414. Israel vs. Iran: What Happens Next

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Welcome to an emergency podcast. And I think unlike Trump, Musk, I think that Israel, Iran... Merit says scrambling. And I must apologize, Rory. I've done something really, really, really stupid. I have left the UK. I'm in France, but I came without my proper recording gear. So I apologise to you and also to the listeners if the sound is not 100%. We'll do our best. But that, to be frank, is why we're doing this recorded, going out.

pretty much as soon as we've recorded it rather than live. Though we did get loads and loads of questions when we announced we were doing this. So here we are.

I reckon for around two decades, Bibi Netanyahu has been thinking about this military action to take out Iran's nuclear program, and the consequences immediate are pretty...

serious and long-term, possibly even more so. So what have you made of it so far? Well, quick explainer to help people. So Israel launched a series of strikes on two different types of target. One of them was Iranian nuclear facilities, and there are two major types of Iranian nuclear facilities. It seems as though they hit the Natan sites, but not the Fordo sites. So they did not hit.

the massive underground, you know, half a mile underground bunker sites. Possibly because actually they don't even have the kit to do that. They don't have the planes and bunker buses to do that. But the Americans do, but they don't. But the Americans do and could provide it. The second thing that they did was that they hit most senior members of the Iranian regime.

the head of the entire armed forces, so number two in the entire Iranian government, the head of the Revolutionary Guard, the chief negotiator in the Iran-Israel negotiations. and a series of nuclear scientists. I think there's so many different ramifications to this, but before we get on to, I think...

what for me are the two biggest questions, which is, what does this mean for peace? And related to that, what on earth is the US doing in all of this? Let's look at it from a purely military point of view. purely technical military point of view, this was a very, very effective attack. It's something that one of the reasons why many people in the Israeli services

who objected to these kind of attacks even two, three years ago is they would have worried that Iran would have struck back with ballistic missiles. They would have worried that there would have been attacks coming in. from Iranian proxy groups, so Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq. But, of course, what's happened since October 7th is Israel has dismantled the Hezbollah groups, taken out most of their entire...

basically missile capacity and their leadership with this attack with the pages. They've also mounted an attack on Iran, which was now just under a year ago.

where they took out most of the air defense systems. And Iran has been in a very difficult strategic position, trying to work out whether if they keep their head down... and keep talking and talking about peace negotiations, sincerely or otherwise, whether the threat will go away or whether what they needed to do is put their foot down and push ahead with their nuclear program because they were under existential threat from Israel.

And now they've been hit. Back over to you. Yeah. You talk about existential threats. And of course, that is the phrase that Netanyahu used. in order to explain to the Israeli people why he was doing this now. And a combination, really, of what they say is their intelligence, that the Iranians were... within striking distance of being able to and indeed wanting to use a nuclear weapon against Israel. We have no way of knowing whether that's right or wrong.

But secondly, the other thing that happened was that the nuclear authorities, the International Atomic Energy Authority, for the first time in 20 years, said that Iran was operating in breach of its obligations. And that, I think, was what gave Netanyahu possibly the sort of tipping point in his thinking to say, right, let's go for this. Now, what's fascinating is the extent to which...

America is or is not involved, because there are very, very mixed signals. And that may be deliberate, or it may just be part of the chaos that we've come to associate with the American administration under Trump. One other thing, Roy, which I think maybe just before we really dive into it, I find it fascinating that part of the thinking, if you remember about the episodes that we recorded at the time of October 7th, part of the thinking was that...

that Hamas were going for it at that point because they were trying to disrupt progress towards a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. And I wonder if part of the thinking here is... disrupting the negotiations that are underway between America and Iran, which were due to resume, I think, on Sunday, and the Iranians now saying they won't take part.

And I think the other thing that I find interesting in this is Donald Trump was signaling yesterday that something may be happening. He's sort of signaling that he knew something was coming. Rubio, the Secretary of State, came straight out in the back of this and said, we were not involved in this.

But then there was this rather strange, I mean, it is really weird how he operates. Well, the first things he did was to phone the CNN journalist down a bash. Now, he doesn't really like CNN. He's always going about them fake news. But he did have this conversation with her.

she then reported, which indicated that actually he was fully behind what was going on. And I wonder whether that sort of, he doesn't want to look like Netanyahu's done this without his authority, because that makes him look... look weak. And you were pointed about the effect of the military operation. When this all started, I was up in Paris.

