Latest / The Fourcast / Inside Trump’s dilemma: deal or ground invasion | The Fourcast Indicators

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Inside Trump’s dilemma: deal or ground invasion | The Fourcast Indicators · The Fourcast

0:00
Wouldn't that be ironic? After all this sacrifice of
0:03
blood and treasure, all the billions that have been spent on
0:06
this war? We end up with a bloke still
0:08
called Harmony who's running the country, but we end up with
0:11
Iran, more resilient, able to do quite a lot with very little.
0:15
There is the potential for a Vietnam style complete
0:19
disillusionment of the Americans.
0:21
Their military may be shown to have been not up to the task and
0:25
that new forms of warfare, so-called asymmetric, you know,
0:28
as the indeed the Viet and the North Vietnamese practice
0:31
against them may in a sense humble them.
0:34
What's Britain's world in all this?
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Hiding behind the sofa. Hello, and welcome to Forecast
0:43
Indicators on the Iran war, with me, Matt Frey, alongside the
0:46
defense and intelligence analyst Mark Urban.
0:49
Yes, well, the idea behind forecast indicators is simple.
0:53
Each episode we will look out for the signals analysts watch
0:57
out for most closely. We separate the wheat from the
1:00
chaff, the signal from the noise, and look for the telltale
1:04
signs that suggest imminent and significant change may be
1:08
coming. Indeed so Donald Trump says he
1:10
wants to take the oil and may seize Hag Island as the US
1:14
reinforces its troops in the Middle East, Iran remains
1:17
dangerous even if weakened. Diplomacy still flickers in the
1:21
background. And hanging over all of it is
1:23
the biggest strategic question of them all.
1:25
What happens now to Iran's nuclear program?
1:28
And what lessons does Tehran draw from all of this?
1:32
Mark, let's start with the first indicator, the Strait of Hormuz.
1:36
And we keep saying, everyone keeps saying that they're
1:38
closed, but they're not entirely closed.
1:40
And that in a sense is my first indicator is what I'm looking
1:43
out for every day now is what is coming through.
1:47
So I can tell you before we sat down for this chat, 2.
1:50
Chinese registered container ships came through the Strait of
1:54
Hormuz and indeed 3. Travelling which director?
1:57
Travelling out, right? In other words, they pass
2:00
through the Iranian checks, the toll booth.
2:03
Yeah. Well, we don't know if they
2:05
paid, but three oil tankers were also due out today.
2:08
Now people are talking about a level of 567 ships a day, which
2:13
is about a 10th of what would be normal.
2:16
So it's not business as usual. But what is happening, and I
2:18
think This is why this is such an important indicator, is Iran
2:22
is staking its claim to control the Strait and we say it's
2:28
closed, but it isn't. And actually closing it through
2:32
mining the whole thing could be a further stage of escalation.
2:36
I was looking at some intelligence briefings this
2:38
morning and the numbers are really quite interesting.
2:41
So before the war started, Iran was sending something like
2:45
between 2.4 and 2.8 million barrels a day of both
2:50
petrochemical products and oil, you know, through the Strait of
2:54
Hormuz into the shadow market where, you know, people would
2:58
either mostly Chinese people would buy or Chinese companies.
3:00
I think 90% of that all goes to China since you know, as of last
3:06
week we're we're back at that number.
3:08
But there's one big difference. The price of that barrel of oil,
3:10
which was AI don't know, it was a discounted price of course,
3:13
because it was sanctioned oil. So I think they were flogging it
3:16
roughly at about $60.00 a barrel of Brent crude.
3:19
And their particular vintage is light crude.
3:23
I mean, apparently that's the signature crude that the
3:25
Iranians produce, and now they're selling it for 108.
3:28
So the discount has gone down massively because people,
3:32
especially the Chinese, are desperate to get hold of this
3:34
stuff. And so, and by the way, they're
3:37
making money. We don't know how much that
3:40
they're making money from the tankers that are going through
3:43
now. I don't know what you've heard.
3:44
I've heard $2,000,000 a tanker. Well, I don't know if that's
3:47
true or not. It's a flexible pricing.
3:49
I I I would have thought. Yeah, Dynamic, dynamic pricing.
3:53
And the fascinating thing is in this day and age with open
3:56
source intelligence that people are gathering, we can look at
3:59
every part of it and we can know that there are 5 tankers filling
4:02
up at Hague Island. That's roughly 2 million barrels
4:06
apparently. We can look at all aspects of
4:08
this and we can try and work out what are they actually doing
4:11
with this. Now, It was in the old days, the
4:14
case that the Iranians used to say to people, I had a former
4:17
British ambassador relay this to me, if you don't let us get our
4:21
oil out, no one's going to get their oil out.
4:24
And now, because of this war, the reverse situations have,
4:27
they're the only people. Getting their oil out.
4:29
Exactly. And as you say, at a premium
4:32
price. So that's one of the big
4:34
questions I think going forward about the terms on which this
4:37
ends. Are the Iranians allowed to
4:39
assert their rights in this way? And even if they're not,
4:42
everybody knows. Everybody will know the Gulf
4:44
States and others going forward that this weapon is there if
4:48
they want to use. It and I know that because we,
4:51
we spoke to some Gulf officials at the weekend when I was still
4:53
in Israel or last week. I mean, they're, they're furious
4:56
that the Iranians might be able to establish a toll booth in the
4:59
Strait of Hormuz. But I don't think they're
5:02
furious enough in order to risk going to war over it.
