508. Is Starmer Sleepwalking into War with Iran?

17:25Alastair Campbell:Well, no, I don't think it is right because I think he, what he said was when he said we will give the Americans permission to use two bases, Fairfoot and Diego Garcia, it was in relation to defensive operations. So when you said you can use them for whatever you like, now Trump may decide that's the green light so to do, but that's not what was agreed.

17:44Rory Stewart:If I said that he said he could use more of it like, I don't think I did say that. I apologize. But I think it's a really weird bit of political signaling. If your view on Saturday is we're not joining this war, and there are very good reasons not to join this war. Let me put one of them. If you start getting involved in this war, you become a legitimate target for Iran and Iranian terrorist attacks against Britain.

18:04Alastair Campbell:Since when they fired drones at an RA base in Cyprus?

18:07Rory Stewart:Exactly. You start saying we're going to be part of this war, even if it's only for defensive operations from two bases. You've blurred that line suddenly. Maybe. Suddenly, Britain's security is now more at risk.

18:17Alastair Campbell:Okay. I actually do think there is a logic to what he did. And actually, if you think about the history of US-UK relations, the relations between presidents and prime ministers, and you've been critical of Keir, trying to be too close to Trump, I've tried to kind of maybe understand it. I thought he was very clear that he doesn't want to say the words, and I heard Darren Jones being interviewed this morning, they're desperate for him to say the was we think the initial action was illegal by the way which clearly they do what they've said was they have been given advice by the attorney general that there was no legal basis for the UK to take part in that initial attack okay they think there is a legal basis to take part in defensive operations where UK interests have come under attack which they have and so look I think this underlines just how bloody hard this is logistically practically and politically but i actually hope my hope out of this is because i watched a lot of the statement in parliament yesterday and i think i don't know if you saw i think if you had you'd have felt actually keir starman was really pushing back at the americans in a way that thus far he has not he was essentially saying that and he didn't want to say in these terms but essentially he was saying that so far as he is concerned, the UK will not take part in military action that it does not believe to have a legal basis.

19:40Alastair Campbell:And Rory, look at the reaction there's been. Look at the reaction there's been from Trump. Why has he phoned up the Sun and the Telegraph?

19:46Rory Stewart:Yeah, well, that's why I think it's the worst of all worlds. Well, maybe. I think it's really bizarre. I think people were quite proud of him on Saturday. Actually, quite proud of Mertz on Saturday. I mean, there was a brief moment when it looked like at least Britain, France and Germany were taking what I think is the correct position, which only the spanish government has really laid out which is you can say this is a really evil horrendous serenian regime and you can also say this is an illegal reckless war that we want to have nothing to do with so that's the correct position i think right yeah that's you and they came pretty close to that on saturday yeah and then on sunday right we'll come back to starmer in a second i mean i think at the very least it's a communications disaster you know whatever else it is i think most people in britain who on saturday were thinking thank god this guy stepped out of the war.

20:31Rory Stewart:Then think on Sunday, oh my god, Starmer's changed his mind, now we're involved in this in some way because we're allowing him to use his bases for defensive operations and now we're a legitimate target for the Iranians. Suddenly you've gone from Saturday where reform of the Conservatives are saying, you know, you're weak and legally livid, to saying at last, you know, Starmer's got with the programme better late than never, thank goodness he's now letting the base. Well they're not saying that, they're really not saying that. That's what they were saying on Sunday, that's what they were saying on Sunday, and now by Wednesday it's all shifted again.

20:59Alastair Campbell:Okay, no, but I do honestly worry. I think you're too clear.

21:03Rory Stewart:I think literally everybody that I've spoken to over the last few days just thinks Starmer is in a complete mess.

21:10Alastair Campbell:No, he's in a bind, which is a different thing. I would say that I think you are showing the difference between being commentator and player. Keir Starmer is having to make the actual decisions about this. Let's take Sanchez. We're going to be speaking to Sanchez quite soon. Now, I agree from the precision that I laid that you and I laid out on Saturday. His was the clearest, and you and I can both say, yeah, I want to hear that. What happens in the next few days if in Dubai, an Iranian missile lands on a five-star hotel and a Spanish football team gets taken out? Okay? You've got to think through where you might need these alliances.

