The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge
Remembering D-Day While Waiting For The War To End In Iran
01 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What current events in Iran are impacting the situation?
And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's June 1st. It's a Monday. That means Dr. Janice Stein is here. Lots to discuss. Iran, Russia, the Caribbean, and D-Day. It's all coming right up. June 1st. Feels good.
Chapter 2: How is the ceasefire in Iran being perceived?
Do you do anything special on a first day of each month? I try to remember to say white rabbits are supposed to give you good luck. It's got to be the first thing you say. Technically, it's supposed to be the first thing you even think. But at least if when the words come out of your mouth, they're white rabbits, then you're supposed to get good luck.
Seems to work for me on the months I remember, which aren't a lot, but there are some, and I did remember today, so that's all good. Dr. Janice Stein coming your way in a few minutes' time, but as always on Mondays, we like to do a little housekeeping first, and that housekeeping usually revolves, as it does today, around giving you the question for Thursday's Your Turn.
And I think this one might prove to be interesting. We'll see how you feel. There's a lot of discussion these days about Canadian identity, right?
Chapter 3: What factors are influencing Iran's decision-making in the conflict?
It's in the news because of, well, because of the referendum situation in Alberta, because of talk of another referendum in Quebec, and because a lot of other places in the country are interested in both those stories. So Canadian identity is going to be our issue of the week. And the question is this. How do you identify yourself first? Do you identify yourself as a Canadian?
Or do you go with your province? Are you an islander? Are you a Quebecer? Are you Albertan first? Or perhaps you identify regionally.
Chapter 4: How does the U.S. approach its relationship with Iran?
I'm a Western Canadian. I'm a Maritimer. Or is it your city? I'm a Vancouverite. I'm a Torontonian. I'm a Montrealer. A Calgarian. Or perhaps you think of yourself in terms of your heritage, Chinese Canadian, African or Caribbean Canadian, Scottish Canadian, or some other way entirely. You may think of yourself in many different categories, but how do you think of yourself first and why? Okay?
So that's the question. How do you identify yourself first and And why do you do it that way? That's your question for this week. You have until Wednesday. Wednesday at 6 p.m. Eastern Time to get your answers in. No, actually, we're going to move it up. 3 p.m. Eastern Time because, you know, the hour difference and everything over here where I am in Scotland this week.
Chapter 5: What lessons can we learn from D-Day and its historical context?
So 3 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday is the cutoff time. And here are the conditions you have to follow. 75 words or fewer. Send it to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Include your name and the location you're writing from. You have to make all those categories, all those conditions. And we'll have a look and we'll see whether we can make a show out of this. There's your question for this week.
All right, let's get to the program. There's a lot of interesting stuff in this program today, in this discussion, as there always is with Dr. Janice Stein. But I like this one because it's an interesting week to have this discussion. So let's get at it. Here she is this Monday with Dr. Janice Stein. So I want to start on Iran again.
You know, they say, it's really interesting, they say the ceasefire is holding. This at the same time, you got the Americans dropping bombs in Iran. You got the Iranians sending drone strikes into Kuwait. You've got Israel still pounding Lebanon, taking territory in southern Lebanon. Ceasefire is holding, but people are dying.
Chapter 6: What are the implications of the recent discussions around Canadian identity?
What are we supposed to make of this?
So when people say this all the time, and these ceasefires have this history that they're almost always violated. Right before they're signed, it's usually the worst period. And then you get this up and down, like an erratic heartbeat. If you think about one of those graphs, there's more, there's less.
And so they say this because what they mean is, well, the parties to the ceasefire are using some force, some coercion to get better terms at the table. But as soon as we get the final deal done, this will stop. But when you see a consistent pattern of the acts of force are actually growing, right? it's really difficult to argue that there's a meaningful ceasefire here.
Does this pattern of, and we're seeing, you know, increasing acts of violence. But what we're not seeing yet is a return by either the United States or Iran. Less true, by the way, on the leavening between Hezbollah and Israel. That's turning into a continuous pattern. You'd really be stretched to say there's any ceasefire there at all, Peter. It's not holding.