5:04
Not yet. I mean, depends who you speak
5:06
to. I think the UAE is more robust
5:09
on this issue. Perhaps the Saudis too, but
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others aren't. The Qataris aren't, you know,
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the Bahrainis aren't, the Kuwaitis aren't.
5:14
So, so there's a division amongst the Gulf states about
5:17
exactly what to do. And they're kind of all looking
5:19
at this American force heading, you know, this beefed up force,
5:23
Trump's Navy heading towards the Gulf and wondering like all of
5:27
us, what exactly will they do when they get there?
5:30
Because one of the other things I've learnt and gosh, we are
5:33
learning a lot every day, Aren't we all becoming sort of amateur
5:38
armchair generals and armchair, you know, petroleum exporters
5:41
and tanker operators apparently in the, on Hag Island, which
5:46
Trump has been obsessed with since the 1980s, They have the,
5:51
the, the way that they fill up their, their, their tankers for
5:54
export is in such a way that if the tankers have to break loose
5:58
very quickly because there's an incoming attack, they can.
6:01
So they're not tethered in the same way that they were.
6:04
And the other thing is that there's like four or five other
6:06
islands that also have oil loading capacities and they've
6:09
all been beefed up. So if you're an Expeditionary
6:11
force, you know, launched by Donald Trump heading into the
6:14
Gulf, it's not just Hague Island you may have to consider, but
6:16
all these other little islands. I mean, you know, well, it's
6:19
geographically complicated. Absolutely.
6:21
Well, you're not going to get to Hague Island until you've got
6:23
through the Strait. If it's a landing force, I mean
6:25
yes you could attempt airborne assault, but if it's a landing
6:29
force coming from ships you have first got to get through the
6:32
Strait. Just on the, on the money, just
6:34
quickly these, so if you're a tanker company and you're not
6:37
having to pay, you know, up to $2,000,000 for each ship to get
6:42
through for the passage, does it make financial sense to do so?
6:47
Because that's about a, that's about a tenth of the value of
6:49
the tanker. But I guess it makes sense
6:51
because the, the oil that you carry is maybe worth 150
6:55
million, a 160 million. So it's still the business model
6:58
still works. Yes.
7:01
And some of the more, shall we say, sporty tanker operators
7:05
have been taking the risk. I mean, they've been coming out
7:08
in ones and twos, Greek flagged some, some other nation,
7:12
Southeast Asian nations, they have been getting some out,
7:16
whether it's through an informal arrangement with the Iranians.
7:19
But clearly my suspicion is the Iranians would like to step this
7:23
up. Apparently there's a bill going
7:24
to the match list, the Iranian parliament to sort of regularize
7:28
the toll idea and and put it into law, into Iranian law.
7:32
And that's the reality they'd like to create when this is
7:35
over. Wouldn't that be ironic if, you
7:37
know, after all this, you know, sacrifice of blood and treasure,
7:42
all the billions that have been spent on this war, We end up
7:45
with a bloke still called Harmony who's running the
7:47
country, but we end up with more resilient, able to do quite a
7:51
lot with very little. I know they've been militarily
7:54
weakened, but you know, at the moment they seem to have the
7:56
upper hand and they've used the Strait of Hormuz.
7:59
You know, they've leveraged that in a way that actually, I mean,
8:01
many military planners had imagined.
8:03
But actually seeing it happen is another thing, isn't it?
8:06
And we remember the circumstances under which the
8:10
Armada, in inverted commas, set out from the Eastern seaboard of
8:14
the United States when demonstrators were being killed
8:17
on the streets. It was, you know, we won't let
8:19
this happen. But actually, the forces weren't
8:21
in place. The forces then were in place.
8:24
The war has happened. And the outcome may end up
8:27
strengthening the regime by giving it that additional income
8:31
and securing its exports and its control over the straight in the
8:34
longer term. Do you think that we're being
8:38
too pessimistic here that actually maybe in two weeks
8:41
time, if and when the Iranians have run out of missiles and
8:44
drones, you know, it is just game over.
8:47
Or if Trump were to hit their power plants, I know there's a
8:50
massive risk of escalation there.
8:51
And that's why the one reason why he called it off.
8:54
But if you hit their power plants, then there's only so
8:56
much they can do. Are we giving them too much
8:59
benefit here? Well, for their resilience.
9:01
One thing you could argue is that they are also sensitive to
9:05
both the oil price and the implications of completely
9:09
closing the Strait, including with their allies in China who
9:12
get so much of their oil from them that they are sensitive to
9:15
that, which is why they're operating this system and
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allowing some out and allowing. Now, if they are sensitive to
9:22
that, that does indicate potential pressure points and
9:25
points of weakness. Hog Island, obviously, you know,
9:28
Trump's favorite option or whatever, but but I think there
9:31
are still some escalatory possibilities that we that the
9:35
US and Israel might use that we don't really know whether Iran
9:39
has obviously threatened to respond against industry,
9:43
against power plants, Desalina Tion and we've seen them trying
9:47
to do some of it. But the real question I think
9:49
with some of those retaliatory options is what is their ability
9:52
to actually, you know, turn the lights off in Israel, for
9:55
example. And we're not quite so sure
9:57
about that. The the odd thing we've learnt
9:59
so far in this war is that their short range missiles and drones
10:03
are much more accurate and therefore they can.
