Chapter 1: What recent events prompted Israel's attack on Beirut?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk with Aviva Insurance. US President Donald Trump has said once again that the Iran war will be over quickly. But on the other battlefront, Israel launched an attack on Beirut last night for the first time since a ceasefire was agreed. To give us the latest on the conflict in the Middle East, I'm joined by Matt Fry, Channel 4 presenter. Hello, Matt. Yes, hello.
How are you, Clare? I'm good. Let's turn to Beirut first and Israel launching this attack last night. What happened? What do we know about what happened?
Well, as far as I know, there was an attack on central Beirut, which has not happened for a long time. And I think the Israelis are claiming that this was a Hezbollah target and therefore they were completely within their rights to break the ceasefire and hit the target. I mean, it shows you just how vulnerable the ceasefire in Lebanon is.
And even though Donald Trump has read the Israelis, the riot act not to break the ceasefire.
Chapter 2: How fragile is the ceasefire situation in Lebanon?
I remember there was a very stern phone call a couple of weeks ago when the the Israelis' position was in danger of exploding all the ceasefires in the region. Despite that riot act, occasionally they feel incumbent to intervene.
And I think this is a portent of what might happen if there is a lasting ceasefire in the Iran war, that whenever the Israelis feel that there's unfinished business, and they very much feel, as I've been told by a couple of Israeli officials, that there was unfinished business in Tehran, that they have the right to intervene in order to finish regime change, they could do so.
So it shows you just how fragile the whole situation is.
I mean, we have heard over the last 24 hours or so just how close we're getting to a sustainable deal between Iran and the United States. Do you think that this will put the moxie on that?
No, I think that's not at the moment. I think the bigger issue is can they reach a deal? Can Tehran and Washington agree reach a deal, and I think we are getting closer to a deal for two reasons. Number one is that both sides are feeling the economic pain.
Donald Trump at the petrol pump, he's very aware that this is an unpopular war, that rising petrol prices of 40%, 50%, or even more in places like California was never part of the deal. And meanwhile, the Iranians, because of the double blockade imposed by the Americans,
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Chapter 3: What economic factors are influencing negotiations between Iran and the US?
across the wider Strait of Hormuz into the Indian Ocean are also feeling a lot of pain. I mean, they're losing hundreds of millions of dollars a week
in lost revenue because their oil tankers aren't getting through the land route via pakistan is not yet established enough to make up for what they've lost so they also need some uh resolution here and remember it's the riots in in january that almost you know that was the biggest challenge to the regime in half a century were caused because of economic pain which must now be far more severe the second reason is that there's a big summit coming up in beijing
next week between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. This is arguably the most important meeting for Donald Trump in his second term so far. And I think he will want this thing to be resolved by the time he shows up in Beijing. That summit, by the way, Claire, as you know, has already been postponed once because of the Iran war that was started at the end of February.
He can't possibly postpone it a second time. And to show up in Beijing... will the world economy and indeed America's economy to some extent in the chokehold of a regime that supposedly was pummeled by sanctions and by bombs would be embarrassing.
But even if he does manage to resolve this one by then, how does he sell it as a win? You know, oh, the Strait is open. Yeah, it was open beforehand and it was running fine. Oh, we, you know, have pummeled the regime. Well, now you've got more hardline guys in.
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Chapter 4: How might the upcoming summit in Beijing affect US-Iran relations?
in charge in Iran. How can even Donald Trump, how can he sell this as a win?
Well, but Donald Trump can sell anything as a win. He just pretends it's a win. I mean, I guess what he could say is that the regime has been weakened in terms of its ballistic missile capability, which is probably true. They've been weakened in terms of their enrichment capability, which is probably also true.
but it's not decisive enough because they will still be able to keep their hands on the 440 kilograms of enriched uranium. And ultimately, I don't think he cares about the subtler point, whether the hardcore regime has been left in place. Remember, in Venezuela, he announced regime change, and it turned out to be regime reboot.
I mean, the hardliners around Venezuela are still running Venezuela, and no one seems to care very much. I think the key thing for Obama always is, Is what he is doing any better than what Obama did? He's obsessed with Barack Obama.
