what happens if you had, you know, I'm talking to an Iranian on my street. I've got a neighbour who's an Iranian and not surprisingly, his grandmother is in a car trying to cross the Turkish border at the moment.
- [57:24]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. This is what's so nauseating about the sort of farage position of, you know, let's be with the Americans, let's do this, let's go with it. We should be alongside them. When you know that the minute some of those consequences start to play over, he'll be absolutely livid and absolutely furious and be saying, you know, send them all back home. So there are so many unintended consequences. I think you and I have agreed on most of the things we've talked about. I just was trying to be a little bit more reasonable about the horrible bind that Keir Starmer is in right now. And I feel he's got so many people kicking him, including my missus, that I had to stand up for him a little bit. Rory. I hope he didn't mind too much.
- [58:03]
Rory Stewart
That was good. Good to stand up for him, Alistair. Well, we'll be back in which you have another chance to stand up for him in question time tomorrow on the Gordon and Denton by election on the subject of student loans.
- [58:13]
Alistair Campbell
Oh, yes, yes. Oh, that went very. Went very, very well.
- [58:19]
Rory Stewart
Looking forward to it. I'll see you soon. Bye. Bye. Did Vladimir Putin interfere in the US 2016 presidential election?
- [58:33]
Alistair Campbell
I'm Gordon Carrera, national security journalist.
- [58:35]
Rory Stewart
And I'm David McCloskey, author and former CIA analyst. And we are the hosts of the Rest Is Classified. And in our latest series, we're going 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
- [58:52]
Alistair Campbell
Russian spies first hacked and then leaked emails belonging to Hillary Clinton's campaign, how Julian Assange got involved with Putin spies, and how 2016 marked the point that the world changed from forever.
- [59:07]
Rory Stewart
Get the full insider scoop by listening to the Rest Is Classified. Wherever you get your podcasts,