Why does Kemi Badenoch want an even smaller Tory party?

14:57Lewis Goodall:Oh, for sure. But exactly. But they are trying to broaden the appeal and bringing new voters to the tent. Whereas what I find curious about Baden-Ock, who, you know, speeches are always, I mean, I read the speech and, you know, there are some really interesting, there are some interesting parts of it. And she's clearly thinking about politics, you know, conceptually. But I don't understand a strategy which actively tries to alienate voters who not so long ago were part of your coalition. and you still have MPs. Let's not forget, she's now down to, what, 115 MPs? I mean, what does she want? These small centre-left MPs to go another one?

15:24Lewis Goodall:Yeah, yeah. I mean, how small do you have to get before you get the ideological coherence that you want, right? And I think, again, though, it kind of goes back to the discussion we had on Monday. I mean, you're absolutely right. There will be differences, particularly on welfare and kind of the role of the state, I think. But again, this schism on the right feels just increasingly, more than anything else, more and more personal. If Bainock is saying, basically, my agenda is not so far from Farage's or very similar. You know, my project is one of the right and Farage's project is self-evidently a project of the right.

15:53Lewis Goodall:Then it makes the whole schism even less explicable than it was before.

15:56Andrew Marr:Well, it's also very good news for Keir Starmer at this point. If Keir Starmer and the Labour Party just say, come on in, we will find a broad church. We will find a tent for you. We want all ideas. We want every idea and we want all the experience. Yeah, I don't think that the Prosper team are about to join Labour, but they're not being made to feel very welcome in the Conservatives right now. In a moment, is the US gearing up for military intervention in Iran? And what would that look like with Trump's so-called beautiful armada?

16:29News you can trust and the conversations that matter.

16:32Andrew Marr:With award-winning journalists at the heart of the stories from the UK and around the world. Breaking news here in Edinburgh. I'm Simon Marks. My American Week is next. Reporting from the heart of Cardiff. Discover how today's story affects your life. Listen on our free Global Player app or the new LBC app. LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

16:58The News Agents. And by the way, there's another beautiful armada floating beautifully toward Iran right now. So we'll see. I hope they make a deal. I hope they make a deal. They should have made a deal the first time. Iran doesn't know what is about to hit it.

17:19Andrew Marr:In other words, Trump is talking about a possible US attack with his beautiful armada, the USS Abraham Lincoln, which is stationed in waters now which would make it possible for it to attack Tehran. And if you think that this is about coming in to save democracy, if you think this is about America trying to be the world's policeman in a place that is going through the seeds of revolution or counter-revolution, the uprising of protesters against the regime, then many people inside the country are actually much more clear-sighted, much more sceptical about what Trump intends to do because he spelled out today and in recent days that this is still about a deal.

18:11Andrew Marr:This is still about a deal with the Iranian administration. This is a deal that would see Iran cleaned, cleansed of its nuclear capabilities. And so protesters now are really confused because they are dying in their thousands. We know that the The death toll sits somewhere between 20 ,000 and 30 ,000 in the last few weeks. This is based on UN and external projections. And the protesters are desperate to see someone, somewhere, take action against their regime. But is Trump's beautiful armada going to deliver them that freedom? Not so sure.

18:51Lewis Goodall:Meanwhile, there are continued crackdowns on dissents, continued examples of murder from the authorities reports just in the last 24 hours of a 19 year old influencer being shot dead by security forces and there continues to be of course an internet blackout which has prevented iranians from telling the rest of the world in the main what is going on nonetheless as these crackdowns really extraordinary report bit reporting from the ft today on this as these crackdowns have continued and got worse and public shows of dissent or displays of dissent on the streets have become less and less possible.

19:25Lewis Goodall:Iran is being gripped by all its social media internally, is being flooded by Iranian families showing pictures and videos of funerals of protesters. And they're doing something that you might not imagine. Families and friends dancing, clapping, clapping at the funerals as music blares all around them. Just listen to a bit of this.