10:06
It's like. The Gulf states have been badly
10:07
affected and they. Can turn the lights off in some
10:10
of the Gulf countries, but we don't really know.
10:12
And of course it's Israel that would be hitting some of these
10:15
things like power plants or the Americans to be fair.
10:19
But we know the Israelis have hit their steel plants recently.
10:22
Yes, which apparently I didn't know this, but the Iranian steel
10:26
is a is a massive industry. It's another great.
10:27
Second biggest? Exactly, Yeah.
10:29
But but to your question, I think we cannot assume that all
10:34
of the escalatory options would leave them untroubled that there
10:39
might be worries on their side about what's actually going to
10:41
be left of this economy when we do the deal we'd like to do.
10:46
And so yes, we shouldn't necessarily assume no, no.
10:50
They hold all the but we're having a very different
10:52
conversation to the one that we might have had a month ago had
10:55
the war gone differently, and certainly a different
10:57
conversation to the one that the Pentagon and the White House
11:01
assume that we'd always be having at this stage.
11:04
So let me ask you about another indicator.
11:06
The troops on the way. Yes, Who's coming?
11:08
What will they do? So maybe we'll do that next
11:11
week, but but I would say we're not there yet.
11:16
So, you know, 2 1/2 thousand Marines, let's remember 2003
11:19
invasion of Iraq, 130,000 boots on the ground, as well as all
11:24
the other people on warships and Air Force and all the rest of
11:27
it. So the numbers are very, very
11:29
small and the kind of. Are they show and tell, do you
11:31
think? I mean, is this to kind of
11:33
encourage you Iranians to come to some conclusion?
11:35
Or it gives you options. So if you were to say to me, OK,
11:38
let's stop the flow of, of oil from Hag Island, but without
11:41
taking it or bombing it, your option is to board tankers and
11:45
the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, for example, That's one of
11:49
the things they train to do is board ships.
11:50
They have helicopters, you know, so, so it gives you that option.
11:54
It does give you the option to go in, maybe do a raid somewhere
11:57
near the Strait of Hormuz to clear out a missile site,
12:00
something like that. But it doesn't give you the
12:02
option to take and hold significant amounts of ground.
12:06
It's just not enough. Because I guess the the, the big
12:08
choice facing Trump and therefore all of us is if you
12:14
don't accept that you have to do a deal with the regime that you
12:17
swore to get rid of just a month ago, that you know, who's
12:21
supreme leader you bombed on day one.
12:24
And the Israelis of course, still believe.
12:26
We'll talk about that the minute they still believe deeply in
12:28
regime change. But if that's, if you don't want
12:30
that, don't want to do do a deal with the devil, then it has to
12:35
be the other thing. It has to be a grand invasion,
12:38
doesn't it really? I mean that's, that's where
12:41
where that's where this tanker is hitting.
12:43
But but. Because you can't, if you can't
12:44
do a deal, and if you don't want to do a deal.
12:47
And Trump may want to do a deal, but the Israelis may not let him
12:50
at the end of the day. I don't think they carry on
12:52
bombing without the Americans. Or if they do, it's for a very
12:56
limited and demonstrative period, just as I think it's
12:59
been fairly clear since early on in this that if the Americans
13:02
stop, the Iranians will performatively say we're not
13:06
stopping, we're not ready. They want to show that Trump is
13:09
the demonder and that they are the ones dictating terms.
13:13
So it's possible the Israelis might do something similar.
13:15
But I don't think they carry on in any significant way without
13:17
Trump because otherwise, you know, all sorts of things could
13:21
happen negatively for them and Trump will want to bring it to
13:24
halt. But I I think he's already
13:26
signalled in a way. And in a minute you must tell
13:28
me, you know, you're reading of his domestic political position.
13:32
But I think he's already signal that he's ready to do a deal
13:35
with these guys. He's just said we just don't
13:36
know who's who to talk. To well, what he's saying of
13:38
course, officially is that they're begging to do a deal
13:41
with him, whereas actually all the signals indicate that he's
13:43
trying to do a deal with them. So my I mean there are the
13:46
domestic indicators. Yeah, what's your key?
13:48
Thing my domestic indicators don't look good for Trump.
13:52
And it's not just the opinion polls where you see a flagging
13:56
support for the war. It was there was never a
13:58
majority in favour, unlike there was with Iraq in 2003.
14:01
There was never a majority of the American public that was in
14:03
favour. The you'll feel, even though
14:06
America oddly, ironically, is energy independent, is the
14:10
biggest energy exporter in the world, people are feeling the,
14:14
the pain at the pump even more than here.
14:16
I mean, you know, you go to places like California where
14:18
there are lots of surcharges anyway, that the price of, you
14:21
know, of diesel and petrol has gone up exponentially.
