Sovereignty and Alignment Contradictions

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 therest ispolitics.com. That's the rest is politics.com . Blair has strongly, strongly given the impression that he would have been much more strongly behind what Trump and Israel are doing in Iran than Kirstama. If you are any former Prime Minister, but I would argue particularly Tony Blair, in this context, where a Labour Prime Minister has got a particular difficulty with the American president, then there is no such thing as off the record. We need some way of saying to the US, we're distancing ourselves, we're not gonna be your lackeys anymore. You've just strengthened Russia's hand by pushing up the oil price, you've weakened Ukraine by taking patriot missiles out, you've weakened our own economies. With respect, you tell us to look after ourselves, stand on our own two feet, be proud national Europeans. Our priority is this, we're not having anything to do with this . Welcome to the rest of the politics question Time with me, Alistair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And as with the main episode that we did live yesterday, we are going to be focusing entirely on Iran. We have had thousands of questions from you. And it is such a consequential an amazing. And actually I, mean, even on the live show, we got a huge amount of questions, but we've also had people sending them in by I guess email, all different social media platforms, Discord. I mean it's it's been incredible. I want to start though with Jennifer, who's a Trip Plus member. Thank you, Jennifer very much. Thank you. Thank you for subscribing. From New Molden. What do you make of Alistair's former boss commenting on Starmer's reluctance to join the Orange Man and his seemingly I know that post Brexit the unspoken policy of ex Prime Ministers not commenting on their successors seems to have gone out of the window. But to me it seems particularly vicious to kick Starmer when he's already down. Has being on the orange man's board of peace gone to Blair's head, or is he now Board of Peace? Okay, well I'll put the case of the defence, then I'll put the case of the prosecution. Very good. In a good sort of, you know, fancy balanced. So the case for the defence is that Tony is adamant he didn't say the things that the headlines said he said. In other words, the headlines were Blair rebukes Starmer, Blair admonishes Starmer, Blair says Starmer weak, and he says he said none of that. What he did say was that in an ideal world Britain would be alongside the Americans in these foreign policy adventures. And that he suggested that he personally, had he been Prime Minister, would have been squarely behind the US in this particular That. Now what he what he hasn't done is denied saying some of the things that he's reported as saying, because he's assuming, and this is where I make the case for the prosecution, if you are any former Prime Minister, but I would argue particularly Tony Blair, in this context, where a Labour Prime Minister has got a particular difficulty ongoing with the American president, then you are a very, very skilled, very, very experienced politician. There is no such thing as off the record, there is no such thing as Chatham House rule. It said in the papers it was a Chatham House event. There's no such thing. Sure. So my sense is that as much through body language and tone, he gave enough to the mail, the telegraph, etc. , whoever was taping the thing to run the headlines that they did. And just to sorry f in very, very basic terms, the story seems to be that Blair has strongly, strongly given the impression, whether he exactly said this or not, that he would have been much more strongly behind what Trump and Israel are doing in Iran than Kirstama. And if he'd been in charge, the implication at least was that Britain would have opened up these airbases, got behind it, and the suggestion is that he's worried that Starmer hasn't done enough to support the US. And that and that's Trump's line too, which makes it even more complicated because Trump also has been going around saying that, you know, Starmer's not exactly Churchill, you know, we used to be a great ally and has basically been insulting Starmer, saying he's not being strong enough with the Right and that is why in my view Tony should have been a lot more sensitive whatever he said and however he said it to the notion that there would be people in that room. This was a Jewish news fundraiser. This is a very, very pro-raIsel audience. Israel is much more in favor of what's happening in Iran than the UK or Europe or indeed the United States. Why is Tony speaking at a fundraiser for Jewish news? Probably because he's you know su,pports the some of the causes that they support. And uh I've I've said to you before one of the reasons I actually don't mind him being involved in the Board of Peace, 'cause I think he is one of the few people who genuinely has access to all of the sides in this debate and does at least care about the future of Gaza in a way that I'm not convinced that Kushner and Whitkoff and and Trump remotely do. But I just I just felt when I when I got the the pig on my phone. I just thought. I mean Keir Starmatt can do without this. And to be fair, John Major would not be tempted to to do that kind of thing. He's been much more careful, hasn't he? I mean the interventions from people like Major were very, very limited in control. Certainly when we were in government. I mean you you were not worried. Yeah. Until Boris Johnson. Yeah. That's because he had been very loyal with Cameron and May, and with Johnson, he thought he'd completely overstepped the mark on Brexit. So when Major decided to do it, it was he was putting the boot into somebody he thought was a terrible prime minister. So very, very odd. Rishi Sunak's come out in favor of what Trump's doing, or seems to have done, judging by the headlines in the newspapers. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy. Most of us are buying energy in the dark, not knowing what it costs. You wouldn't do that with your weekly food shop, but with energy, you're often charged first and only find out the number later. When you don't have that clarity, you usually end up paying more than you should, which is what Fuse Energy is working to change about how energy works. The average household switching to Fuse can save around £200 on their energy bills. 