Is Trump about to put boots on the ground in Iran?

0:00Do you ever feel like you're drinking from a firehouse? PayCore's intelligent HR solution empowers leaders to turn down the pressure. Their unified platform includes payroll, talent management, compliance software, and a lot more, connecting you to the people, data, and expertise you need to drive long-term business results. Visit PayCore.com slash leaders and go from workflow to workflow. That's PayCore.com slash leaders. This is a Global Player original podcast. Trump's latest salvo, he's threatening to obliterate Iran's Karg Island if he can't get the deal he's offered. I don't think the Iranians think at the moment they are on the edge of defeat.

0:46The fact that American Marines are now threatening to take your island does not make you want to come to the table. There are options for America. Something is going on here. Trump likes the sort of element of surprise. What are we doing? Putting boots on the ground? In Iran? Are you mad? But they have to open it up. They have to open up the strait of Trump. I mean, Harmouth. Excuse me. I'm so sorry. Such a terrible mistake. The fake news will say he accidentally said no. There's no accidents with me, not too many. If there were, we'd have a major story. Well, we do. And there are. And once again, Trump is laughing about something that's left the rest of the world reeling.

1:38But is he about to put boots on the ground in Iran now? And where will that leave the rest of the world? But putting boots on the ground, trying to forcibly take Khark Island, involves the most enormous risks to American lives. Is Donald Trump really prepared to do that? Welcome to The News Agents.

2:04The News Agents. It's John. It's Meatless. And we're going to start with Donald Trump's A Truth Social Post, which classically, in Donald Trump fashion, looks both ways at once. So let me just read a bit of it to you. The United States of America is in serious discussions with a new and more reasonable regime to end our military operations in Iran. Great progress has been made. But if for any reason a deal is not shortly reached, which it probably will be, and if the Hormuz Strait is not immediately open for business, we will conclude our lovely stay in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Carg Island, and possibly all desalinisation, and possibly all desalinisation plants, which we have purposefully not yet touched.

3:01Once again, we're back on Monday morning trying to work out how to read Trump's words, and Iran is trying to do the same. Iran has called America's terms illogical and excessive. It says the American proposals reopening the straits are unrealistic, illogical and excessive. And I think the problem is at the moment that much as you'd like to rubbish the Iranian response to this, that's kind of where a lot of the world is right now, because we are trying to make sense of, as you would say, two things at once. He's talking about taking the oil in Iran. To put this in context, Khark Island has about 90 percent or it controls about 90 percent of Iran's own oil.

3:47It has been bombed previously, two weeks ago. But at the time, Trump very carefully did not take the refineries. He did not want to shut off Iran's own source of oil. this time round with what looks to be an amphibious response. I mean, I always feel weird saying that word because I think of frogs, but you get what I mean. These troops are arriving. The expeditionary force essentially is arriving in the seas around Iran. Kharkh Island is not in Hormuz. Kharkh Island is, if you like, to the left, I guess we'd say the west of Iran and the Hormuz Straits are on the east of Iran. But the boats are carrying US Marines now who would presumably have to go onshore to go aboard and actually take the island by force if they want now to control Iran's oil supplies.

4:41Now, if you're Iran, right, a week ago this time, you were told that there had been a peace plan put on the table and that you had known all about this 15-point peace plan. We've now learned a little bit more about these 15 points, which was essentially 12 of them were demands from the Americans and three were offers to remove sanctions or to make life slightly easier for the Iranians. And at the time, Iran just said, sorry, we've had no direct communication. We've had no part of these peace plans. We don't know anything that's going on. Now, even if they were lying at the time, even if there was something afoot at the time, even if there was a sort of intermediary using Amman or Pakistan or Turkey at the time, sort of trying to soften the way for these talks to happen.

5:31The fact that American Marines are now threatening to take your island does not make you want to come to the table. Right. It's illogical in the extreme. Go back to your frogs and amphibious landing. So, you know, Marines are in theatre. The Pentagon last night. Again, a weird, a weird phrase. A weird phrase. But the Pentagon last night released pictures of Marines sort of tooled up with their weapons and their headsets and their helmets on and their dark goggles and all the rest of it. And it was to show the Iranians, look, we're here. We're ready. We're ready to do all this. it would mean sending boats amphibious boats up the the Strait of Hormuz which so far no American warship has dared enter to forcibly land on Harg Island which is presumably heavily defended and then you will have presumably as well 82nd Airborne trying to land on Harg Island as well and the danger of that is that it becomes a turkey shoot and you are putting an awful lot of American lives at risk to retake this strategically vital piece of island a piece of real estate in the strait but at what cost at what risk and Donald Trump is he really prepared to do that at the same time he's saying yeah the talks are going really well with whom we're still unclear about who is negotiating we know that messages are being passed but are negotiations really underweight.

