Does Donald Trump remember who started the war in Iran?

0:28It never happens at a good time. This is a Global Player original podcast. This is all happening because Donald Trump realises he is in a corner now over the Strait of Hormuz. We have got to a place where Trump believes that he is the saviour of this war now, not the perpetrator. There is now a red, white and blue dome over the Strait of Hormuz and it's safe for commercial shipping to pass. You can't just come in and sort of, you know, play the white knight. Does anyone believe him? Direct gift from the United States to the world. We have established a powerful red, white and blue dome over the street.

1:10American destroyers are on station supported by hundreds of fighter jets, helicopters, drones and surveillance aircraft, providing 24-7 overwatch for peaceful commercial vessels. Except Iran's, of course. That is Pete Hegseth, the Defence Secretary or Secretary of War, just a few moments ago at the Pentagon, saying, forget iron domes, there is now a red, white and blue dome over the Strait of Hormuz, which means it is now safe for commercial shipping to pass. They're calling it Project Freedom. America trying to tell the rest of the world it's safe to go through the Strait of Hormuz. Does anyone believe them?

1:52Welcome to the News Agents.

1:58The News Agents. It's John. It's Meatless. So Hegseth today is telling everyone it's safe. There is now all this military hardware in place that anyone who wants to go through the Strait of Hormuz can, and he's declaring it a humanitarian mission. It was only yesterday that it seemed that the ceasefire was disintegrating and collapsing in on itself and that the Iranians were firing once again at Gulf nations and there were incoming drones and missile strikes and the Americans were firing on small, fast boats used by the Revolutionary Guard to patrol the Strait of Hormuz and sinking a number of those vessels.

2:42And here we are today with Pete Hegseth trying to reassure everybody that if you want to go on your way and you want to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, you are now free to do so thanks to this red, white and blue dome that is over the Strait of Hormuz. Everything that Pete Hegsworth says is just mildly funny, isn't it? I mean, totally atrocious, but also very funny. And I think this goes to the heart of what Trump is now offering. He's decided to basically create what he thinks of as a humanitarian corridor, as if he's actually offering salvation to ships that have been sort of marooned there because of Iran.

3:21I mean, this is how he thinks it is working. And he's essentially created this idea, Project Freedom, which means that America, as if it were some neutral country stepping into this terrible humanitarian crisis, is going to be the sort of defender of last resort, you know, the security guarantor for all these ships and lead them to safety. Now, it doesn't really make sense because America is a key player in this. So of course, as soon as America shows that it is interested in trying to create that role, Iran is just stepping up and going, well, no, you don't. Sorry. No, you don't. We've got this.

4:03This is part of the economic war that we've waged. You started this. You didn't know where you were taking it. And you can't just come in and sort of, you know, play the white knight. But he was asked on the Hugh Hewitt show, this is Trump, if the ceasefire was now over? Because after, you know, America assumed this role, Iran started attacking, then looks at America is responding. And this is what Trump said when he was asked about the ceasefire. Is the ceasefire over, Mr. President? Is it over? We're going to hit him tonight? Well, I can't tell you that. All right, that's fine. You wouldn't, if I answered that question, you'd say this man is not smart enough to be living in the United States of America.

4:45Got to ask anyway. Got to ask. And basically, this is because Trump is rejecting the assertion that the US has sunk seven small boats. That's what the US said, saying actually it had struck two very small boats carrying people, killing five civilian passengers. That's according to Iran's news agency. But I think that we have got to a place where Trump believes that he is the saviour of this war now, not the perpetrator. He is seeing himself in a sort of new light, as in the sort of the liberator of the Strait of Tehran, of the Strait of Hormuz of Tehran. And this is clearly just not going to go down well to anyone who thinks that there is still business to be done.

5:31Well, just on a point of language, he said he shot down the boats, which I always think you shoot down aeroplanes, but not boats. But anyway, if you're Trump, you can shoot down. OK, you shot them out of the sky, those boats. But it's also less about him being this kind of generous philanthrop who wants the world to stop the suffering. This is all happening because Donald Trump realises he is in a corner now over the Strait of Hormuz, that it was absolutely open and functioning normally before America and Israel launched their attack on Iran. The fuel price is going up. His approval ratings are going down.