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This episode is brought to you by Adobe Acrobat Studio. There's a lot of data in today's game, but chaps, is it all waffle? A lot of it is, yes. No, it's no, come on. XG, pre-assists, pockets of space. Hold on, you started using that terminology. Hypocrisy, come on. Well, if your role involves working through reams of information and data, take a look at Acrobat Studio. You can create a PDF space, an AI powered workspace that turns documents into summaries and insights, and even generates reports or presentations out of it, so you can cut through the waffle, work smarter and save time. It's easy to create something amazing. All in record time. Plus, because we know working as a team is always better, you can work on projects together without having to worry about privacy or security. So whatever you want to do, do that with Acrobat. Learn more and try it out on Adobe. com. I think you've always got to be careful with these things because they they there is something. I mean forget Johnson and and trust, but the s the sort of serious former Prime Ministers, Tony, John Major, etcetera, Theresa May, they will think very, very carefully before intervening in a domestic political, a live domestic political issue. Partly because when they do, it should carry weight and have impact, they shouldn't kind of rent a quote. And it's perfectly clear to me that Tony did not imagine, and this is where I think he made a mistake, he did not imagine that this was going to become a big thing in the newspapers. So he sort of indicated, yeah, well basically I'm probably more on the American side than the British government is the same. And he was sitting in Downing Street in the comms department listening to you, would they not be saying, Come off it. Alistair, for God's sake. I mean, every time a minister said to you, Oh, I didn't realise it was going to be a big thing in the newspapers, you would say, Grow up, you're a senior politician you know exactly what's the idea the idea that Blair with all his experience gets to say ooh whoops I thought it was Chatham House rules I don't know if it'd be a big thing he's better. I think that was the that was what they that was then sort of put out there. Look, I don't think he would want he would not have wanted the set of Sunday newspaper headlines that we got. He would not be wanting to make Keir Starmer's life even more difficult. Now there is a case Matt Kelly, the editor of the New World, he's he's done his whole podcast, and this is the best sort of PR gift to Keir Starmer going because Tony Blair is seen as you know negative vis-a-vis Iraq, and this is Keir Starmer doing something different. I think number 10 could have done without it, no doubt about that. And I also think maybe to go to the the you know, the the point that Jennifer's making, I do think you and I argued about the way that they got there, but I do think Keir Starmer's ended up in broadly the right position for the UK. He doesn't want to be falling out with Trump. Now he has fallen out with Trump. They had a phone call that apparently went reasonably well but not great. Trump does think that asking for the use of a base is not that big a deal when you're an ally and he thinks that being told you can't use a particular base at a particular time was a really bad move by the Brits. But can he get over that? Keir Starman I has to try to rebuild that relationship. being in favour and then a lot of briefing coming from people close to Starmer saying he decided one thing on Thursday. These are people that's close but who are not on his side saying he decided one thing Thursday, Friday and then he changed his mind on Saturday, and then you have other people in Downing Street saying the US didn't request on Thursday, Friday, so he only agreed to it on Saturday. It doesn't seem to me as though those stories feel like a clean, clear decision tree. They feel like an almighty disagreement within the cabinet about what they're going to do, and a lot of uncertainty about what US was requesting when they were requesting it, what's going on. Here's another fact that was interesting to me. So the Daily Mail did some pretty good reporting on what was happening in Prestwick, which is owned by the Scottish Government. So they discovered that at this base, Presswick Airport, in the build up, so the implication is not after the operation started, there were already ten F thirty five's American F thirty five's the big attack aircraft, two A ten Warthogs, two C seventeen A's. To make the story even more complicated, uh, it appears that the US was just using all these bases anyway. So him saying one day you can't use them the next day, you can use them for defensive purposes. I I also still don't quite really understand what that means. I mean, does that mean to defend US missile bases and radar stations from Iranian attack? In which case are you saying it's not justifiable for the Iranians to attack US radar stations Aaron Powell My my understanding of what they didn't agree to was British assets being used in the initial attacks on Iran. So no British planes flying. Correct. Right. And now does that mean that there weren't British assets that are used under our everyday 24-7 defence arrangements with the US? Probably. Which is the point you were making. So actually there was one of the I saw on the one of the I think it was CNN, they were filming from Fairford and talking about whether they could use this base, and you could see stuff coming and going, and you're thinking that is a lot of civilian aircraft I'm looking at there. I do think on this, I think we've got to be really careful to. I mean, I said last week I thought you were being quite harsh on Kieran, quite unfair. I think we are in this very, very weird political environment. So yesterday, for example, Rachel Reeves stands up in the House of Commons and makes a statement about the economic impact. The level of coming from the Tories and from reform and from the Lib Dems, of you know, you're making a complete mess of this and you haven't done this and why aren't you doing this? There's no sort of understanding of just how tough this is right now. And likewise for Keir Starmer, I mean, you and I weren't at the National Security Council meeting. It is terrible if somebody is briefing out