19:57Lewis Goodall:So dancing at funerals, EFT says, not unprecedented in Iran, but nonetheless, this recent trend is going further, clearly as an act of defiance against the theocracy. Women dancing, when it's been banned previously, expressions of grief and joy, festive funerals are basically being transformed into an act of resistance, which tells you something about the feeling in Iran right now.

20:19Andrew Marr:Yeah, and we've been talking to people in the diaspora and some who have given us their contacts, friends, family on the streets of Iran and trying to paint a picture of what that is like right now. And of course, when Trump tweeted, posted, what, nearly two weeks ago, that help was on the way, many people took that as a sign that they could go out and protest. They were emboldened to actually head to the streets because for that glimpse, for that moment, they thought it meant liberation is on the way. They thought that if they went into the streets, their own government would be too scared to act against them.

21:02And clearly the opposite was true.

21:06Andrew Marr:And there is an eye hospital, the Farabee Eye Hospital, that has treated 1 ,000 eyes, we hear, in the last 10 days for pellet wounds. 17 people at least shot in both eyes. In other words, they are trying to blind people. They are trying to scare people who are in the crowds. And at some points they are just shooting point blank with rubber. I think that the fact I was told last night was the ratio of rubber to real bullets used to be four to one. And now it's more like one to two. In other words, they're not even pretending that they're just trying to disperse the crowds. They are trying to shoot people dead within them.

21:46Andrew Marr:And so you have people who might have been in two minds about what Trump, what America, what intervention looked like two weeks ago. But now they're saying, well, we need something, right? Is Trump and the US, Abraham Lincoln, the Armada, is that the only thing on offer now? and does anyone believe that what looked like the beginning of an overthrow of Khomeini at the beginning of this year looked like that was possible it was in the grasp doesn't look like that at all the army is clearly still on the administration side the protesters have been shot to death there are people as you say still going out still trying to look as if they have protests within them, even at the funerals of their loved ones.

22:36Andrew Marr:But I think the sense of whether we're about to see the overthrow that, I mean, you were talking about here on the news agents two weeks ago, looks really distant now. Well, one person that we've been in touch with is Negin Shirai. She's a former journalist. She is an activist. She is joining us from a country which is not Iran, and it's not even the UK, because the Iranian administration has been targeting both her and her family. Negin, thank you for joining us. Can we start with the news that's coming out of the US right now? Donald Trump telling us that a massive armada is heading to Iran and warning us that time is running out.

23:13Andrew Marr:When you hear that, do you feel relief or concern with what may be about to happen? I feel big concern because when you read what he wrote, it's this like underline, you know, between the line, there is a message to the Iranian government. And that's what scares me more than anything, which is his aim at the end is making a nuclear deal, making sure that he's getting what he wants. And that has nothing to do with the massacre that's happening inside the country and the people dying. And especially now, a lot of people have been arrested and we don't know what happens to them in the prison. And we're really worried about that.

23:58So this is contrary to what he the message he was putting out there at the beginning of these protests. You know, after the first 10 days, he was saying if there is any death on the streets, I'm going to attack. Then that changed to if there is any execution, I will attack. And then now it's changing to if there is no nuclear deal, I will show you. So I think when you look at his patterns and what he does at the end, it's not about the democracy and it's not about the people of Iran. And everyone knows that. But also, I think for people inside the country, there is still a glimmer of hope that some sort of help should come from outside to help them to stop the killing.

24:40But would it be effective even if there is an attack by Donald Trump and, you know, Islamic Republic doesn't come to the table? I really don't know. I feel I have a feeling that Islamic Republic, there's two scenarios here. Either they're going to continue until there is no opposition left in the country. They're going to continue killing. They're going to continue the arrest. that has been their pattern for the last three weeks, or there's going to be an attack by U.S. in one way or form. If that attack is successful, which is really a big if, then we would have Iran which is in conflict. So I don't think he would be successful in the government with one attack.

25:25Then at the same time, if it's a full-on war, which we don't see it happening yet with the, you know, the armies that is in the Middle East and all of that. I think then it leads to a lot of infightings and a lot of other players inside the country trying to gain power. So it's a scary time.

