419. What next for Trump, Israel, and Iran? | Peace vs. Regime Change

26:52And just while we're on the politics of all this, and this underlines how tricky this is for world leaders right around the place, somebody has just sent me the front page of today's daily mail. The paper, let me remind you that backed Adolf Hitler in the run up to the Second World War, and the front page had, so whose side are you on, Sir Kier? In other words, they want to be in the place where if it's bad for the government or it's tricky for their own government, that's good for them. There's this underlines that the answer to the question, whose side are you on? He's on the side of trying to bring this to do what little any European leader can to keep this on their keep using the word de -escalation.

27:40And I think from their perspective, they just have to keep going with that. And interestingly, again, sorry to sort of give away spoiler alert on our interview with the President of Cyprus. He was talking last night, and as you will remember, very, very, how it's felt for the Europeans to have a British government back that actually at least takes these things seriously, that they feel they're a proper dialogue with, etc. So I just wish on newspapers sometimes would be less tribalistic, less ridiculous, less hysterical, and less about clickbait. But I think that what the leaders were just to go to your question, what were the leaders saying?

28:16I mean, I saw an interview that David Lamy did, where it was obvious, a bit like the President of Cyprus yesterday, they don't want to say anything that can be fed back by ambassadors around the world, Donald Trump has Britain has criticized, or Cyprus has criticized. So what they're doing is having a public position that frames this as yes, let's all try to prevent Iran from having a nuclear bomb. But given, of course, we are not directly involved, not become commentators on the legalities and all the rest of it. That I think Karl built, put out a very Karl built former Prime Minister Sweden, very respected diplomat around the world, put out a very, very strong statement, but really condemning the Europeans for not focusing upon international law.

29:05But that's the debate that's going to go on through this, because this this is not the last of it. And sorry, I said on the Com side given that this is a political problem for the government. Is there a possible route for the government to say, of course, the US are our allies, of course, Iran are not our allies, of course, we're on the side of the US against Iran. But equally, we believe that international law is unbelievably important and we make a joint statement by European leaders. Totally. And in a way, that was what President Christodunit is was saying is to say, look, we are very, very clear that we are in favor of Israel's right to exist and right to defend itself.

29:49He also made the point that we're literally a short flight away. He actually made the point. If, for example, there had been nuclear radiation release from the attacks on the three plants in Iran, that would have been here pretty quickly.

30:08So, Trump, focusing upon the sort of potential positives for American diplomacy, but at the same time emphasizing, we all have to understand that international cooperation is better, rule of law is important, so forth. So, I think it is possible to do it. But I think that underlines, that Daily Mail front page underlines just how the sort of venerally difficult circumstances in which British political leaders have to operate when we get to these big foreign policy issues. But the problem with all these European leaders coming so strongly in behind Trump and not caring is that it puts the UN in a completely impossible situation.

30:51I was thinking about. Hold on, you're saying that, but there's Keir's style of being criticized for not coming behind. In other words, what the Daily Mail hope is that that front page gets sent by American diplomats to the American system so that Trump can start to think. And then you have the Elon Musk Tucker Carlson's who've both got a bit of a obsession about the labor government coming out and saying, well, we can't rely on Britain. I mean, they are so irresponsible these people. They really do make me sick. But I was just sort of thinking this through. If you're grossy, who's the guy from the International Atomic Energy Authority.

31:26And you're trying to run an agency which is works on complicated inspections, very complicated relationships, not just with Iran, but other governments around the world that are trying to on the cusp of acquiring nuclear weapons and relies on people believing you your credibility and being supported by the permanent most security council when things go wrong. And grossy came out and said, he didn't have a few Fox News in fact, he said Iran has enough material for several warheads. But this should not be equated with a nuclear weapon. We do not have at this point any tangible proof that there is a program or a plan to fabricate to manufacture a nuclear weapon.