14:25
And of course, you know, all these alternative fuels that you
14:27
put in your in your car, you know, like, you know, there's,
14:30
there's, you know, biofuels, they've also gone up because
14:33
there's scarcity all around because of shipping and because
14:35
of the straight being sort of semi closed.
14:39
So that's, you know, that's bad news on the opinion poll front
14:42
for Trump. Can I add in one other indicator
14:45
that we're looking at which of course markets now we've seen
14:48
this pattern of making certain announcements on Friday
14:50
afternoon after the markets are closed like the threat against
14:56
infrastructure that was made a couple of weeks ago and then,
14:59
you know, the nervous wait for the futures market to open on
15:02
Sunday evening. He does listen to markets.
15:05
He does. Yeah, but the trouble is the
15:06
markets are no longer listening to him.
15:09
So he says something. And if he says it three times,
15:14
then the reality doesn't correspond to what he's been
15:16
saying. So a rosy statement about this
15:19
war is winding down, but I'm still sending thousands of
15:21
troops in that direction, and they're still firing their
15:24
drones and their missiles. So the reality doesn't match
15:27
with the words. And if you look at what markets
15:31
have been, so let's say go back to last Monday, right?
15:33
So last Monday morning, just before the markets opened, Trump
15:37
made this, you know, statement about postponing the doomsday
15:40
deadline by another five days. And so, on the Doomsday Clock,
15:44
the markets Yelp the joy. Some people made a lot of money.
15:46
Yeah, some people by the others, that's another subject.
15:48
So the markets basically reacted.
15:50
They yelped. Things that were supposed to go
15:52
down went down and things that went up went up.
15:55
And then ever since then, he's tried the same gambit when when
15:58
things looked a bit wobbly, he's come out with these positive
16:01
statements and the markets have barely budged, barely budged.
16:04
And what that tells me and what my friends who work in, you
16:08
know, in finance tell me is that the markets are nervous.
16:12
They're sitting on the fence. They're not quite sure how to
16:15
read this. So they haven't panic because
16:17
panic would mean oil at $160 a barrel, which it isn't.
16:21
Unsustainable. Unsustainable, but they haven't
16:23
done that. But nor have they gone down to
16:25
90 or 80. They're just sitting on the
16:27
sidelines a bit like all of us, because they're not entirely
16:31
sure what Trump will do and they don't believe everything that
16:35
comes out of his mouth. And that's a tricky situation to
16:38
be in, right? If you're trying to manage the
16:40
messaging of this war, then I think that's really hard.
16:44
So we touched on it briefly. You know, JD Vance possibly
16:46
going to Pakistan, Pakistan's role as a mediator in all this,
16:50
which I think the White House has confirmed.
16:52
But what do we actually know about this, and who's talking to
16:55
whom? Gosh, this is so hard.
17:00
I mean, we saw this in the run up to the the abortive talks in
17:05
Oman both this year in February and last year before the June
17:10
war questions about where is who's doing this, where, where
17:15
is it happening now? In both cases, it ended up
17:17
settling in Amman. But for example, this year, at
17:20
one point it was supposed to happen in Turkey and Turkey was
17:23
very much trying to, to put themselves in as, as the
17:26
mediators. So now I would say they're the
17:29
ones to watch. Notwithstanding that Pakistan
17:32
has made these statements and said, you know, we, we'd be
17:34
willing to host and all that kind of stuff.
17:36
The Turks are definitely very active in this, in trying to
17:39
negotiate something. And we've seen, we've seen the
17:42
multilateral alignment of Turkish, Pakistani, Egyptian,
17:47
Saudi foreign ministers all trying to, to, to, you know,
17:50
concert a line or, or work out something that might appeal to
17:53
both sides to get them around the table.
17:55
But definitely the Turks and the Pakistani are in there.
17:58
The Amanis, of course, having played host to talks that
18:03
disastrously miscarried, would like to be in there.
18:06
I mean, they've made a lot of negative comments about the
18:09
Israelis and the Americans trying to sort of, in a sense,
18:12
stay on side with the Iranians. But the Iranians have been
18:15
bombing them and bombing their ports and facilities.
18:18
So I think the Amanis are out of the.
18:20
Picture for the I I spoke to a senior Qatari government
18:23
official last week. The Qataris, of course, are
18:25
great negotiators and they've been negotiating in all sorts of
18:28
conflicts, including in Venezuela, you know, with, with
18:31
kidnappings back in the day, not recently.
18:34
And of course, famously with Hamas and Israel.
18:37
They're not interested. I mean, they're so upset by
18:39
what's happened, understandably, because they're all, you know,
18:42
they're gas, natural gas, oil, you know, production and export
18:45
facilities have been bombed to smithereens and they're going to
18:48
take many, many years to recover from that.
18:50
So they're not interested anymore.
18:52
And I also think getting back to the Pakistanis, it was so
18:55
interesting that a lot of the, the, the ships that managed to
18:58
slip through the Strait, either because they're paid money or
19:01
because they were allowed to go through by the Iranians, were
19:03
Pakistani flagged. So there was a lot of flag
19:06
exchanging that went on. And maybe the Pakistanis that,
19:09
you know, they've got a special place in all this and they're
19:12
trying to cash in on this, you know, both, you know,
19:14
financially but also diplomatically.