25:45Lewis Goodall:Do we think that in terms of an attack on Iran, obviously, lots of Iranians have been asking Trump to do it. And it's something that seems to be growing in appetite as well on the American right within the Republican Party. And yet at the same time, he also says, maybe we can reach a deal. That's quite confusing, isn't it? Because either it's about Iranian freedom, democracy, the regime ending, or it's about some sort of geopolitical arrangements between the Iranians and the Americans. Are you clear in your mind what this armada is for? I'm clear. I think it's for the geopolitical reasons and it's for oil and it's for China, because China has a lot of influence inside Iran.

26:24They have this massive deal with the Iranian government that they're selling the sanctioned oil really cheap to the Chinese. And this contract was going to last until 2045. And there is a growing influence because of the sanctions. Iran became even more close to China. It was close to China, but now it's like this massive collaboration. So that's one part of it. Then for Donald Trump, when was it about people or democracy? I don't believe for a moment that Trump is after democracy. And he's been really clear in that messaging, in all of his attitudes inside the US and outside the US. So I don't think anyone is fooled, even my mom, who's 80 years old in Iran and lives under this regime, and is really angry at the regime, which she understands.

27:12And she told me that she doesn't believe Trump is after democracy or thinking about them. But the feeling is we're helpless here. There is no help coming from anywhere. And this government is trying to kill us. And there is no shame in that for them. And they will continue until there is no opposition in sight. So if there is someone, even a bully, who doesn't care about us and might, you know, do something that as a side effect we would benefit of it, then let them do that. I think that's the feeling of a lot of people inside the country. I won't argue the same for the people who are outside.

27:54We've seen a lot of protests that are asking for Trump to attack. And it's a far right fraction of the Iranian society, especially in diaspora, which has a different mindset in mind of what they want. They want to implement the monarchy in place of the Islamic Republic. So their mandate is different. But I think the message that's coming from inside the country is more out of frustration of international community who's been watching this massacre happening in the country and doing nothing about it. imagine they're infants who's been killed on the street by shotguns they're people who's been in a hospital bed with the hospital equipment still attached to them who's been shot in the head so when you see that in your life on a daily basis you would react to that you would cling to anything that is out there that might be able to help you.

28:59Andrew Marr:So you don't think, I mean, listening to you, Negan, you don't think that Trump wants regime change. You don't think he's going to topple the Ayatollah. And you don't think that there is help coming from any other source. Is that right? I mean, are you basically saying the Iranian people can't win this one on their own? Yes, so I've been a journalist for more than 20 years. I've been a journalist inside Iran. I've worked outside as well. I work with a lot of activists in different parts of the world, in Myanmar, in Sudan. So I know how the authoritarian regimes work, and especially the mindset of the Islamic Republic.

29:43They're in that last leg of survival. For them, it's a moment that they have to cling to power. And that's why we see even the reformers who always try to keep their face and saying, oh, you know, where there is, we would be more modern and, you know, try to open up the country. They're saying the killing is justified and they have to kill people. So we are in this existential moment for the Islamic Republic. people know and have that feeling inside the country that no one is, that it belonged to that government, would defect at this moment. So there's no defection. They're going to continue fighting until the end.

30:26And for Trump, it was obvious even from the beginning that for him, it's about what he can gain from any given situation, for him, for himself, and for the U.S. so in that scenario there is nothing for him to gain from a democratic Iran there is a lot of things to gain keeping the you know as they they used to call it in foreign policy containment of the Middle East so making sure that the flow of the oil continues making sure the players in that region are playing the hands that he wants and then at the end benefiting from that that's the end of it. It doesn't matter how many people are killed on the street.

31:09It doesn't matter what the people are demanding. And we've seen in the Iranian history for the last 150 years, more than that, Iranian people over and over again, every time they try to do a democratic transition in their own country, it's been stopped by the foreign forces. It's a curse of our country that we are in a really geopolitical situation, that everyone has an interest in it. We are really rich on oil and minerals. So it's a country that has been in a battleground of powerful forces. It was powerful once. It lost the power. And then now it's always been, you know, divided between the sources.

