Is Israel already sabotaging the ceasefire?

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0:33This is a Global Player original podcast. This is a highly fragile truce and ceasefire that hasn't even so far lasted 24 hours. Trump or somebody around Trump on the American side came to Pakistan saying, please give me a reason to extend the deadline, to ask for a ceasefire, to sort of stop this. Why, if that were the case, would they, less than 24 hours later, having begged for a deal, choose to renege on that deal immediately? The Iranians are kind of working up to something that is going to be a big economic shift. It's bad, right? It's bad because it's incompetence from Trump if it's option A.

1:10But if it's option B, it just kind of reveals just what complete bollocks everything was yesterday. And there's a lot of bad faith negotiation and a lot of bad faith, you know, propaganda going on. I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn't. We never made that promise. We never indicated that was going to be the case. What we said is that the ceasefire would be focused on Iran, and the ceasefire would be focused on America's allies, both Israel and the Gulf Arab states. Can a ceasefire be a ceasefire when all of the signatories to the ceasefire don't even agree on what the ceasefire involves?

1:49That is the question that the whole world is thinking about this afternoon as Iran and the US disagree about what they even agreed about 24 hours ago. What is clear is that Israel never signed up to stop bombing Lebanon. They haven't stopped bombing Lebanon. So is there any point in calling this a ceasefire anymore? Welcome to the News Agents.

2:20The News Agents. It's Maitlis. It's Lewis. And it's John in Washington, where the morning TV shows which are on at the moment are saying, this ceasefire doesn't look that durable, does it? Doesn't look that well negotiated. And you realise that this was cobbled together so fast after Donald Trump had promised to wipe out a civilisation in one day, that what you've got now is America rushing to say, yeah, yeah, we'll sign this ceasefire. and Iran being much more guarded in the framing of its acceptance of the ceasefire saying yes we accept a ceasefire a two-week pause and we will reopen the Strait of Hormuz but any ship that's wanting to pass through the strait will have to liaise with the Iranian military.

3:08Yesterday I think four ships passed through normally in normal times before this war started it was a hundred And so there is no way that we are back to normal or that the ceasefire is in any way being carried out in the way that I think America hoped and prayed for. And so you've still got a mighty problem of what do America do now if the Iranians say, sorry, that's just the way it is for the moment. I think there are only two possibilities here and maybe they slightly bleed into each other. But one is and Lord Ricketts, the former security, national security adviser to the Cameron government, was talking about this today, that there were no professional diplomats in the room.

3:52You know, this has been sort of you use the phrase there, John, cobbled together at the last minute. Whatever the Trump administration was saying about the Iranians being on their knees and desperate for a deal. The truth is Trump was desperate for a deal, saw the Pakistani lifeboat that the Pakistani government offered, which is to mediate and come to a ceasefire. And Trump agreed to it. And the idea is basically this happened so quickly and so rapidly that no one was actually completely across the particulars. That's one school of thought. The other school of thought is that the Israelis were fully aware of the particulars, that they had been told by Trump what the deal was.

4:28And the Israelis have decided during this period when it's still a little bit unclear to make use and exploit that lack of clarity and decide to go for one last massive hit of southern Israel while they had the chance. I mean, we might get to the end of the day. And I suspect that the net result will be that Donald Trump phones up Benjamin Netanyahu saying, I want this deal. You need to leave off for the time being. But, of course, it just adds to exactly what we were saying yesterday. What J.D. Vance was saying was that this is a highly fragile truce and ceasefire that hasn't even so far lasted 24 hours.

5:02Look, some of you will remember the 11th hour tweet that came from Pakistan's prime minister. This was after Trump's apocalyptic, genocidal threat to Iran. And Pakistan's prime minister tweeted at that point, diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully to allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline by two weeks. Now, I'm going to take you through something that we are learning in real time, which is about the edit history of this tweet. Because when you look back at the original version, what you understand is that it says at the very top, draft Pakistan's PM message on X.