And I'm now down in the South. And so I've been reading and listening and sort of, you know, one of the most interesting things I listened to was actually a podcast by our colleagues at The Rest is Classified, David McCloskey and... and Gordon Carrera, recorded some months ago and got handed to Gordon Carrera. He said that the next few...

weeks, this is likely to come to a head and it's either going to be a deal or it's going to be Israel taking action against Iran. So what was fascinating, they told in detail this story of an incredible operation to take out a guy who was... the head of the nuclear weapons program, who was also doubling up as a physics lecturer in a university in Tehran, but he was eventually taken out by a machine gun.

operated robotically from a long, long, long way away and assisted by AI. So I think what we've seen, the fact that they were able to name so quickly some of these people that you talked about, the leadership,

and the nuclear scientists and so forth. Now, the question now for Iran, they, as you say, have had their defences and their attack substantially weakened in recent time. so that they can whack off missiles all they want. The truth is Israel's defences are pretty strong and be able to bring them down. They're a long way. They'd have to go through Iraq.

Jordan, Syria, they can't really sort of, you can't think of sort of troops piling in on Israel. That's not going to happen. So I think the two things that are left, they're left with, one is sort of cyber warfare, but I imagine that the Israelis are pretty good at that as well. And the worry I have about what's happened today is that the response that they might be tempted to go for is to say, right, well, look, we can't...

We did the deal 10 years ago. We did the deal with America and with Britain and France and Germany and Russia and the European Union. We did that deal. You keep saying that we've been breaking the terms of that deal, but we've actually launched. You know, nothing seems substantial against you guys. Therefore, we're going to pull out of our international nuclear obligations.

and go hell for leather to get a book well so so yeah let me come in you're covering a lot of ground there you've covered about seven seven different points but um the uh let's maybe start with that one um which is what's Iran's response? And I think we've got to get away from just being stuck in the question of the military war. I think one of the problems is that there are two things that

nobody are really talking about. One of them is the US context, but the other is the bigger question of international law. I mean, there's a tendency amongst commentators, and in fact, actually amongst some British diplomats I've been talking to today, to just see it as a technical, tactical operation. Well done, Israel. Really cool technology. As you said, remembering the robotics thing, remembering Stuxnet, which was this...

famous cyber attack that interfered with the machinery of the nuclear system. And to ask yourself what options Iran's got, and of course it's true, Iran has to some extent been exposed as a paper tiger. And there'll be a whole debate taking place there. So there's that framing of it. You know, why did they why did the timing come then?

What was the nature of the surgical strike? What can the Iranian regime do back? But there's a much bigger question, which is this was in the middle of a peace negotiation. And the action that Israel has taken... is, to put it mildly, very, very questionable under international law, whether they remotely cross the threshold for a preemptive strike. So there would have been, I guess, if we'd been talking about this even three years ago,

much more talk about what on earth is going on. How is the world getting into people taking this kind of unilateral action? But it's very interesting how quickly we now almost take that for granted and are into the question of the tech. On the Iranian response, I think that- Just relive that point. I mean, you're absolutely right. That is unbelievably significant because we should remind listeners and viewers that Netanyahu is already indicted on allegations of war crimes in relation to Gaza.

But the fact that he, I think we said this at the time, but the fact that he can go to Washington and sit down with Donald Trump and talk about all this without that even being mentioned or raised or even part of the debate. that underlines this notion that we kind of are living in an era of impunity. So Netanyahu, if he thinks he can do this, he will do it. And what's more, they're indicating that this is going to go on for some time. This is not a sort of one-day wonder. Yes.

Maybe just develop that one more point. So I think the important context is to remind people that Trump thought that he was in the middle of a negotiation. He thought that he was going to maybe overly optimistically get a deal out of Iran. As we've talked about on the podcast before, he's chasing a Nobel Peace Prize. And this was meant to be part of the deal of his Middle East trip.

And a lot of his posts on True Social have been directed to Iran. And maybe we'll ask you to talk a little bit more about the old Iran nuclear deal, the JCPO, but having taken people out of that. it looked as though Trump was on track to create a new one. And the idea was going to be that Iran would agree to not build up its nuclear program in return for sanctions being lifted and peace across the region. And Trump had support for this. For example,

from other regions in the Gulf. Saudi Arabia is much less worried by Iran than it would have been a few years ago. China broke a deal between Saudi and Iran. So there was a possible direction in which Iran was moving to a peace deal. At which point, Israel seems to have informed the United States that they were considering a strike. But the nature of this strike appears to have been very unclear to the US, which is extraordinary.

Because if you look at the messages that the US State Department was passing to its embassies, which is our best indication on how worried they were and what they were expecting, there were some very, very mixed messages coming out yesterday afternoon. Is this about just non-essential staff? Is this about all staff? What kind of threat do we face? Which suggests, actually, even as late as yesterday afternoon, they didn't have a confident, detailed view on what Israel was going to do.