6:10And this is about public opinion in America. And so you had Pete Hegseth today going on to say, look, this is a temporary measure by us. The world has to come in and ensure that the Strait of Hormuz is open. We can't be expected to do it, but we're doing this now. There's no philanthropy there. There's no sense of humanitarian concern there. Maybe there is a bit. But this is all about the economy in the United States of America. and he's doing it because he's getting hammered at home as this war becomes less and less popular and every decision is being must be seen through that lens because this is explaining what america is doing now and you've got the iranians saying okay bring it on bring it on we're only just getting started is what the iranians said today and so you've now got a situation where if you're the captain of some commercial vessel uh a tanker a bulk carrier whatever it happens to be are you going to go through and say okay pete haggs has told me it's safe yeah i'll i'll i'll shear i'll steer the ship towards the strait of humus and start sailing through it now when you've got the iranians at the same time saying don't even think about it because we can hit you and the iranians have shown that they can hit other vessels so it would take a mighty commitment of american fire power.

7:30Now, Hegseth has said that is there. But do we believe it, as you said in the introduction? Yeah. And meanwhile, America is losing allies in the Gulf, not because they are attacking, but because Iran is attacking places that it formerly was leaving well alone. One of the Emirates, Fujairah, I mean, it's the pub quiz. Can you name all the seven Emirates? But this is the one that people don't often have on their list, which has got a very big industrial oil zone there. And Iran has come in, hit the Gulf state, basically made India incredibly unhappy. India's foreign ministry has stepped in and said the attack on it was unacceptable.

8:15Three Indian citizens were injured in that drone strike. And so suddenly America not finding a path through to the ceasefire, which has nominally been in place now for four weeks, is actually just angering everyone else who is now looking at Trump and saying, get on with it. Just get on with it. Yeah, completely. And this is where we are now that, you know, what has Trump achieved? Look, there has been a degradation of the Iranian military, no doubt. The top leadership has been taken out. True. But you're now left with hardliners who are running the show on a devolved basis, who don't want to make any concessions to the Americans.

8:53who are determined to fight and they still have weaponry. That's evidenced by the fact that missiles have been fired again. Drones have been fired again. They've still got these small boats that are patrolling the strait and can hit commercial vessels that are there. And so America is sounding really, really tough and belligerent. And there just seems to be an ever-widening gap between the belligerence of the language. We're going to wipe them off the face of the earth if they ever do anything again. Donald Trump more or less said that again yesterday against the reality, which is they look a bit toothless at the moment.

9:31And they've talked about NATO being the paper tiger. America has the most powerful military in the world. True. Undoubtedly true. But at the moment, the Iranians are calling the shots. Yeah. And where are all the other world leaders or all the Western world leaders? Well, weirdly, they're all in Armenia, or at least they have been over the weekend. end we saw Yerevan hosting the EPC which is the European Political Committee and you saw Macron and you saw Starmer there and you saw Mark Carney who a bit like Australia in the Eurovision sort of sneaks into these European gatherings and make no mistake this is about I think certainly from Britain's perspective a very visible question of well who are our allies where are our allies now while America is immersing itself in this, what has started to look like a bit of a forever war, something that is easily solvable if Trump were to sort of take the more obvious steps.

10:29Starmer's saying, right, I need to be close to the EU. I need to think about what we're going to pay to have a closer alignment with the single market. Mark Carney's coming in because we're going to talk about Ukraine. I mean, that gathering was not NATO, but it looked as if it could have been. One other detail that has come out in the last 24 hours, which is really interesting, relates back to that trip that the Chancellor Rachel Reeves did to Washington in April. And she was there for the IMF, the International Monetary Fund Spring Meetings, but she did not hold back from telling the world quite publicly what she thought of Trump's involvement in Iran.

11:09I think she used the word foolish. It was pretty outspoken. And what has become clear was that she got her wrists slapped by none other than Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, who actually got into a bit of a heated exchange with her. This is according to reporting the Daily Beast. And after she had gone on to CNBC and she'd sort of said Donald Trump's war is a mistake, It has no clear objectives or end game. And she dismissed the idea that we were any safer than we were a few weeks ago. Clearly, we're not only not safer, everything is costing more. And Besant apparently, according to this reporting, confronted Reeves over those comments and tried to tell her that, yes, the war was making the world safer.