5:58In other words, this was written for the Prime Minister of Pakistan and he copy and pasted the whole thing in its entirety. The Pakistan PM wouldn't call himself Pakistan's PM. So presumably it was written by someone, without going too far down a conspiracy rabbit warren who was on the American side who was asking Pakistan's PM to demand a two-week extension. That's the lifeboat that you're talking about, Lewis, and that puts this whole thing into a slightly bigger context, which is that Trump came to Pakistan, right? Trump or somebody around Trump on the American side came to Pakistan saying, please give me a reason to extend the deadline, to ask for a ceasefire, to sort of stop this.

6:51What he clearly didn't do at that point was tell Netanyahu, talk to Israel, say this has got to include you, this has got to include Lebanon. It didn't include Lebanon. And now we've seen where this has got to. In the last 24 hours, we're just hearing now that the Israeli military has struck the last direct crossing carrying traffic to Tyre. That's over the Latani River, which is the sort of demarcation line that separates southern Lebanon from the rest of the country. Yesterday, 800 people were injured. We think nearly 200 were killed. And I'm going to play you a video of a girl, a young woman who is literally kind of Instagramming her social media, her way around Lebanon.

7:37and she's got her filters on. She's like any young person who's just recording, you know, a trip around town with kind of funny bunny ear cat filters, all the rest of it. Suddenly, she realises she's in the middle of a rocket attack. This is what it sounds like. What's up? Yeah. What's up? Yeah. What's up? Dad! What the fuck? What the fuck? Dad! What the fuck?

8:13What the fuck? So we know that Israel believes or claims it is still targeting Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. The trouble is that when you kill 200 people in one night's strike, when you maim or injure 800 people in one day's attacks, that is clearly not all going to be Hezbollah. That is going to be many, many civilians. And what they're trying to do essentially is annex off the south from the north to create some kind of enclave that it looks like they're going to beat the shit out of. I think whichever way you look at this, whether it's incompetence, i.e. Trump and the Trump administration didn't get everyone across all the particulars, make sure that Netanyahu was in line and so on, or it has been that the Iranians, as the US seem to be alluding to, have reneged on the deal.

9:03it's bad right it's bad because it's incompetence from Trump if it's option A but if it's option B it just kind of reveals just what complete bollocks everything was yesterday that Vance and Trump and Hegseth were talking about because if we listened to them yesterday they were saying quite literally that Iran was on its knees they were begging for a deal now why if that were the case would they less than 24 hours later having begged for a deal choose to renege on that deal immediately it's one or the other basically it's trump has either been you know either blindsided by israel or incompetent or actually they were lying about the entire premise of how we'd got to where we got to yesterday maybe it's actually a combination of of both but again it reveals just how poor the statecraft is with all of this from the trump administration but are we surprised i mean no you you look at the people who donald trump puts all his faith in to do the negotiating on behalf of the United States of America.

10:01They're not State Department officials who are grizzled and who went through lengthy negotiations with the Iranians in Vienna to try and get the JCPOA, the kind of nuclear deal that the Obama administration signed, that took forever to get sorted out. No, it's Steve Wyckoff, who's a property billionaire, who turns up in Russia to negotiate with Putin without any translators, just relies on the Kremlin translator, without any note takers from the State Department. He's just making a mental note of it so that he can tell Donald Trump later on. And the other person in that is Jared Kushner, who apparently is much more thoughtful and much more assiduous in preparing for these things.

10:40But those are the key negotiators for American diplomacy right now. Both people who have grown up developing property have no experience of diplomacy, have no experience of negotiation. and the iranians are very difficult to negotiate with everyone knows that from history of trying to get a deal with the iranians and they are sly and they are clever one of the one of the explanations i've heard and this one i should say absolutely derided on fox and friends this morning on the kind of normally loyal trump breakfast show was jd vance saying well one of the problems might be that they just didn't really understand the english that was being used in in the text Oh, come off it.

11:23That's ridiculous. I mean, the Iranians have got plenty of people who speak perfect English and would have known exactly what they were signing up for. Well, there is an indication that things aren't entirely going to plan. Iran's ambassador to Pakistan has quietly deleted his announcement that an Iranian delegation will arrive in Islamabad tonight for talks with the US and Israel. So, I mean, I guess there is a world in which you think that Israel was acting with extraordinary force yesterday because they thought that that was the last day before the delegation would arrive on Friday. I'm not trying to excuse that at all.