32:13So this is the statement from the main UN agency whose job for more than 50 years has been to try to stop nuclear non -proliferation. And of course, they assume that people will support their judgment. What's actually happened is that his judgment is completely swept aside. By politics. And he must feel his job becomes almost entirely impossible. Well, and of course, the other question that we don't know and I suspect we won't know into either in terms of what's actually happening or the nature of this ceasefire agreement that's being reached is what has actually happened to the Hyde in Riches Uranium, which Iran already has.

32:47We don't know for sure that it was any of those three sites. And the other thing, the worry I have about this black and white declaration, it's over, relax world, it's all going to be fine. He actually said, congratulations to the whole world. It's actually that the reaction, the next step reaction from Iran could be something that isn't even directly related to Iran. They do have these sort of sleeper cells around the place. They do have very, very highly motivated people sort of planted around the place that could take out somebody or take out some sort of piece of infrastructure, whatever it might be.

33:28So I think that's why it's so important not to overstate. Yes, people would rather Iran and Israel weren't whacking up weapons at each other. And yes, people would rather the Americans weren't sort of dropping these 30 ,000 bombs and putting a risk of water and radiation all the rest of it. But it doesn't mean that just because Donald Trump says this is all over, that it's all over. Yeah, because you've just put your finger on the reason why this could start again quite quickly. So if you are Israel, and you've just heard your point, which is absolutely right, which is we don't know what's happened to all of this in Richie Iranian.

34:05And you really feel that Iran is an existential threat and that your entire mission in life is to make sure it never gets a nuclear bomb. Well, then you'll think, well, we haven't finished our job. We're going to have to bomb them again until we deal with this. Yes, present in Richie Iranian. And if you look at the fact that Iran is still able to fire missiles into Israel and just killed another four people overnight, again, you'll feel the job isn't finished. So it doesn't seem to me that there's anything naturally stable here. It's very difficult for President Trump to say this is the end of it.

34:39If Israel feels it hasn't achieved its objectives on the one hand, and then let's just flock to Iran and then maybe some reason to watch you. We're going to say about how many. Iran is now into different world. So Iran, as I say, has been used to playing a shadow war. And they have done these responses over time, which are calibrated. Always well, well below what they could do. That was true after October the 7th, where they appear to have restrained his blaster response, his blaster had whatever it was, 100 ,000 missiles. It fired missiles into Northern Israel, drove populations out in Northern Israel, but it used a fraction of what it could have used.

35:21Again, as you said after the killing of gas and silver money, the Iranian response wasn't just to attack a US base, but to actually signal in advance that they were going to do so. So that the people, the US could put everybody into bunkers before the attacks happened and did it again with Qatar. So this is the normal playbook, which is Iran does just enough to keep their pride in attack, just enough to convince the hardliners that they're not going to take this line down. But never quite enough, they feel to sort of rain hell down themselves. But something's changed. And also they have even greater control over the dissemination of public messaging than Trump, you know, Trump's a very, very powerful communicator, but there is a sort of free press, whereas, you know, in Iran, he's got total control.

36:10I think that just to talk about Ali Khmerani, I mean, he's a fascinating character. And last night when we announced, sort of this morning when we announced that we're doing this podcast and the real rory in my life, my son, he sent me this clip, he said, if you've seen this before, and I hadn't, we'll put it in the newsletter. It's some footage of the of the actual event when the assembly of experts, which is the decision making body appointed Khmerani as the successor of Supreme Leader to Khmerani. I mean, it's quite interesting that you just have changed a couple of letters in the day. So Khmerani had appointed Khmerani as a sort of very senior advisor.

36:52He became a kind of very low profile president for a while. And then this, this assembly of experts meeting, so Raksan Jhani, who was the who was Khmerani's main advisor, and who wanted and did become president. And the feeling was that he was manipulating Khmerani into this place as that he would become a very, very powerful presidential figure. But the truth is that Khmerani and the speech that Khmerani made is incredible because he basically says, I'm not remotely qualified to do this job. I don't have the religious and clerical qualifications. It was like a sort of, it was like somebody who does the Sunday school lessons sessions at your church, suddenly becoming the Archivist of Canterbury.