Trump almost certainly did not want them to do it. And we can come back to that. But the logic of this... is if he did allow them to do it, if Wyckoff and Trump thought this was a good idea in the negotiation, they're unbelievably naive. Because as you pointed out, this is the end of the negotiation. This is the end of any peace deal. The logical move now from Iran is to...

accelerate its nuclear weapons program and just back out of the whole thing. So my suspicion is Trump and Wyckoff and their system can't be that naive. They must have...

seen the risk of this doing, which raises the question of what on earth is the world that now exists that Netanyahu using American weapons, closely allied with the United States, launches an attack that the US president not only doesn't want, but hadn't been informed about in detail. And probably does so because Netanyahu senses that we're in a new world order.

in which he can get away with these things. And that's why I think, look, I don't know, I'm not inside the guy's head, but I sense from what he said... If you go through the tone of his posts and his comments in the run-up, it was indicating, I'm the great dealmaker, I've got Steve Wyckoff on the case, we're going to get somewhere on this, okay?

The only way that it can be post facto justified by him now saying to Dana Bash and presumably to others, yeah, I'm totally with them. This was a great hit. The only way you can justify that if he thinks that... He can get Iran into a better position. He's now talking about giving them a second chance by now suggesting that actually he's been part of this all along.

But that goes completely contradictory to the noises, as you say, that were coming out before. There's a problem, Alistair. Can I just interrupt on that? Just to push you back on that. I mean, part of the problem is that… How can Iran now believe that he can control Israel? So let's say he went back to Iran and said, okay, you get a second chance. If you sit down at the negotiating table, you won't be hit again.

Will Iran not think, what do you mean you can guarantee we won't be hit again? What's to stop Netanyahu just continuing to do it? And of course, Netanyahu has said that this is just the beginning. This is going to go on for days and weeks.

And probably Netanyahu needs this to go on for days and weeks because he doesn't want to be accused by his own right wing of having mounted one attack which didn't actually eliminate their entire nuclear operations. A lot of their nuclear operations are still intact.

Netanyahu sees this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to flatten Iran's nuclear program. So he will continue. And he probably, if Trump tries to stop him, it'll be like Trump trying to stop Putin. Netanyahu will know perfectly well.

that he can ignore him and Trump won't follow through with sanctioning Israel. So how can Iran trust the US now in this deal? Well, they can't. And what's more, they're probably sitting there thinking, well, Israel... has given us the opportunity to be able to push back on the Americans.

without really feeling that Trump wants to sort of go back hard on them. And I think you talk about his obsession with this idea of getting the Nobel Prize. Let's be frank. Of the three big foreign policy... issues that he said he was going to sort out because he's the greatest dealmaker on the planet, Putin is...

to use his own phrase, been tapping him out. And that is going nowhere. The negotiations there appear to be going nowhere. Middle East, you know, that's what we've seen in the last 24 hours, not really going. anywhere, whether we're talking about Ukraine, about Israel-Gaza, or now about Israel-Iran, he projects himself as the guy who's got all the power, to use his phrase, holding all the cards.

But actually, he's the one who's looking a little bit like a paper tiger right now. And so, and I honestly do think, Roy, we've got to go back to this deal. It's almost 10 years ago now. And I think... You may know more about the deal than I do, but I feel that actually it was a pretty amazing piece of diplomatic work to get that deal done. To have Donald Trump in the middle of his 2016 election campaign just come out.

and say, it's a terrible deal. I'll get a better deal. I'm going to pull the plug on it. And then to do it, I think that is a big part of where we are now today on this issue. Let's come back to Iran's response for a second. Do you disagree with that? No. I don't disagree with you at all. I think that what you've put your finger on is a lot of things. One of them is that at best, what he tries to do is wait for events to happen and try to take credit for them.

So he tries to cover up the fact that this is not what he wanted, didn't happen in the way that he wanted by claiming it was his idea all along. But it also suggests that his power is waning, American power is waning, that you don't get to... do what he's done, which is say, we're not going to be the global policeman anymore. We don't really care about the rules-based international order. We don't really care about international security. You don't get to do that without

going into a situation in which you no longer have the power to determine events. I mean, why would Netanyahu pay any attention to the US's story? Six months ago, it would have been, well, of course, he's got to pay attention to the US because he gets all his weapons and support from the US. But what we've seen with Putin, and Putin is much less close to the United States than Israel is to the United States,

Trump threatened Putin with sanctions and said, I'm horrified that you made this attack. Putin simply ignores him and just continues. He knows perfectly well that Trump is never going to sanction him. Netanyahu must know perfectly well that whatever he does, I mean, literally whatever he does, Trump will continue to supply him with weapons.