of that. Truly terrible. Rightly, Theresa May sacked cabinet ministers who were briefing out of that. So and I think what usually happens whenever you're reading a partial, tendentious account of meetings, it's always worth asking who benefits from the way that this is being projected. Now, because Keir Starmer is kind of public enemy number one in the eyes of most of the right wing in the of our media. He becomes the one who is slighted and projected as being weak in this context. I don't know. I n what I do know is that there was a pretty robust discussion about all of the consequences, which you would expect. If you go through what we've just just go through all the things that we talked about yesterday on the main podcast, of all the things where we said, did Trump even think about this, even think about that? I would hope that the British National Security Council would think through consequences for environment, consequences for desalination, consequences for oil, consequences for the sort of geostrategic alliances that we have. Does that mean then that because Minister A says one thing and Minister B says something else, and Minister C, or even worse, may I suggest an official starts to brief the media? And Tim Shipman, the journalist who who wrote it, Tim Shipman who's he's written these books that sort of chronicle the Tory years. And but I think we've got to stop pretending that just because you're Tim Shipman, I'm not maligning Tim Shipman in any way here, but it doesn't mean that you have got a full account. And just because you've written it under Michael Gove's banner in the spectator does not mean it's all accurate. No, I don't think it's 100% accurate, but it is also true that certainly when I was in government, Tim had a lot of people on SpeedDell and there are lots of MPs who'll be talking to him and giving him a little bit of a point this really because g having been involved in one or two of these war situations, it is a time when you have to have absolute grip on the communications. Yeah. You can't have people. I'm always amazed when I see these TV reporters and this and the and I got a WhatsApp from this message, this minister, and I got a WhatsApp from that minister, and I got a this and the that and the other. What the hell are they all doing? No, I agree. If you're in this situation, you have to have an agreed approach and then you see that. It's completely shocking. And as you say, Gavin Williamson was fired for doing this. But I was really struck as a minister, how angry. I remember Tim Shipman getting very angry with me because I wouldn't talk. Um and him saying, you know, I don't see how you're presenting yourself as a insurgent candidate running to be the Prime Minister if you're not talking to journalists. So the deal, which Liz Trust benefited from, is the more that you have a good relationship with them, the more they promote you. And so if you are West Streeting or you're Angela Rayner or I don't know, you're Shabana Mahmoud, you're thinking, well, these connections help to boost my stock. We have to remain with the big story and not get caught into the weeds of this too much. And I think there are two big stories. One of them is this is an ille gal, immoral war. So it doesn't make any sense in international law. But it's also, uh as Tally Rong would say, right, it it's it's not just a crime, right? It's stupidity. This is uh this is something which is going to go badly wrong. Do you think Trump has heard of Tallehall? Yeah, he thinks about him a lot. Yeah. So the key point here is that it's going to almost certainly create a repressive regime in Iran, it's going to shake the economies of the Middle East, it's going to make Britain's economies struggle, Europe's economies struggle, and it's achieving next to nothing. That's the big story. Should a British Prime Minister be supporting this trend of war? Absolutely not. Not least because the way that Trump and Netanyahu, who has done it, is flagrantly undermining international. Should he be saying it in the terms that you've just said it? No, no, I don't think you should be saying it in those terms. I think what he should have said, and I think it's a difficult line, but it's got to be the line going forward for all these guys, right? Which is to say to the US, you've said from the beginning that you want to retreat from Europe 'cause you want to focus on China. You want us to focus on our own backyard. You want us to take on Russia and guess what we're doing it? You've taken fifty billion dollars out. We've taken responsibility for that. You want us to be sovereign, you want us to be independent. You want to stand on the U.S. right now. And by the way, you've just strengthened Russia's hand by pushing up the oil price. You've weakened Ukraine by taking patriot missiles out. You've weakened our own economies. So with respect, you tell us to look after ourselves, stand on our own two feet, be proud national Europeans. Our priority is this, we're not having anything to do with this. I mentioned yesterday's book. You can't read it because it's in German, but uh this honestly has got to be translated into English. It's a really important book, I think. The Grown Up Land, Germany Without America. But I was I found this amazing account. This is when Merkel was Chancellor and Jared Kushner was in the little team and they were doing all the small talk before the big meeting started. And this guy, Christoph Heusgen, who is an advisor to Angela Merkel, and he's he's having this discussion with Kushn er. And Kushner says as follow s We're business people. In business, one day somebody's your friend and the next day they're your enemy. That's how our foreign policy is going to work. And you've been challenging me on this response. I don't think it's just a question for the UK. And Nick Osler, who's a Tripplas member, has a question on this. With three years left of Trump's chaotic presidency, should Starmer and other world leaders stop tiptoeing and start calling out his childish, unpredictable and dangerous actions. The usual strategy of ignoring insults and hoping flattery works doesn't seem to be preventing real damage to the world order. Has the time come to speak plainly about the Emperor's lack of clothes? I mean that that does in a way speak to the different challenges that are that are posed to people like us who can say what we want