37:36He wasn't that high up the religious ladder. And yet he becomes, and so they appointed him first of all as a temporary Supreme Leader because he didn't have the qualifications. They then changed the constitution. Raksan Jhani engineered it so as they changed the constitution to get him in there. And he's an amazing survivor who's always, always, always been underestimated. Very poor background, second of eight kids. And he's now the second longest serving leader in the history of Iran after the old Shah. Well, we should do a special episode on him. But just in terms of what this means now, he is somebody who was formed through the Iran -Araq war.

38:25And we can talk a little bit more about why the Iran -Araq war matters. But essentially the revolution happens and to remind listeners almost immediately, Saddam Hussein invades Iraq. And then for the next day, he is Iran is fighting Iraq. And the sacred defense, the regime, is right at the heart of what he's doing. So when Khmerani is in his Supreme Leader, Khmerani is essentially organizing much of that fighting. And it's a crazy form of fighting in which 500 ,000 people are killed and watching him, etc. After he takes over his Supreme Leader, he begins to craft an entire narrative, which is about identity.

39:02It's about the United States. He's always believed from the very beginning, since 1979, that the United States has only one objective, which is regime change in Iran. And that anything they say, any time they attempt to be nice, any treaties they offer, any compromises they offer, are just a ruse in the end what they want to do as topple the regime. So the question I guess now that I'm getting to is, will his responses now change? And this is where the world could get much more dangerous. Because up to now, as I say, they've tended to think that what they do is these slightly calibrated responses, enough to placate the hard line as not enough to unleash hell against them from Israel and the US.

39:47Now the hard line as we'll say, and he himself will feel wait, the hell has now been unleashed by Israel and the US. It can't really get much worse. I mean, what is it we were afraid of? We were not doing too much because we didn't want them to unleash massive bombers and blow up our nuclear facilities. So what can we lose now by striking back? And if he begins to feel it's getting existential for Iran, if he begins to feel that these people are actually pushing for full regime change and he's felt that that's been the American policy since, since Musadek was toppled in a CIA coup in 1953. Then you may begin to see much more extreme stuff.

40:30You'll begin to see stuff where some of that spirit of the Iran Iraq war begins to come out. And that's the moment at which you really do begin to think. Will they start looking at dirty bombs? So when you've got Iranian and rich for 60%, you can make it into 90%. Yes, it's going to take you a year to develop a ballistic missile. But it's much easier to make a little dirty bomb. Again, what do you do as you say with all your proxies, your sleeper cells? And what can you do with pretty low technology? They have the missiles to strike the straights of our moves. They can, during Iran, Iraq war, they drove sort of crazy suicide missions with boats and tankers.

41:09Now, it doesn't feel like they're quite there yet. At the moment, he's still being restrained. But it's going to be quite interesting as the regime settles down. Will they think the last 12 days have changed everything? And we now need a very different approach and we can't continue what we've been doing since the early 90s? Yeah, there's anything I say about that. He's no old. He's been in power as I say since he's been the supreme leader, increasing his powers, he's gone along. He has real control over. He's very good at divide and rule. All the various parts of the institutions of around the military, the intelligence, the parliament, the presidency, he divides and rules between them.

41:49And he's always the final arbiter of any big decision. And like a lot of people, it's like Putin, it's like Xi, like a lot of so I don't, I don't think there's any much reason to think that he will change. And if you go, I was talking to a friend, an Iranian friend of mine who lives in the UK, who was saying that if you go back to all the different difficult points that he's faced in the past, whether it was the protest in 2009 before the presidential election, the general strike they had, I think it was in 2018, the protest they had more recently in relation to the young girl who must Armenia was killed.

42:31The response has always been to whip up more nationalism but actually to clamp down to be more repressive. And so I think you're probably going to see, because don't forget there will be those within Iran and Iranians outside Iran who want regime change, they will be trying to exploit this. And they will, so they will come under greater repression. And he will feel in order to stave off the people, the real hardliners, I think he will feel that he can't just let this lie. That's why I don't think this will be a kind of one -off, solemnly thing. And on the nuclear program point, interestingly, early in his reign, or his period rule, he issued a fat war against all developments of any weapons of mass destruction.