There's also something really interesting there about the history of nuclear proliferation that might be worth just a thought thinking about. Because, of course, you know, my old boss, Tony Blair, was very, very centrally involved in trying to talk. Gaddafi down from his nuclear weapons program. And eventually, Gaddafi did give up his nuclear weapons. And, you know, he's no longer here to tell us whether he thought that was the right thing or the wrong thing, because not long after...

He ended up dead in a ditch in the middle of a coup. Whereas old Kim Jong-un, he sort of... heard all the threats and consider all the threats and basically just ignored them. And he's sitting there now. I don't know the extent of his nuclear weapons program, but it's, you know, it's certainly better than Gaddafi's. And so...

This is what worries me about what's gone on. And I've no doubt we'll get the texts and the emails from Netanyahu's office saying this is a very disappointing sort of, you know, Western view to take. But I can't see any other... consequence of this than that iran thinks right we really have to go for it now because they there's israel that sits there saying that we are we're facing an existential threat from iran now that is true in that

Iran has always said, you know, basically wants to wipe out Israel. And you can see why they're so obsessed about Iran not being able to develop nuclear weapons. But when they are sitting there and this attack happens... They, having done the deal with the international community that they did 10 years ago, you can see why they might just take a very, very, very different approach. And 10 years ago, the world was different in two key ways for the Iranians. The first is that...

They believed then that they were actually quite well protected by all these proxy militia groups all the way through the Middle East who would strike back at Israel if anyone hit them. And they also had much more confidence in their own kit and their own missiles. 10 years ago, the regime was already unpopular, but it was nothing like as unpopular as it is today. And a nuclear weapon is an answer to those two problems.

A nuclear weapon is the one way that you can guarantee that nobody attacks you without having a proper missile system or proxies. And a nuclear weapon is also something that you can have without public support. It's not something like a big national army where you need the whole population on your side. You build a nuclear bomb. It's quite suitable for an increasingly unpopular, marginalized regime.

can they build it? I think there's no doubt at all they will now build it. I mean, maybe a little doubt. I mean, things in geopolitics are very weird and things could change. And there will be a small minority of people within the regime who were saying, let's give up this nuclear program. Let's go to Trump. Let's have peace. Let's have sanctions lifted. It's the better way to go. But I think it'll be a small group. Most of the regime will feel...

that actually for a whole series of reasons, including their very strange objectives towards Israel, that what they need to do now is get their nuclear bomb. The problem, though, is that clearly... they are very, very deeply infiltrated, as you pointed out, by Israeli intelligence. And Israeli intelligence is demonstrating, as they did with Hezbollah in Lebanon, their incredible ability to pinpoint so many key figures so quickly.

So I don't think Israel can actually kill enough people and bomb up enough to actually delay it that long. I think in the end... Iran will be able to sort out its internal security. And in the end, it will be able to push, but it may have put it back by one or two years. And I think from the Israeli point of view, they've always had a tendency to think, well,

We're not going to worry about the medium long term. If we can hold people back for one or two years, if we can, in this horrible phrase, mow the grass, who knows what will happen in one or two years. I just remember when you were speaking there, I just remember that on the day, I think it was on the day. that the deal was done. It was certainly around that. This is back in 2015. Fiona and I were out. We were at dinner with Christian Amanpour and your good friend, Jamie Rubin.

with whom you had such a spirited exchange on the podcast. But the other guest there was John Soares and his wife, Shelley. And I can remember John being absolutely... He was saying this is kind of the best news for the world. This deal is just like the best news for the world. The fact that we've been able to pull this off and really get the Iranians' agreement on...

capping enrichment and lowering down the uranium stuff and actually taking some of the facilities out and, yes, lifting the sanctions. Now, it's true that there were at the time American Republicans saying... This is giving them far too much and they can't be trusted, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. But the deal did seem to be holding for quite a while. And so I just think that we're now in a place where, as you say, trust.

broken down, Israel feeling emboldened, although they will still want American... the Americans to be on side, not just through providing military support, but on side politically as well. And I think the question the Iranians now have is whether they...

even need to think about the short-term retaliation. We have this assumption. They sent these 100 drones over and it seems the Israelis have sort of taken them down. Do they really need to think about that? I think they probably just need to sit tight and play a long game. Well, let's take a break there and just come back to some of these issues after the break. This is an advertisement from BetterHelp. In politics, we often talk about strength.

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Welcome back to Restless Politics special on the Israeli strikes against Iran today, 13th June 2025. So I think...

The next question to ask is a question around narratives or stories or legitimacy. A lot will come down to a fight between... Israel and Iran on how this is perceived. If you are Israel, you will be saying these were surgical strikes, this was an existential threat. And you will say, if somebody says, well, what about international law? You'll say, well, Iran didn't really care about international law. There'll be a lot of what about, what about Iran?