and say what we think, and people who are actually involved day to day in the art of statecraft and trying to build alliances. But I I think for example, just two quick examples that relate to this. We talked on the main episode yesterday about this school that's been hit in uh that was hit on the day day one and a hundred and fifty people killed, many of them very, very small children. Trump is lying about it. He is now he's basically saying, Oh well, we think it was Iran. He's the only person who's saying that. He was actually to be fair to a reporter, he was r directly challenged about it yesterday. And he said, Oh well there's a report, we'll see what the report is. But I think there comes a point where other leaders actually have to step up and say, look, if we cannot even tell the truth about mistakes that are being made in this war, then we cannot possibly tell the truth about the bigger picture. And so I think those sorts of things, and maybe we're off to Spain tomorrow to see the Prime Minister of Spain. Maybe it's the sort of thing that he could do. But I I I think this it really does speak to just how hard this is when you know if you have a go at Trump, he's going to make It it is also fascinating because I think we're also learning that of course we're very dependent on the US, but the US is actually quite dependent on us. It's no accident that he went ballistic when the Spanish Prime Minister didn't let him use his airbases or that he put so much pressure on Starmer to let him use British airbases. The idea that the US can just do what it wants around the world isn't quite true. And that giveses the alli more leverage than they realize. Yeah. Aaron Powell We've got to do two things. We've got to be able to not be dragged into whatever mad adventures Trump or his successors want to pursue if they're not in our interests. And secondly, we've got to slowly be able to become more independent of the US, stand on our own two feet, tech, AI, defense, etc. And we need a narrative. We need some way of respectfully saying to the US we're distancing ourselves, we're not going to be your lackeys anymore, you don't get to help yourself to Greenland, and we're going to start separating ourselves from US AI tech defense. What's the best communication strategy for that? What's the best way of articulating that? And we've got to do it together, because if we don't do it together and we don't have a joint statement from Europe, UK and Canada, what he'll do is he'll divide and rule. What we'll find is when it suits him, he'll offer a nice trade deal to uh Keir Starmer and make Starmer feel he's got a special relationship. And when it suits him, he'll sit down with Matt's, the Gem Chancellor in the in the White House and Metz will say supportive things and goodness knows he may even be able to get Marc Carney to say supportive things. And he will do this again and again and again. You know, if Spain comes against him, he'll punish them on tariffs and trade. So what I'm looking for is is there a narrative? And is the narrative the one that I'm trying to sell, which is you told us that we needed to stand on our own two feet, and this is us standing on our own two feet? I think that is part of the narrative, but I I think the bigger narrative goes to something else we've talked about in the last few weeks, which is values. What I really liked about the Modi Carney statement was that it was essentially a response to what Trump's doing without talking about Trump. It was this really long, detailed agreement that they reached across so many different aspects of their economies and their their business landscapes. And and and I think it was a really, really, really impressive piece of work. And I think we need something really big on that front. So for example, whether there is a case to be made for the revival of human rights, whether there is a case to be made for the revival of international law, a new definition of international law, where somebody like Keir Starmer gets together with a Khani, possibly with the Australians, possibly with the Koreans, and says, you know, we're all being challenged in this, let's redefine what it is. And if the Americans want to be part of it, fine. If they don't, they don't. And are you imagining that we try to hold together a pretty consistent coalition of joint statements, or is it going to be little ad hoc on this one, Korea, Canada, Britain, on that one, France, Germany, whatever? I mean how's this going to operate? Well, I think uh partly this is a result of of the kind the the pace of the world that we're in. So for example, um yesterday you had a situation with five uh women Iranian footballers who have been decided they they want to stay in Australia. Okay? So that becomes a s that becomes an issue which Trump decides to get involved in, because he's a way of saying Iran bad, America good. So I said to the Australian Prime Minister, you've got to help these people out. That could happen in any country in the world. I think it makes more sense that Albanese, rather than sort of thinking about that on the hoof, is thinking, right, well, what would we do if this was Canada, if this was Britain, if this was Korea, if this was New Zealand? And we start to kind of think through some of these scenario planning situations. Because the thing we know about Trump is he does operate according to to impulse. He just sees that situation. Women, football, world cups coming down, I've got to get involved. Trevor Burrus And I suppose there are two big pictures that all these leaders can begin to develop. Number one is more independence from the US. So define the ten things that the US has a chokehold over us from. Trevor Burrus And by the way, that's hard. Your AI CRA is undermines how hard that is. Very defence is hard. AI is hard. Very hard. But if we're gonna do it, what's that five, ten year plan? What are the steps we're gonna take to get there? And I suppose the second thing is what are the new rules? Because we need some rules. We need some laws. We need some norms. We need some idea of how things operate. And we'll know consistently that those are the two things with Trump. He will be weaponizing any form of dependence and he'll be breaking every form of norm. And just on before we go to the next question on on the on the kind of military thing, I was just looking last night, so and it