43:17And that actually has played a role in some of the kind of legal discussions that have gone around about Iran and nuclear weapons. I think he's I don't think anybody believes that he any longer thinks that it's wrong to develop weapons of mass destruction. He did say it was anti -Islamic at one point. And so I think we're talking now about somebody who is old, been there a long time, will be very scared in terms of his own survival. I don't think we should doubt his personal courage. This is a guy who's, I don't even know this worry, he's, I always used to wonder why does he always shake hands with his left hand when he's sort of working the crowds.

43:55And it's because he was almost killed in the aftermath of the revolution by he was doing a, it was taking prayers and somebody went up and put a tape recorder up as if to tape what he was saying. And it was a, it was a bomb exploded and he ended up sort of, I think he, one of the reasons his voice is so weak, weaker than maybe a leader would like it to be, because his vocal cords of damage paralyzed down his right side, his right arm. So this is somebody I think who will, we should not think that this is somebody who's just going to kind of think, okay, well, America's told us to stop. Israel looks like he's got more weapons that we have, we'll just sort of hide away.

44:39Well, there's been some quite, quite interesting stuff in the comments. Some of it, cheerful, some of it, typically rude, that's something. Give me the root stuff first. Give me the root stuff. One thing is they're accusing me of looking at my phone and multitasking when you're speaking. A lot of people are saying roaring, never lessons, and then stuff saying Alistair's wrong. But anyway, apart from some of that stuff, no rude stuff guys. We'll Trump expect peace price. And we'll Trump expect peace price just for a moment on Serena L. We'll Trump expect a peace price. I was talking to a senior Pakistani politician yesterday, who'd reminded me that we'd missed one of the extraordinary stories last week, which is that President Trump welcomed into the White House.

45:29The Pakistan Chief of the Army stuff didn't bother to invite the Prime Minister or President of Pakistan, just the Chief of the Army stuff and the head of the Inter -Services Intelligence Agency. Sat them down for a halal lunch, a kosher lunch in the White House. With Marco Rubio and Hexath and the President, two hour lunch, an incredible honor for the US President's Secretary of State, defense secretary to sit down with the Pakistan Army Chief. At the end of it, the Pakistanis came out and have nominated him formally. For a Nobel Peace Prize. So, and I wonder whether over the lunch Donald Trump gave a verbal version of the post he put out last week saying, I bought peace to Ethiopia, I bought peace to Kosovo and Serbia, I bought peace to, I mean, this desperation for gongs and adulation, I had a very interesting email this morning from a woman who is, we should maybe talk about this another time today, it's probably not the day.

46:28But she said, you guys keep scratching your head about what motivates Trump's. And she sent me the 10 factors that doctors used to analyze narcissistic personality disorder. And I said, I did, I did take them all off, but will we, will we be coming back to that? So, I told my friend, my friend Emma Skye, who's a colleague at Yale and who knows Iraq in particular far better than, than almost any other international commentator. She was pointing out a couple of things. One is that point that I stole from her at the beginning, which is that what matters to Trump is not avoiding war, but seeming like a winner.

47:07The second is how astonishingly pleased Netanyahu will be. He has achieved the great objective of his political career, which is to get the United States to come in behind him, bombing Iran. It will be seen as an enormous triumph for him to have got Trump on side, a huge win for Netanyahu. Final thing just before we stop, we've got Sarah Lane, keep it up, Pugsdan now joined China and Russia calling for peace. The China Russia peace, people haven't talked about enough. So, Russia is Iran's ally. They signed just seven months ago, a very special pact between them, a public pact. And Putin has invited the Iranian Foreign Minister yesterday to Moscow.

47:57And Iran was really supporting Russia and Ukraine. It was giving them drones. It actually helped them build a drone factory. It's been the main conduit for smuggling stuff into Russia to break sanctions. And yet, Russia did not really come out and support Iran when the chips were down. Even when Putin had a meeting with Iranians, and they did the cameras and he said a few words. He talked about this unprovoked, agression and so forth. But the body language was not, I'm all in with you guys. It's really interesting. So, 10 years ago, Russia was playing the role of stepping into Syria against the West, saving Bashar al -Assad's regime against the wishes of the Gulf and the West.