21:49Alastair Campbell:You have to play a little bit shades of grey. I think Keir Starmer on day one, on day one, I think he pushed the boat out as far as he's pushed it thus far, basically saying to Trump, there's no legal basis, we're not taking part. Okay, that's quite a big message to put out when you think of the history of the US-UK in these war situations. Day two, when you've got drones flying at Cyprus, and you've got the Cypriot president phoning Keir Starmer saying, what the fuck is going on here? And they're the current president of the European Union. I think that does change things a little bit and you have to adapt to that you can say it's a communication if there was a communications issue it is that he if you like he communicated both with the same sense of gravity and the same tone for them what's the result let's let's step back from it and say

22:37Rory Stewart:let's say we're thinking about uk national interest yeah the uk national interest basically in this is you don't want to be making an enemy of the u.s because the u.s can make life very uncomfortable for you correct and you don't want to be making an enemy of iran because iran can cause chaos in the british streets so you make your call right it's a very difficult call yeah but what i fear he's done is he's managed to piss off both of them he's taken a position on the u.s which he hasn't turned around by his decision on sunday i don't think the u.s particularly thank him for having come out said their wars are legal no trump says he took too long then on sunday said by the way you can use my airfields for defensive purposes i don't think we've won any credit from the US for doing that.

23:18Rory Stewart:But it's not about winning credit. I don't see that it's about winning credit. No, no, because this is what the national interest is about here. Let's be blunt, right? Right. So you said - The UK is not protecting its citizens by getting involved in this war. The UK is endangering its citizens by getting involved in its war. In what way are we making the United Kingdom safer by making ourselves part of a coalition against Iran?

23:39Alastair Campbell:Well, one, we have not joined that war against Iran. But when you have upwards of more than a quarter of a million people, Brits, in that region, you are going to have to deploy some British assets to be part of an operation to take out the potential threat against them. And that's what they're doing. I don't think, I think you...

23:59Rory Stewart:I don't even understand this. What are you saying? Have we joined it or not? Are we fighting or aren't we? What are we doing? We've had... You seem to suggest we are fighting. We're not joining the coalition. We are fighting. We're not. What are we doing here?

24:09Alastair Campbell:They've got... Rory, I think you're being, honestly, I think you're being ridiculous on this. I think you're so determined. basically to say that the position that you hold, which is we should have nothing to do with this, is so right that anybody who disagrees... It's the Spanish position. It's the correct position. That is the Spanish position. No, it's the correct position in your view. It's your view that it's correct, OK? You're not the Prime Minister. You're not the Cabinet having to sit there thinking, OK, first day, we are pretty clear. There's no legal basis, but we don't want to say that because that's going to piss off Big Donald in the White House.

24:41Alastair Campbell:But we're not taking part. That pisses him off anyway, OK? But it pisses him off maybe a little bit less. Day two, they actually feel, not least when they see drones coming in on Cyprus, and they then see, I just listed, 14 countries where they're whacking off missiles. Britain cannot just sort of sit that out. It's doing so from a defensive perspective. I was in Ukraine last week, right? We talked about Ukraine. I'll tell you one place where this is going to do real damage to our relations with the United States in relation to Ukraine. because oil, the oil price is going to go up because that's a real factor.

25:18Alastair Campbell:Trump probably won't have thought about it, but it's going to go up and Russia is going to start to make more money. At some point in the coming weeks, we're going to have to go back to Trump and say, please don't pull the plug on the intelligence. What Sanchez has done is quite easy for Sanchez to do. I think for the British prime minister or the French president or the German chancellor, we'll see what Merz says in Germany today. They are riding quite a few horses at the same time. and the clarity that you're calling for, I think is totally naive.

25:44Rory Stewart:We're not going to agree on Starmer because obviously you have a very different position on this. I think he's made a huge mistake and I think he's ended up in the worst of all worlds. I think he's pissed off both the US and the Iranians with very little benefit for Britain and I don't think Britain will be safer as a result.

25:57Alastair Campbell:We've pissed off the Iranians for the entirety of our existence. I wouldn't worry too much about that. Where you're right is he doesn't want the Yanks to be falling out and he doesn't want the Iranians to be whacking off missiles. If the Iranians saw an opportunity tomorrow to take out a few Brits somewhere, they would do it. British forces have to be alive and alert to that. Our intelligence agencies have to be alive and alert to that. And if something happened in the next few days, Rory, if something happened that hit Britain's injuries, you just watch the avalanche against Keir Starmer.

26:28Rory Stewart:And how will his decision to let the Americans fly from Diego Garcia make any difference to that? I don't know that it will. I don't know because, you know, we'll have to see. Well, you seem to be suggesting somehow that's relevant to the question of how we respond when Iran attacks British troops. I just don't see why he needed to do that.

26:43Alastair Campbell:Look, he's asked first time. He says no. He's asked second time and he says yes for these limited purposes in which we're going to be participating ourselves, defensive operations against threats to us. Right. You don't want to see that there may become circumstances where that becomes the right decision, not the wrong decision. It's not black and white, this.