And so if he can say that what he has negotiated after billions of dollars spent on bombs, after thousands of people sacrificed, is better than the Obama-JCPOA deal from 2015, which of course he shredded, then he can take that to the bank at the pearly gates and say, look, what I've done is better.
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Chapter 5: What challenges does Trump face in selling a potential deal with Iran?
And one way that would be better is if he could get the Iranians to commit to a moratorium on enrichment that isn't just five years, but maybe 10 or 15 years. But my God, for a tiny little clause like that, without having achieved any of the things that he said he might want to achieve at the beginning of this war, it's pretty pathetic.
And at the cost-benefit ratio, I would say the costs far outweigh the benefits.
Yeah, because any of the analysis I was looking at last night seems to suggest that the deal he's going to get on the uranium enrichment is going to be so close to what Barack Obama got and what he walked away from in 2018 to make the whole thing pointless, as you say.
Just on the American economy front, and I know that he's really feeling the pinch at the pumps and how people are feeling about that. But I heard something this morning about how the stock market is not feeling the impact. In fact, the stock markets are doing really well because of the AI boom. And I just wonder, will that insulate him to an extent around all of this, Matt?
Or do you think that the prices at the pumps, really, when it comes to voters and the midterms, that's all they're going to care about?
Well, it insulates him against any damage with people who own stocks in AI companies and people who own oil companies. And these people are very important to Donald Trump, the oil magnates of Texas.
and other places who went to see him before the election in 2024, promised to give him as much money as he wanted for his own campaign in return for deregulation of the oil industry and drill, baby, drill, and all that kind of stuff. Now, they're obviously cock-a-loo because they're making more money than they ever dreamt of making because of this war.
But the trouble is that there's only so many votes in oil tycoons.
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Chapter 6: How do rising oil prices impact the US economy and voter sentiment?
There's a lot more votes in people who actually have to fill their cars with the stuff that the tycoons create. Now, they will be upset. And although the MAGA base still seems to be holding quite well, you need more than the MAGA base in order to win in the midterm elections.
Ultimately, he may not care if he loses the House of Representatives to the Democrats, which is almost inevitable because he's been ruling the country. America, that is, as a supreme leader, so to speak, without the use of Congress for the last year and a half. And it will carry on trying to do so.
And Congress only comes in, really, when it comes to either impeachment proceedings, which they would be daft to try again unless they were assured of a conviction of Trump in the Senate, which is unlikely, or when it comes to the power of the purse. But even the power of the purse hasn't prevented
uh trump from conducting a very costly war in iran so i don't think he really cares that much about the midterm elections i think he is quite happy to carry on this thing as long as he can claim at some stage that he has done more than Barack Obama, which may be true.
I mean, it may result in that at the end of the day, but as I said before, and it's an incredibly costly journey to get to an incremental victory.
Yeah, but he very clearly wants this to end and wants it to end right now. And do you think the imperative is that Beijing meeting?
I think that's a really important one because... First of all, Beijing has again sort of managed to wriggle itself into a much stronger position than people thought it was in.
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Chapter 7: What is the current state of America's influence in the Middle East?
Although China relies much more on oil from the Strait of Hormuz and natural gas to keep their vast factories that supply the world with all sorts of things going and then keep their population in employment, They have also been very strategic in all sorts of things, including the storage of oil.
So their strategic oil reserves are massive and they were built up over years precisely because of this kind of scenario. So they're living off those oil reserves and they've been quite smart at using the Pakistanis to establish a land route for exports and imports to Iran. And the Pakistanis obviously are also part of this.
By the way, both Iran and Pakistan are part of China's Belt and Road project. So that is very much China's sphere of influence. What is America's sphere of influence in the Middle East at the moment? I mean, it's Israel and the Israelis are doing their own thing, much to the annoyance of the Trump administration at times.
And then you've got the Gulf states who thought they were Donald Trump's best buddies, who were basically thrown under the bus on February the 28th. They weren't even consulted about a war in which they themselves have had to suffer.
Matt, thank you very much. Matt Fry there, Channel 4 presenter.
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