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- [00:51]
Charlie Sykes
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- [01:01]
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- [02:53]
Charlie Sykes
I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the to the Contrary podcast. Donald Trump did not get the coalition of the willing. Instead, he got a wall of no, which led to epic Trump meltdown and tantrum. But what does the rest of the world make of this and what is next for NATO? Lot to cover. And joining us on the podcast, our good friend Ed Luce from the Financial Times. First of all, welcome back, Ed.
- [03:22]
Ed Luce
Great to be with you, Charlie.
- [03:24]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, I want to talk about one of the strangest stories of the week. You called Donald Trump. You picked up your cell phone and you called Donald Trump and. And he answered. This actually happened. You called the President and he answered the phone.
- [03:37]
Ed Luce
Yeah, it's one of the most Alice in Wonderland moments I've had recently. He answered the phone and was very happy to chat for eight minutes. In fact, the call was lost after about four minutes and I thought, oh shit, I've lost the President. And then he called back and he goes, oh, the line went down.
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Charlie Sykes
He called you back?
- [04:01]
Ed Luce
Yes.
- [04:02]
Charlie Sykes
Okay, he called you back. Okay, so what did you chat about, Ed? You, you know, Ed and Donald, what were you chatting about?
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Ed Luce
So I just launched straight into questions and they were about his appeal for allied help in unblocking the Straight of Hormuz. And I knew that earlier in the day, which is, I think why he was happy to talk or to rant really. Earlier in the day he had had a call with Keir Starmer in which he'd come up with British Prime Minister, with the British Prime Minister in which he'd asked for offensive help and not received it. And so I think he was frustrated and wanted to vent that, which he then proceeded to do. And he also then floated the idea, which the next day he then confirmed that he was going to delay the China summit which was going to take place the last day of this month. Because of logistics.
- [05:03]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, because of logistics. So this has led to one of the more interesting storylines of the week, that Donald Trump was asking all of our NATO allies, the allies that he has been urinating upon from a great height for the last year and appears to have been completely shocked that the allies were not willing to step up to fix what he has broken. I love that quote from the French retired French general who says that joining Trump's coalition now would be like buying a ticket on the Titanic to go drinking and dancing the day after it hit the iceberg. But then, so apparently he was enraged by all of this. Lindsey Graham said, I just spoke to Trump, I've never heard him so angry in my life. And then we had this great all caps post saying we no longer need or desire the NATO countries assistance. We never did. All in caps, exclamation point. We do not need the help of anyone. Which struck me as this red faced tantrum because obviously he had been asking for it. They told him no and we don't want you anyway. What do you make of that?
- [06:12]
Ed Luce
So, you know, one thing I picked up on this 8 minute call I had was a sense of sort of quite strong underlying panic that, you know, he is in a situation he cannot easily or quickly get out of, which is getting worse. And so he's looking for people to blame. I mean, I don't think there's any conceivable scenario in which if the US Navy cannot unblock the Strait of Hormuz, that, you know, the Spanish and the Brits can steam in and do it for him. I mean, that's just not. If we're talking about logistics, that's just not logistically realistic or feasible. Now, it is true that Europe has more minesweepers than the United States.
- [06:55]
Charlie Sykes
We decommissioned ours in the region, weirdly enough.
- [06:59]
Ed Luce
And after the 12 Day War, when I presume the sort of next phase of this long war with Iran was still in Trump's mind. Well, maybe not, because they were decommissioned. So I'll give him that, that there are minesweepers nearby. But the problem is, you know, they would be sitting ducks. There would be no guarantee of their security to help get Trump out of a war on which none of them were consulted. Having, you know, for the last year or so been berated by Trump for not contributing enough to NATO, etcetera, but also for never being there when America needs it. And, you know, if you're Danish or British or Canadian or Australian, and you've been in Afghanistan, you've been in Iraq, and you've been in Iraq both times, in fact, you're not going to take kindly to being told you never contributed. And now you must. Because I think the actual act of helping Trump in this war of whim, what I call it, a war of whim, a war of choice, would be political suicide for somebody like Keir Starmer. It would be. His political grip is not particularly firm at the moment. This would just blow it away. He would be over and done. So Trump is asking him to do something for which experience tells us he would show no gratitude, which probably wouldn't help the situation anyway, and which would kill Keir Starmer's prime ministership and other leaders, for that matter. So, of course it's not gonna happen.
- [08:46]
Charlie Sykes
So were you at all surprised by this? I mean, given the. It's one of those surprise, shocking sorts of things where the entire Western alliance basically says no to the United States, given what's happened over the last year, in many ways, it felt inevitable. And yet you just never know when people are going to cave into Donald Trump. So were you at all surprised by the unanimity of the no's that he received from the ent. Entire. The entire Western Alliance. How surprising.
