So it's timely that we get to access from nine News Jonathan Curzly to bring us up to date with some of these pretty challenging times in the United States. He's up nice and early for us. Jonathan.
Good morning, Tony, Good morning to you and all the listeners across the vast expanse of Australia.
It's a tricky one as to where we start. I mean, it's because I think when we spoke early in the week JK, it's about this is a movable feast in so many ways.
Look, everything with Iran Israel in the Middle East can change hour by hour, and we've seen that take place over the course of well the last seven days of fighting or so. Yesterday we had some reporting out of the Wall Street Journal that Donald Trump had approved attack plans but essentially was holding off. He wants to try
and find some sort of diplomatic path to this. And essentially what it's opened up is there is this feud within the MAGA movement, if you like, because for so long Donald Trump has insisted he is a president who would not be entering into wars, entering into far away conflicts, and that is exactly what he is considering doing right now,
he is weighing up the possibility. He's had two meetings in the situation room now with his National Security Council, this national security team, weighing up exactly what action he could take against Iran. Now, a lot of the speculation if America does enter this war from a military perspective, has been about the so called busterbug, the buster bucker bombs, that it could be dropped on Iram's Ki nuclear sites. Now he's reportedly questioning whether that could work, whether his
military people are confident in its success. Clearly there's a lot going through his mind at the moment about what he does next. He still wants to leave a diplomatic door open, and essentially he has done yesterday say he won't make a decision until the last second. Now he hasn't said when that last second is going to be. But last night we saw that this war between Israel and Iran just continues to escalate. Iran managing to strike in Israeli hospital in and around the Tel Aviv area.
Thankfully the patients had been evacuated out of there, but Israeli's lawn with an extraordinary response, accusing Iran of carrying out terrorism, of being war criminals, and they are now weighing up their next move too. So as I say, we could talk in an hour or two from now and all of this could have moved even further. That's just how fluid this situation is. That's just how fluid war is.
It'd be fascinated to sit in that situation room and here a what was being reported to him and how the president reacts to those reports.
Yeah. Oh, to be a fly on the wars of that situation room. I mean, it has been the site of so many crucial decisions for American presidents over the years. Be it the strike to kill Osama bin Laden, be it strikes on Iraq, Afghanistan, be it other key moments of national security for a United States president to consider.
And now once again you've got the president of the United States sitting in the key chair inside that situation room, receiving key advice from his military officials, from his national security team about what could be a path forward. Clearly, he would have had the options laid out to him about everything that could be possible, every single option that the United States has, both from a military perspective and a diplomatic perspective, but he has made it clear that
his patience is running out. You can gauge by what he said over the course of the last few days. He appears to be leaning towards some sort of military move. He has said on truth Social within the last sort of couple of hours or so that the Wall Street Journal, which first reported that he had approved attack plans but
was waiting to give the fidal order. He said that the Wall Street Journal doesn't know his thinking, and I mean, to be honest, the only person who does know he's thinking to him, and the world will find out what his response is essentially when he says it. I mean, his national security teams, defense officials will know shortly beforehand. But he is the one now with the decision in the palm of his hands. What is he going to do? Because the decision he makes is going to be consequential,
not just for the Israel Iran conflict. It's going to be consequential for the region of the Middle East. It's going to be consequential for the world, and ultimately too from a domestic perspective, from human it's going to be consequential for his power within the Magan movement and whether the Megan movement is going to splinter over this issue. I mean, there is so much at play right now. The stakes really in this situation now could not be higher.
Jonathan as a senior journo now and working in news for many, many years, and you see those reports come from that Wall Street Journal for example, does it somehow in the back of your given everything else that you're doing in every given day become a bit irritating because how can they publish that?