19:17
But I don't know where this will lead, frankly.
19:19
And I just don't know also to what extent anything that is
19:22
said by the American side in these negotiations will be
19:26
believed by the other side, considering that the Iranians
19:29
rightly say, well, twice we've talked to each other and we
19:32
thought things were going quite well, and then he started
19:34
bombing us. Yeah, I think this point, I
19:38
mean, the shattered sense of security among the Gulf leaders
19:41
is obviously one of the key things that will come out of
19:44
this. And I think this point about
19:48
just how far do you go now with Trump, entrusting him.
19:51
I mean, clearly some of these Gulf leaders, particularly the
19:55
Qataris, Saudis and UAE, after that business last summer when
20:00
the Israelis tried to kill the Hamas leadership in Qatar, they
20:04
very effectively put pressure together on Trump.
20:08
And they thought they had a deal.
20:09
And in fact, of course, you may recall that Qatar and the US
20:13
signed this security agreement with guarantees.
20:16
And I, it may have been the same Qatari, I, I spoke to 1 after
20:20
this and said, well, guys, you've done it.
20:22
You've got a deal that's better than Israel here.
20:24
And he replied, it's all dependent on the whim of one
20:27
man. So it doesn't really amount to
20:29
much, which I think was prophetic under the
20:32
circumstances. So, so they've got to make
20:34
decisions. And I think, you know, the
20:36
question, one of the tankers, because that's supposed to be
20:38
coming out today, is carrying Saudi oil.
20:43
So, so the question for all of them now as to how far do they
20:47
actually keep channels open with the Iranians through the
20:50
Pakistan, you know, try and find their own new regional balance
20:54
here. None of them have entered the
20:55
war on the side of the US and Israel.
20:58
I think all of them think that would be toxic in terms of
21:01
domestic opinion. But but you know, do they still
21:04
count on the Americans when this is over?
21:06
You know, do they seek new arrangements?
21:08
Do they appease Iran? A lot of them would say they'd
21:11
already tried doing that, and look how that ended.
21:14
So they're between a rock and a hard place.
21:16
Here's an interesting sidebar. So you remember the run up to
21:19
the Gaza ceasefire, the one that actually worked out, Yes.
21:23
So the thing that got Trump to basically put his foot down and
21:28
force Benjamin Netanyahu, who was in the Oval Office, I think
21:31
last September, just after the UN General Assembly meeting in
21:34
New York, basically the Israelis bombed the Hamas headquarters in
21:40
Qatar. The Qataris were furious with
21:43
the Israelis. Qatar just promised, you know,
21:46
apparently Donald Trump is shiny new plane once he leaves office.
21:49
They did. They signed that security
21:51
agreement. And here the Israelis bombing
21:53
the Hamas headquarters in Qatar, which was then still leading
21:57
negotiations between the two sides.
22:01
So there's that famous picture which the White House made
22:04
certain that we would see at the stilts photograph.
22:06
Of PB apologizing. Not but also Trump hands him the
22:10
phone and says, call them up, call up the emir of Qatar and
22:13
apologize. And that then led to ultimately
22:17
that down the road we had the ceasefire.
22:20
The fact that Trump was able to, you know, put Benjamin Netanyahu
22:24
on notice like this and put him in line, basically read him the
22:28
riot act. It was fascinating.
22:30
And I just wonder whether he's still doing that.
22:33
I mean, apparently he did it after the attack on the Iranian,
22:37
you know, oil and gas installations, which then led to
22:39
the attack on the Qatari gas field and the gas, the facility
22:44
the Russell found. I mean, this was such a big blow
22:47
to Qatar. But again, Qatar gets it in the
22:49
neck all the time, doesn't it, either from the Iranians or from
22:53
the Israelis. And I just, the reason I'm
22:55
saying all this is I just don't get the impression that Trump is
22:59
in control of much of the stuff that he thinks he's in control
23:02
of, including his own messaging. And I think this thing is, if
23:06
you look at the last four weeks, it's spun out of control because
23:10
they underestimated Iran's resilience.
23:13
They underestimated, you know, Israel's determination, you
23:17
know, and they underestimated the importance of the, you know,
23:20
of the, of the oil markets. Yeah.
23:23
And the fact that, I mean, in a sense, the biggest
23:27
miscalculation was they failed to appreciate that Ayatollah Ali
23:32
Khamenei was in certain ways a moderating influence.
23:36
Faced with the situation after last June's war of Do we just
23:42
batten down, do a deal? Except that, you know, they
23:46
might possibly do this to us again?
23:49
He guided the Iranian leadership towards saying yes.
23:52
Better that than endless escalation which might do untold
23:56
damage to to the country. So by removing him, they have
24:01
removed a a a potentially moderating influence in this
24:04
discussion. And, and I wonder, Mark, if that
24:06
goes back to Trump's own personal obsession with
24:10
leadership. And, you know, the, the, the big
24:13
man at the top of the tree, because this is a man who's
24:16
shown us in not just in recent months, but actually, you know,
24:19
while he's been in office also the first time around that he
24:23
believes in decapitation of leadership as a strategy of war.