- [09:16]
Ed Luce
And we're about to get another, I suspect, more politely rendered no from the Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi, who is going to be, you know, running the gauntlet in the Oval Office with the President on Thursday, tomorrow, not surprised at all. You know, even America's sort of most hardy allies, like Australia and Britain, didn't really have to think twice about it. They saw this war as whimsical, as capricious and as damaging. They objectively do not agree that there was an imminent threat and they do not agree that going to war with Iran will improve anybody's security, that this problem, the Iranian problem, which is very real, don't get me wrong, nobody likes the Iranian regime, but that it was being managed, it was being contained, and that that was the least bad option. Moreover, the talks that Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner held with their Iranian counterparts in Geneva, brokered by Oman, mediated by the government over Oman, had other participants and observers, including Jonathan Powell, senior British figure, former national Security Advisor. Well, sorry, current national Security advisor, who was very clear in briefings this week that the deal offered by the Iranians was a very good one, better than what the Obama administration got with the JCPOA, the Iran US nuclear deal in 2015. And was really surprised to, to see within the next 24 hours that the administration not only dismissed the Iranian offer, but completely misportrayed it. Iran offered to get rid of all stockpiles and to put them offshore of enriched uranium. That's a serious offer. 24 hours later, the war begins. No follow up. And Jonathan Powell was expecting the second round of talks in Vienna the following week, never happened. So I think the sense that the administration wanted war come what may, or rather, Trump wanted more come what may has added sort of curdled the transatlantic mindset even further.
- [11:43]
Charlie Sykes
Curdled is an interesting word. Now, you mentioned Donald Trump appears to be somewhat obsessed with the British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer. Just let's spend a moment on that. The Irish Prime Minister was in the Oval Office the other day and. And Trump is going on and on about him. It appears as if the government of Britain now has supplanted his animus towards. Well, I mean, he sort of, you know, shifts the radar of, like, you know, Canada is my obsession, Greenland's my obsession. He does seem a little obsessed at beating up on the British, by the way, not his good friend Vladimir Putin, who continues to help the Iranians, but he is pounding away on Starmer. Is there some particular personal chemistry going on there? Why is Trump obsessed with him?
- [12:29]
Ed Luce
It was really interesting when Trump yet again said he was asked about Starmer in that Oval Office meeting with the Irish Taoiseach Mikhail Martin. He yet Again said, we have a bust of Churchill here. Keir Starmer's no Churchill. These people are useless. What was really interesting to me, my wife is Irish. It's sort of British Irish. It's a bit like an Israeli Palestinian marriage. I've got a tuned antennae. Mikhail Martin then stepped in to defend Keir Starmer. Say, he's a good man, you should deal with him. I know in the past you've got along with them. And of course, you remember Charlie, the somewhat cringeworthy Keir Starmer Oval Office meeting where he flourishes. This invitation from King Charles III to Trump to stay at Windsor Castle. To have an Irish leader coming in defend a British leader, and the two get along very well. To have them get along way better with each other than with an American president is, I think, a first in history. I can't recall anything like that. And to me, although it's a little thing, it's a sort of mood music moment. It's a measure of just how curdled that transatlantic world is. Now it's that all they're doing when they go to see Trump is trying to avoid crockery being thrown at them. They're not expecting anything serious, substantive or constructive. It's just a bullet dodging exercise.
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Charlie Sykes
Okay, so this raises the question about what happens next. And I wrote yesterday that the Trump tantrum tells us a couple of things, that this is what America alone looks like. Yes. I mean, despite all the bluster and the dick wagging, Trump has clearly lost control of events. And you picked up a little bit of the panic. But then I guess the question is, will his rage over Hormuz and the fact that they didn't step up for him, is that going to be the proximate cause of the end of NATO? I mean, is Trump so angry now? I think that NATO has essentially been dead man walking since Trump, you know, became president again. But give me your sense of what this means for the future of the alliance. Has. Have the other allies just simply decided it's gone anyway, so we're willing to piss them off over this.