But between Iran and the United States, nobody said we're going back to war. And after each incident, you get a lull. So that's the other measure that people look at. You have an incident, does it immediately lead to a spiral up or is there a pause between incidents? This is gray zone talk, frankly, all of it.
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Chapter 7: How does the current war in Ukraine affect global politics?
And decision makers, policymakers tend to say it when they really don't want to go back to war.
But why isn't Iran racing to a deal?
Iran believes, there's no question about it, that when you read the statements by people like their speaker, Ghalibaf, and others who are speaking out more often now, they believe they've won this war. They believe they've humiliated the United States. They believe they've withstood, and not only have they withstood the pounding, but they come out with an enormous strategic asset, which
which is they can block at any time. In the future, they can blockade the Strait of Hormuz. And so for them, it's very clear they feel this is a victory, they have momentum, and they do not believe that Donald Trump will awaken. that he has the patience to do it. They think the midterms are going to push him to make concessions at the table.
And they're absolutely convinced that the longer they delay this, Peter, the better the terms that they're going to get. And they have a history of being able to wait. There's a term for this called strategic patience. They have strategic patience, the Iranians. Even though I think, frankly, that's not accurate, their assessment. It's not accurate.
On the other side, Donald Trump just toughened the terms. The leaks were, well, we have an agreement and Mustafa Khamenei has signed off on it, which is one of the things that Donald Trump insisted on. He was going to be the first to sign. Who knows if that's true or not.
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Chapter 8: What are the consequences of U.S. military actions in the Caribbean?
But there was a deal. It came to the White House. There was a national security meeting and a cabinet meeting. He toughened the terms. which tells you he's under domestic political pressure. Because in that first round, there was no specific commitment by Iran to giving up the highly enriched uranium, which is now for him. Because he said it so often. Now, for him, the minimum.
And so he sent it back. It's gone back now. But he's doing it for a second reason. And he's saying this all the time. You believe I can't wait you out? You believe that I care about the midterms? No, I don't care about the midterms. He's saying this publicly all the time. Now, you're reading me wrong. I don't care about the midterms. I will wait you out.
That's what the competition is now between the two of them. Who can outweigh the other is what we're seeing.
You know, I've heard that Trump saying that I don't care about the midterms. But I heard John Bolton over the weekend. And, you know, you only take a certain amount of what John Bolton says. But nevertheless, he did say that's all he cares about is the midterms. Yeah. You know, he cares about the midterms and he cares about the price of gas and how those two issues are linked.
Just getting back to Iran and its positioning, you know, I get what you're saying. I also, you know, I can appreciate some of those arguments the Iranians are making about how they've actually bettered the U.S. on this. But their country's in ruins, right? They've got to rebuild their country at a certain point. They can't do that without this war kind of officially ending.
I think that's, you know, that's why I said, Peter, I don't think that they're reading it. Or I don't think what they're saying is actually reflective of the pressure they're under. And I think the pressure is much, much greater on them than they're willing to acknowledge in public. First of all, there is huge pressure on them. Because they're going to run out of oil storage.
They're really, what does that mean? They're pumping oil from their wells. Normally that would go out the strait. They can't get it out now. Where they store the oil. They're storing it on old tankers near Carg Island. They only have a limited number of those. And then you really face a serious dilemma when you shut the wells down. you do a lot of damage, a lot of damage to the infrastructure.
And it can take years afterwards to restart the pumping of the oil from the wells. They're really weeks a month, six weeks, depending on how many tankers they can find to store, away from that. So there's pressure on the Iranians as well. There's really immediate issue... of what are they going to do with their oil without damaging their infrastructure. And they need oil exports.
That is the only way they can earn hard currency in the near future because, as you just said, everything else is in ruins. Their petrochemical industry, their steel industry, they've got agricultural exports that they can put on trucks, which is what they're doing, but that's not going to be enough. So... I think there is a lot of, you know, this is high noon. This is what it is.
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