11:57and it was trying to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon and kept on sort of saying, well, what would happen if Tehran did, you know, get nuclear proliferation? And he then was basically slapped down by her. She just said, enough, no. Yeah, I think it's fascinating because I think that this shows, it's a vignette. It's one little row, but it tells you so much more about how America sees Britain and how Britain is starting to see America. You know, Reeves reportedly then responded angrily to Besant's comments and said he didn't like the way he was speaking to her. Reeves also reminded Besant that she did not work for him and reiterated her sharp criticisms of the war in Iran.

12:44So you can imagine that Besant is saying, you do what I tell you to do. And Rachel Reeves says, I am the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Of a different country. Of a different country. So I will say what I bloody well like. I think it does Rachel Reeves a lot of good. A lot of good that this story comes out, particularly in a turbulent week where questions of leadership, I am sure, will be resurfacing after the local council elections. I'm not saying there was anything deliberate in it. But my God, you know, Rachel Reeves saying, you know what? Go shove it, Scott Besson. You're the US Treasury Secretary.

13:17You're not the British Chancellor of the Exchequer. It's so interesting, isn't it? I mean, is it a cutting of the umbilical cord? Not entirely. But is it a kind of standing up, finding your feet, finding your voice saying you are not making our life any easier? And if there's one person who knows that by looking at the actual numbers on her spreadsheet, it's Reeves. It's the Chancellor. She can see where this is heading. You know, it's undoubtedly true that Europe does seem to be trying to step up. How successful that will be remains to be seen and whether they can fill the gap left behind by an America that clearly is, you know, quavering over the Western security umbrella and no longer seems to want to be a part of it.

14:04um europe is setting up but i think that this is kind of you know we're meant to be in this era if you believe the trump rhetoric of american greatness and he hasn't brought peace to ukraine far from it and by all reports vladimir putin is running a little bit scared at the moment and kind of hunkering down ahead of the mayday cancelling all his military uh yeah the mayday parades because he's fearful of ukraine uh strikes you you've got this iran war which was going to be quick one and done, you know, change the regime, everything happy, it will just be like Venezuela. And that has absolutely gone to shit.

14:39And so Trump is kind of, I'm sure there are huge sections of American public opinion that still buy into everything that Donald Trump is saying and the bellicosity and the kind of strident language. But if you look at the approval ratings, an ever growing number are thinking, hang on, this is all bullshit. You're not getting anywhere Bear with us right now.

15:09from a range of trusted voices and award-winning journalists good morning i'm nick ferrari it's time to get to your calls find out the latest news and hear every side of the story there is also a judgment i made that was wrong i should not have appointed peter mandelson and i apologize again to the victims of the pedophile jeffrey epstein who were clearly failed by my decision The pendulum has become turbocharged over the last few days, swinging hither and thither with gay abandon. So where is it now regarding the Prime Minister? Listen on our free Global Player app or the LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

15:48It never happens at a good time. The pipe bursts at midnight. The heater quits on the coldest night. Suddenly, you're overwhelmed. That's when home service here. For$4.99 a month, you're never alone. Just call their 24-7 hotline and a local pro is on the way. Trusted by millions, HomeServe delivers peace of mind when you need it most. For plans starting at just$4.99 a month, go to homeserve.com. That's homeserve.com. Not available everywhere. Most plans range between$4.99 to$11.99 a month your first year. Terms apply on covered repairs.

16:24message to iran or to any other country that might seek to foment violence hatred or division in society is that it will not be tolerated that is why we're fast-tracking legislation to tackle these malign threats that is keir starmer at a conference in downing street today to deal with the surge in anti-Semitic attacks. And what we don't know is how many of them that have taken place are kind of rent-a-thug incidents where Iran has paid some hoodlums or whatever to go and attack a synagogue or go and set light to something that is part of the Jewish community. We don't know the extent of it. But if you feel in British politics right now that this has become quite a moment where there is almost an auction going on about who can be most concerned about anti-Semitism, with Nigel Farage turning up in Golders Green Road, Kemi Badenok, who has consistently been very, very strong on this issue, again talking about how Britain could be in danger of going back to the 1930s.