48:41This time round, not only if they refuse to sell them planes and air defense systems, but they've been remarkably quiet. And I wonder what people around the world are doing looking at that because it's becoming part of a pattern from Russia. They didn't support their ally Armenia when Azerbaijan went in and helped itself to Nagorno -Karabakh. I would be beginning to wonder if I was a country relying on Russia as an ally. Will Russia actually help and the chips are down? Or will it, as it's just done now, calculated? Well, it's got relationships with Israel it cares about. It's relying on the Gulf to help aid sanctions.

49:19And it's not going to take any risk because all it really cares about is Ukraine. So, I think there's also a sense of a weakening of Russian power around the region. Interesting. There's a question here from Jabbawaki GB. What do you think about Mark Rutter stating that the US action didn't break international law? Mark Rutter caused former prime minister in the Netherlands, who's known the head of NATO. I hadn't heard him say that. I looked up the UN law on this. All members, this is Article 2 .4 of the UN Charter. All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the UN.

50:03There are only two exceptions. One, when the UN Security Council authorizes force, that doesn't apply. And two, when a state acts in self -defense. So, the whole argument here is about whether genuinely this is about self -defense. And the interesting thing we've talked about the similarities and the differences with Iraq. And if you go back to, I said the other day, the press, the reason why we did the intelligence dossier in the end was because the public and parliament and the media were saying, well, you keep talking about intelligence. Where is it? But we're not going to place with Trump and Netanyahu.

50:39They simply assert we have intelligence to show, etc. And it was interesting. The reason I think that you and why that's important is that if you look at the statement that Trump has put out about Congress, he essentially has said that he's done a note to Congress effectively saying that they took part to support our ally of Israel in its self -defense. In other words, they, I think the lawyers have been over that to try to give a sort of post facto legal justification. But we are, as you be keep saying, we're in the Syrian punitive scene. Yeah, we're in a very, very different world. There's a good article by a Suzanne Reign in Engelsberg ideas on the idea of preemption.

51:26And she focuses on Sedaniel Bethlehem QC, who managed to produce 16 principles on what constitutes the right of self -defense. So this is article 51 of the UN. But basically, it comes down to the fact that you can attack someone else, provided you can demonstrate that an armed attack is imminent was being planned. So the threshold would need to be that the US and Israel could show that an armed attack from Iran was imminent. And the whole thing comes into the nature and imminency of the threat, the probability of the attack, the relationship to patent, likely scale of the attack, the likelihood of other opportunities to stop it.

52:10But I think that's the issue here. And this is where I was talking about Eisenhower on Sunday, where he said, it's not enough to say that this is an enemy. It's not enough to say that in the long term, it's a threat. You cannot get into a world of using force just because you think someone might in the future attack you because if you open that up, there's no end to it. I mean, literally any adversary you have anywhere in the world, definitionally, you'd think might sometime attack you. And certainly if you're the Iranians looking at the US and Israel at the moment, you'd be absolutely right to think they might at some time attack you.

52:48But that wouldn't be considered an international law or justification for striking them. Yeah. I mean, before we go, my final point is about how many, because I don't want to give the impression this is some sort of guy who's absolutely dedicated to his cause and just sort of toils away as a leader. He's also phenomenally wealthy. Reuters did a huge investigation a few years ago where they put together analysis that they reckon he's got a financial empire worth not short, not a lot short of a hundred billion dollars. And not necessarily because he wants to live in great lavishness. I don't know whether he does or he doesn't, but because he wants himself to be independent of the other financial structures of the state.

53:34And the other thing that makes him slightly oligarchical, Trumpian in another way as well is that there's a lot of talk that he wants one of his sons. I think he's second son that he wants him to be his successor. So we're talking about somebody who's been in power so long that he's developed a lot of the characteristics that go with long -term dictatorial leaders. But this be my final observation. I think let's not underestimate the level of his belief or the level of belief within the inner circle. It may be shrinking. I mean, there are fewer and fewer people who believe in the revolution, but there is still a hardcore of millions of people who surround him who I think are genuinely profoundly ideologically committed.