12:03I'm trying to sort of get in the mindset of what was going on in the Netanyahu government, in which case they were sort of preparing for the end to come on Friday and thought they had to seize, you know, Wednesday, Thursday. Well, they could. What it looks like tonight is that the talks between the US and Israel and Iran may not be going ahead anyway, because why would Iran delete a tweet announcing his arrival if he was still going? I think there is obviously another imperative here which we should talk about, which is actually Israeli domestic politics and why there is a case that Netanyahu might quite deliberately have tried and be trying to sabotage this ceasefire.

12:48evidence for that a obviously we know that netanyahu has wanted this war against iran for a very long time the war against hezbollah in southern lebanon has been going on on and off for the best part of 20 years we know that netanyahu from marco rubio was instrumental in persuading donald trump to launch the war against iran and right now if you actually look at thinking about whether even if Netanyahu wanted to accept, wanted to accept the terms of this ceasefire, there are two factors which might prevent him from doing so. One is that, in fact, anything more than a ceasefire of a week or two weeks or so, he would be under tremendous pressure from his far-right coalition partners.

13:33We also know that Netanyahu has every, every incentive to keep the war, just as will happen with Gaza going on as long as possible, in order to potentially defer the elections this year and frankly keep himself out of prison, given the corruption charges were against him. And I know as well, look at how Netanyahu is being criticised by his own domestic political opponents within Israel. Yair Lapid, who's the leader of the opposition in Israel, made a television address to the Israeli public last night, saying, criticising Netanyahu for being a bystander against Trump. We think of him as the guy maybe pulling the strings.

14:09Within Israel, he's increasingly being criticised as someone who basically gets his orders from Trump. He said this, Israel had no influence whatsoever over the agreement signed overnight between the US and Iran through Pakistani mediation. They will try to sell you the story that we influence things behind the scenes, that they consulted us, that they were late night talks and secret meetings. Know this. These are hollow lies. Netanyahu has led us into a strategic debacle, nothing less. What we saw was a disgraceful combination of arrogance, irresponsibility, lack of planning. That is one of Netanyahu's political opponents.

14:42Of course, you'd expect him to be truculent. But the point is, is that all of these factors come together to suggest that Netanyahu had every incentive or has every incentive to try and throw as much sand in the gears for as long as possible of this ceasefire for his own political purposes. I mean, look, just to step back a second, Hezbollah has been and continues to be a real threat to Israel. Many in Israel believe that Hezbollah was firmly behind the October the 7th attacks, that it wasn't some sort of, you know, pressure valve release of Palestinians in Gaza. It was absolutely the work of Iranian proxies who came in and massacred and raped and kidnapped and all the rest of it.

15:26So the idea that Israel thinks that it is fighting an existential enemy here, I think, is absolutely real. and the idea that it thinks it's protecting its northern cities by creating a buffer zone is the legitimisation of what is going on. But clearly, if the Lebanese people had a problem with Hezbollah, many did before this, they're now kind of waking up and saying, well, we thought Hezbollah was the problem, but actually we really feel Israel's the problem because there are entire residential blocks and bridges. Gaza all over again. That is the fear, right? And so once again, it starts from a position which I think is understandable, which is that Israel fears terrorists on its doorstep.

16:10I mean, this is always the sort of starting point for Israel's responses, but it just escalates and involves so many civilians. And it gets to absolutely disproportionate levels very, very quickly to the point where there is no, there is very little sympathy left for the original goal. look you know it's hard to know what's going on precisely at the moment other than this is the most fragile ceasefire and it probably isn't going to last i suppose you know if you look at military history it's often the case that you take the most extreme military action before a ceasefire comes into effect that you make your last big gains before you have to stop a war and you know you look at kind of when it looked like there may be something in ukraine you saw the russians trying to kind of force an advance.

16:58And so it goes on. And there have been loads of other examples of that as well. And maybe that is a more benign interpretation of what is happening, that Israel will stop, that the talks will go ahead in Islamabad, that the ceasefire will last, there'll be a framework for peace. But I think you'd have to be mad to think that that is a probability, given all the separate pieces of what we've just talked about now, of what is happening in the Strait of Hormuz, the anger that's clearly felt in Iran, the chaos of what's happening in the White House administration, that to think this is going to be an orderly and seemly path towards a sort of sunny uplands where, you know, world's oil supplies resume and prices come down and the economy doesn't take too much of a hit.