27:06Rory Stewart:I don't think any of these things are black and white. But you're saying there's one decision. But you're defending him. You're defending him. You're defending him very strongly here, Alistair. I'm defending him. You're not saying it's a difficult decision. I am saying it's a difficult decision. I might not have made it. You're giving us the talking points, essentially, for the cabinet.

27:20Alastair Campbell:That's their view, right? No, Rory, don't insult me. Well, let's hear some criticism then.

27:24Rory Stewart:Okay. If you're seeing this balanced.

27:26Alastair Campbell:Rory, we're having an agreeable disagreement because I think you're being both naive and unfair. You're being naive because it's so easy to sit on the sidelines and say, I wouldn't do that. I'd be like Sanchez.

27:38Rory Stewart:Why is that naive, Alison? What's naive? Let's just follow this through.

27:41Alastair Campbell:I've explained to you why I think it's naive.

27:43Rory Stewart:You make a big call on Saturday. It's a difficult call. It's a principal call. You hold to that call. You hold to that call. And a drone comes into Cyprus. You hold to that call. It's not that difficult. And then something else happens. And then something else happens.

27:58Alastair Campbell:And then something else happens. Look, if events change, if events change, maybe you have to change your mind. But you don't have to do it on Sunday. Okay, okay. You can say that. Let me tell you why I think it's naive. because I think Sanchez's position is easier to take than to see through if and when we've started we started this podcast talking about how unpredictable this now is and about how dangerous and how difficult it is there will come a point through the next weeks and months where we will need all sorts of different allies in this equation we will need the French we will need the Germans We may well, we will need the Americans at some point.

28:35Alastair Campbell:I think you are wanting, I've said this the last time we talked about this, you're wanting the Hugh Grant moment where he basically says what we say, Trump, you're an evil bastard, go away, leave us alone. I'd like to hear a bit of that. I'd like to hear a bit of that. I said to you, I wish he would have absolutely called him out over slagging off Sadiq Khan. I wished he would say when he came out against what Trump said on Afghanistan, I would like Keir Starmer to have done it sooner and to have done it harder. we are not in the same position that we were i guess the reason i'm defending i'm not doing the talking points i'm defending him because i i think he's in a really really really tough spot at a time when most of our media and most of the opposition i think and let me tell you rory i think farage and badnock have made a massive mistake in my view by not giving any thought other than the idea that Trump may be right.

29:26Alastair Campbell:You think Trump has to be wrong. I'm saying if you're the British Prime Minister, you have to weigh things up in the round. You're going to get attacked whatever you do. And I think you're being very, very unfair in saying that he got it right day one, got it totally wrong, and he's ended up in the worst of all worlds. Let's see where it goes. And I think if you read Hansard from yesterday, you would have a sense of somebody who reacted in the way that he did day one, thought about it a bit more. Day two, I think, was in a better, more rounded position. And that's what we saw yesterday.

29:57Rory Stewart:Well, Alistair, listen, that was quite a tough, difficult conversation where maybe we weren't always, certainly I wasn't always modeling the best example of disagreeing agreeably, for which apologies. So let's take a little break. In exchange, Alistair, I want to do a little plugging for you, which is you're doing a great show with Anthony Scaramucci in Belfast. So while we take it down a turn or two, time for a quick break and encourage people to get some tickets, a couple of tickets to the left for the Belfast show, which should be fantastic.

30:27Alastair Campbell:That's on Friday. Dublin's on Thursday, massively sold out with a huge waiting list. Belfast, you've got half a front row left, so see you there. And the link is in the description.

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32:43Rory Stewart:Okay, we're clearly not going to agree on Starmer's decision. Metz, I think that is even more disappointing, shocking. I mean, Metz has come out in a statement and a speech essentially saying we shouldn't worry too much about international law. That's a catastrophic thing for the chancellor to say, because what is our position on Ukraine? What is our position on Greenland? It's about international law. International law is messy, sure. It's hypocritical. There's always a conflict between morality and international law. There's always realpolitik. There's always this kind of stuff. But it embeds the basic idea, which is that you cannot just get out of bed in the morning and say, this is a nasty regime, and therefore I'm going after it.

33:27Rory Stewart:And it embeds an idea that you need to be cautious. And we can get on to talking about what we think is going to happen in Iran after this. But many, many of the scenarios are horrendous. And it's extraordinary that with this opportunity, which I felt existed for these middle powers to actually articulate a non-Trumpian foreign policy to really explain what their worldview was, we have the German Chancellor essentially saying that international law isn't that important.