Well, there's some elements of this. I am going to talk to the Wall Street chugs reporting specifically. You know, I don't know personally the reporters in question, but there are senior news journalists in this country who report crucial details and are very close to the White House officials, to the White House administration, to military officials. A lot of this information gets out to a number of US
news outlets and it gets out quickly. Now, the only way it gets out quickly across such a broad stance is that the officials who are briefing this out want it to be out there. I think what you're seeing now, though, Tony, is Donald Trump is playing the ultimate game of brinkmanship diplomacy. He is driving Iran to the very brink. I mean, just back of what he said over the course of the last few days. He put out a message saying that people in Tehran needed to evacuate, they needed to
get out. He then said that he knew where Ayatola Kamione was and he wasn't going to kill him yet. Now he's essentially saying his entire frustration and patients has run out. All of this is a message to Iran, essentially saying you have one last shot at this. There is some reporting that his Middle East on voy Step Weekop has been in touch with Iran's foreign minister the entire time, has been trying to find some sort of
diplomatic path to get around back to the table. But the only deal that Donald Trump is going to want is for Iran to say we are not going to have a nuclear program at all. There was some suggestion yesterday from Iran's foreign minister when he put out a public statement of middle of the afternoon Australian Eastern Time. Essentially he said Iran does not have a nuclear program.
Now evidence may well suggest otherwise, But the key question for the world is how far advanced has Iran actually been, because for fifteen or twenty years, we've kept hearing that Iran is months away or weeks away from developing a nuclear weapon, and we've seen no firm evidence of that yet. We have seen nuclear sites that they clearly are that they have that they are using in some way, shape or form, but there is great mystery around exactly how
far advanced Iran's technology is. You also have to look at the situation as it stands now that the barrage of missiles Aroan it's been sending into Israel has been reducing quite significantly. When it first started, it was perhaps one hundred missiles every single time they would launch a barrage. Now maybe it's twenty to thirty every single time. Last night's was about twenty five when they struck the hospital. But they are managing to penetrate Israel's iron dome, and
that is a key concern for Israel. They are managing to have direct hits, they're managing to have direct strikes, they're managing to kill an injure people. So clearly they are exposing a gap in Israel's iron dome that has long been fancied and savored so much so Donald Trump wanted what he called a Golden Dome, which was essentially the same system across the giant, vast expanse of the United States of America, an anti missile system. So, look,
this conflict is far from over. Donald Trump is yet to make a decision on what his movie is going to be. When he does, it will be consequential. It will be arguably the most important decision by an American president and foreign conflicts in some considerable time. He now has to weigh in does he go in, does he use a bunker buster bomb, does he assist Israel in some other way, or does he find a way to do what he says he wants to do, and that
is to be a man at peace and to end conflicts. Remember, he said he would end Ukraine Russia in one day. That hasn't happened. He said he was going to end the war between Israel and the musk That hasn't really happened either. So look, he hasn't met the markets that he put in front of himself. So this is now a key test for him, and the question is going to be, now, what does he do next? Because the
eyes of the world are watching and they're bracing. You can see world leaders of posturing around their own cabinet decisions, their own cabinet discussion and trying to work out what Donald Trump is going to do. They're trying to sort of move their people out. We've seen Australians evacuated out of Israel. There are other nations moving their people out of these areas because they fear that this conflict is only going to worsen. Now it's all in the hands
of the US president. His decision ultimately could decide where this all heads.
No pressure Jonathan Scraid having the program for listeners right across Australia. Second, just before I let you go, have you had a look at a fuel, oil and gas prices? What are they paying in the United States? Any movement?
Well, I mean the big market you always look to in these conflicts is what particularly around the Middle East, is what is happening to the price of oil. Now, let's take a look at crude oil for example, because go over the last five days and the crude oil while it was looking at round about I'm looking at the crude oil futures here, it was around about seventy five dollars round about a week ago. Now now it's sorry, it was sixty six, now it's up to seventy three.
So prices are rising, and they rise because there's concern. They rise because there's a vulnerability. I mean, the big move next could be I mean Iran has sort of suggested that if there was an escalation in this conflict, then you could see the hookies start to attack American ships and see now that obviously, once you start putting those critical supply roots in jeopardy, then things like oil and gas are only going to rise further because it
makes supply unreliable. That is a key shipping lane. Iran knows that the Hoopies know that, and this is now a critical point, not just for concern obviously about a much broader conflict erupting in the Middle East, which is really the last thing anybody wants to see, but when you look at these oil prices too, they are going to increase if the conflict continues because the possibility of shipping lanes being shut down that we get that oil
out of the Middle East into other parts of the world, well, that creates significant problems. So there's flow on effects from everywhere it's not just a military aspect, but it's supply chain roots too, so this is critical. We saw it with golf war Mark one. We saw it with Golf war Mark two. We see it every time there's conflict
in the Middle East. There is a concern around oil and oil supply, and that means ultimately that if you do not produce your own and you rely on getting it from the Middle East, then that is going to have a significant problem for anybody. It's not just consumers that the bows are wanting to fill up their cars. If anybody wanting to try and get their hands on oil is going to have a problem.