is honestly your old party Roy, they are pretty nauseating the way they're sort of blaming Keir Starmer to for the state of our armed forces. So 1993, height of the Cold War, we had a combined armed forces across the three services of 321,000. Okay. By the time we got to the Iraq war, we're on 207,000 and we're now on 125,680. So we have more than halved, well more than halved, our armed our thrill navy, air force since So so a guy called Tom Sharp was writing in the telegraph about trying to think about a wood a UK naval response is and it's completely astonishing. You know, it's basically one ship that they're all talking about called HMS Dragon. One ship which is going next week. There's one submarine, one working attack submarine, which was recently in Australia, which hopefully is beginning to steam its way back. There's an aircraft carrier, HMS Prince Wales, but it ain't going anywhere at the moment because we're not really sure how to defend it, there's only one out of two of those. We are supposed to have a non-combat evacuation ship, but that is in extended readiness in Gibraltar, and extended readiness seems to be a spin phrase for not operating. And the last one of our four mine hunters made it back without a crew, carried by another vessel back to the UK, and that's the end of all our mine hunters. So what can we actually do in Hormos? We can't do any mine hunting because we don't have any mine hunters. We can't do any civilian evacuation. We haven't got a civilian evacuation ship. Our single submarine is pottering over from Australia. We hope we don't know it's under the water. Our aircraft carrier can't move. And this thing called HMS Dragon appears to be the entire British Navy. Trevor Burrus Your fault. Your government's fault. All our faults. Yeah. All our faults. No, but it but it's a fact. And that's that's where we are gonna have to face up to that. So when you say what's the s what's the overall strategy? Th hasere to be a defence strategy that's part of this. Now we both said Trump had a point in saying NATO countries have to step up more than they are. But even by their own definition of what stepping up means, they're not going to fill that gap anytime soon. No No no no. Right, Roy, Irene from Toronto. We had a lot of response to a the talk about Churchill in the main podcast. Eighty years ago, Churchill said in his sinews of peace speech, it is not our duty at this time when difficulties are so numerous to interfere forcibly in the internal affairs of countries which we have not conquered in war? Has our duty changed? If it has, in what circumstances can we justify that interference? It is an amazing speech, by the way. When you go you go I went back. It's just I mean this you talk about kind of the stuff of history. There is so many elements to that speech. One of the things that that's so interesting about him is that we forget how experienced he was. He'd be by the time he's speaking out in the thirties, let alone after the war, he's already been home secretary, Chancellor, Colonies Secretary, First Lord of the Admiralty. I mean he's been in and out of cabinets of all colours for almost thirty years. And he's also a guy who made his whole career about very clear big ide as. Values were right at the heart of this. So when he's talking about Hitler, and and this is why I'm interested in how he would deal with Trump, my guess is he wouldn't just keep quiet, flatter, keep his head down, and try to do things in the background, he would find a way of articulating clearly values, British interests, alliances, and framing what he thinks the future of that relationship over the next 20, 30 years isn't I I so I'm what I'm looking for in the Churchill moment is somebody who can say to the US, look, of course, you are going to be a very, very important ally for us for the next 20 years. But equ ally, the w the world in which you tell us what to do and we're just a mini me for the United States is over. And we're now going to explain what that new world could look like where we stand proud and tall and we're better allies for you as a result. Yeah, I I also think he would in relation to Ukraine and I mean there was Trump yesterday did a phone call with Putin and c i the top line when he came out was he's trying to be help ful. He's trying to be helpful. He's basically giving the Iranians all the intelligence they should be trying to be helpful. I mean obviously Putin is not trying to be helpful. I mean obviously obviously for Putin and Xi Jinping this is a dream. Right? But particularly for Putin because his oil prices were in the toilet. Sanctions are being lifted, his revenue's going up, Russia's getting richer, all the missiles that could be fired. And he gets to play every which way. He can be like this is what Exactly. So I think Churchill would have been onto that and I think he would have been onto the impact, the worrying impact upon Ukraine and why it was in our interests as the UK and Europe to be very much on that side. Desperate to try to get Mussolini's advice on how to deal with Hitler and hoping that if they were nice to Mussolini and Abyssinia, he'd somehow help them against Hitler. And Churchill was saying consistently, you're out of your mind. It doesn't work like that. You know the famous picture of um Stalin and Roosevelt and Churchill where Churchill's sort of sitting down. He looks quite bored and he's sitting down his ship. That's Terran. Yeah. So I mean this the way that he ran is part of this this story. But he also he had this wonderful thing, he said this is where the meeting where he realized that he was sitting between the great Russian bear and the great American buffalo, while Britain was resembling the poor little British donkey. So the his his observation about the special relationship was much as it was as much a plea for the special relationship as opposed to it's become known as a definition of the special relationship. Anyway, I think to yeah, Churchill, I dunno. He also he also did he he was the one who said that whenever you go to war you end up at the mercy of malignant fortune, ugly surprises and awful miscalculations. Which again I don't think Trump thinks in those terms so good. Well let's take a quick break. And then I think what we should do maybe is come back to what's happening on the ground in Iran, because as I say, we tend to look at this from ten thousand feet, and actually right at the heart of this is the experience of people uh in Iran at the moment Cool. See you in a bit. This is an advertisement by better help. We tend to focus on what's visible. Elections won, speeches delivered, crises managed, but every stable system relies on quieter work, judgment restraint, and the steady absorption of tension before it hardens into conflict. In many families, public institutions, women often carry a disproportionate share of the organizing and smoothing over. International Women's Day brings that into view. 