17:31And you've got Keir Starmer as well now, of course, as the Prime Minister, trying to figure out what on earth you can do to keep the Jewish community safe, but to also tackle why this rise in anti-Semitism has reared its head again. I think Keir Starmer has realised that there is an imperative as the Prime Minister to come out strongly, very strongly against the attacks and whoever's behind it. And he does so with the backing of the government. But there is also the small matter of the local elections, which may be coming for Labour in as big a way as we can imagine. And it is quite interesting to put some of these issues back in the context of how they're affecting the standing of each of the party leaders.

18:24And Luke Trill, who, as you know, is a good friend of the podcast, more in common pollster, has been looking at leader approval ratings. And it is fair to say, I think we should start with Keir Starmer, who is down at the bottom of the pile on minus 45. That hasn't changed that much for the last few weeks. But the big change that he has pointed out in some of his work is Zach Polanski, who had this phenomenal sort of rise to power, extraordinary sort of expedited successes from his leadership back in September, October of last year, and has now dropped quite considerably to minus 27 on the sort of net approval ratings, which is much further down than Nigel Farage, Ed Davey or Kemi Badenock.

19:16And so if you were trying to work out, this is literally over the weekend, polling done in the last few days, what has happened? I guess you might look at Polanski's more recent comments, most noticeably after the stabbing of two Jewish men in Golders Green last week where he seemed to come out and criticise the police response suggesting it was too heavy-handed for the way they had tasered, tackled a mentally ill man to the ground. A mentally ill man, we have to say, who had shown himself fully capable of stabbing two men and leaving them in a very serious position. And so it is also probably helpful for Keir Starmer right now to be talking about this, because certainly in London, the Greens are snapping at Labour's feet.

20:10If Polanski starts to look a little bit less popular, a little bit less confident going to these local elections, then you have not just a prime minister, but a Labour leader who will be intensely relieved. Well, Zach Polanski is walking a very tight, tightrope with the way he is positioning himself as the Jewish anti-Zionist who will invariably kind of, you know, two Jews are stabbed and he raises questions about whether the police were too aggressive with the suspect, the guy who had a knife in his hand and who's on the ground and has been tasered and is still resisting. This is how we address the issue on Sunday's Trevor Phillips show.

20:55You retweeted this message about the behaviour of a group of Metropolitan Police officers when they had probably just saved several lives, including, by the way, the life of Esa Suleiman, who's since been arrested and charged with attempted murder because the armed police were on the way and had he not been subdued, who knows what would have happened. what on earth was going through your head when you retweeted that i know you've apologized but how did you get to that place i think you can both recognize the bravery of officers who run towards incidents that most of us including myself would certainly want to run away from and find the appropriate forum to say that no one especially the police should be above scrutiny reason why i've apologized is i accept that wasn't the appropriate forum as a member of the london assembly, a place I know you know well, the police and crime committee would be an appropriate place, or indeed a meeting with the commissioner, which I'm pleased I've reached out and he's now agreed to.

21:50I do also think, by the way, open letters aren't an appropriate way to do politics either in a local election, but I accept all of that and I'll be having that conversation with the commissioner. But you chose X to do this, and I'm just curious, what prompted you to look at this this message and to repost it, repost it. You can say you didn't endorse it and so on, but you made a choice to do this. I'm just curious, what thought process led you to do that? Well, the first thing I did was recognise that this was a horrific crime and I showed solidarity to the victims of their families. I then thanked the emergency responders for the brave work they did.

22:32I found it all very traumatic, especially as a Jewish person. And I also found the video that was circulating online traumatic too. I accept, though, that conversation about that video needs to be had with the commissioner rather than on X. So you're the leader of a political party. I think you know what you're doing when you retweet something, as Zach Polanski did after the attack. And to his supporters on the left, who are maybe kind of, you know, merge, blend that anti-Semitism into anti-Zionism, and it's hard to distinguish. and he's very much trying to court the Muslim vote in this country.

23:09The message stays there that the police acted too precipitously in trying to arrest that guy. And I think the blowback has shaken him. I think that he does seem shocked by how much of a kind of pushback there has been. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't just political blowback. It wasn't from other party leaders. It was from Mark Rowley. It was from the Metropolitan Police Commissioner himself saying, this is not helpful. Let me know when you know how to police London better than my officers and me. And we can have that conversation. But we do not need politicians wading in to tell us how to police London and how to stop dangerous suspects who are in the middle of a terrorist attack.