33:57Alastair Campbell:I will agree with you on that and I did think his statement was off and I also think it was probably because as we speak I think he's in Washington now and he's going to be the first world leader to sit down with Trump since this thing whole happened that may have calibrated add it to which Germany is as we've said many many times on the podcast before is always instinctively way way closer to Israel than a lot of other European countries are not least Spain that we've talked about I think that this point though about international law David Wolfson shadow attorney general he wrote a long piece and he hits back at Keir Starmer Richard Herman the attorney general's position that the first that if the UK had been involved in the first wave that that would have somehow been against international law and he said some really interesting things what he said and when you read the argument in full he is using his interpretation of international law to say why it would have been perfectly justifiable for the UK to be involved and we should have been involved that's the conservative party position it's the nigel farage position and he says international law ought to provide a mechanism to restrain and if necessary end despotic and tyrannical regimes such as that in iran if the doctrines of international law prove unable to restrain iranian terrorism and mass murder and tie the hands of democracies while forcing them to stand and watch iranian atrocities international law will have failed And what that says to me is that on any side of these things, you will find people who will use their interpretation of international law to suit a political position.

35:29Alastair Campbell:OK, we got accused of doing that in relation to Iraq and paid a very heavy political price for it. I would argue that he's doing something very, very similar with this.

35:40Rory Stewart:Yeah, well, on Wolfson, I think it's completely shocking that a shadow attorney general can take that position. I mean, international law ought to provide a mechanism. Well, it either does or it doesn't. He then goes on to say, if the doctrines of international law prove unable to do what he wants to do, then international law will have failed.

36:02Alastair Campbell:Yeah. So he's in Mert's position.

36:04Rory Stewart:He then says, the inherent right to use force in the face of an imminent attack from a hostile nation. What is that imminent attack? There wasn't one. So the whole point about the judgment on that is you need to show that they have the capacity to do real harm and they're about to do it. It didn't meet that evidentiary standard. I totally agree. I totally agree. I can't understand how someone as distinguished as David Wolfson can end up taking this position. It's completely bizarre. Literally, there's not a single international lawyer in the world who can make an international lawyer. Trump isn't even attempting to make an international legal argument.

36:41Rory Stewart:Israel isn't even attempting to make an international legal argument. So why is Wolfson making it for them?

36:46Alastair Campbell:because what he and farage and tice and badenot what they are doing is saying international law isn't like other sorts of laws where it's clear or it should be clear it's really complicated it's very very political it's how we interpret it give you another example paragraph five of his statement the uk and also the us is permitted under international law to use force to aid another state which is enacting in self-defense so he's trying to say america's under attack which you and i let's not fall out again rory you and i agree there was no self-defense going on here this is a war of choice he then goes on moreover the uk is under an obligation in international law to prevent genocide not just to stop it stopping an ongoing genocide is required but it necessarily means the action was taken too late and as i read that i thought bloody hell if we're going to talk about he's basically saying iran wants to commit genocide against israel okay we had a discussion a few months ago about whether Britain actually was not fulfilling its international obligations in relation to the prevention of genocide in Gaza.

37:49Alastair Campbell:And so the point I'm making this is that we've we're all everybody's just making this about pre-existing political positions.

38:00Rory Stewart:It's so weird. I mean, David Wolfson, I think, was on record saying the accusation of genocide and the notion that she should be stopping Israel in Gaza because of genocide was completely unfair. And now he's using the same term that he said was dangerous, too vague, shouldn't be applied to Israel's actions in Gaza. He's applying it to the Iranian regime. I really don't understand what's going on in his head at the moment. No, I think what's going on is that his party, the conservatives,

38:32Alastair Campbell:who are in this sort of existential battle with reform, have decided that we the uk should have been in lockstep with the us from the word go now you and i disagree with that right and so does keir starmer even though you don't like what he did on day two but they've made that decision now as it happens just to go to the politics of this i think they've made a terrible mistake because even though i will get my usual suspects including the person i live with saying you know for god's sake she's bad to say rory was right and i was wrong but i think the fact is don't look so pleased about that roy the fact is it's fiona it's fiona

39:11Rory Stewart:whose views i'm interested in really as long as she's on my side i don't mind too much no fiona

39:16Alastair Campbell:fiona's views aren't dissimilar to yours they're not dissimilar to yours is that and she was angry on the second night when that statement was made i would have liked to have heard labor people out today attacking Donald Trump for saying what he said about Keir Starmer. And I'd also like to hear Labour people attacking those media outlets that are so gagging for the Labour Prime Minister to be slapped down by the American president. I think what Newsom said, if without Murdoch there is no Trump, what Trump says about the way he, and Hex said yesterday, I hate the way they do it, but I think the public know that there is something wrong in the way that really difficult, complicated government positions that a prime minister has to take kind of on the spot, surrounded by millions of views and Twitter and all this stuff, that at least give them a bit of credit for trying to think things through when they're fast paced and incredibly complicated.