- [14:57]
Ed Luce
Pretty much everybody is, to one degree or another, recognized that they need a post NATO world or they need a NATO minus one. And so the crockery throwing in the last few days related to Iran comes after that realization. The Greenland moment was really the sort of final crystallizing of that realization. And so you have the French talking, Macron did this big speech talking about making the French nuclear umbrella broader to cover the rest of Europe. There is a debate in Britain, because unlike the French, Britain doesn't have. It's basically a dual nuclear deterrent with the United States. There's a debate about how to make it formally fully independent. Decoupled. Yeah. I mean, to decouple. And I'm really not sure how easy that would be, to be honest. But the fact is the debate is happening and Britain's moving closer to. To Europe. Brexit has become regretsit. That sort of whole episode now seems like a sort of fit of absentmindedness because Britain and the European Union and others who aren't in the eu, like Norway, and neutral countries that are in the eu, like Ireland, are all rethinking. We've got to sort of get our act together here. And so, yes, I think they're acting as though NATO is gone. And whether Trump formally pulls out of it or not is almost a sort of technical question, because nobody trusts. It's about trust and credibility. Nobody trusts that, say, if Putin exploited this chaos in the Middle east to take off a chunk of Estonia or Moldova or something. Well, Moldova is not in NATO of Estonia, which is in NATO, that the Trump administration would come to their aid. That Article 5 would be, we worked. And once you've lost that confidence, then the magic's gone.
- [17:13]
Charlie Sykes
Well, speaking of Putin, Wall Street Journal has a piece today, Russia is sharing satellite imagery and drone technology with Iran. Phillips o' Brien says it is so fascinating that as Trump threatens and insults U.S. allies to try to get them to get him out of his ridiculous strategic bind, he does not have the courage to even ask Putin politely to stop helping Iran kill American soldiers. Interesting that. And the Europeans were quite upset when he lifted the sanctions last week, the oil sanctions against Putin, weren't they?
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Ed Luce
Yeah. And so this is another question I asked Trump on that call, and he said what he'd said before, in fact, which was, well, you know, we were helping Ukrainian. Ukrainians target their assets. So, you know, well, essentially, all's fair in love and war. He didn't care.
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Charlie Sykes
What the hell.
- [18:06]
Ed Luce
I mean, Steve Witkoff, you might recall, a couple of weeks ago, very early into the Iran war, was asked about the exact same question in a TV interview. And he said, I've been assured by President Putin he's not doing that. And I have no reason not to believe him. I have no reason to think that Putin might be lying. I mean, this is the world's most accomplished, trained and experienced liar. But Wyckoff has no reason not to take him at his word because he's a gentleman. So there is some enduring massive Trumpian blind spot about Putin that we can theorize about, but we know it's there. For whatever reason it's there. We know it's never gonna go away.
- [18:56]
Charlie Sykes
So I can't get over the fact that you just picked. You called Donald Trump and he picked up the phone. There's actually been this story that a lot of people apparently, apparently are getting Donald Trump's phone number. Did you think that he was going to answer your call? I mean, you have been, shall we say, somewhat critical of Donald Trump. Did he know who you were? I mean, when he picked up the phone? Or is he just picking up, like, unscreen call. The president states unscreen calls. Like, who this. Did he know it was you?
- [19:24]
Ed Luce
I put in a couple of words with people around him. Okay. And I tried him about three times before, and then I texted him. I mean, this sounds like. This just sounds.
- [19:38]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah.
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Ed Luce
So bizarre, you know, and then. So he knew who I was when I picked up and talked a little bit about my. I mean, was, as, you know, is his want. He was sort of laid it on thick. Was very flattering, which, of course, is how he talks to people in private, but then can turn quite the opposite.
- [20:03]
Charlie Sykes
Wait, wait, wait. He was very, very flattering. He says, I really like your column where you called me a fascist. I mean, how did this go? I mean, does he actually know what you have said about him and about his regime?
- [20:17]
Ed Luce
It became pretty clear to me that he'd never read a word I'd written. Maybe he seen me on Morning Joe or something. As he gets his information from phone calls and banks of TV screens. That's how he absorbs, processes information. So possibly that. But I had had a couple of people who do know what I write put in a word with him. I won't mention who they are. And I think the timing was because of his annoyance with Starmer,
- [20:50]
Charlie Sykes
the British thing. So let's talk about some of the other developments. And I think there's a little bit of confusion on the part of some of the observers who are not deep into MAGA world about the whole Joe Kent story. Of course, Joe Kent is the. Is the. Was the direct the title. The director of the National Counterterrorism center, who resigned in protest, said, I cannot in good conscience support the ongoing war in Iran. Iran posed no immediate threat to our nation. It is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby. Now, this is the highest ranking official, but I do think it's important to point out as Adam Kinsey, you know, we're talking about the Graper adjacent, you know, Joe Kent. Not suddenly a good guy. He's a straight up white nationalist. But what do you make of this? Because, you know, he does represent a certain wing of maga, the Tucker Carlson wing. Your reaction?