23:50And I think that may have landed quite strongly. I mean, the interesting thing, actually, just going back to where the party leaders are right now. We've also had over the weekend this sort of new policy. I don't know if you'd call it a policy. At the other end of the spectrum, the other populist party, Reform, who are saying we will invite everyone to vote Reform by telling you that we won't put deportation camps of migrants in Reform voting areas where we win. In other words, if we get elected, we will start sending immigrants to places that are green, that are Labour, that are the places that we do not have supporters.

24:40And I mean, it's very Trumpian, isn't it, to sort of think of your country in, you know, red states and blue states. You know, the red states get funding, the blue states don't. The red states get help in hurricanes, the blue states don't. in the reform world, if you vote with us, we will keep those areas nice. The rest of you, go hang. You can have the immigrants, you know, all across your constituencies, all across your councils. We don't care about the places that didn't vote for us. And I wonder if that is also going to get some pushback, actually, because it feels so un-British. It feels so out of character, which is that you govern for all.

25:25You govern to bring the country together. You say it sounds quite Trumpian. That is exactly what the very Trumpian governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, did with illegal immigrants who he put them all on a plane to go to Martha's Vineyard in Massachusetts in one of the poshest parts of America. An island just off Boston. And sent them there. because that, well, you should, you know, why should we just have the illegal immigrants? What about you? So it has been done before. I think there's another thing, though, that really caught my attention, which was Farage on the radio last week and talking about deportation of illegal immigrants.

26:06And he sort of started lording the work of an American president who's done this brilliantly. It wasn't Donald Trump. He was lording Barack Obama for the work that Obama had done. I thought it was really interesting. This is Nigel Farage, who wants to pursue Trumpian policies, but recognises that Trump is toxic in the UK. So I want the policies, but I don't want to have anything to do with Trump. I know. I'll say this is what Barack Obama did when he was president. I mean, statistically, he's absolutely right. You know, in terms of the numbers, Barack Obama deported more people, illegals from the US than any president before or since.

26:43But I think reform is playing a very odd game at the moment because it was told to me this morning that on the one hand, yes. So Farage invokes Obama, not Trump. On the other hand, I've been told they're getting increasingly nervous about Rupert Lowe. So Rupert Lowe is a kind of nationally, he's a nobody, you know, his party, which is a sort of a breakaway, a splinter group from reform called Restore. OK, so they are fielding candidates for Great Yarmouth, which is, you know, his part of the world. And they could do pretty well there. And I think in that one area, that council, there are only three percentage points behind reform.

27:25but he has this big online presence and that was always what reform did really well right farage was really good at all the instagram stuff farage was really good online and now they're seeing rupert lowe who seems to be getting the oxygen you know for the right of the party and they're going oh hang on maybe we should be sounding a bit more like him maybe we should be a bit more rightward leaning and so just as we talk quite often about labor being squeezed between you know sort of reform on their right and the Greens on their left. Reform themselves are also weirdly being squeezed between restore on their right and the Conservatives on their left.

28:05And that's why they're now into this position of kind of, you know, enforced deportations, which is such an expensive policy. And given, I mean, you know, look, people shouldn't be in the country illegally. but are you really going to commit the billions of pounds it would take and the plane loads of people you know if you're talking about i don't know three quarters of a million people deporting three quarters of a million people would be the work of the government in the next parliament if reform came to be in and it would dominate everything and is that the central priority right now for britain when economic growth is absolutely stagnating and spending billions and billions on an enforcement force and snatch squads and ice because that really went down well in america for trump didn't it

28:59it never happens at a good time the pipe bursts at midnight the heater quits on the coldest night suddenly you're overwhelmed that's when home service here for 4.99 a month you're never alone Just call their 24-7 hotline and a local pro is on the way. Trusted by millions, HomeServe delivers peace of mind when you need it most. For plans starting at just$4.99 a month, go to homeserve.com. That's homeserve.com. Not available everywhere. Most plans range between$4.99 to$11.99 a month your first year. Terms apply on covered repairs.