24:28
So, or certainly a strategy of victory.
24:31
So he, he, he got rid of Madhuri, got him kidnapped.
24:35
Did that change the regime in Venezuela?
24:36
Not one bit. He may think the same will
24:41
happen in Cuba. I don't think it necessarily
24:44
changes the the Cuban set up. He, he respects exceptional
24:49
people at the top, whether they're goodies or baddies.
24:52
So, you know, I wonder if that if that is a rabbit hole that
24:56
he's gone down. He kills Khamenei, he gets
24:58
another Khamenei. There's no guarantee that
25:01
Khamenei junior, the Nepo Ayatollah, would have taken over
25:04
from a Khamenei senior if this assassination hadn't happened.
25:09
So what do you, what are what are you being told?
25:11
What are your indicators of what's going on right now in
25:13
Iran? Well, I think anyone who tells
25:15
you with any confidence that they know what's going on is
25:18
probably lying. I mean, the Israelis we know
25:21
from their ability to pinpoint these people when they're going
25:23
to particular meetings, clearly have extremely good visibility
25:27
inside the regime. They know all kinds of things
25:30
about the regime's positions and we have to consider that, You
25:34
know, we have to consider, well, how can they be so good at XY
25:37
and Z when it comes targeting to them, but so mistaken in their
25:40
judgements about certain other things, for example, you know,
25:44
escalating against the gas field.
25:46
Now, I think probably there's a middle ground there where they
25:49
have reasons for doing some of those things they do that seem
25:53
to us to be sort of pointlessly escalatory.
25:56
Clearly they hope through escalation to cause a a more
26:00
sober mood to overtake at what what is left of the leadership.
26:05
But yes, I mean, you've got the speaker of the Parliament,
26:07
you've got the commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corps,
26:11
you've got a few key figures like that.
26:12
The people in the Supreme Leader's office, if you like,
26:14
the gatekeepers, if he's still seriously injured and not really
26:19
able to exert power, you know, they might be exerting power in
26:22
his name. But this is is going to be a key
26:25
thing. Yeah.
26:26
And it was even said, I think it was JD Vance himself who said it
26:30
before this started. We don't really know who to talk
26:32
to. Yeah.
26:33
But Trump has said it, too. Yeah, even more people now.
26:35
We were going to talk to others who were left.
26:37
Yeah, even before they started this, they were saying that.
26:41
And that I think is going to be an absolutely critical hurdle in
26:45
in trying to bring this to a halt.
26:48
I mean, the other thing of course that we keep talking
26:49
about and again, we don't really know unless you do mark the 440
26:53
kilograms we do. Know.
26:55
In which you're in. Do we know that?
26:57
Not you and I, but the US Intelligence Committee.
26:59
It is a very. Curious they haven't told you A.
27:02
Couple of weeks ago there was a very curious statement in front
27:04
of the house by Tulsi Gabbard where she where she said we know
27:09
with high confidence where all of it is now under the rules,
27:15
you know, the laws that govern these testimonies.
27:18
If she says high confidence, that means multiple sources of
27:21
intelligence. So yes, maybe the Israelis have
27:24
got a spy who tells them and maybe they through observing
27:27
overhead through satellites or intercepting emails have
27:31
collateral on that. Now, the inference I think, and
27:34
I wrote this in The Sunday Times from what people are saying, is
27:37
that it is all underground at the Isfahan facility, one of the
27:40
places where they caved in the entrances with bombs.
27:43
So on the one hand, you might say that a lot of those theories
27:47
that were going around during the 12 Day War, oh, they'll have
27:50
scattered it into penny packets all over the country was not
27:53
true. And that in a sense, if you
27:55
wanted to try and go in and get it, the key thing, the
27:59
intelligence about where it is, if you believe Tulsi Gabbard is
28:04
actually pretty precise and reliable.
28:06
But the question of how on earth would you surround that Isfahan
28:10
facility with enough troops to fight off the people who'd be
28:14
trying to stop you while you dug in through those collapsed
28:17
tunnels and tried to find these containers?
28:20
I mean, an extraordinarily complex operation that would be,
28:24
I mean, I've spoken to some people, both Israeli and on this
28:27
side of of the Atlantic who've been in the special operations
28:31
world, who've suggested it's possible.
28:33
But boy, oh boy. But what a risk.
28:35
I mean, do you remember, you know, on the Jimmy, the thing
28:37
that really did for Jimmy Carter was failed.
28:39
Mission. To, to, you know, to rescue the
28:41
hostages, which arguably is a much easier thing to do than
28:44
trying to dig up 440kg of enriched uranium hidden,
28:49
entombed in a mountain somewhere, you know, near
28:51
Isfahan. And, and are you getting the
28:55
same that I'm getting, which is that if they had had that
28:58
uranium and carried on enriching it a little bit further, they
29:02
would have been two weeks away? Yeah, two weeks, yeah.
29:04
Two weeks for making a nuclear device.
29:06
I think even the IEA, you know, the international watchdog has
29:09
said that the amount of time you'd need to convert some of it
29:14
to up to the north of 90% for fissile material, in other
29:18
words, to use in an atomic bomb was, yeah, a couple of weeks.
