Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Thanks for listening to The Rest Is Politics. To support the podcast, listen without the adverts and get early access to episodes and live show tickets, go to therestispolitics.com. That's therestispolitics.com. Welcome to Arrest This Politics special on US-Israeli attacks on Iran. Operation Epic Fury is underway. Sounds like very much something written by Donald Trump or Hexeth.
And to think that just two days ago in Geneva there were talks going on And the Armani mediator was heading to Washington to report on progress. And now we are with some pretty major bombing underway. Rory, where do you want to start?
Well, I think let's start with, for people who are interested in a kind of granular US view, maybe look back at the recent leading interview that we did with Rob Malley. And just to remind people who are listening, Rob Malley was... the lead negotiator on the JCPOA, which was the old Iran nuclear deal and was Obama's point man and then Biden's point man on Iran.
And we obviously got him on because the US fleet has been gathering around Iran for months now, much in the way that it did in Venezuela. So people remember there was a lot of false alarms around Venezuela, people very concerned that This enormous American military, naval, and air presence, marine presence had ended up around Venezuela. But for weeks, nothing really happened.
And then the strike occurred. And the same pattern roughly has been followed in Iran.
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Chapter 2: What triggered the recent US-Israel attacks on Iran?
So over the last weeks and months, more and more American assets have been moved into the region. And there was a real sense, actually, even when the strike happened in Venezuela, of people saying, oh, I'm surprised it's Venezuela. I thought they would be doing Iran first. When we did a recording, I think a month ago, we were talking about why it might not have happened yet.
There was a speculation that Israel felt it wasn't quite ready. I'm not getting into the rights or wrongs of this yet. We're getting the rights wrong. I'm just talking about the logistics, the tactics. One argument was that Israel wasn't quite ready. Its defenses weren't quite ready. Another argument was that the Gulf countries were holding off
and that they didn't really want a war breaking out and that they'd put pressure on Trump to hold off. And by the time we interviewed Rob Malley, there was a rather sort of striking moment, which was rather sort of good quote, which we've just been reminded of by our team, which is Rob said,
I would not be at all surprised if by the end of this podcast, you tell me, oh, we've just had a news bulletin that a deal has been struck, a nuclear deal has been struck, and President Trump has announced that it's the best deal that's ever been negotiated with anyone anywhere for the last 4,000 years.
Or if you told me at the end of this, oh, we've just got a news bulletin that President Trump has ordered strikes on Iran and strikes against military political targets. Over to you.
Yeah, and he also said that there was some method in this madness because, of course, unpredictability was a useful weapon. But I think we have seen this coming recently. I read something just a few days ago when I was in Ukraine, and it was that some of the kit that has been sent as this build-up, two-thirds of the U.S. 's E-3 command-and-control aircraft,
Somebody said this would totally not be required just for PR in the way that some of the Armada might be. I think the other point to make, Rory, is that, you know, one of the things I kept hearing in Ukraine was that these negotiations with Wyckoff and Kushner are just fake. They're for show. And you sort of feel it's been the same with this.
The Iranians turn up, the Americans tell them to capitulate, the Iranians say no, and they go away. And there was a very interesting, there's this guy, I don't know if you follow this guy, Trita Parsi from the Quincy Institute, who seems to be like Rob Malley, something of an expert on Iran. He is adamant that most of the information flow that goes to Trump about Iran comes from Netanyahu.
And he's convinced Trump that one, that Iran is a lot weaker than it was, which is true. It is weaker than it was on the nuclear front.
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Chapter 3: How has Trump's approach affected US-Iran relations?
It's weaker economically. And it's just had the biggest demonstrations, probably the biggest demonstrations that we've seen in recent memory. and has persuaded him that a few big hits and a few big threats and Iran will crumble.
And Parsi tweeted recently, he said this, Trump's fundamental misread of Iran is that he believed that the theocratic leadership would fear all the US aircraft carriers and their firepower, and as a result, opt to surrender. It's the opposite. They fear surrender far more than they fear war.
And I think that's an important insight, because the way that Trump operates, I mean, don't forget, when he did do the launch of the nuclear program recently, he came out immediately and said it's been obliterated. I saw J.D. Vance last week being asked, if it's been obliterated, why do you have to attack it again? He really struggled with the answer. But these attacks are far bigger.
These attacks are far bigger. We've already seen attacks on the intelligence headquarters, National Security Council, the Pasteur compound, where it's thought that both the president and the Supreme Leader Khamenei are thought to live. We've seen an attack on the place where the former president is believed to live. And we've also seen the response as well.
Qatar says it's thwarted a number of attacks on the American air base there. We've got bases in Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, all being subject to attack. So this could go in any sort of really quite dangerous directions. This episode is powered by Fuse Energy.
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Chapter 4: What implications do the attacks have for the Middle East?
But those regimes are now very, very angry indeed that Iran, who they felt that they were taking a gentler attitude towards, has decided to strike their territory, whether or not they're going after US assets.