31:49We've never been colonized, but it's a country that during the World War has been run by other countries. We've been divided between Russia and Britain at some point. We had, you You know, the coup against our elected prime minister, Mossad there. So it's been the trend over and over again. And unfortunately, what I see at this moment in history is the history is repeating itself.

32:15Lewis Goodall:Do you think, do you have much sense of, and there's been much speculation about this, do you have much sense of what the death toll might now have been, now this has been going on for some weeks? And also, obviously, there's been a lot of hope and speculation that maybe this would finally be the set of protests that would lead to the collapse of the Ayatollah's regime? Given this has now been going on for some weeks, do we think that those hopes have been far-fetched? So the death toll, the UN special rapporteur talked about, the 20 ,000 people dead. The human rights organisations are starting to, you know, documenting more, but it's really difficult because of the internet shutdown and the remote places that the deaths are happening.

32:59So, for example, yesterday there was a news came out that one of the organizations could confirm and, you know, say this is correct. In this village that none of us heard the name before, there was like two people shot down a couple of days ago by checkpoints. You know, they were stopped at a checkpoint. Their mobile phone was checked. They were released and 10 meters later they were like shot down by the Pudis forces. There is a crazy frenzy of killing happening in the country, still ongoing. So I would argue that we would see the rise of the numbers because of how widespread the protests were, how many are happening already now on the ground, and also the fact that a lot of people who've been wounded are scared to go to the hospitals because they've been killed in the hospitals as injured people and because they can get arrested and then the body is returned to the family a couple of days later.

33:58So there's a lot of infections going around and people are in the homes. I would argue that the dissent hasn't happened. That has been one of the biggest factors that happened in 1979. So they were like the police forces stopped collaborating with the government. Right now, the situation is that the security forces are so embedded within the Iranian regime mindset and indoctrinated into that, that I don't see the dissent necessarily happening at this moment, and we've seen it. The other part of it, I would argue, is that the opposition is not organized enough. The democratic opposition is not organized enough.

34:37So the only opposition that is organized at the moment, and we hear the name, is Pahlavi and the Monarchists, which is the far-right values, and their manifesto has been read by people inside the country, especially labor activists, students who are the ones who are driving the protests and are the civil society in Iran for years, they haven't bought into that. They believe it's another form of dictatorship in place. So even if right now anything happens, I think there would be a fight against if monarchy come into place from inside the country, the minority groups, the different groups. So there is also this gray area of a society that hasn't decided they want they they know we know based on the statistic that is coming from iran that they are pro-democracy they don't have a representation and i think that's the biggest challenge if we manage to get that in place there are efforts in the civil society outside iran we are part of it which we are trying to create a two years transition for the Iranian people, what happens within these two years, how the transitional justice processes will start, how the constitutional assembly will start.

35:53But this kind of activities needs international support. It cannot be done in vacuum. It needs money. It needs a lot of budgets and support from international community. So until there is infrastructure like that, I don't think that dissent would happen. I don't think there's enough power inside the country to go against this massive killing because people thought in this round that if they go to the streets en masse in millions, especially because Trump said, if there is a killing, I would attack, they thought this time the government wouldn't kill them. and they killed them and nothing has happened.

36:32So in that situation, I would feel in the short term the people would go through to depression. There's a lot of anger on the ground. But what happens after, there is another element missing at this moment. How that can happen, I really have no clue at this moment.

36:54Andrew Marr:Negan Shiragi, thank you so much. Thanks for joining us. Thanks, Negan. Thank you.

37:08The news agents. It's pretty unusual, but nobody knows when they saw the gun, how they saw the gun, everything else. The bottom line, it was terrible. Both of them were terrible. The other was terrible, too. And I'm not sure about his parents, but I know her parents were big Trump fans. Makes me feel bad anyway. But I mean, I guess you could say even worse, they were tremendous Trump people, Trump fans. And, you know, the daughter was, she was, I don't know if you could say radicalized, maybe radicalized, maybe not. I don't know. But I hate to see it. I hate to see that.