6:57I don't think they are. Let's hear from Donald Trump himself on Air Force One. And I would only say that we're doing extremely well in that negotiation. But you never know with Iran because we negotiate with them and then we always have to blow them up, whether it's the B-2 bombers or just terminating as an example, the Iran nuclear deal done by Barack Hussein Obama, probably the worst deal we've ever done as a country, one of the dumbest deals we've ever done. Well, he's talking about blowing Iran up and Iran's parliament. The speaker there said that forces were waiting for American ground troops so that they could rain fire upon them.

7:37Look, I think something is going on here, which is that Trump likes the sort of element of surprise, right? He thinks that he's unpredictable. In my head, that is one of the most boring, aggrandizing cliches of our time, that Trump is always this, whoa, what's going to happen? You know, he's like he's sort of like, you know, what was the Pink Panther movie guy called Kato Fong, who sort of comes out of nowhere and karate chops and swings from the chandelier and tries to give the whole world a sort of reflex test at the same time. And I actually think there's less sort of Kato Fong and more Inspector Clouseau to Trump, which is that he's sort of haplessly bumbling around, leaving this wake of chaos in his in his steed.

8:21And we all respond as if like, oh, what's he going to do next? What's he going to do next? We know. We've seen how he acts, right? There is a pattern to how he acts, which is generally on a Monday, you hear about calming things down, right? Because that's where the markets are. The markets don't want to hear bad news. So they kind of, you know, get very jittery. And the whole idea of the taco thing came from traders, right? Originally was like when Trump chooses a position that's really unpopular, then they kind of go, oh, the market's not going to like this. And he chickens out. If you look at when Trump bombs, it's always on a Saturday morning or a Sunday morning or late, late Friday night after the markets have shut.

9:01So where are we now? We're in a place where he's threatening. He'll watch the markets go down and then I'll go, oh, actually, we're going to get a deal. It's all going to be fine. Because that's how he does it. Right. The trouble is now he's got all these military troops. He's got all these sort of people, personnel who are waiting for their next sign. What do we do? Do we listen to Trump saying, oh, actually, we could still do a deal? Or Hegseth, who's saying, well, crazy Hegseth things. Just listen to him over the weekend. That is why President Trump has drawn a new strategic map from Greenland to the Gulf of America, to the Panama Canal and its surrounding countries.

9:40At the Department of War, we call this strategic map the Greater North America. Why? Because every sovereign nation and territory north of the equator, from Greenland to Ecuador and from Alaska to Guyana, is not part of the global south. Each one of these countries border either the North Atlantic or the North Pacific. Each one of these countries sits north of the two basic geographic barriers that exist in this region, the Amazon and the Andes Mountains. This is basic geography. Pete Hankseth left with the mammoth task of trying to find a strategic map to America's neighbourhood. In other words, basically, anything that Trump looks at that he wants to take becomes part...

10:28Yeah, exactly. It's the definition of the American empire. Look, you talked about Clouseau a moment ago. There is a phrase in French, il fait n 'importe quoi, which roughly translate as he doesn't know what he's doing but it's more than that in French it's just such a great phrase because it also hints that it's absurd it's irrational it hasn't been thought through there is no analysis and you just go il fait n 'importe quoi and you know we shout at referees during a football match that they don't know what they're doing this is somehow kind of worse because it's suggesting that the behavior is irrational and ridiculous and it goes on and honestly I'm now at the stage where I think that Donald Trump's behaviour is il fait n 'importe quoi because it seems to me that every day you reach some new absurdity some new irrationality and some weird justification for the behaviour that the more you look at it the less you see of how it makes sense and you know so you let's go back to Karg Island and whether the Americans are going to take it by force.

11:30The Iranians are still firing missiles a month into this war that are hitting targets in the Gulf and in Israel. They are being very effective. They may not be firing as much as they were, but even the Americans are now not saying, well, we've reduced their capability by 90 percent. They're just saying they're firing 90 percent less than they were at the start, which means they've still got stockpiles. They've still got command and control. And so for America to go into Haag Island, say, and try to retake it could be absolutely perilous. And if the Iranians know that they can do such damage, they probably think, why am I going to sit down and agree to a 15-point peace plan dictated by Donald Trump that is very unfavourable to us?