If you're Iran, you're already saying, and you could see it, this is a gross violation of international law, this is a disruption of the peace process, and they killed civilians, women and children is one of the narratives that's coming in. The problem that both Iran and Israel face is that neither of them are in an environment where the world is inclined to be very well disposed to be leaving either of their narratives.

For Israel, the problem is that much of the Middle Eastern street is profoundly alienated. And many people will see this in the light of what Israel has been doing in Gaza. and see the bombing in that same light. And of course, they're not helped by the fact that their ally Donald Trump is not exactly the flavor of the month for many, many people around the world.

Iran, on the other hand, is a deeply illegitimate, theocratic military regime where the vast majority of their own population are against them, where Gulf Arabs have no time for them, where most of their neighbors are running away. And where their only real allies at the moment are China and Russia, partly because Russia's relying on them for a lot of its supplies of drones and a lot of smuggling into the economy. So in this war of narratives,

I can't really see either side coming cleanly out, winning over public opinion. I even wonder if they care about that. I mean, does Netanyahu right now, I think he cares about Israeli public opinion. I thought that he really cared about American political opinion. Now, it may be that the Republican Party... actually comes out very, very strongly. The Republican senators and Congress will come out very, very strongly in favor of what's going on. But I think that will be mixed.

I'm not convinced that Iran cares that much about international public opinion. I think you're right that they probably worry a little bit about China and about Russia. But I think what they will try to do is present themselves as a victim. that's been hit and that justifies what it does in the future by portraying itself as the victim of what they will say is an illegal aggression.

And I think that Israel, the narrative that he will care about is whether he can persuade people that this has to be done now because it was a chance and possibly the last chance. for the world to stop Iran from becoming a nuclear power. That's where the narrative seems to me, but I'm not convinced that either of them really care about what international opinion says. Last point for me before we go to questions. Firstly,

There's a loss of logic which will be driving Israel to do much more of this. They may not, but it's going to be difficult for Netanyahu to stop because, as I said, it isn't finished, that job. And he said he's going to do more. And if he doesn't do more, he's in a very vulnerable position in relation to Iran and its nuclear programs in the future. The second point is...

The Iranian regime will be like headless chickens. They've lost a lot of their most senior people. They've lost the head of the army. They've lost the head of the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the two biggest institutions under the supreme leader.

And as they cast around, one of the problems is that they will start improvising and you may well find terrorist attacks happening. One of the few things that the Iranians have got in an asymmetric fashion, if they can no longer fight a conventional military war. against Israel is they have a lot of terrorists. Hezbollah has deep roots in Latin America. You can expect potentially to have a lot of attacks on Jewish communities in Latin America.

and Iran striking back through terrorist attacks on Israelis worldwide. You see that Israel is shutting down embassies and consulates around the world, presumably because he thinks that some of them are... may be subject to attack and also sending a message to Jewish people, as it were, not to display their Jewishness in public, which I was surprised at that.

I was surprised at that because maybe that's him preempting the sense of Israel being the victim. You have got a sort of weird victim-oppressor thing going on both sides here, which is... which is going to make it hard. It's going to make it hard for the public, our public, for example, to make sense of what actually is going on. I see there was just my final point for a bit of questions, Ray. I see there was a...

a three-way phone call between Mertz, Macron, and Starmer. But I think where the British and European energy should go... are actually towards this business about the power, the authority of the international nuclear authorities, the International Atomic Energy Authority. I think they need to be bolstered. They need to be strengthened. Because if we end up with a place where Iran just says, don't care what you say, don't care about your inspectors, don't care about your authority.

then I think we are into a very, very dangerous place. Okay, here's a question from a listener. Florian van Kietters, to what extent do you believe the timing of these events were driven by military opportunity and necessity? versus an attempt to shape the political narrative and attention. So let me frame that for you. What you might say is it's quite difficult at the moment to make sense of Israel's strategy because half doing this doesn't make sense.

stopping and allowing the negotiation to continue doesn't make sense. So one way of looking at it is that this is a great deal to do with Bibi, his coalition, the way in which Netanyahu wants to show himself as a strong man. And the opportunity that he's been provided by Donald Trump, who gives the impression that this is the one chance that an Israeli government is going to do to do this stuff without the US objecting. So what do you make about the balance between political opportunism?

and military necessity. Well, he would argue that you don't get more military necessity than you're fearing that your greatest enemy is going to get his hands on a nuclear weapon and use it against you because it exists to wipe you out. That does rather go against the whole argument about nuclear deterrence, and added to which, as we've already discussed, Israel remains a pretty formidable military force on pretty much every level.

