Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Now though, peace talks are set to continue over the conflict in the Middle East despite reports that Iran has walked away due to Donald Trump's latest actions. Let's get the latest detail on this. I'm joined by Chief Correspondent and Presenter with Channel 4 News, Alex Thompson. Good morning, Alex.
Very good morning, Clare.
Thank you very much for being with us. So can you tell us what's happening?
Chapter 2: What are the latest developments in the Middle East peace talks?
No. End of chat. Do you know what? I guess that that's what the answer would be because it is so confusing. What do we know about what's going on?
Well, yeah, I'm just being perhaps a bit flip there, but kind of honest, you know, nobody knows where anything is going. Let's take two strands of this, if you like. For instance, yesterday was a kind of typical day in this process.
You have Donald Trump on the one hand threatening what certainly in theory looked like a potential major war crime, i.e., you know, if you don't come to talks, then we're going to bomb any bridge and all the power stations. and all the civilian superstructure across the Iranian nation on the one hand.
And then over in Turkey, a very quiet moment, if you will, with the Iranian deputy foreign minister who said, look, yeah, we don't understand. and, you know, completely confusing mixed messages from the U.S. president. And basically, they're losing patience with this. But he did also say, and it's gone largely unremarked, to the media, don't get too excited with the ups and downs of this.
I mean, I know, I know, it's not going to go far with that, but... What he meant was in the background behind all this, we are still talking and there is still a process here. So if you like front of house noise, confusion, bluster and bullying to some degree from both sides behind that, there is still some kind of process in place. So those are the two things you've got to consider here.
So it would seem then from what the foreign minister said that there are contacts happening all of the time.
Yes, there's no doubt about that. Contacts are happening all the time. I mean, obviously, both sides want out of this for very different reasons. Clearly, the Iranians, you know, they're not stupid. They don't want to get bombed. And equally, Donald Trump can see what this is doing to the US economy and to his poll ratings, which some of his poll ratings recently have been worse.
than joe biden's at the very nadir of joe biden's popularity so that shows you how far he's thinking he's got elections coming up in the autumn now obviously the revolutionary guard and the regime in tehran don't have to bother themselves with details like elections um but equally they want and they need this to go away economically as well as only in any other way
But then he needs that image, doesn't he, of J.D. Vance being able to meet with the Iranians in a very public way because the private contacts that the foreign minister is suggesting are happening. That's all fine. But the public need to see, both in America and the people who are controlling the markets and making all of our lives difficult with fuel prices, we need to see them meeting.
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Chapter 3: How does Trump's recent actions affect Iran's participation?
But you've got to stand back in a minute and say, look, we've got a situation here where we've been seeing a catalogue of failure from both the Israelis and the Americans. I'll come to the Israelis in a minute, but from the president of the United States, he's tried insults and all kinds of language that you'd never expect to see from a US president or anybody in the diplomatic world. It failed.
He's tried cajoling and being nice to the Iranians on his social platform. It failed. He's tried threatening an out-and-out genocide at one point. That failed. He threatened, as I said yesterday, a potential war crime. That failed. Wider frame, you've got to stand back and say, this isn't about Iran. This isn't about the Straits of Hormuz. This isn't about Iranian search for a nuclear bomb.
This is about, first and foremost, the Palestinian question. And on that, the Israeli prime minister, with America enjoined, has now got themselves involved in something that looks very like warfare, in not one, two, three, four, but five different regions. And you can count six if you want to add the West Bank into that. Why? Because he wanted to destroy Hezbollah. He has failed.
He wanted to destroy Hamas. He has failed. And he, Benjamin Netanyahu, wanted to destroy the Iranian regime. They have failed. So you can see, looking at that, the Iranians, by many estimations, are emerging, as this goes on and on, in an ever stronger position. They have the patience. They have the time. They have the resilience.
Mm-hmm. Just coming back to what's been happening in Lebanon, because as you say, the Israeli side of this forms a huge part of the picture.
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Chapter 4: What are the mixed messages coming from the U.S. regarding Iran?
I mean, you say it is the underlying reason why we're in this place at all. The ceasefire, though, or truce, rather, is holding, isn't it?
Mm-hmm. Well, holding. Yes, the Israelis have been ordered not to bomb by a diktat from Donald Trump, a further humiliation on top of him imposing on Netanyahu the 10-day ceasefire. Since that ceasefire has happened, at least two Israeli soldiers have been killed and around 10 injured. The Israelis say they have killed a number of Hezbollah soldiers, and the Israeli military
program of continuing to detonate completely, just like they did in Gaza, large civilian areas, large villages, whole villages along the border zone that they've invaded and occupied with northern Israel. That process all continues. If that's what you like as a ceasefire, then that's what you've got. It's better than it was for the civilians, and they are
as you heard there from your news report, they are returning, sometimes in defiance of the areas to which the Israelis say they should not go back to.
How does America get out of this one, Alex?
Well, the off-ramp, to use that cliche that everybody's using. Well, I mean, it's difficult because Donald Trump, we know, shows no temperament for any kind of long-term, in-depth diplomacy. And don't forget, to get to the nuclear deal, the West had a reasonable nuclear deal with the Iranians right there, working on the table, functioning. Donald Trump tore it up.
Now, Donald Trump, as we've seen with previous, you know, we've seen with his the rhetoric that the wild rhetoric that he's used everywhere from Panama to Canada to Greenland to saying he would fix the Ukraine war with Russia in a day and has walked away from it without an abject diplomatic failure.
That is not a great track record, and this almost infantile approach to want to have instant solutions to these matters is going to go nowhere. So it's very hard to see the Americans getting away from this unless there's some kind of sea change in the atmospherics, in the diplomacy, in the whole leadership from the United States, from Donald Trump. And that means changing Donald Trump's approach.
I don't see any evidence of that. And I don't think any of your listeners do.
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Chapter 5: How are Trump and Iran's foreign minister responding to the conflict?
He finds it pointless. He went to the last talks in Islamabad, which he came after 21 hours in the last session, came away completely empty-handed. It's probably a sidebar, but he went to Islamabad via, of course, Hungary to interfere in the Orban election. That also blew up in his face. So the man has a recent track record of complete, almost comical failure on the diplomatic front.
But yet we've got the same team supposedly going back. But at the moment, they haven't got anybody to talk to.
That, though, given what you said about what the foreign minister said, may change. Would you expect it to in the coming hours?
Yes, I mean, as ever with Donald J. Trump, do not take at face value or even believe anything that comes out of his mouth. look instead of what actually happens or what he actually does. So we watch very carefully on this.
Yes, there was the incident where the Americans fired on a vessel, but in American terms, in any naval terms, they fired a very, very careful and precise amount of munition into one particular area of an oil tanker, pretty much certain that they wouldn't detonate it. So the actual action here
despite all the bluster and the kind of sometimes terrifying rhetoric that comes out of the mouth of the president of the United States, you look at what is happening. And as you say, Channels are still open. Talking is still going on behind the scenes. And the Iranians, we know, are extremely meticulous diplomats. They come back to things again and again and again.
It is an exhausting, meticulous, long-term, painstaking, almost geological timescale. That is the Iranian style. It is not the style of Trump and the present White House.
Well, Alex, as I'm listening to you, I'm thinking about how we started our program this morning at nine o'clock talking about our energy bills, which, you know, it was predicted on our program could rise by 30 percent in the medium term and not likely to drop regardless of what happens with these talks until 2028.
So while all of this is going on, our economies, our household budgets right around the world are being severely and will be severely impacted by this.
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