40:19Alastair Campbell:That's all I'm saying.

40:20Rory Stewart:One of the things that I think would help with this is if we really got to a stage where Britain, France, Germany, and goodness knows maybe Canada, began to develop a bit of joint thinking. And the reason they need joint thinking is they need to work out what threats are really happening. Well, for example, I could imagine a conversation between Britain, France, and Germany saying to the US, listen, you told us that you couldn't afford to defend Europe because you needed to focus on priorities elsewhere, in particular China. We're a little puzzled that you told us the reason you couldn't support Ukraine with Patriot missiles as they were so precious and you needed to keep them all for China.

41:01Rory Stewart:And now you've apparently blown them all up, not blown them up, but used a fair quantity of them in a war of choice against Iran. But our view is that the real threat to our security is Russia. Iran hasn't taken 20 % of the territory of a European state. Iran hasn't ended up with 1.2 million casualties. We're focused on Russia. Thank you very much. And actually, our view is that this war against Iran is wrong. It's going to drive up oil prices, which will help Russia, as you pointed out. Which you already asked. It's going to use up American money and missiles, which we were hoping to purchase for the Ukrainians, right?

41:36Rory Stewart:Which is going to help Russia, etc. Right. Right. So that would be one type of argument. You do your threat assessment. You work out where your priorities are. Let's say it's Russia. Second thing you might do is you might develop a view on the world. You know, what do you think about international law? Maybe take the Wolfson view. Maybe you take whatever view. It doesn't really matter. Thirdly, work out how much you can defend on the United States. What kind of relationship do you want with the US? Do you going to have to make your own patriot missiles or are you going to continue to buy them?

42:02Rory Stewart:Two perfectly valid views. You know, one of them is actually the US in the end is always going to send us these things so we don't need to make them. But nuclear weapons, we've just had this announcement from Macron about the French nuclear shield. Huge news. So, you know, even if we start spending hundreds of billions more on defense, we're not going to be able to spend that money well unless we have a joint threat assessment, right? Money on defense without a shared view of where the threats are is money wasted. That could be, you know, what's our relationship with the US? What do we think about the Middle East?

42:34Rory Stewart:What do we think about Russia and Ukraine? So, I think what would have helped here is if we'd had a sense, not that all these guys were surprised and had to respond on the hoof, right? You know, one of the defenses I've heard for Canada is, of course, we didn't call them what we're supposed to do, we were suddenly surprised. What do you mean surprised? For months now, a massive American fleet has been sitting off the coast of Iran. Israel has been pushing for intervention in Iran. So, I could imagine Europe, Canada having a really strong, clear joint position weeks in advance, signaled to the US weeks in advance, so that if you have a situation where the US doesn't consult its allies, barely informs you of what it's doing, doesn't go to the UN, doesn't go to Congress, you come up with a clear joint statement saying, you know, we're with you or we're against you.

43:21Rory Stewart:I would suggest we're not with you, but anyway, whatever it is, and not get the sense that everybody's thrown off balance and changing their position every, you know, whatever. I mean, I don't want to get Dragnes Dahmer again, but certainly with Merz, the position is very odd. Certainly with Carney, the position doesn't really seem to track with his Dabas position. I mean, I don't get what's going on with these people.

43:40Alastair Campbell:No, and also with Merz, I mean, I think I sent you a clip. He was speaking at a party congress by the weekend, and he does a very, very good impersonation of Donald Trump. What did you say? 60 %? I don't believe it. He was basically suggesting that you can only deal with Donald Trump. It's a bit like Scaramucci says, you have to show him pictures and he's going to show him graphs. He was trying to explain, he was explaining that immigration is falling in Germany by 60%. So that was him the day before taking the mickey out of Donald Trump and the audience was lapping it up. As you say, the next day, he comes out with this statement essentially saying, you know, they can do pretty much blank check.

44:20Alastair Campbell:We'll see what he says in Washington today. I thought the Macron statement, by the way, got a lot less attention than I thought it would. This nuclear thing. Incredible. Yeah. Incredible. They're changing the nuclear doctrine. They're increasing the number of warheads in direct response, essentially, to the fact that China is getting more and more nukes. America is behaving in a much more irrational way. And then there's all this talk about whether other European countries will be able to will be protected by that shield, etc. So I thought that was one of the most underreported significant developments of the week.