12:15I don't think the Iranians think at the moment they are on the edge of defeat, that annihilation is coming, and that they have to wave a white flag and surrender to Donald Trump right now? Look, we're always asking, aren't we, who are the gatekeepers around Trump? At the moment, there are very few, right, within his own cabinet. We're hearing surrogates go on air, you know, the whole time defending how great the strategy is and how he's winning the war, not least his own secretary of defence stroke war. But there is the Israeli cabinet who actually may very well prove to be the guardrails on this.

12:51And the Israelis are not prepared to follow Trump into a ground war. And I think that is really important. The other person who's missing from this is J.D. Vance, right? Now, we've raised an eyebrow about J.D. Vance's commitment to any kind of sort of overseas war. If those negotiations with Iran were even beginning to take shape, right, if there was anything to them, we would see J.D. Vance, as promised, in the middle of them coming out and saying these are going well. The fact that it's just been left to Wyckoff and Kushner, the sort of chuckle brothers in this scenario, right, I think tells you that they're not sending in the vice president.

13:32They're not sending in somebody who can get Trump on speed dial anytime, you know, he wants to say, we think we're making progress. Vance doesn't want to be near here, or there's nothing for him to do, or there isn't the room at the moment to see any kind of peace taking shape. So I think that kind of puts the peace thing in a whole new light. And I think the amphibious landing, when Israel is basically waving a finger and saying, Are you sure about this? Are you sure? Because we are definitely not. It's something that actually might stop them in this. Yeah. And you go back in history and, you know, you quoted you have gallant there i mean the turning point in the second world war as far as britain and america was concerned was d-day june the 6th 1944 that was an extraordinary landing on the beaches of normandy but my god the cost in lives was huge to kind of land onto mainland europe and start retaking parts of northern france now i just don't see that donald trump has public opinion in a place where it is anywhere near ready for something like that, which they do not understand, which the American people understand, do not understand why Donald Trump is doing this, particularly when Donald Trump promised the exact opposite when he ran for office and even within his MAGA coalition.

14:55I mean, the thing that strikes me listening to Lewis's stuff from CPAC over the weekend, the Conservative Political Action Committee conference in Texas was how many of them are still with him. But there are undoubtedly fractures appearing with saying, what are we doing? What putting boots on the ground in Iran? Are you mad? And again, this all underlines to me that some people think that Donald Trump is the great savant who kind of knows and plays this game of three dimensional chess that only mere mortals can watch and wonder at. I don't think he's anywhere near that. I think they're making it up as they go along that there are options for America and all those options right now are bad.

15:37It is curious. I mean, you used the word savant. The FT dug out this quote from Trump. You know, the FT's been speaking to Trump on the phone again, which is kind of how you get him these days. In 1988, so coming up for, what, 40 years ago, Trump said, I'd do a number on Carg Island. he said that in an interview with the guardian i'd go in and take it iran can't even be iraq because this was in the dying days of the iran iraq war and yet they pushed the united states around it'd be good for the world to take them on so i mean there is a world where you think trump had this idea 40 years ago and now thinks like nothing's changed and he might as well just do it now because he's in a position where he can.

16:25I don't know if that shows foresight or some kind of kind of long term strategic thinking, or if it just means that he's never really dealt with reality. He's just had a fixed idea that stays with him and now thinks he can do what he wants because he's actually got the military behind him. The other aspect of this, which we haven't spoken about, which has changed over the course of the weekend, which is the Houthis starting to fire missiles at Israel. A different bit of the map if you kind of get it out, but it's the Red Sea that leads up to the Suez Canal. It's not just oil we're talking about, it's container ships with, you know, all sorts of goods that are delivered around the world.

17:07If the Houthis start trying to choke off parts of the Red Sea, then again, that is going to add another economic blow to world trade. We're already seeing the world reeling as it is from the rise in oil prices, the limited amount of fertilisers that are getting through to other places that are affecting what farmers are going to charge for their foodstuffs for their crops in in you know in the next season and if we are also going to have the Red Sea kind of with limited amount of deliveries because shipping dare not go through the Red Sea either then you can see that you know Iran because it's the because it's the Iranians that support the Houthis Iran is playing this I mean they're an evil terrible awful regime they're playing it very cleverly and they're using the weapons that they've got they haven't got the firepower the kind of explosive firepower that the americans have got but they've got economic power and they are using that from 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 but we're dealing with some people that I find to be very reasonable, very solid.