- [21:48]
Ed Luce
So if you look at what people like Steve Ban said, I mean, you can kind of guess with Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson, Bannon is a little bit more of a swing vote in the MAGA world because he likes to keep close to Trump with his war room. He's been proclaiming this as the sort of biggest event all year, that Kent left the administration and resigned for the reasons he resigned. And although he's not sort of using the same tropes you hear Tucker Carlson use, he is saying that this is an Israel first war. And, you know, clearly Tulsi Gabbard, you know, is, is Tulsi Gabbard is in that camp. It's reading. I don't know how you felt, Charlie, but reading his. Kent's letter, you know, you're in full agreement with the bit where he says there was no imminent threat, right, from Iran and then he just goes off into. And it's a Jewish war, essentially. Yes, this is where we, you know, I have no doubt, none of us have any doubt that Netanyahu has been very influential and, you know, at times decisive in persuading Trump and sort of feeding Trump with certain lines about Iranian, presumably the imminence of Iranian attacks. But this is Trump's decision. This is Trump's war. And if you recall the 12 Day War last June, for sure, Israel began it, but then Trump joined in and then Trump ended it and he publicly told Israel to respect the ceasefire that Trump had declared and Israel obeyed. So, I mean, Trump might be subject to, you know, very skilled influence of Netanyahu, but we should be very, very careful not to say that there are Jews pulling, you know, the strings and Trump's a puppet.
- [23:42]
Charlie Sykes
This is where. Okay, my reaction to this was this actually turns my stomach because again, I. That Kent is right about the lack of the imminence. But I mean, people do need to understand how extreme Kent was and pointing out that when he was appointed and Republicans confirmed him to this position, there were all kinds of warning signs. His association with the Proud Boys, his interviews with Nick Fuentes and all of that. But let's just step aside. What he has done is he has injected this anti Semitic trope that has always been floating around that America fights wars because of the Jewish lobby. And my concern is that we've seen this before, moving the extreme ideas into the mainstream, that now he has really raised this, the profile of this, the Jews did this. This is a disaster, I think, for people who had supported Israel. I think it's very, very dangerous at a moment when we've seen anti Semitism on the right and the left rising. And I have some friends who justified their support for Trump on the grounds that Trump would be good for the Jews. And I was always skeptical of this, as you know, but it reminds me of what Rick Wilson said, that everything Trump touches dies. And I think you will look back on this as this disastrous moment, both for American support for Israel. I think it will have a generational effect. I think that we will see the fallout of this for years. But again, taking these memes about the Jewish lobby, you know, put sending us to war, especially if this war, you know, goes south. I remember, remember when people like Pat Buchanan would say thing about, say things about, you know, the Jewish, you know, lobby and the Amen chorus and everything. The right back then and the Republican Party had an immune system where they said, no, listen, we're not going in this particular direction. People like William F. Buckley Jr. Exiled him. And now we are seeing this very much part of the ecosystem of the right. And I gotta tell you, it sickens me and it really worries me that we're going to be hearing this kind of thing now for years and years and years.
- [26:02]
Ed Luce
I share your foreboding on this. I think the most credible people to push back on the anti Semitic, the Griper, the Fuentes sort of wing that's clearly gaining ground. The most credible people are not those who demonized everybody else except the Jews, which is Trump. It's like, well, there's the brown people, then there's the gays, and then there's Haitians, they eat pets. And there's Somalis, my goodness, they're garbage. But the Jews, no, no, no, don't touch the Jews. We will break every taboo possible, but we're going to just ring fence that one. Well, there's no reason why at that point, since you've unleashed the Kraken, that the Kraken's going to say, oh, okay, there's a red light. I'll stop at the red light. So this has got to be a much broader, much broader pushback by people other than, you know, those around Trump. And, you know, I see, I watched very closely that interview that Tucker Carlson did with Ted Cruz. And I agreed with what Ted Cruz was saying.
- [27:13]
Charlie Sykes
I do too.
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Ed Luce
But, you know, I don't think Ted Cruz has a particularly strong ground to stand on given everything else he's joined in on. So this is worrying. This is very worrying because something has been unleashed that needs to be a sort of hygiene rule, that racism, including antisemitism, is unacceptable and we're.