37:42Lewis Goodall:So that is President Trump weighing in, giving his assessment on the killing of Rene Good and of Alex Preti. And even for Trump, you've got to say it's pretty grotesque. Grotesque, basically saying that he feels worse about one than the other, precisely because in his view, I don't know where he's got this from, but the parents of one were Trump supporters and the others were not.

38:05Andrew Marr:Yeah. And he was commenting on both the deaths and his take on Alex Preti, with whom he doesn't, as we've heard, have as much sympathy. He was the ICU nurse, was that he was essentially a fool to be carrying a gun. Now, to put this in context, Minnesota is an open carry state. He was carrying a gun, a concealed carry, which is allowed. He had a gun licence. And the Second Amendment allows you to take a gun with you. Yes, even to a protest. Now, it's a weird place for us, this, isn't it, to be sort of trying to unpick the row that is unfolding. because I would say that most Brits are not big fans of Second Amendment rights.

38:48Andrew Marr:We are not big fans of weaponry on the streets of any city. And yet here is the NRA trying to defend citizens who were carrying guns because it is a constitutional right against a president who has always been very friendly to the NRA, who is now making citizens who carry guns legally feel like they were doing wrong. And so you've got this very interesting juxtaposition now, haven't you, where you've got gun lobbies, not just the NRA, but lots of, you know, guns for American people, lots of these different sort of lobby groups saying, why is he having a go at ordinary American citizens? But they don't really want to back left-wing demonstrators, so they end up sort of attacking Tim Walsh and saying it's the governor's fault for allowing the protests and there shouldn't have been these protests in the first place, but if there are going to be protests, then they should be allowed to carry guns.

39:39Lewis Goodall:It puts us in, all of us, I think, in a kind of slightly weird headspace. It is, isn't it? Where sort of we're the ones going, well, he had the right to bear arms and maybe exposes. Do I think actually, I express it or anybody, having been to them and seen how high the tensions are running there, do I think it's a good idea that anyone takes guns? No, I don't. That isn't exculpatory of what happened. That doesn't excuse what happened. But I just don't think in any protest or anything like that, just in the same way that I don't think, you know, all of those people who took guns on the January the 6th riots, that that was a very good idea either.

40:11Lewis Goodall:And I think we would have been hearing, imagine if the Biden administration or the Capitol Police had just sort of attacked and then shot on sight anybody who was carrying a gun during January the 6th. I think we'd have heard quite a different tone and different analysis from Trump and others if that had taken place.

40:24Andrew Marr:Isn't the point that once again, we're falling for it by having a discussion about something completely tangential to the one that we should be having, which is the murdering of US citizens on the streets by federal ICE agents. In other words, we should be talking about the process or lack of process. We should be talking about why there isn't a judicial investigation. We should be talking about why there isn't a criminal investigation into either of those deaths. But yet we're all having this sort of Second Amendment rights chat, which is sort of vintage Trump. You know, he's managed once again to sort of make you turn the page and go off down this rabbit hole so that nobody's chasing what on earth ICE were doing on the streets of Minneapolis for the last three weeks.

41:08Lewis Goodall:Or frankly, just going back to that first clip of Trump saying that he's more bothered about one than the other because of their political affiliation. I mean, there's only two explanations for that. Either he knows it's grotesque and he's literally seeking to troll the families and everybody, which is grotesque, if not psychopathic. Or he's been so grotesque for that long and he's been so sort of adult and pickled in that particular type of politics for that long that he doesn't even know it's grotesque, in which case it's basically a form of psychopathy. You know, this is the president of the United States.

41:35Lewis Goodall:And again, we just get so inured to it. But honestly, I mean, there's been plenty of people talking about his decline in mental acuity. I mean, it's so hard to tell with Trump because he's always said things like this. But just listening to that now and the fact that barely causes a ripple and we shrug our shoulders. That's the grotesque thing.

41:48Andrew Marr:We'll be back tomorrow.

41:49Lewis Goodall:We'll see you then.

41:50Andrew Marr:Bye bye. Bye for now.

41:51Lewis Goodall:This has been a Global Player original production.