44:54Rory Stewart:Can I just finish on the Macron point? Because there was something interesting there that I thought. I mean, it was incredible. It was staged with the French president flying in on a helicopter with two French jets alongside. The speech was made in this massive kind of James Bond style building. And he's announcing the French nuclear territory. The implication was going to cover Poland and Germany. It's like the biggest news. And he'd presumably been planning for weeks. would there be have been an argument for not doing it right at the very start of the iran war when everyone every news station is only covering iran doesn't really feel that it has much bandwidth for

45:27Alastair Campbell:this and delaying it a couple of weeks oh possibly yeah possibly i mean the only thing is i wonder whether it had already been planned and i also think that right in france it was kind of wall it's seen as and i think in germany as well i mean we we do have a such a sort of inward looking kind the media here and of course America it's even it's even worse but no but I thought that was really really significant and by the way I agree with you we're both big friends and fans of Mark Carney I think he's great but there was something slightly going against the tenor of his Davos speech in the way that Canada reacted this week I thought the closest he's got to was day one the E3 there was something we said that on the podcast on Saturday there was something in that initial statement yeah that felt like these are serious people taking this seriously they're not going to slag off trump they're all sitting there thinking christ what's the guy going to do next this is going to cause chaos but since then i agree i think it's become much more nation by nation and the other reason why that happens is because and this is the nature of the globalized world every country in the world has people who are kind of flying in and out of dubai who now stuck and they've got families and friends and media saying you know what are you doing to help us we've just i just heard this morning that the australian military headquarters in the gulf has just taken a couple of a couple of drones so this is this is the point this is going to go in any which way and i think until it becomes a little bit clear we haven't even gone on i'm sorry we got so dragged into the sort of row about care we haven't even got on to what's actually going to be happening inside iran and where that might lead we haven't got on to how israel now moving further into lebanon basically saying that they're entitled to do that because hezbollah have been whacking off a few missiles at them again and in breach of the deal that was done.

47:14Rory Stewart:We've got quite caught up in this question of international law and international reactions. But the heart of this, of course, is what's happening on the ground. You've talked about Dubai, which will be terrifying for people living in UAE. It's also terrifying for the government of UAE. I mean, that's a government that has spent 25 years pursuing a development model, which is about providing safety, technology, low tax, predictable life for expatriates. It's a very expatriate place. And suddenly, that whole model is under sustained fire. And it's really exposing how potentially vulnerable someone like the Emirates can be.

47:57Rory Stewart:I mean, it doesn't have a big military. It doesn't have a big ability to defend itself when these things happen. But let's just do Iran for a second. I'm hoping we talked a little bit about Kareem Sadeghpur perhaps coming on the program, but I sent you something that he'd written. I saw it, yeah. Yeah, I thought it was quite interesting. I mean, what Kareem is saying, he's a big, big Iran expert, is that he thinks that what may happen is that it may feel a bit more like Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union. He points out Iran's actually only had four leaders in 100 years, two shahs, Khomeini, Khomeini.

48:32Rory Stewart:Everything may collapse and there may be chaos. But what happens if it's like Russia is the Soviet Union collapses, you then have seven, eight years of chaos, and then a new sort of nationalist strongman emerges. And he thinks there's quite a lot in the Iranian structure, the paranoid systems, oil, oligarchs. The reason why he's a bit gloomy about people who think that this is going to be great for the human rights of the Iranian people, or it's going to end with liberal democracy is because he can see structural elements which suggest that you could end up with an Iranian Putin at the end of this.

49:04Alastair Campbell:Is that sort of what we were saying the other day when we went through the four possibilities of what might happen? I think you and I both coalesced around the idea of a military dictatorship that was less interested in the exterior world and much more interested in internal power. So I guess you might say that's an early stage Putin as opposed to the Putin that developed. We were being critical earlier about the way that perhaps the middle powers as Mark Carney calls them hadn't sort of thought through right well what are the what-ifs we've all been saying that this what's just happened might happen if Netanyahu and Trump get together and they whack out Khamenei what do we do okay you do get the feeling that if that discussion hadn't happened amongst those powers that it had certainly happened amongst the Iranian regime so as we said on the podcast on Sunday a lot of them got taken out well there

49:52Rory Stewart:was this amazing moment to just quickly on that where trump seemed to say that he'd been given a list of successors his sort of dulcie rodriguez figures in venezuela the kind of deputies who were going to take over but unfortunately he killed them all by mistake so he isn't quite

50:05Alastair Campbell:sure who's supposed to be taking over now yeah if you think about their response i mean it has been quite strategic in its own way i mean it looks chaotic because they're just whacking off missiles here and they're everywhere but what is the strategy at the heart of it i think it is to have the effect that they're having which is to drive the oil price up very very high which to get these nations in the gulf that iran thinks have much more influence upon trump than iran ever does and certainly than europe seems to be able to do so the saudis and these guys actually say come on trump this has got to be over sooner rather than later so i think there is a sort of method in what they've been what they've been trying to do i do you know the other thing that's really surprised me in recent days, Rory, is, I mean, I've got the scars of several sort of military situations, but if we go back to the early days of our time in government, the Kosovo war, every time there were kind of civilian casualties, there was a big debate about it.