I think there is part of him that will, he doesn't want to be, we're talking here about somebody we've said for many, many times on the podcast is a great survivor. He's somebody who was under real pressure because of domestic politics, then under real pressure because of October 7th happening, and him at that point being seen as a weak leader, if you like, who allowed that to happen.

in relation to Gaza, has been absolutely, it seems to me, pretty oblivious to the international condemnation that has grown over the way that he's conducted that operation. And where you made the point... that he'll feel that he has to keep going with this. That is a sort of mirror image of what's happened in Gaza, where the military objective was to take out the leadership of Hamas.

It's hard to see that he didn't do pretty considerable damage to Hamas, but then it went on and on and on and on, and it's still going on now. And now with this one... Is he taking out the entire nuclear program? Is he taking out the bits that he can take out now, but then he's going to try and persuade the Americans to help him with the bunker busters and the stuff that we talked about earlier?

So I think it's a combination of those things. I think it's him using the argument of military necessity. which I don't know if he fundamentally believes it, but he clearly gives the sense that he does, alongside his own political position being a lot weaker. than sometimes he would like us to think. Here's one from, I guess that's the question there from Ann Dunn.

Is Benjamin Netanyahu attempting to launch a war in the Middle East to save himself from national and international scrutiny? Well, listen, he's going to get lots of national and international scrutiny. But so I don't think, no, I don't think that is the reason for this. I think you have to, even with people like Netanyahu, let's take it at face value.

let's have the argument of face value for now about whether he sees the threat from Iran as real. However, to go back to a point that we've discussed before, I think there is a real problem now with the believability of both of these regimes now. And that's a bad place for Israel to be in. And I honestly do think they would do themselves a lot more good if they actually change the...

the way that they communicate, change that. He's actually, to be fair, he is better at it. His communication is better. either than the people who communicate on his behalf often, the sort of third-party voices and the proxies, or certainly than Ben Gavir and Smotrich, who've got such an aggressive way of communicating. But he and the defence minister, I think, they're going to...

to be the guys that we're going to hear most from in the coming days and weeks. I think a better tone wouldn't do them any harm at all. Yeah. I mean, one question which is an interesting one is… If it's not driven by the opportunity provided by Trump, or maybe driven by a desire to... derail the peace process because it's striking that it's happening right in the middle of the peace negotiation and it's happening includes killing the Iranian chief negotiator in the peace negotiation.

That's one possible motivation. But if you're right that it's done for genuine national security reasons, the question that people will ask is, but...

Netanyahu, you've been saying for 20 years you've wanted to do this. You've been saying for 20 years this is an existential threat. Now, he will say, well, that's because of all the stuff I've done over 20 years to keep it under wraps. If you're on the other side of the argument,

potentially John Sawes' colleagues putting together JCPOA, they would say, no, no, no. The reason this hasn't happened for 20 years is that the world created an environment where Iran didn't feel that it needed to accelerate its nuclear weapons program.

Partly, it didn't feel it needed to accelerate its nuclear weapons program because it had all these proxies like Hezbollah, which protected it, which meant it didn't need to do it. And now actually, and this will be the great historical question, if Iran now ends up with a nuclear weapon. To what extent will Netanyahu carry the blame for that from future historians? And how will one get to the bottom of that question? Yeah, one of the things I read on the way down from...

Paris was from Kenneth Pollack. Do you know Kenneth Pollack? Yeah, yeah, yeah. was CIA and also a member of the National Security Council. And he wrote a pretty long read, which we should put in the newsletter, a really kind of interesting piece. But I'll just read you the last sentence.

Israel may have succeeded in setting the Iranian nuclear program back in the short term, perhaps a year or two, only to ensure the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran not long thereafter. It kind of goes to what both of us have been... have been saying really. And so I think that's what makes this such a kind of difficult strategic moment for all of the major powers and not least the United States. There's a question here from...

Isla, TripPlus member, despite only declaring knowledge of the strikes, do you think that Trump was involved due to him since using Israel as a threat to get Iran to sign a nuclear deal? And that again goes to the heart of something we say, what? I said, Rory, I thought this was post-facto rationalization. What's your view? I mean, we don't know. I think all the indications are this is not what Trump wanted and it happened.

in a time and a way that Trump didn't want. I mean, there's another question from Elsie, do you think the US will secretly be happy it's happened? If so, why? I mean, the only way in which Trump is going to be happy it's happened is that it, I suppose... gives him an excuse for why his peace negotiation failed. You can say, it was my fault Israel bombed the...

nuclear weapons program, but then he's got to be clear on whether he asked them to do it or whether he didn't ask them to do it, whether he knew they were doing it and let them do it or didn't let them do it. I think fundamentally that in relation to Elsie,

There isn't any upside really for the U.S. in the long run. Listeners, like all of us, I guess, will feel... we are frogs in boiling water. We're not understanding how quickly and fundamentally the world has changed. Remember, in the last few weeks, we were also on the verge of a major armed confrontation between Pakistan and India.