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Charlie Sykes
It metastasizes. Right. And plus, you know, for years, I think there was an understanding that if you indulge in conspiracy theories, if you mainstream conspiracy theories, sooner or later that's going to have an anti Semitic trope. And. And here. And here we are. I want to talk to you about one of our sponsors because this is something that we talk about all the time. How do you avoid getting caught in an echo chamber? How do you avoid blind spots? How do you not get stuck in a bias bubble? Well, that's what Ground News is all about. This is what they do. Take this story I found on their homepage. Donald Trump posts a racist video. Or this one. Ghislaine Maxwell refuses to testify before Congress, for example. Now, how did the left cover those stories? How did the center cover it? How did the right cover it? They'll tell you the bias rating for each source worldwide, as well as how factual they are and who funds them. Plus, thanks to their blind spot feed, you'll see stories that are being ignored by the left or the right, like this one, the story about Kristi Noem, who fired and reinstated a Coast Guard pilot over a missing blanket. So if you want access to stories you may otherwise never see in the necessary context to make up your own mind, visit groundnews.com to subscribe to the Vantage subscription for 40% off, which will grant you unlimited access for just $5 a month. You don't have to take my word for it. The Nobel Peace center called Ground News an excellent way to stay informed, avoid echo chambers, and expand your worldview. I recommend that you visit groundnews.com tc today. Hi, this is Pablo Torre from. Pablo Torre Finds Out. And today I want to talk to you about Boost Mobile because we spend a lot of time analyzing inefficiencies in sports, overvalued contracts, money tied up in the wrong places, and so on. But those inefficiencies aren't just on a roster. Sometimes they're in your own monthly expenses. Boost Mobile says switching to their $25 Unlimited Forever plan can unlock up to $600 in savings a year. That's $25 a month for unlimited data, talk and text. When you bring your own phone if that money is trapped in a pricey phone bill, it might be worth a second look. Visit boostmobile.com to learn more. After 30 gigabytes, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the Boost Mobile Unlimited Plan savings claim based on a January 2026 Boost Mobile survey of 1,000Americans with single line unlimited plans, comparing average annual payments of major carriers to 12 months on the Boost Mobile Unlimited Plan. For full offer details, visit boostmobile.com. Okay, so let's talk about the other pivot here because I thought this was kind of interesting, that even as the Iran war continues to spiral out of control, Trump is pivoting to Cuba. And they had this very strange quote which I'm sure you caught, says, I will be having the honor of taking Cuba whether I free it. Take it. I think I can do anything I want with it, if you wanna know the truth. I think I could do anything. I might free it, I might just do anything. I might turn it into a resort. I mean, the hubris first of all. But the sort of the naked neo colonialism, what do you make of that? Because clearly the clusterfuck of Iran has not humbled him because he's now talking about the next country that he's gonna take over and control.
- [31:12]
Ed Luce
Yeah, I mean, I think he probably rightly thinks, okay, the Delsey Rodriguez scenario didn't apply to Iran. Yeah, well, whatever. I'll blame NATO for that. But it would work in Cuba. And Cuba has a bunch of sort of ailing leaders who make the sort of Trump administration look youthful, or at least Trump himself look youthful. We've got people in their 90s. It's a bust regime. It's got more bust since the Venezuela operation on January 3rd because Venezuela was supplying Cuba with a lot of its oil in exchange for Cuba supplying basically military advisors, as they call them, and intelligence. That's one thing Cuba can still do well. So it's really been cut off. It's getting even more strangled. It was a lifeless economy to begin with and so it's a sitting duck. I mean, nobody's going to ride to Cuba's rescue. Nobody rode to Venezuela's rescue. Nobody's riding to Iran's rescue.
- [32:21]
Charlie Sykes
Interesting.
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Ed Luce
For that matter, so if Trump is looking for something to an antidote to his self inflicted pain from, I think what is turning into a strategic disaster in Iran, then Cuba's kind of easy picking. So I do not discount this at all. I think this is, I don't either. And the Secretary of State Marco Rubio. It's pretty much a lifelong ambition. He is the son of Cuban exiles and he's always talked about this. So it sort of feels over determined. And Hegseth, of course, loves action in the Caribbean. So you've got all the ducks lined up?
- [33:03]
Charlie Sykes
Oh, all the ducks are lined up. And I have no doubt that they're going to do this. In fact, they may be able to do this without a military attack. And from a political point of view, from an optics point of view, liberating Cuba will have a different feel to it now, what the future of Cuba will be. I thought, what a strange way that he put it where he said, I might free it, I might take it, I can do whatever I want with it. So it's not necessarily we're gonna have free Cuba. We could have, I don't know, you know, another Batista or, you know, installed some other, you know, Cadillo down there. We, we just don't know. And Donald Trump clearly does not care. But I'm guessing that that will be there. Unfortunately, from his point of view, though, I guess one of the questions, why wouldn't you have done that first as opposed to this? Because I'm guessing that by the middle of the year there's going to be a certain weariness about the adventurism, the there, there might be an appetite and excitement for like the first country you take over or the second country you threaten, or the, the third country that you bomb or the fourth country that you invade. At some point people are going to go, wait. I mean, you know, it is particularly in the election year, how many countries are we going to take over? You follow me? I mean, it's just, I mean, I. The neocolonialism thing, the neoclaim.