18:22We have a very serious chance of making a deal. The day on which almost all of the world recognized that Donald Trump is a deranged liar. So what on earth happens next? The fallout of the Iran war. Follow it live on LBC. Listen on our free global player app or the LBC app. Do you ever feel like you're drinking from a firehouse? Paycor's intelligent HR solution empowers leaders to turn down the pressure. Their unified platform includes payroll, talent management, compliance software, and a lot more, connecting you to the people, data, and expertise you need to drive long-term business results. Visit paycor.com slash leaders and go from work flood to workflow.

19:06That's paycor.com slash leaders.

19:14The News Agents. Look, I think even if there was a thunderbolt and the whole America-Iran thing ended overnight, don't think that oil prices would just like revert to means, right? It will take weeks. There are analysts predicting it could take six months to actually see oil prices go back to normal levels. And this is clearly on our government's mind. And Keir Starmer is right now trying to find the path between a defiant message to Trump and what the hell happens. Because this is not our war and we are not going to be dragged into it.

20:02Yes, of course, we will defend British lives and British interests in the region. We'll stand by our allies in the Gulf region. But we're not going to get dragged in. That's my values. That's my principles. And that's what we've applied to our decisions, whatever the pressure and whoever it's coming from. But what a contrast. if you took Kemi Badenock or Nigel Farage? What did they want to do? They wanted to go straight in with both feet into the war without thinking. OK, so there was a little bit of, let's call it, early local election campaigning going on at the tail end of that speech, I think.

20:40Keir Starmer sounds very bold, doesn't he? You know, we're not going into this war. Compare me to the others. Interestingly enough, Kemi Badenock has also confirmed today that she would not welcome, she would not be part of a push to get ground troops in British forces into the area. But I still think it doesn't explain to us what part we will play, right? There's the question of do we send the anti-mineship? Is that considered to be a provocation to the Iranians? There are people who are sitting in Dubai jails, we read, for their part in sort of filming, you know, the Iranian warfare, who are finding that they're being targeted for, you know, why hasn't your government done more?

21:23Why haven't British people put more pressure on your government to help us out more? Starmer is talking about helping allies in the Gulf, right? But what does that involve doing then? What does he send? So I think that the answer to that is that there is going to be no British kind of warships anywhere near the Strait of Hormuz until there's some kind of agreement, in which case the British could be part of the policing of the Strait of Hormuz. But they're not going to go... So once it's all done? Yeah, yeah, once it's all done. So you don't send your mine... Sweepers in just yet. OK. Unless it gets mined and then there is a real kind of battle going on and you could send...

22:08But I don't think... Well, it is mined, isn't it? I mean, isn't that the whole point? There are reports of 12 mines that have been put into the Strait of Hormuz. And the reason that shipping isn't moving is Iran is saying, you're not moving. And that's good enough for most tankard captains to think, I'm not going anywhere near. And for insurance companies to say, forget it. We're not insuring you to go through when the Iranians are saying you can't. So it's possible that you could have some kind of fragile agreement and Britain sends minesweepers at that point to try to kind of check that the shipping routes are clear before the tankers go through.

22:47That is perfectly possible. What Britain is doing at the moment is it's got its air force. It's got, you know, kind of anti sort of missile bases around the Gulf and trying to take out, you know, Iranian attacks and mitigate those. I think the question that's really interesting is what can Keir Starmer do at home? I think that's the critical one. Oil prices are going up. We've seen in other countries around the world, people start to talk about petrol rationing. Yeah. We haven't had petrol rationing for decades. And the idea that pumps could start running out of, you know, unleaded petrol or diesel.

23:29And therefore, people are going to have to queue up pumps to get that fill up their cars and that there is some kind of rationing in place. Well, it's already going on. We were talking, I think, about the measures in Southeast Asia last week. Yeah. But we're already seeing some countries saying you can only drive on alternate days. I mean, that's a measure from the 1970s. I think Australia has now introduced two states in which they are keeping free transport. Public transport is free for a month. Right. In other words, leave your car at home. But this is a carrot. Come on. Come on to our subways.