Yeah. Now, Rory, I'm doing this live podcast with you. If I was doing it with our American counterpart, Mr. Scaramucci, and I were to ask him the question, how much do you think Wag the Dog is being brought into the equation? What do you think he would say?
He'd say 100%. This is all about the Epstein files. That's why Hegsteth is going to war with Anthropic and OpenAI. And this is why they're attacking Iran. Go on, tell us about that then. Give us the Wag the Dog theory.
Well, Wag the Dog was a film... starring Robert De Niro, Dustin Hoffman, I think. And basically what happened was the American president was caught up in a big sex scandal, I think just getting up to the election. And his kind of Alastair Campbell figure, a guy called Conrad, he somehow constructed a fake war, would you believe, against Albania. So America went to war with Albania to stop this.
So wag the dog basically means where bad things are happening, you create something far bigger so that the world stops talking about the bad thing and they start talking about the thing you want to. Now, in that, I don't minimise, by the way, how awful the Iranian regime is and how Iran has been seen as a threat by all sorts of countries for a long, long time.
But it does seem sort of the timing, you know, he's... We've had Trump just on his State of the Union address, longest in history, and didn't go down terribly well. His ratings are really poor right now. And there's a couple of historic tweets, Rory. October the 9th, 2012. from Donald Trump.
Now that President Obama's poll numbers are in tailspin, watch for him to launch a strike on Libya or Iran. He's desperate. Now you can often work, I've said this before, you can often work someone out best by how they attack their opponents. And then this one, a year later, November 2013.
Remember, I predicted a long time ago, President Obama will attack Iran because of his inability to negotiate properly, not skilled. So, you know, I think that given what we know about Trump, what we saw in Venezuela, what we've seen in some of the other operations he's done, there will be a pretty powerful political motivation.
And what that leads me to worry, in fact, it puts people like you in a tricky spot. We'd loathe the Iranian regime, we'd long for it to be gone. But when you are highly suspicious of the motives, unsure whether this is thought through, you do worry that this This could go any which way, and it'd be hard to work out the truth because Trump's going to declare huge success whatever happens.
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Chapter 5: How are Gulf countries reacting to Iran's strikes?
All our friends are out then. So that's, yeah. There's a lot of comments. There are thousands of comments. My God. Okay. So I think let's just take that on for a second. How would you, if you were, I don't know, Keir Starmer, for example, make a speech to the people there who say we're just a bunch of useless lefties who aren't condemning the Iranian regime enough and we just want to smear Trump?
I think what you have to say is, listen, The Iranian regime is a horrifying, horrendous regime that's machine-gunned tens of thousands of people in the streets. I, I would say to this person challenging me, have spent, I guess, much more time in Iran than they have. And my experience being detained by the Basij militia and the Revolutionary Guard was extremely unpleasant. I got a sense of a...
a totalitarian regime, people living under fear, massive underdevelopment, a very, very angry population. And this is going back even 20, 25 years. It's a regime that's been in place nearly 50. And it's also true that this is a regime that has destabilized the region, fired missiles around.
So I would be incredibly happy if this regime was toppled and a liberal democratic government emerged in Iran and all the incredible potential of this educated, vibrant, huge civilization was released and stabilized the world. Trump does not have a good track record on doing these things carefully and responsibly.
There is no sense at all that he's answering the question of what happens the day after. What is the nation building? How do you get the government going? How do you get the economy going? And secondly, The risk is here is not being properly analysed. Let's talk through the risk. What would it mean if there was civil war? What would it mean if there was a military coup?
What would it mean if another Iranian Revolutionary Guard takes over? What does it mean if Iran starts not just firing ballistic missiles at the Gulf, but starts doing much nastier terrorist attacks around the world in revenge? Somehow, we have to find a way of saying...
I totally condemn the Iranian regime, but what Trump is doing is reckless, stupid, ill-planned, and has a very, very high probability of going wrong. And even if he gets away with it, it'll be through fluke, not judgment.
I don't think Keir Starmer can say the last bit of that. I think he can say a lot of the first bit about Iran and what we think about that. But I think maybe the way to phrase it is that, look, Iran is an issue and a country that has bedeviled presidents and other world leaders for decades now.
And it is probably only if we do have some kind of joint cooperative approach to this that we can make real progress. I mean, the truth is that the deal that was done
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Chapter 6: What is the 'Wag the Dog' theory in relation to these events?
Oh, my Lord. Listen, Alistair, I didn't want to say this. Signed by Maradona and Pele. Oh, that's amazing. But Maradona, you just provoked me there because I saw our mutual friend, Damien Lewis, two days ago. Oh, yeah. Oh, did he tell you about that? He said to me, listen, you know, I love Alistair, but I've got to say when he was selected as left back and I was right wing, I felt pretty lucky.
Yeah.
Yeah, he was lucky. There's a truly horrible picture of him gliding past me and me looking like I'm old and tired. Anyway, I don't care. I still mention Maradona every day of my life. You've got your dad's Chinese teacher. I've got my Maradona boots, you know. See you soon. Bye-bye. See you soon. Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
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