29:22
But if if removing the nuclear capability of the regime as well
29:26
as the regime itself was one of the original reasons for going
29:29
to war, you know, unless they actually capture this stuff and
29:33
get hold of it, I'm talking about the Americans, then we're
29:35
kind of back to square one, aren't we?
29:37
Possibly. But, you know, even if they do
29:38
capture it, there's nothing to stop the Iranians building new
29:41
centrifuges and making more. I I just think the level of
29:44
intelligence penetration of the regime is such that the Israelis
29:47
and therefore the Americans would soon become aware of that.
29:50
But did they say disarming it of nuclear weapons or, or, or
29:54
ending the nuclear program, for example, which is always the
29:58
thing that the Iranians have clung onto their right to have
30:02
nuclear power and their own enrichment.
30:05
I'm not sure they did, particularly in the way the
30:07
Pentagon formulated the military aims, which was to prevent Iran
30:12
being a threat to its neighbors. Now, Lordy Lord, I mean, we're a
30:15
month in and they're still firing off enough drones and
30:18
missiles to be a threat to the. So they have failed by that
30:21
yardstick, but on the nuclear so far.
30:24
But on the nuclear side, I think they left themselves room for
30:27
manoeuvre. I think what has been, what is
30:29
consistently underestimated by the Americans, and I wonder if
30:32
this is a side product of the sophistication of their smart
30:36
weapons, is that firepower determines wars.
30:40
And what they're not looking at is all the other, you know, more
30:43
mystical stuff like the power of resilience, of mythology, of
30:46
history, of character. You know, what does it do if you
30:49
are the, you know, the, the junior Harmony and your dad's
30:52
been killed, your wife's been killed, your son's been killed,
30:54
your wife's been killed, You know, you are going to be really
30:57
upset and you will do whatever you can, however injured you
31:00
might be, if you're still functioning, you know, to to do
31:04
as much damage as you possibly can to the Americans.
31:06
And that applies to everyone else and it applies to all the
31:09
institutions. And I think one thing that we is
31:12
so difficult for us to get a handle on is to what extent that
31:16
other element of Iran, you know, the people on the streets that
31:19
we saw in January that were massacred, you know, the Iranian
31:22
exiles that I know, some of whom are good friends that I speak to
31:25
in this country and in America who are so determined for regime
31:29
change to continue as a primary goal of this war.
31:33
What proportion of the population do they represent?
31:37
What about, you know, we know about the hardcore supporters of
31:40
the you know, of the revolutionary?
31:42
Yeah, but what about the people in?
31:44
Elections would suggest there's 10 million of them, yes.
31:46
I mean, there's quite a lot in the nation of 92,000,000, yeah.
31:50
And but also and what about the people in the middle who don't
31:52
like the ayatollahs but aren't prepared to die on the streets?
31:55
Do they now think this is the Battle of Kabbalah 680AD all
31:59
over again? By the way, mythology.
32:01
This is another one of my my final indicator.
32:04
Mythology in Iran is incredibly important.
32:07
So the battle of Kabbalah, as you know, where the the grandson
32:12
of the Prophet Muhammad Ali was defeated by the Umayyad
32:16
Caliphate, Yazid the first, I think he was called.
32:21
It's a little bit like Masada in Israel or like the battle of
32:25
Kosovo field or a little bit like Dunkirk.
32:27
It is a heroic defeat and this heroic defeat, you know, where a
32:31
nation is able to be resilient and survive against, you know,
32:36
overwhelming odds, which is such a powerful force.
32:40
You know, in the story that you tell yourself in the middle of a
32:42
war or indeed outside a war, you know, this is very important
32:48
because Kabbalah's been popping up left, right and centre, you
32:51
know, in propaganda. And then what the the messaging
32:54
of the government. Now many of the people will say,
32:56
especially those demonstrating nonsense, right nonsense.
33:00
But for others this will be a, a motivating factor.
33:04
And again, again, something that we have to look up and we have
33:07
to get wise about. Do you think militarily?
33:11
Well, and politically, and I'll give you my own opinion, this
33:13
could be another Vietnam for the Americans.
33:16
I think there's two aspects to this.
33:17
The first is that it's always been an existential fight for
33:20
the Iranian regime, but a war of choice for Trump and somewhere
33:25
between the two for he would Netanyahu would portray it as an
33:28
existential struggle. But I think for most Israelis,
33:31
knowing that the the war filled recent past for their country,
33:35
I'm not sure they expect it to produce a definitive answer to
33:40
the Iranian threat. So I think there's somewhere in
33:43
between the two. Now, clearly if it's an
33:45
existential threat as it is for the for the Islamic regime, they
33:49
will go to levels and go to an extent that clearly the
33:53
Americans won't trump. Whatever he's going to do.
33:55
He's not going to mobilize the population of the United States
33:58
to send hundreds of thousands of troops there.
34:01
You know, like the 91 Gulf or 500,000 ground troops to go and
34:06
take then only the South of the country.
34:08
That's not going to happen. The one aspect where I think and
34:11
and my last indicator there is the potential for a Vietnam
34:17
style Commission creep. Well, no, I would say complete
34:21
disillusionment of the Americans is the degree to which their
34:25
military may be shown to have been not up to the task.