17:41I think it's wishful thinking. I think that ultimately, what we can certainly say is that even if Trump does, which I think what he will do, which is phone Netanyahu up and say, we need these two weeks, we need these two weeks of talks. You've got to stop what you're doing in southern Lebanon, which we should say again, over a million people displaced now. Extraordinary figures, 30 ,000 people fleeing into Syria, having had absorbed so many Syrian refugees from the Syrian civil war. And assuming that Iran can also call its dogs off from Hezbollah, who are a murderous force, that, you know, you get that time.

18:17But what do we seriously think is going to be realised at the end of it? Let's remember that Iran and the US have been in talks to deal with the Iran crisis on and off for well over a decade. These problems are intractable and difficult and fiendish, and we are in a situation now where, as we were saying yesterday, whatever happens with southern Lebanon, Iran is in a more potent position than it was 41 days ago. So what can possibly really arise? J.D. Vance apparently is going to be getting involved with these negotiations with the Iranians, possibly travelling as part of the delegation there.

18:53What can we possibly hope to see? Probably the best case scenario is ever with these things is that they agree on a very limited number of things that they can agree on and agree to defer everything else back to talks. But that doesn't mean, of course... If the Iranians even turn up. If the Iranians even turn up. And that doesn't, of course, mean... And what we can certainly know as well is if this issue of what's going on in southern Lebanon is a repeated, going to be a repeated problem, even if Netanyahu agrees to stop it for two weeks, is he going to do it for much longer? Because as you say, Emily, this has been an ongoing security tension basically for 20 years.

19:27I mean, from my own point of view, you know, the Israelis, they keep doing the same thing in terms of trying to batter the regions next to their borders and expecting a different result. But they just keep coming back and coming back and coming back. But it's clear that Netanyahu isn't going to call off the attacks much longer than a few weeks. So if this is going to be a repeated problem, presumably it's going to be one that rears its head again and again and again. So Keir Starmer, as we reported yesterday, headed to the Gulf yesterday, and he was asked in Saudi to comment on his relationship with Donald Trump.

20:00And, I mean, it was Robert Peston, our colleague at ITV, who put it quite bluntly and said, is it in tatters? Here's Starmer's response. I wonder what you make of it. I've acted as you would expect of a British Prime Minister, which is by being absolutely focused on what is our national interest. And that's why I've applied my principles and my values throughout. And my principles and values made sure that our decisions were that we wouldn't get involved in the action without a lawful basis and without a viable thought-through plan. That was the right position for the United Kingdom. and of course that has included us taking action in collective self-defence.

20:41I'm here to say thank you to some of those who have been defending our allies and British interests in the region. But the principles of not getting dragged into this war, principles of always saying the UK will act only on a lawful basis and only if there's a viable long-term plan, they're the right principles. and, as I say, I'm the British Prime Minister, I act in the British national interest, and nothing, but nothing, is going to deflect me from that. I mean, if you get past those extraordinarily odd stressed words throughout his entire answer, he does still come across as being in a pretty confident position, I think, of his own choices over the last month.

21:28I mean, if anything, the fact that the whole world is kind of catching up with where arguably, you know, the Labour cabinet that the government was a month ago, I think is quite helpful to Starmer now. He just has to say, I only ever wanted what was right for Britain, you know, quietly to hell with Trump's demands. The question is now, if he's trying to get the Hormuz Strait opened, and we've heard from John, there's only four ships coming through. I think Iran has said up to 15 a day will start coming through. They're talking about some kind of cyber currency tariff to sort of de-dollarize. dollarized.