Yeah. Where planes are being shot down. I mean, these are the beginnings of an indication of what happens as the global world order disintegrates. The canaries in the mine- are those first movements by Putin going into Crimea, going into Ukraine. Then we have Israel-Gaza. But increasingly now, what we're going to find, I think, is that the US has lost any ability.

any leverage. And it's lost it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, it's lost it because of this taco point that Mooch keeps making, which is that Putin has suggested that you can do what you want and Trump won't respond. But the second bigger point is that there's no longer any... Also underlined by the issue of China and tariffs. Underlined by China and tariffs. You also...

Though I think another bigger point is that when you've no longer got an idea of what America wants, what is its global order, what are its values? Is it in favor of peace? Is it in favor of international development? Is it in favor of international law? Is it in favor of international security? Does it want to defend international borders? Is it on the side of the West against Russia and China?

or not, right? If you can't tell those kinds of things, America can't exercise global leadership because any kind of leadership, even in a small organization, certainly in a government, requires everyone to understand roughly what the plan is, what the values are, what the strategy is.

The world doesn't know what those things are anymore. They have no idea what the rules are, what you can do and what you can't do. And therefore, how on earth is America supposed to control the world? If I was operating in Eastern Congo, if I was China... looking at Taiwan, if I was the junta operating in Myanmar. If I was the fighting parties in Sudan, if I was UAE supporting one of the fighting parties in Sudan, etc., etc., etc., I would conclude that...

we're in a world in which there is no policeman and no policeman's ever going to turn up. And therefore, it's going to get more and more dangerous more and more quickly. And we're just the beginning of this. And if you think about what's just, you know, this is what is so scary about the world right now. you've got climate change going on, and that's kind of just fading into the background. Two days ago, we were all talking about the protests in Los Angeles.

And yesterday, you had a situation where an elected senator gets... basically shoved to the ground and handcuffed because he had the temerity to try to ask a question of the director of Homeland Security, who was... sort of, you know, pushing this idea that- It's an absolute unbelievable visual analysis, isn't it? Because if you think about, I mean, just for British listeners, or indeed most European listeners, if a member of parliament turned up, let's say, I don't know.

During a conservative government, Angela Rayner turned up or Jeremy Corbyn turned up and started heckling a Tory minister. Yeah, I mean, ultimately, I suppose, you know, some polite... person in a sort of funny House of Commons robes might try to take you out in the way that Alex Salmond or Michael Hasseltine were reprimanded for picking up the mace.

or interrupting the budget, but being pushed on the ground and handcuffed. I mean, the guy, this is a senator. He's one of the most senior people in the entire America. There's only 100 senators and he's the senator of the largest state, right? Yeah. I mean, how is it... conceivable uh that you and he's not a threat to anyone you look at him he's a relatively you know he's not in his first flush of youth and so why is he being handcuffed for because because we're in the era of

performative politics where essentially, as we keep saying, it's about the next episode. It's about the next storyline. So the storyline a couple of days ago was... Trump warns Israel, you know, tells Bibi don't do it, warns Israel to make it, tells Iran to make a deal. And then within 48 hours, both of those storylines have gone. So tomorrow we've got another storyline. The storyline tomorrow is going to be this ridiculous.

military parade where you've seen while you've got this stuff happening in Los Angeles and you've got all the stuff happening around the world and tomorrow Donald Trump is going to be essentially presenting himself at a military parade like a sort of, you know, pound shot Putin, Kim Jong-un. And so people look in on that. This is where I think this erosion of their soft power.

and the authority they have. And I, you know, the fact, so for example, this morning, you know, you wake up, the big story is that Israel has launched this attack. Then within not very long time, it's all about the response from Iran, and then it's the reaction around the world. But then straight to the top of the news goes what Donald Trump's reaction is. And his reaction...

comes in this strange sort of social media post that is full of kind of the usual sort of insults of his opponents and so forth. They're losing moral authority. And to lose moral authority... at this time, I think is a really, really dangerous thing to do. And the other thing we should say, Roy, yesterday, we might have imagined this would have been the case in a sort of a calmer...

more settled world a while back, that plane crash yesterday in India would have dominated the news for days and days and days. And yet here we are 24 hours later. We're talking about something completely different. And who knows, we could be talking about something different again tomorrow. So the instability of the world, I think, is what Trump is not helping. But the one that maybe...

I want to finish on is to come back to what it means for Iran and what it means for this very, very unpopular regime. Are the regime going to be able to use it to build up a bit of nationalist support by claiming that they were attacked in an unprovoked fashion?

are they going to find actually quite a lot of their population exhausted saying, oh, goodness gracious, stop these international adventures. All you do is get us in trouble and we're being humiliated. You're an embarrassment. You can't even defend us.