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The link is in the episode description . Welcome back to the rest of this politics question time with me Roy Stewart and me Alistair Campbell. And Rory, as if by magic, Lorkan of London said what is actually unfolding inside Iran Aaron Powell the the first answer, Lorcan, is uh we'd be bluffing if we said we completely knew because internet's down often, telephones down often, it's really difficult talking to people in Iran. An Iranian friend of mine managed to get through to his mother yesterday. Another one of my neighbors uh managed to talk to someone in Tehran. So what am I hearing from them? There's a random anecdotal. Uh first thing is their experience is they think that the US is mostly striking uh military sites, ballistic missile sites. Israel seems to be, but how on earth they differentiate an Israeli bomb from a uh an American bomb? I have no idea. But anyway, this th their understanding is that it's Israel that's mostly hitting the government offices. And And uh one of the things that you will realize when you go to Tehran is that these government offices and go even go to Shiraz are right in the middle of town. And there's residential neighborhoods all the way around. It it's not actually quite like hitting Whitehall here. It's much, much more integrated into civilian life. Second th ing, we talked about yesterday what's happened in the leadership change. So the Iranian people overwhelmingly detest this regime. Eighty, ninety percent of the Iranian people want to see this horrible regime gone because for almost half a century they have been ruled by an increasingly brutal, cynical, repressive, theocratic regime. But there isn't any credible opposition on the ground. And so they are stuck in this horrifying situation where they're being forced to choose between a regime they h ate and American and Israeli bombs. And that's a really difficult issue because as an Iranian nationalist, you don't want either of those options. I was talking to somebody who works with the Iranian diaspora here and in different parts of Europe who said the worst thing about what's going on is that we we feel we're we're going through two wars simultaneously. We feel that the regime has been waging war on us, and now we feel that we, despite being opponents of the regime, are being put into exactly the same basket as the regime because we happen to be Iranian. And when you And Hexer certainly talked about it. Absolutely. Hex has basically said, you know, the ones that the the the ones who are Iranian and still still think they're gonna live, they're our target. Well that again, that one could come back to haunt him in a in a tribunal down the track. But if you imagine that, the no, there will be, I mean, it's impossible to know, but let's let's let's say you're right, eighty, ninety percent. Let's say the sort of ten, fifteen, twenty percent totally support the regime, totally locked up. That means you've got eighty percent saying not for us. Yep. They are now feeling like they are on the receiving end of a massive American Israeli war. And that is psychologically, I'd have thought pretty crushing, knowing how to get it. Another thing I think that's so interesting when when we talk about this is people talk about what Iranians think or Iranian public opinion. But it's a massive country of almost a hundred million people. It would be like saying, you know, what are the British think? And of course, as we found out with Brexit, you could talk to one group of good British friends and they could be like, No, no, no, no, no, you know, all these Brexiteers are maniacs and you talk to another group of British friends and it turns out fifty two percent of people are voting for Brexit. Again, if I was to you know, let's say I was an American journalist interviewing you about Nigel Far age, you might be a bit tempted to be like, he's an idiot, nobody likes him, nobody supports him. No, you won't. But anyway. But you see the basic point. The part of the problem when we're talking to Iranians is who are you talking to? Are you talking to somebody from a wealthier, more educated background living in a city, and those people have hated the regime for forty years. Are you talking to someone in the kind of villages that I was walking through, which are poor, conservative, nationalistic, propagandized who traditionally have been the base of the regime? Are you talking to ethnic groups? So one of the things we need to think about is that there's these persistent rumours that Trump and the CIA have been flirting with the idea of arming the Kurds. Kurds less than ten percent of the population of Iran, right? Located up in the northwest on the western edges of the coun try, that would be a terrifying thing to do. I mean, the Kurds have been very badly treated by the Iranians, terribly oppressed, but the idea that arming a I think he's backing off that. The other thing that I find incredible about the way that Trump conducts himself in this w th this is his genius as a sort of political operative. You have serious journalists today whose framing of this is, well, it looks like Trump is going to decide when this is over and he's going to declare victory on his terms. And they're already shaping the debate like that. Yeah. Which of course is what then allows him to do it. Just on everyone bringing a sigh of relief. So I was listening to today programme this morning and the oil price is down because Trump has said it was extraordinary Trump communication. Uh I think it's gonna end very soon. When? Well, you know, we haven't won enough yet. We've won, but we haven't won enough yet. Which which means I think at some point we should get on to a very interesting question, which is that even if the war ended tomorrow, my reckoning is that the