510. How The Iran War Is Spiralling Into a Global Crisis
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Welcome to a Restist Politics special episode live on Iran with me, Alastair Campbell. And with me, Rory Stewart. And Rory, it's a few days now since we did an episode together. And since then, a huge amount has happened. I don't think even Donald Trump can really pretend that this war is where he expected it to be right now. There have been all sorts of unintended consequences, some of which we'll talk about. To my absolute gobsmacked shock, he said that he was... The big surprise was that the Iranians launched attacks upon Gulf, some of the countries in the Gulf. You and I, I think, said from the first minute that is one of the things they were likely to do to try and drive the oil price up. Oil price now over $100 a barrel, predicted to go higher.
And I guess the most... Perhaps the most newsworthy thing that has happened in the last 24 hours is the appointment of the new Ayatollah. Mojtaba, 56, apparently has a very large London property portfolio. I hope Oliver Bullough will dig into that at some point. But if anything says continuity, this certainly does. So I guess now remains to be seen whether Israel will carry out their threat to take him out, which they said they would if he was appointed. And I'm sorry, just to underscore the continuity point, you didn't mention his surname. So he is, of course, the son of the previous supreme leader. So this is Khamenei. And he is, you know, he's the son of a murdered father. He's the husband of a wife who's been killed, the father of a child who's been killed.
So he's 56 years old. But in the last week, he's lost his father, his wife and his child. So his willingness to... engaged may be a little bit reduced by his personal circumstances. I suspect also that this is a process of 88 clerics who come together, and I suspect that the fact that Netanyahu had been saying, we will take out the successor if it doesn't meet with our approval, the fact that Donald Trump has been saying, we have to have approval of whoever they appoint, this is a very deliberate way of saying, no, you have absolutely nothing to do with this, and this is continuity. Yes, as you were saying, I mean, it would be almost anyone else they appointed, they would have to explain to the world why they're not giving in to US and Israeli demands.
But to appoint the son of the previous supreme leader, I think, communicates pretty clearly. And this is a man who's right at the heart. He's not been right out in the open. He's been working very much, I think, partly sometimes as the head of his father's private office, but very much as the link between his father the kind of intelligence security set up, the Revolutionary Guard, the Basij militia, and the clerical establishment on the other. So he's right in the very, very heart of the system. And as you say, symbolically, it couldn't be a clearer continuity candidate. Although, interestingly, he's not the oldest son. So I don't know whether there's a sort of Shakespearean angle going on somewhere in the background.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:00–6:49
2
How has Trump's actions impacted the Iran War?
6:49–8:45
3
What are the unintended consequences of the Iran conflict?
8:45–11:46
4
How do oil prices relate to the current crisis?
11:46–13:30
5
What role does the new Ayatollah play in Iran's future?
13:30–26:45
6
How is the global order affected by the Iran War?
26:45–54:28
7
What are the implications for the Gulf states amidst the conflict?
54:28–1:05:08
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