- [34:23]
Ed Luce
I mean, the resource grab, you know, Cuba is like a notch on the bedstead. I mean, what Venezuela and Iran and in Trump's mind, Greenland have in common is resources, it's critical minerals, it's oil, it's gas. Cuba does have some oil production, but it's not a big player. It may be in the sort of sepia tinted memories of Trump's early years. He does remember that Batista era. He does remember, you know, the Corleone sort of hanging out.
- [34:56]
Charlie Sykes
Yeah, right.
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Ed Luce
In Havana. And you know, there were a lot of big games and there was a lot of blackjack, but I don't see that he could sort of, it's not the sort of ready resource grab, the sort of neo imperialist logic we saw with Venezuela. It is I and I alone. And just like I did with Iran 47 years after the revolution, I and I alone can fix it. I can be the one who after 60 years can, or more than 60 years can fix this Cuba and build resorts.
- [35:36]
Charlie Sykes
I mean, the weather's great down there, right? You can turn it into a tourist attraction. I mean, the fact that he was talking about turning Gaza into like the Trump Riviera on the Mediterranean. Okay, this is slightly more plausible than that. I mean, it's right there in any case. So let me just talk about something you've written about, because the whole world is watching all this, trying to figure out what is going on. Give me your sense. You wrote about China. How does China look at this and how are they benefiting from the chaos that we're seeing right now? Because in terms of what is the great geopolitical rival that we face? It's frankly, you know, it's not Iran, it's not Cuba, it's not Greenland, it's China. So talk to me about China.
- [36:22]
Ed Luce
Yeah, so China, I mean, I think I wrote that the one thing that I had plenty of things on my bingo card for 2026, including wars and bespoke peace prizes, lots of AI action, tons of stuff. One of the things I did not have on my bingo card was Trump asking China to send a naval expeditionary force to help get him out of a war in the Middle East. That just wasn't anything IOU expected, Charlie. And of course, China's even less keen to do that than any of America's NATO partners. China is not going to help bail Trump out of this war. And there are two reasons for this. One is the old adage, never interrupt your enemy while he's making a mistake. This is an act, I think of quite reckless act by Trump that put the entire global south as well as the rest of us on notice that the economy is fragile and that these escalating prices will feed into food, will feed into fertilizer, will feed into people's cost of living. And that China isn't doing that. United States is doing that. This is a sort of good, it's a good diplomatic win for Xi Jinping in the sense that China is trying to present itself. And it has been for several years now, since its Wolf Warrior, very ill advised wolf warrior phase. It's been trying to sort of keep quiet and present itself as the grown up, as the stabilizing, predictable actor on the global stage, whereas America is volatile and wild. And so he's been sitting there doing nothing, essentially just waiting for unforced errors. And this is a very big unforced error. And China has no intention of helping Trump back out of this era. And then the second thing is, of course China does. Trump is correct that Europe, and particularly China, gets get tons of their energy through the straight of Hormuz. For China, it's more than half of its oil comes through that narrow waterway, and therefore, it should be incentivized to help unblock it. But China's been throwing ton of money into all forms of energy in the last 20 years, particularly in the last few years. And it has a lot of solar and wind. I mean, it has coal, too, but it has a lot of energy options and hydro. It's not nearly as dependent on the oil price as it was a few years ago. So it can afford to ride this one out. And even if it does sort of pinch the Chinese consumer a bit, like it would our consumers is our consumers, the gain in terms of China's geopolitical positioning far outweighs that. So I think China's not interrupting its enemy while it's making a mistake.
- [39:31]
Charlie Sykes
So speaking of not interrupting your enemy while you're making a mistake, there has to be people who are talking to Donald Trump who have his phone number as well as you do, who are telling him this would be good to bail out on. Why don't you simply declare victory? Because the international consequences are obviously bad, but the domestic political consequences are mounting. I mean, just drive down the street, look at the price of gas, listen to people talk about what they're seeing in the grocery store. Affordability was a liability before this even began. You know, and I've asked several guests this question. You know, in the past, Trump has been very, very willing to back off on certain things, not necessarily tariffs, because he's obsessed with tariffs. But, you know, why do you think that Trump and he might do it in the next, like, hour, just simply say, we've won, it's over, we're pulling out, we're gonna do Cuba instead. Why is he not. Why has he allowed himself to get sucked into what feels like a quagmire at the moment?