consequences of this are going to be with us for a very long time. This is a shattered region now. The way that the literally the media around the world allow him to dictate an agenda, as you say, based on just a couple of throwaway remarks, which are probably not thought through. Just on Trump, by the way, there's some very good polling I saw. I mean, Trump, as we've as the Mooch and I found in Belfast and Dublin, he's really not popular right now. But if you go through it according to how you voted in the 2024 election. So Lib Dem, if you're Lib Dem, 79% define themselves as very anti-Trump. Labour 75%, Greens 74%, Conservatives 45%, Reform twelve. Now, I think this is a really big problem for Mr Mr. Farage. Mr Farage, who went off at the weekend, he was going to have a meeting at Mar-a-Lago with Trump, he got stood up, poor chap. But I think that Farage has locked himself into a position alongside a deeply unpopular American president. And Keir Starmer, whatever people say about him, on the politics of this, which are fiendishly difficult, has ended up broadly, I think, where British people feel pretty comfortable with the position that he's now landed in. Just to finish up with Lorcan on what's happening on the ground the run, uh you you you talked about uh the different leadership candidates. So you you raised last week uh Ali Laranja, who's the national security advisor. Uh we could have talked about Mohammed Bagr uh Ghalibat, who's the Speaker of the parliament. And those were the kind of two secure people thought you know really were at the key of this regime, running it day-to-day. And now we've had Khameni's son, which have a Khameni take over. Um the bottom line on these three figures is they are regimes through and through and through. I mean anyone who hoped that this is the beginning of a new reform and a new pragmatism. This is instead people who I think absolutely buy into Hameni's fundamental position. And Hameni's position is the same as Xi Jinping's position. They both looked at what happened to the Soviet Union, and they thought what happened is Gorbachev was too soft. The biggest moment of danger for regimes is when you reform. How many had us another uh Iranian wrestling statement where he used to say that when your opponent is pushing you har d, what you must never do is step back because they just occupy that space and push you further back. And they will all of Putin's judo principles as well. Very good. Well they will have all concluded that um they were to o restrained in their response to Israel and the US last time around, that Hezbollah in retrospect should have launched a hundred thousand missiles into Israel straight after October the seventh, that they should have hit back at the whole Gulf and launched all their drones after the first two strikes, that they gave the impression to Israel and the US that they were weak and they gained nothing from it. That everybody who had said to them, listen, if we keep our heads down, maybe they won't come after us. What they've actually heard from Netanyahu and Trump is Is we will not stop till we've wiped you out. And if someone says to you we will not stop till we wipe you out, what possible incentive is there to restrain yourself in any way at all? Is it also the case if you go through the three uh a Ayyatotollaolhas. So we go uh hominy, how many, how many two. Yep. Are they becoming less and less theocratic? So these are all um these uh th this is um this is So certainly true. Ayatollah Khomeini was a really major theological scholar. And and um in some ways Shia Islam feels a bit like the Catholic Church, except the Pope-like fig ures, who are these sources of emulation, uh are often profound theologians. And the the great example is Sistani, who's basically the big figure sitting running this from Najev. And Qom, which is the kind of holy city in Iran, is where they all move through. But don't underestimate the fact that when we say that Mujtaba Khamini is not a great theological scholar, the guy has almost certainly memorized the entire Quran from one end to the other, and could certainly spend nine or ten days lecturing you on detailed surahs implications. It's a really, really odd culture because footballer. Okay, okay. So the Ayat the original Ayatolla h Jomey, he he was he was Champions League. Yeah, well we we have these weird phrases like we have these weird phrases of grand Ayatollah sources of emulation and and one of the things that happened after Homey died is that they did two very odd things at the same time. They broke the connection between the theological, religious authority and the political by allowing Grand Aiatollah Sistani, in in who's actually located in Iraq, to be the big theological source, separate from the political, but they strengthened the notion of the Wulaiatif Haqi, which is the the government of the jurists, they actually made the clergy stronger within the regime. My my my family have been Christians for generations. What's this is? And then it's all to do with the habit of writing. I think for those of us who are not Muslims, who are Western Europeans, there's always something very attractive about Shia Islam because it's tended to have much more relationship to a Sufism, to mystical traditions, towards intellectualism, it's got more clerical authority. Traditionally, it was actually less radical, and it was always slightly on the back foot. But one of the problems that we're dealing with here is that at the heart of it, going back to its foundation story, is the idea of martyrdom, because the break was when the son-in-law and cousin of the Prophet Muhammad was killed at Karbala. The Sunni tradition takes over, and the Shia tradition is from this martyr tradition, which is why you see all these great images of Imam Ali, Imam Hussein dressed in martyrs' robes, and which is why you now have this situation where for the 10-20% who support the regime, Mujtaba Khamini has now become something called a Shahid Zende. So he's a living Shahid, he's a living martyr because of the loss of his father, his mother, his wife. Why I became a Muslim by Roy Stewart. Well the final thing for lessons you really want, Roy Mutahade has written the great book. Also bit shout out to Valinasser, he's just written a great piece today in the New York Times uh looking at nationalism in Iran and why he thinks the regime is actually