54:19And he, I think, is one of them. I think he was formed by the revolution, formed by the Iran -eraq war. And I wouldn't conclude that he's just somebody who's going to sort of give up shrug and run for the hills of people attacking. There's quite a few you're talking about the criticism. I'm getting quite a lot of criticism trying to say that Iraq was different that people saying it's actually just the same. I will get argue about that. Ruin I already have. But there's also quite a lot of argument about my glasses. Some people like them and some people don't. So there we are. The big debates will have them on this podcast.

54:51Let's do a podcast on your glasses. I mean, I can see some. No, I don't agree with what you should read. I agree with you about that. No, tell me what we could do a podcast on. You've been a real man for occasionally reminding us of Prince Reza Pellavi. So Gen X Ray. Prince Reza Pellavi, of course, being the son of the last Shah of Iran, who's now to be found appearing on Laura Kunzberg on a Sunday morning saying, you know, anybody who attacks the regime is fine with me. And essentially seem to be saying it was okay. And he was on the side of the US with their strikes because it was top of the regime.

55:24I think that is a massive error. I think Iranians around the world, whatever they think of the regime, are not happy with somebody purporting to be leader who says he's okay with the US just attacking Iran whenever they feel like it. I think some will be and some won't surely. Some will see anything that undermines the Iranian regime. We happy others not. Maybe I think we should do more about Iran in future. And Lin Williams finally asked about the mug, I'm really pleased people take an interest in my pots and my ceramics. This is a really good cup. Available for I think nine pounds ninety nine on all good salads, but I don't know yet to promote.

56:07Anyway, thank you all. This is a recyclable. I always insist recyclable coffee cup from a coffee shop in Nicosia. Marvelous. Well, see you very soon, Alistair. Thanks for tuning in. Thank you so much to all the people, followers, members of Trip class. People who've been on YouTube been great to have your voices in this conversation. Have a great day today. Five to eight here in the United Kingdom. Signing off. Thank you very much.

56:40Hey, everyone. Here's the George Clip that we mentioned during the break that you can listen to the whole episode for free on the rest of entertainment dot com.

56:51There's no cast. The cast is so last minute for this. It was nine days. Before principal photography was due to start two of the three main parts Quinton Hooper still hadn't been cast nine days before. So everyone's ready. Everyone's ready to go. You know, the whole universe. You were eventually played by Robert Shore and Richard Dreyfus in the movie. And those two have a massive feud. There were so many other different people that they considered. Now Brody, who was actually played by Roy Shider, is a brilliant performance. He's so sort of it's an amazing performance. Yeah, so put upon and like every man, but yeah, I mean, other people consider where Paul Newman, Charlton Heston, Robert DeValle, Jean Hattman, like definitely the last two of those could have done it.

57:30Yeah, so I think Charlton Heston was desperate to be in and Spielberg. Again, you know what? He was smart right from the beginning Spielberg. Yeah, he said, think about Charlton Heston. He's too big a star. Why is he too big because you know Charlton Heston always wins. That's the problem. You know Charlton Heston is going to defeat the shot. You know what Roy's showing is going to do. You just don't know. So it's really important. Yeah, Roy's show leader has a look of a man who could be eaten. You're definitely eating. Yeah, you will. Yeah, I mean, I can see it. I don't know if his agent is, you know, he's going to be saying he's going to be in it, but he can't be eaten.

57:58He could definitely be eaten. Charlton Heston, each shot. Yeah. Charlton Heston, each shot. Another, again, another great title, for the book. Roy Shider actually heard Steven Spielberg talking about it as a party. And Steven Spielberg was saying he'd had this idea for how he could get the shot, the shot to jump onto a boat. Roy Shider thought, I'd like to be in that movie. Yeah, that sounds good. I like this kid. And he said I would like to be in this movie. Anyway, John Heston, by the way, vowed never to work with Spielberg after that.