24:02Come on to our buses. Come on to the trains. Do whatever you want. But don't bring your car in. And the Philippines, I think, is now rationing how much oil people can buy, when they can drive. Thailand, we talked about the air conditioning being turned off. I mean, these are kind of these are proper sort of, you know, it's it's it's bigger than the stuff even during austerity. Right. Where the state is intervening now to tell you how you can or can't live. Yeah, when I was based in France, there was a big tanker's driver's strike and there was no fuel anywhere. And it was alternate day. If you had an even number plate, you can drive on Monday, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

24:48And if you had an odd number plate, you could have you drive on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. I mean, kind of nuts. But the idea that here we are in 2026 and this is being seriously talked about is really interesting. Well, cleverly, it's not being talked about by our government yet. No, it's not yet. So Gustavo has got, at the moment, the senior executives of Shell, BP, Norwegian energy company Equinor in Downing Street discussing contingency measures. And if you listen to Bridget Phillipson at the weekend, she is basically screaming, don't panic. Let's keep calm and carry on. Keep calm and carry on.

25:23Do not go to the pumps. Do not fill up your car. Do not, in other words, take matters into your own hands. Otherwise, we really will have a problem. Well, do not create the shortage. Yeah, exactly. Let's just listen to her tone here on the Sunday shows. Look, it's clear that there could be, we don't know yet, but there could be shortages of oil and gas, even food because of this war. What is the government doing to ensure that emergency vehicles, hospitals, schools don't run out? As a government, any government would always have contingency plans to make sure that we can deliver what is necessary.

25:57But I would just say that where it comes to what consumers will say in their day-to-day lives. You know, the trade bodies, the RAC, the AA have been absolutely clear that if you go into the pump, just fill up as normal, continue as you are. We've got that security of what is coming in and production isn't affected. And I think people should take note of what those trade bodies are saying. Of course, governments will always plan for what we need to do to make sure in the event of any disruption, we are well prepared. But of course, what we are working to do is to support that de-escalation of the conflict.

26:31Yeah. So the question is, does the government convey a sense of we've got this, we're looking at all contingency measures, but don't panic? Or does the government say, actually, it'd be really helpful if you could look at the lights you're leaving on, the petrol you're using, the heating you're using? Are we all going to be told to turn down the thermostat just when British summertime gets to its coldest weekend of the year? So the problem that Keir Starmer has got and the problem that Britain has got, which is different from other countries, are all grappling with rising prices as far as fuel is concerned, is that our cost of government borrowing is going up.

27:11So people look at Britain and think, well, if I'm going to buy your government debt, you're going to have to give me a bloody good rate of interest before I buy it. And so the government is having to give out more and more money to fund government debt. And that means, you know, what fiscal headroom you've got is being taken by that. So if the government suddenly announced, right, we are going to drop fuel prices or subsidise or lift VAT on fuel or, you know, reduce VAT on fuel, then the government is going to face even higher borrowing costs. And so it's got very limited room for manoeuvre of what it can do because of, you know, past history of the Liz Trust shock and the lack of confidence in economic growth in this country and what we did during Covid.

27:57All those things are adding up to make us with very, very limited ability to come in and help consumers. So although, you know, Rachel Reeves wants to give targeted help to certain groups, it's very difficult to see how that works. Yeah, but if you are listening now to sort of industry figures who kind of are watching the trajectory on this, they're warning that the UK could start to see fuel shortages within two weeks. Right. I mean, this is not sort of somewhere over the horizon or somewhere in sort of late August, September, if we don't get things. If that's actually what's coming to us, right?

28:38We are just about to go into a period of local election campaigning, right? I mean, imagine what that feels like, the country, if you're going out and saying, it's all fine, we're doing fine, but just, you know, we're going to run out of oil and fuel in two weeks' time. And that thing about running out of fuel in two weeks' time, I mean, look, you know, there are still oil suppliers going in and I'm sure that the government is has got contingency plans of what it's going to do about this but what creates a fuel shortage is people changing their behavior it's like a run on a bank banks don't run out of money unless everyone suddenly turns up at the bank and says I want all my money out now and what you're going to find is that people who've got a car sitting at home with half a tank of petrol are thinking oh Christ I better to go and fill up now.

29:26And hey, Presto, overnight, you're going to have queues outside filling stations. They can't get the petrolling fast enough and you will create the oil shortage. Yeah, but I think we're in a very different place now to the sort of the origins of the keep calm and carry on slogan, which is there is much less trust now, frankly, you know, people who stayed at their desks in 9-11 who were told, don't panic, you're going to be fine, were the ones who never got out of there alive. You know, people who have been told it's all going to be fine, you'll get your money from the Northern Rock collapse. Many of them lost money because they couldn't get it out because there was the run.