Jonathan curzly, thank you. Going to enjoy some breakfast weekend. We'll talk next week.
Always good to talk to you.
Can only have a wonderful.
Weekend, Jonathan Curzy. They're in the United States. A fantastic to get them available to us for Australia overnight. A couple of quick calls Pete in some of them warning thing, oh.
Look are about people who impressed me?
Please please. It's a great question. Is when you think about those favorite subjects at school or someone that you really admire in adulthood.
Yeah, well when I was about twenty. I was working in what's called the technical grades of the Postmaster General Research Department, and I worked with this engineer who had this incredible nack of turning mathematics into reality. And I said to myself, Oh, I'd like to be able to do that. So I changed from a technical course to
an engineering course and well became a communications engineer. And then it's with the plover and then I kept going and got my electronics engineering degree and that's what I worked in for those years, from you know, seventy one to when I retired in twenty sixteen. A huge change in electronics that I had to go up several big learning curves and you know, such a life.
Does that first still exist to some degree in terms of where it's all going electronically? Oh?
Look, I the variation was huge. I actually was the key person in putting the first computer based control in a plant room in an airport in what was it nineteen eighty one or something like that, And it went from that simple stage to in nineteen eighty eight, a newtip came on the market called a field program or Gatoray are you happy for bit to keep?
Yeah? Sure? For going beautiful thank you, which.
Is a completely different chip. It's just a chip with a whole heat of digital resources inside it. So it made a huge leap in speed processing speed in that in the normal program, you execute one line at the time, and it's sharing the computer chip, that's sharing the memory and so on and so forth. In these chips, every line gets its own little bit of hardware associated with so instead of one light executing at a time, all the lines of code execute at the same time, and
so huge changing computing. And I ended up working in that field substantially, and ended up in a company that did medical instrument development for the last fourteen years of my working life.
Good work and congratulations on that. We need you hear from time to time. I've lost an email that was a very foot emails disappeared from a buddy screen and I'm really dirty about. Good on your pet. Keep in touch with the program. Thank you. Mike's in mentone morning, Michael.
My Tony hair Young Well, thank you first to Young Jackson telling that the best pub in Melbourne is Young and Jackson.
There it is that that's why we call him Young and Jackson. The very famous hotel Kinder of Flinders Street there and Swans the Street speaks there for all my life too.
There's nothing better than sitting in that window and just watching.
People, watching the world go by.
Just watch.
Yeah, but thank you, Tony. Please, you played, you played all night long. I woke up and it was all night long line of Richie playing.
Yep, I watched.
He's a birthday today. He's seventy six, the great Lionel Richie.
Here's my childhood idol.
I've met him twice and I have a tattoo of him on my no you dode Wow, Yeah, I do. And I just want to say thank you for putting his name forward in your show. Thank you.
Well, we forget that he actually co wrote that beautiful thing to you, We Are the World, which was a messive hit as well. You USA for Africa. Remember that.
And can I give you a song Tony for the people, for you and your listeners. Please that I have ever lost someone, it's called I hear your voice, Lionel Richie. I hear your voice.
Keep listening. Well much fine to play a little bit of it later on for you, Michael.
For your listeners, I know a few of because I listened to you during the week at night shift. I work nightshift, so I listened to you. I love you, I love night, I love three W I just want to dedicate this song. I hear your voice for those listeners. I hear your voice, Lionel Richie.
I'm thinking about turning into a promo. Michael, well done you, thanks so one double three six nine three. We'll get some calls in just a moment. Someone that you've always really admired, someone that you really admired. And why one double three six' nine three the other one we, had this is from our little icebreak Is i'm loving. This what was your favorite subject at? School favorite? Subject was it? Arithmetic was It? English it may have been a bit about, history,
geography perhaps one double three six nine? Three and? Why and did that serve you well in the. Years and what's one family tradition that you would like to carry on into the. Future just that great family traditions that you may have had that you noticed as a, kid that stayed with the family. Forever and a day one double three six'. Nine three It is. Australia overnight I'm. Turning mack, good morning