34:28
And that new forms of warfare, so-called asymmetric, you know
34:32
as indeed the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese practice
34:35
against them may in a sense humble them.
34:38
Now, we've seen it just over the weekend, how some key aircraft
34:43
were damaged at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia.
34:47
Now, OK, So what, a couple of tankers and one of these spy
34:51
planes, electronic early warning radar station, flying radar
34:54
station, very expensive, embarrassing.
34:57
But the point is a couple of weeks ago, three other tankers
35:01
were hit there. So the American military has not
35:04
been able to to think about that, disperse the planes,
35:08
create the right sort of earthworks to protect them, that
35:11
kind of thing being American helicopter destroyed on the
35:14
ground outside Baghdad by one of these first person view drones
35:18
that we've seen used so extensively in Ukraine, that
35:21
kind of thing. I think the American military is
35:24
going to learn some very hard lessons, particularly if they
35:27
put ground troops ashore. And and isn't the story here
35:30
always that America tries to do war on the expensive war, but on
35:35
the cheap when it comes to losing American lives?
35:37
So we can do this in a weekend, we can do it in a week.
35:41
Again, you're relying on the smartness of your weapons when
35:44
you're not making very smart political or strategic
35:46
decisions, right? And I think that is AI think
35:49
that's a big problem here because not only are these
35:52
weapons unable to take everything out, but the language
35:55
which with which they're sold or their ability is sold from the
35:58
podium by the Secretary of War, Pete Hexif is so bombastic and
36:02
so over the top, it raises expectations.
36:05
It did you can't possibly meet. And then you're back to that old
36:08
question, the original sin of this war.
36:11
What were the reasons for doing it?
36:13
And if it wasn't existential, which it wasn't for America, and
36:17
it wasn't even a war of necessity, which it may have
36:20
become in terms of oil, but nothing else, then why on earth
36:23
did we do it in the first place? OK, finally, Britain.
36:25
What's Britain's role in all this, if any?
36:29
Hiding behind the sofa. I mean that is basically that's
36:33
role look. Are we doing a good job of that?
36:36
I mean, we can. We can just just see the head
36:39
peek up above the sofa. Too, all sorts of things have
36:41
happened, haven't they? Obviously, politically for
36:43
kissed Alma and his government, it's toxic to be too close to
36:47
Trump and Netanyahu on this. So they don't want that and.
36:52
And. The polls suggest that, you
36:54
know, that the public basically are supportive of that.
36:57
I mean, you can take a more geopolitical line and say hang
36:59
on a minute, you told us to focus on Europe.
37:01
That's what we're trying to do with our defence and everything
37:04
else. They're not spending enough
37:06
money on it. But anyway, so there you there
37:08
are lots of reasons for saying we don't want to get too
37:11
involved. And now, even though the UK is
37:13
saying, well we get involved in mine, clearing the small print
37:17
is only after the guns fall silent effectively.
37:19
Which is not not against opposition.
37:22
Yeah, not against opposition. We don't have the ability.
37:24
I mean, we've, you know, had some difficulty sending a single
37:27
large warship to the area and possibly a submarine that is
37:30
lurking there. So I think from the UK point of
37:33
view, they want to stay well clear.
37:35
But I would say that a lot of those points about, you know,
37:38
warfare and lessons, you know, what if Iran mounted a sort of
37:44
Operation Spiders web, that was the Ukrainian attack on those
37:48
Russian bomber bases deep inside Russia at RAF Fairford in
37:51
Gloucestershire. I mean, we take time to
37:54
organize. So, you know, hopefully it won't
37:56
happen. But the implications then for
37:58
Britain, our sense of national security, you know, our ability
38:01
to protect our own forces and and U.S. forces here could all
38:05
be shown up. So there's some quite big risks,
38:08
I think even having taken the position that Starmer has and.
38:10
We haven't even talked about Diego Garcia and, you know,
38:13
missiles flying towards that and the range of that shows.
38:16
And maybe next time we can talk about how, you know, the cost of
38:20
this war, you know, and a Shahid drone is about $30,000 a pop.
38:24
The Iranian, you know, the Ukrainian interceptor drone to
38:28
get rid of it, maybe $3000. What's, what's the, what's the
38:32
market rate for a Tomahawk missile these days or for a
38:34
Patriot missile? Well.
38:35
They're both about the same, actually, 3 to 4 million.
38:38
But you don't shoot, yeah, you don't shoot a Shahid downward.
38:40
No, no, no, of course you don't. But still, they've been more.
38:43
More plus if the Shahid hits your oil plant.
38:45
Yeah. So you can justify spending
38:48
quite a lot to bring it down if you're preventing hundreds of
38:51
millions in damage. But those are the difficult
38:54
equations for people. You know, It's been the, the,
38:57
the daily struggle of the Ukrainian Air Defence Forces for
39:01
the past four years, that matching of means to ends and
39:04
how you're going to bring them down.
39:06
But generally they bring the drones down through electronic
39:08
warfare guns, you know, other things that don't cost much.
39:12
That's it for this episode of Forecast Indicators on the Iran
39:15
War. Many thanks to Mark Urban and
39:17
thanks to you for listening. See you soon.