Ultimately, some regime change in Iran, as people have been talking about for 20, 30 years. If it happens, would it be replaced by a military regime? And if it's a military regime, would it be a nationalist regime, which might say, look, Iran doesn't have anything to do with the Arab world. We should be looking.

east and northeast towards Tajikistan and Turkmenistan and Afghanistan, not worrying about what's happening in Israel-Palestine, which they're worried about actually purely for religious reasons, not really for ethnic Iranian reasons. My guess... for all that, and then I'll hand back to you, is that unfortunately, the likelihood still is that Iran, and again, it's only a 60% likelihood in a world that none of us can now predict, will probably stumble along somewhere between

Iraq today and Syria under Assad, a place increasingly poor, increasingly affected by sanctions, increasingly dependent on smuggling and the regime holding on. And I think you're right. pushing ahead as fast as it can insofar as it's able to, given these hits with its nuclear weapons program. Over to you. Yeah. The other thing we haven't talked about is the impact that has already been on the oil price.

which is always a very, very important factor that every government in the world takes a look at because it has an effect on them whether they're oil producers or not. um instance of all surge price surge but then shares dropping left right the center people worry about a a broader, enduring conflict that leads to a rise in inflation and yet another energy shock, as we're just about recovering from the energy shock of Russia and Ukraine.

And actually, one of the scary scenarios that Ken Pollack wrote about in his piece in Foreign Affairs was whether Iran might try and close the Strait of Hormuz and affect oil prices and global supply.

So, look, I think we've probably, I don't know whether we've helped people understand or whether we've just sort of scared people even more. It is, I think it is a genuinely... It is a genuinely scary moment for the world. I think Netanyahu is a man on a mission. The mission is survival, but the mission is also, this is him.

doing something that he's wanted to do for a very, very long time. And Rory, we regularly applaud long-termism, but just it comes in many, many ways. And some of them we might applaud more than others. And I think it is slightly exposing Trump. as somebody who talks the language of strength and deal-making and negotiating. But if you look at the areas that he came in saying he was going to sort,

I think it's hard to make a case that he's succeeding on any of them right now. And that will embolden America's opponents rather than strengthen them. So I think this is... This is a scary time and it's going to give us lots and lots to talk about in the days ahead. Well, thank you, Alistair. And we'll see listeners again on Monday for our leading interview with Kevin McCarthy. So that is the...

former Republican leader of Congress, Speaker of Congress. He is an extraordinary insight into the world of Donald Trump, how you defend Donald Trump, because he was the man who could have impeached him and didn't. He's the man who criticized January 6th and then became his friend again. He's charming and he's also a sort of slightly terrifying glimpse. into the world of American politics today. So look forward to people listening to that on Monday.

So if you want to hear that, and by the way, an awful lot has happened even since we spoke to him because things are moving so fast in the States right now. But he is a fascinating interview. He's also got very good hair, which Rory sees as a very important. factor in modern politics. If you want to see and hear him, just search The Rest is Politics Leading wherever you get your podcasts or you can go and get it on YouTube. Bye-bye.

I'm Gordon Carrera. And I'm David McCloskey. Together we're the co-hosts of another goal hanger show called The Rest is Classified. Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on. When I look back on it now, you still see that there's plans, there's memoranda, there's notifications, there's all these things, but they're never actually executed. They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they?

I'm a little bit of two minds on this because I agree with you that the theme of this episode really is a series of missed opportunities to get Osama bin Laden prior to 9-11. Yeah. But we should also note that once Tenet and the CIA understand that Osama bin Laden is coming for us, in particular after the East Africa bombings, there is a push.

to improve our collection and our understanding of Al-Qaeda pretty significantly. I mean, there's a bunch of human sources who get recruited in this period. There's a lot more technical collection. Alex Station. is beefed up to more than 40 people. There's a bunch of connections with foreign partners and al-Qaeda that hadn't existed before. I mean, interestingly, there's a PDB, President's Daily Brief, in December, December the 4th of 1998.

which is titled, quote, Bin Laden preparing to hijack US aircraft and other attacks. And so there's a lot of strategic warning, I think you could say, about what al-Qaeda is up to. And yet... There's an inability, I think, to translate that into practical efforts and operations to stop these attacks and to stop Al-Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 9-11. If you want to hear the full episode, listen to The Rest is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.

Right. Well done, everybody who's still listening, because that means you've listened right to the end of the episode. Thank you. Very impressive. But can I ask you something? Did you hear an advert on today's episode? And did you think, you know what? I'm sure the listeners would rather hear about my brand rather than all these other things they're promoting. Well, you could be right, but there's only one way to find out. That's right.

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