- [40:34]
Ed Luce
I think he is belatedly reading or listening to the briefings that he didn't pay any attention to before he started this war. And those briefings say that you can start a war, but you're not the only person who gets to decide when it ends. And so the prospect, the incentive rather, for Iran to continue to squeeze the straight of Hormuz, because that's its only real Lever, you know, China has rare earths. You know, that's, that's, that's something it can, that's a card it can play at any time. Again, this is all Iran has got. It's got its choke point. And if it gives up that choke point, then it's basically a sitting duck. So, so this is existential. Barely a day goes by where another senior Iranian leader isn't struck by the Israelis. I mean, we've had the head of the Basij, which is the massive paramilitary voluntary arm of the Revolutionary Guards, head of the Revolutionary Guards, the head of national Security, the Grand Ayatollah. I mean, one after the other, they're getting knocked off. So they're existential. They're not going to say, oh, let's sort of pause for like an English cricket game, let's pause for tea and meet in the Tea Room in Geneva next Tuesday. We're not in that situation anymore. So I think he probably knows that Iran's going to just keep inflicting pain because that's the way that Iran will, in its own mind, guarantee that Trump doesn't come back for more action six months from now.
- [42:11]
Charlie Sykes
And. Yeah, and why would you sit down with them after the last negotiations? Now, you, I'm sure, saw that very detailed New York Times story that seemed to suggest that not only have we not knocked out the regime, but we've made the regime more militant and extreme, that the way things have gone, that the dead ayatollah had been somewhat reluctant to have his son take over because he was such a hardliner, there were other people who would have been more in line. The leader that was just assassinated yesterday was considered. And again, we've been doing this for so long, moderate compared to the hardliner. This puts the military more in control. So in other words, that we've made that what's left is actually more hostile, more hardline, more extreme than alternatives. So everything you just said is true. And really, we've had this, the unintended consequence of hardening this regime, hardening the resolve of this regime.
- [43:13]
Ed Luce
And I think on the ground, amongst Iranian people who detest this regime, for the most part, you know, we're talking 70, 80% of the country loathe this regime. Well, they're now sort of splitting their loathings because they really, you know, there is a latent, never, far from the surface, anti Americanism, anti Israelism of a nationalism there that isn't inconsistent with hating their regime. But they're feeling that, too, because the bombing and we've got a couple of very good correspondents on the ground in Iran who've been reporting on public sentiment that there is real anger against what's coming from the skies and the missiles that are hitting their power plants and that are causing electricity blackouts and some hitting schools and, and the sort of fear.
- [44:02]
Charlie Sykes
Cultural institutions too.
- [44:04]
Ed Luce
And cultural institutions. And now the upstream gas production. There's this sort of real loathing of what's coming from the skies and the regime's clearly going to manipulate that. They will stop at nothing to quash any signs of protests or about. They will not politely arrest people, they will mow them down. So the Israeli strategy of like getting rid of everybody in the hope that there is an uprising and a regime change is wrong. First of all, on the count you've just laid out, Charlie, which is it's making the regime more hardline. The hardliners are really, the military are really now in control. And B, it's alienating the people who are supposed to rise up and the
- [44:54]
Charlie Sykes
people supposedly supposed to rise up. And the mixed messages we're getting, I mean, Donald Trump was at one point encouraging them to rise up and then he sort of backed off on that. We had the report that the Israelis that their intelligence assessment was that even while Israel and the United States is telling people to rise up, that their assessment was that yes, but they would be massacred. So we're not seeing any uprising of the public. They're either afraid or as you point out, we're losing hearts and minds because of the tactics. So it feels as if that has been moved off the table within the last couple of weeks, is that right?
- [45:38]
Ed Luce
I think so. I mean, one of the problems with this war is even though we knew it was going to happen, I mean, there was a build up to it and I was in the Gulf 10 days before the war started. Seeing one of the Gulf rulers, I can't, it was, I can't mention which, but it was very clear that all of the Gulf rulers, including the one I spoke to, were opposed to this war. And five years ago they'd have all been in favor because they all saw the Iranian regime. But now their fear was instability spilling out across the region and they knew they would be getting it first if a war started. They're the most vulnerable. They're just across the Gulf. They're really low hanging fruit for an Iranian regime that wants to horizontalize, escalate. So they didn't want this war to happen. And now their entire business models, their entire sort of existence as these fragile but booming states is being called into question, they don't believe that American security means what they thought it meant three weeks ago, that America would supply their security. They see it actually as a double edged sword because it makes them a target. So even though we were expecting this war to happen, I don't think we were expecting Trump to misread things quite this badly.