grown stronger, not weaker, uh, thanks to the attacks. And uh shout-out again to my friend Gerard Russell, who's very kind, he's been very patient with me as always. He's a great guy. He's a great guy. Now listen, let's get down to grubby politics. Alfie in Surrey wants to know do we think that Netanyahu will now win the next Israeli election? Gone then, what do you think? He's in a better place than he was. Just to remind people, he was in real trouble three years ago. He has been politically dead so many times. Um really the assumption was before October the seventh that he was finished, right? And he's uh his opinion polling was terrible. protests. Then he got the he was getting the blame for the October seventh attacks. But it's really interesting watching the opposition figures in Israel feeling that they have to say they support what Netanyahu is doing in relation to Iran. Aaron Powell I think public opinion is sort of nearly eighty percent of Israeli opinion is behind this Iran thing. I mean i it's a sign in a sense that Israel is now operating in a completely different media space from the rest of the world. I've never seen such a dramatic difference between what Israelis assume, which is they just take it for granted that what they're doing in Iran is completely justified makes perfect sense, while actually the vast majority of the American population is horrified. Yeah. And I watched Channel 4 News last night and Krishna Gura Murti was interviewing Benny Gance, who's you know big military figure, but also kind of much more centrist, moderate sort of political figure. Um and and he Krishna was say Krishna Gramurti was saying to him, but you know, there is no legal basis of this war. And he really pushed back at him. And Krishna held his ground, but it basically is there's a guy who is politically opposing Netanyahu, who is essentially giving him a complete blank check on the legality because he supports taking down the regime. Just quick on this. I mean, we don't know, because this is something Rob Malley said, that we would not be at all surprised that uh if before this podcast went out Trump announced a massive new phase or if he suddenly announced the war was over. But one thing I think that we can be pretty confident of is that even if Trump stops his military operations, in a sense the war will not be over because the way in which senior Israeli figures are talking is that they will go back and back and back into Iran whenever they want. They can go back in three months' time, six months' time, nine months time, because what they're going to do is attempt to perpetually degrade the military infrastructure and probably degrade the entire state structures and government structures of Iran. They would much rather have a failed, weak state that's not a threat to Israel than have a coherent nationalistic state. Yeah. Now Ru I think for a final question, we ought to be allowed to have a little dig at the following people Nigel Farage, Richard Tyson, Jacob Rees Mogg. Lewis H. from London. Could you challenge some of the Brexit supporting politicians like Farage, Tyson, Rees Morg, with a simple question about sovereignty? They argued that Brexit was about taking back control from the EU so Britain could act independently, yet many of them are now arguing the UK should automatically follow the United States in the Iran crisis because of security dependence. How do they reconcile demanding sovereignty from Brussels while advocating alignment with Washington? Lewis has a very, very good question. Absolutely extraordinary. I mean Boris Johnson absolutely just out there again and again saying anybody who remotely questions what the US is doing in Venezuela or Iran is a lefty bedwetter. And clearly what we should do is get right in behind the US. No, it's very interesting. It's as though the right uh really wasn't talking about sovereignty at all. One almost gets the impression that their worldview is they don't like being told what to do uh by the French and the Germans, but they want to be told what to do by the US and Israel. Well they didn't as I said yesterday, they didn't want to be told by Barack Obama to stick with the European Union as the better way to get a trade deal for the UK So they want to be told what to do by right wing right wing governments in the US and Israel, yeah. Even if they are people who clearly, like Trump, offend so many people Trevor Burrus, Interesting. I also think they're going to become increasingly promodi. So you can see there's a Conservative MP representing a Harrow constituency who's just got this medal from the Indian government. But I wouldn't be surprised if we don't find out. I mean I'm I'm teasing them about being too pro-US, too pro Israel. I think within five years' time they'll be knee-jerking to the Indian position on the world too. Interesting. Well I think we should be cautious because I think it's an exciting idea. But remember that India was engaged in the extrajudicial killing of Canadian citizens on Canadian territory not very long ago. And Modi has been on the absolutely on a very weird side on the Russia Ukraine conflict. He's not been providing support to Ukraine. He's been buying Russian oil like billio, filling Putin's coffers. India missed its chance to step up for the rules-based order. It invited Putin famously to come visit them. So I would make the core of an argument for a values rules,ed-bas order. Probably I'd go to New Zealand before I went to India. Hold on. No, Rory, you must see Alexander Stub, the triangle of power, and he goes global global west, global east Global south. And he said in our interview that maybe it should have been a rectangle. The fourth corner of the rectangle has to be Europe. Very good. Okay. Very good. And do you think it's going to be them? But it's got to be Europe. And but you've got to work on how on earth we hold Europe together. What's so sad is that again and again You, yeah, I've given you the job. Again and again, there's this splintering. Exactly the moment where you want Metz and Macron And even Macron going off to Cyprus. I mean it was a quite a good thing to do an attack on Cyprus is an attack on Europe. But it sort of looked like, you know, don't worry the French will look after you even if the Brits won't. It's it's really weird. And and also they were not as supportive of Spain as they should have been.