51:05Alastair Campbell:There was political pressure over it. You had a situation the other day, I watched the footage this morning of the funeral of some of these 175 kids, or well, people, including a lot of kids, who were killed with this school that was bombed. And I've not even seen that on our media. It was just a kind of online thing that I saw somebody had posted.

51:27Rory Stewart:Really kind of, you know... It's completely horrendous. And as you say, that was not true in Kosovo. I mean, there's been a sort of, there's a real sense of decline. And I'm afraid Gaza is part of that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's also been not that much coverage. You mentioned Lebanon, But essentially, there's been another incursion into Lebanon. Hezbollah struck Israel. Israel struck against Hezbollah. I was talking to someone who's in Gaza today. I hadn't got the fact that effectively the border's now closed with Gaza, so food is not going into Gaza at the moment.

51:56Alastair Campbell:They've opened it again this morning, apparently. But no, yesterday was horrific.

51:59Rory Stewart:But then again, international NGOs struggling to operate. Many of them basically can't do anything in Gaza at the moment. The technocratic committee that's meant to be running Gaza is apparently basically sitting in Egypt. So, yeah, we're not hearing much about that either. And I wonder whether that isn't something, you know, something kind of worries me when you talk about this, which is that, God forbid, these kind of middle powers, Europe, Canada, the UK, end up in a world where they start talking about international law and the strong not bullying the weak, but they mean it only in relation to them, that they don't really end up applying that to what's happening in the Middle East.

52:37Rory Stewart:And they start treating that as though it's kind of the law of the jungle.

52:39Alastair Campbell:yeah but that's what's that's what the global south will says that the international order has meant for quite some time i think the other thing that that's starting to come through in i said to the day i've been following the israeli media quite closely and i don't know do you think i think israel probably has a greater stomach for a much longer fight than america does um and you really get the sense that netanyahu has got the bit between the teeth in a pretty alarming way i don't know sorry i said i sent you a couple of things this morning first was a piece in the guardian about the americans using ai which is now faster than humans and the reason is to get through the kill chain faster that sent me a bit of a chill alongside a piece that somebody sent me which has this in it a combat unit commander told non-commissioned officers at a briefing on monday that the Iran war is part of God's plan and that President Donald Trump was anointed by Jesus to light the signal fire in Iran to cause Armageddon and mark his returning to earth.

53:40Alastair Campbell:From Saturday morning through Monday night, more than 110 similar complaints about commanders in every branch of the military have been logged by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. That sort of reminds me, I mean, once you start saying the whole war is a religious one, remember the trouble George Bush got into to talk about a crusade? this is way more explicit and again we're not it's not even on the news it's just like i don't know very it's all very very alarming we haven't talked so much about what israel's

54:11Rory Stewart:objective here is but netanyahu seems to be coming pretty close and yelapid as well to suggesting this is fundamentally from israel's point of view they're going to continue until there's regime change but there's another part of the security establishment that i think tends to see it in more in the terms in which they would perceive operations in Syria or Lebanon, which is kill the leadership, get rid of their weapons capacity, and not worry too much about what kind of political or economic states left behind in Iran at the end of this. It's also worth bearing in mind, if we talked about this a little bit, another reason why people in the region are very troubled and confused.

54:53Rory Stewart:so these gulf countries as we said you know uae or qatar or any of these countries are very aware that they're quite small very wealthy states they're very small they're very fragile and one of the reasons that some of them were trying to convince trump not to do this is they were happier with what they felt was an iran that had basically no longer had a path credible path towards nuclear weapons, no longer had much air defense, no longer posed much for threat to the region because its proxies and Lebanon had been degraded. So they thought better to contain it, leave it alone. These are all bad worlds, but the least bad world was leave Iran alone because at least it's not going to kick off and create regional chaos.

55:36Rory Stewart:Now the regional chaos has started, they're now torn between two positions. One of them is, can we please stop this, right, because our own cities are now being attacked. But on the other hand, because their cities are being attacked, they feel they need to do something in response against the Iranians, then they're worried Israel's becoming a regional hegemon. And then you get a lot of the stuff from Middle East media is now retweeting a former Israeli Prime Minister who said, Turkey's the next Iran, and then in the same breath mentioned Qatar as a space-sanceless terrorism. So then there are going to be some people in these states who are like, well, wait a second, if there's no process with Congress or international law, what happens if suddenly they decide that we are a threat that can be attacked or our regime can be changed.