- [47:05]
Charlie Sykes
So am I remember this correctly, it was your paper, the Financial Times, that just published the story about the bad bet by MBS that Mohammed bin Salman had bet on this war and reports that he is urging the continuing bombing. So what did he think was happening and why has he lost the bet on this?
- [47:26]
Ed Luce
So he, in 2023, they restored relations with Iran and Iran restored relations with Saudi Arabia. These people have been at each other's throats since 1979. A Shiite theocracy and a Sunni royal theocracy. Just a sectarian mutual loathing that has caused a lot of deaths in the last 50 years. But he had this rapprochement because he believed that MBS sort of bet that Iran was going to be around to stay because it had Russia behind it, China behind it, and that you've just got to sort of deal with the realities in your neighborhood. And Trump had different ideas. Now, there are mixed reports on whether MBS really did call before the war for Trump to attack. That's certainly not what I was hearing in the Gulf. What I was hearing was it was pretty much unanimity. This is not a good idea. Please rethink, Mr. President. The Omanis are really good mediators, listen to them and that this advice wasn't heeded. So they are pretty pissed off whether MBS did or didn't and is now switched and saying, okay, finish the job, you've started it. What we're going to see when the dust settles, and I don't know when that is, but what we're going to see is one of the biggest arms booms, arms races. I mean, we're already seeing it begin in Europe and other parts of the world, but we're going to see it globalize. And the Gulf, there's no shortage of money in the Gulf. There's going to be an arms, but we're in a new global arms race and it's going to, it's going to be wonderful.
- [49:06]
Charlie Sykes
No, I was thinking the number of countries that are thinking, boy, if we don't have nukes, is there some way we could get it? Because you look at the global map, who's vulnerable? Who's a victim and who's not. There's a reason why we're bombing the hell out of Iran and not touching North Korea right now. Correct. So, Ed, at the end of all of this, I keep thinking, you know, what are we. Because we often will focus on one story to the exclusion of others. There's a lot of other things going on. We still have ice in the streets of America. The Epstein files have not gone away. The House Oversight Committee has subpoenaed. What do you make with that, by the way? The House Oversight Committee, controlled by Republicans, issuing a subpoena to Attorney General Pam Bondi. She's saying, you didn't need to subpoena me. What's all that about? There's obviously something going on there. So we're all focused internationally, but there's something happening with the Epstein files, including with Republicans in Congress, including some of the fire breathers like James Comer, who are, you know, crosswise with Pam Bondi. Do you have any take on all of that? I'm sort of seeing it out of my, you know, peripheral vision going, what the hell?
- [50:15]
Ed Luce
I mean, you can be, you can be pardoned by the president, of course, but you can be jailed for contempt of Congress. A lot of people around Trump have been jailed for contempt. The Clintons complied with the subpoena. And so I imagine, I mean, your instinct on this, Charlie, would be better. But do you think this subpoena was necessary? Do you think Pam Bondi would just not have complied?
- [50:43]
Charlie Sykes
Well, that's a really interesting question because they're saying, why did you have to issue a subpoena? Why don't you just call up and ask me to come in? But obviously they thought, no, we want you under subpoena. So there's clearly some tension and some distrust, you know, involving at least some of the Republicans on that committee. So we have seen, as you know, so few times when elected Republicans were willing to break with the administration on something substantive like this. And at least in the view of the Trump administration, there's almost nothing more substantive than their cover up of the Epstein files. So this seems like, you know, as
- [51:21]
Ed Luce
you know better than I, Charlie, the Friday, the day before this war began, we had that, the dropping of that case. I mean, I'm not some grand conspiracy theorist, but I noted the timing. Noted is a good word. I noted the timing and I would say this, that even if there's a nuclear war, all that will be left will be cockroaches. And the Epstein files, they're not going away.
- [51:50]
Charlie Sykes
They are not going away and neither are we. So, Ed Luce, when we're done, you're going to text me Donald Trump's phone number because I'm going to call him up. I'm just kidding. Ed Luce from the Financial Time, thank you so much for your time. It's been always great. I appreciate it.
- [52:04]
Ed Luce
A real delight, Charlie and thank you
- [52:06]
Charlie Sykes
all for listening to this episode of to the Contrary podcast. I'm Charlie Sykes. We will continue to do this amid all of the crazy because we have to remind ourselves that we are not crazy. Thank you.
- [52:32]
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Ed Luce
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Charlie Sykes
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