22:08Trump coin by any chance? Melania coin. I don't think it was him calling for the cyber tariff. I think it's the Iranian. The Iranians are kind of working up to something that is going to be a big economic shift, I think, with whatever happens with Hummus. And it's no dollar payments, cyber payments. And we're going to we're going to come out of this making you suffer. So what does Starmer do about that now? Right. Because I mean, clearly for all of us for every consumer and i think we're going to talk about what's happening in ireland uh a little bit later and the fuel protests that are kicking off there which are really quite um dramatic this is something that is coming down the road and all of us right i think they've concluded that um given that the relationship between trump and starmer is is is maybe it's going beyond repair is is too far but it is not going to be anything like that we saw over the course of the first year i think and they know emily as you've identified that even though we have not been part of this we as a country and our economy is going to be battered by the economic effects even if clearing up yeah exactly that they might as well and that's going to be politically costly because it's just happening on their watch and these things always are even if you're not culpable then they might as well particularly with local elections coming up they might as well try and extract as much political capital as they can from being as clear as they can that they were against it.

23:34And frankly, you know, we see from the latest polling, Donald Trump was always deeply unpopular in Britain. It's one of the signs actually we're much less polarised than somewhere like the United States. Even reform voters, even unpopular with reform voters, that you might as well advert and signal to the British public that you don't like the guy and that you disagree with what he's doing. Now, it doesn't actually seem to be translating very much at the moment in terms of much political benefit. it. But, you know, there is some history in elections, you know, over the past couple of years, whether it is in Canada, Mark Carney or Anthony Albanese and so on, of more progressive leaders basically campaigning as themselves as being the sort of anti-Trump.

24:09And we see from Starmer in the government as well, you know, repeatedly trying to put Camille Bay, Nock and Farage, linking the two of them together as they see it supporting the war to begin with. So I think it's a matter of, you know, making the best of what is a bad, generally a bad political moment. I got contacted last night by a senior Labour politician involved in what's happening in the Scottish elections and he was saying that you know I asked him how the campaign was going and he said no it's fine and it's very professional we're doing a good campaign and all the rest of it the problem is that you know the attention economy all the attention is on what Donald Trump is doing and I really do think that there may be that you know this is actually possibly Labour's best argument to be making it in the elections, that look at us, we are not Donald Trump.

24:52And, you know, I just listened to Starmer's remarks there. You know, we would not get involved in an illegal action, da-da-da-da-da. The clear implication is there's such a rebuke to America that what it has done in Iran is illegal, is chaotic, and, you know, Britain is going to have no part in it. And I think that resonates with the British public. We'll be back in a moment talking about another set of elections. what's going on in Hungary this coming Sunday.

25:23When people turn to healthcare for weight loss, they're looking for real support. That's why more people are choosing orderlymeds.com. Orderly Meds connects you with real doctors and access to proven GLP-1 medications like semaglutide and terzepatide. No guessing, just a more supportive experience. And all shipped directly to your door in discreet packaging. Do your research, ask questions. Then visit orderlymeds.com slash podcast for an exclusive offer. That's orderlymeds.com slash podcast. Individual results may vary. Not medical advice. Eligibility required. See site for details. From a range of trusted voices and award-winning journalists.

25:58Good 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. The Iranians have agreed to open up the straits. The United States has agreed to stop attacking. And that is the basis of this fragile truce. There is a ceasefire for two weeks between the US and Iran. Did Trump blink first? The fallout of the Iran war. Follow it live on LBC. Listen on our free global player app or the LBC app.

26:29The News Agents. So there is going to be an election in Hungary on Sunday. And it is an election which so much of Europe, and indeed not just Europe, but the United States as well, is expressing an interest in, far more interest than you would expect for what is just, you know, ultimately a small European country. And that reason, basically, you can sum up in two words, and it is Viktor Orban, who is the Prime Minister of Hungary. He is the longest serving democratically elected, although we can come back to that, democratically elected leader in Europe. He's been Prime Minister since 2010. In case you're not familiar with Orban, he has basically been at the centre of a great experiment in Europe, which is, can you have something called illiberal democracy?

27:16He started off being a sort of anti-Soviet firebrand. That's how he sort of came to prominence. Now he's basically seen by many in Europe, particularly many in the European Union, as basically the kind of fly in the ointment of European democracy. He is the guy who is almost a sort of disruptor in chief from within. He is pro-Putin. He is anti the Ukrainian war, wants it to end probably on Russian terms. And as I say, his project has basically been one which he has called illiberal democracy. The idea that you can have a democracy, but not have all of the kind of liberal norms and values that we typically associate with it.