56:18Alastair Campbell:Yeah. But don't worry, Rory. Melania was at the United Nations banging the gavel.

56:22Rory Stewart:You see, that's another one. Just to finish on that one. I saw that and I initially was like, is this AI? I don't know anymore when I see this stuff whether this is an AI joke or whether it's real. It was real, was it? Melania Trump was actually presiding at the UN.

56:36Alastair Campbell:and because she cares about violence against this and that and the other and but just on and the other thing about trump so i watched the thing where he you know we had four american servicemen killed on the on the first day of all this okay and trump's first public appearance was in this big grand room in the white house and he was presenting the medal of honor to troops who'd served in afghanistan he very very briefly mentioned these four guys and and sort of said it is what it is kind of is what it is it's going to be more of this is what it is it was so kind of lacking in any sort of empathy he then talked about how he'd been trying to get a medal of

57:16Rory Stewart:honor for himself and how he deserved it and he deserved he wondered whether he could do it because

57:21Alastair Campbell:he deserved it so much yeah yeah yeah and um and then started talking about his bloody ballroom And the gold and these drapes, I chose these drapes myself. This on the day, this is his first public utterance since this whole thing kicked off. And he said, I love gold. I've always loved gold. Look at these drapes. I chose them myself. If you peek through those drapes now, you're going to see a big hole. It's going to be a big, beautiful ballroom. It's going to be the biggest, most beautiful ballroom in the world. I mean, it's sick. It's sick. Final point for me, Rory, unintended consequences. Did you know 13 % of Chinese oil all comes from Iran?

57:59Alastair Campbell:So they're going to be looking at that very, very carefully. India said, if you remember, we've talked before about how India relying on Russian oil and helping the Russian war effort by so doing. so they agreed with trump to cut back on russian oil in exchange for tariff relief so they switched to saudi arabia and the uae how does that look for them now and how does it look for the nine million you know there are nine million indian workers in the gulf sending home remittances huge part of their their economy yeah and people aren't talking

58:39Rory Stewart:enough about refugees i mean i i i keep um you quite rightly told me off because i went on the today program yesterday and didn't plug the podcast properly but another thing you could have told me off for is that i mentioned libya and i probably didn't think enough about the fact that people can barely remember what happened in libya because it's 15 years ago now but just a memory of it just to remind people very quickly what happened there is something that on the surface feels a bit like what's happening in Iran. A decision was made to go after Gaddafi, and Gaddafi was killed. And then basically, Britain, France, and the US stepped back.

59:14Rory Stewart:They didn't really want to get involved in nation building, and they sort of thought it would be enough to topple the leader, and then regime change would follow, and good things would follow. What actually happened, this is the Arab Spring, obviously, what actually happened is civil war in Libya, Libya being broken into two hostile states, and then weapons pouring into all those countries that we've talked about in Sahel, Mali, Chad, Niger, and probably most dramatically, ultimately, Sudan. So, a lot of these heavily armed Islamist militias that have emerged and that have destabilized that entire region were powered by what was happening in Libya.

59:53Rory Stewart:So the reason I, you know, I shouldn't explain this more, but the reason we need to think a little bit about Libya. It's not that Iran is like Libya, but one thing that is worth thinking about is what happens to neighboring states when a country starts collapsing and what happens to refugees. I mean, again, Syria, what happened in Syria? Six million refugees start moving. And that, of course, is where the far-right parties in Europe draw a lot of strength. So, you know, what happens if you had, you know, I'm talking to an Iranian on my street. I've got a neighbor who's Iranian and not surprisingly, his grandmother is in a car trying to cross the Turkish border at the moment.

1:00:25Alastair Campbell:Yeah this was so nauseating about the the sort of Farage position of you know let's be with the Americans let's do this let's go with it we should be alongside them when you know that the minute some of those consequences start to play over he'll be absolutely livid and absolutely furious and be saying you know send them all back home so there are so many unintended consequences about this I think you and I have agreed on most of the things we've talked about. I just was trying to be a little bit more reasonable about the horrible bind that Keir Starmer is in right now. And I feel he's got so many people kicking him, including my missus, that I had to stand up for him a little bit, Rory.

1:01:03Rory Stewart:I hope he didn't mind too much. That was good. Good to stand up for him, Alistair. Well, we'll be back, in which you'll have another chance to stand up for him, in question time tomorrow on the Gordon and Denton by-election on the subject of student loans.

1:01:14Alastair Campbell:Oh, yes, yes. Oh, that went very well. It went very, very well.

1:01:20Rory Stewart:looking forward to it also see you soon bye