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Emily Maitlis joins Shelagh Fogarty to discuss Donald Trump's Iran strategy after Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps says it seized two ships in the strait of Hormuz. It came after reports of two ships and a third vessel coming under attack in the strategic waterway this morning. Donald Trump said he is extending the ceasefire with Iran at Pakistan’s request while awaiting a “unified proposal” from Tehran, even as the US military maintains its blockade of Iranian ports. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #emilymaitlis #shelaghfogarty #LBC #debate #donaldtrump #trump #iran #iranwar #news #worldnews #irgc #politics LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
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Yesterday, Tom Swarbrick on LBC spoke to the former Prime Minister Liz Truss and she said that she thinks on this, and clearly in other ways too, but on this, Donald Trump has been a very good president
0:10
I'm not interested in working for the American administration. I'm interested in what we can do to save Britain
0:18
Do you think Trump's been a good president? I do. I think he's been a very good president
0:21
I think he's been a very good president. And I think if we'd had Kamala Harris
0:27
we would be, the West would be facing a very, very serious crisis
0:32
Do you think the war in Iran is justified? I do. I believe that the nuclear weapons that the Iranians were developing are a threat
0:41
not just to the Middle East, but to global stability. And I watched, I was Foreign Secretary
0:47
and Prime Minister when Biden was in. And I just watched the can being kicked down the road again and again
0:52
and the Iranians playing the system. And Trump has called them out
0:58
Yeah, it's not often that we use Liz Truss as an arbiter of good judgment
1:02
and rational common sense. And I'm not sure this is one of those moments, frankly
1:09
because what do we know? We know that Donald Trump had negotiations in place in Geneva
1:14
before this began. and he's got himself back to a position where he wants those negotiations to re-begin
1:21
but he's very much on the back foot now. I mean, you talked about him extending the ceasefire as if it was a choice
1:28
And technically, yeah, he had three options, right? So let's just take ourselves through those three options
1:33
One was that he bombed Iran, which was his threat. He doesn't want to bomb Iran because if he bombs Iran
1:40
then they just start bombing all his allies as well and they start hitting back and more American lives are lost
1:45
and the whole thing goes on longer and the Hormuz Strait stays closed. So he doesn't really want to bomb Iran
1:50
The second thing is he wants to put J.D. Vance on a plane to go and do these peace talks
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J.D. Vance is in Washington, which is a lot further from Pakistan than Iran is
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So if J.D. Vance gets off the plane, having made that commitment
2:04
lands in Pakistan to find that the Iranians don't fancy turning up, that is humiliating
2:08
That is cringe embarrassment. and so he doesn't want to do that to his vice president
2:14
So the third option is what? Well, you have to declare a ceasefire
2:18
I mean, that's all he's done. And the fact that... Buying time
2:22
He's bought time. And the fact that the Iranians don't really believe it
2:26
I think is interesting because they think he's got his catapult out
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In other words, he's pulling back the elastic just to fire it even harder
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So how do they respond to the ceasefire today? Well, they've just attacked three more ships
2:38
in the Hormuz Straits. won a Greek ship that they're now directing towards Iran
2:44
And I think this is their way of saying we're sick and tired of the game, right
2:48
We don't really know what you want. If we want to check a boat, we're going to check a boat. Yeah, I mean, like, don't think you've got the upper hand
2:54
just because you decide it's a ceasefire now. We have not been put in a position where we trust the American negotiations anymore
3:03
And it does seem to be critical because to go back to Liz Truss's point just for a second
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And as you say, Sheila, they had this JCPOA, the Iran deal, that kept nuclear proliferation, nuclear enhancement in Iran in check for a decade
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It wasn't long enough. Nobody was pretending it was the end of the story. Nobody was pretending it ticked every single box forever
3:25
But they had something that looked like containment and they had something that looked like both sides were talking
3:31
And I remember that time really well because frankly British Airways started running direct flights I went to Iran for exactly that reason because I was thinking this is going to be a moment It was deemed to be safer It was deemed to be an opening up You know it was a commercial opening up
3:44
Both sides were talking. There was the sense that, you know, Rouhani was in charge then
3:50
that there was somebody that America could negotiate with on the other side in Iran
3:54
He ripped that up, he threw it in the bin, and now, to push the metaphor, he's actually scrabbling around
4:00
at the bottom of the dustbin, trying to get all those little pieces together, pull back the Iran deal once again
4:06
but with the added complication that the Homer straits closed, that inflation's higher, the oil's through the roof
4:12
and that Iran doesn't trust him anymore because he's the one that got rid of it in the first place
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And you said at the beginning that he doesn't want to bomb Iran, but we've seen that he will
4:22
Oh, gosh, I'm not... Listen, I'm not saying that Donald Trump's such a peacemaker
4:26
I'm not saying he won't. I mean, I think he probably genuinely doesn't know if he will from one day to the other
4:30
But I think if you had to say, does he want to continue, the bombing war, I don't think he does. And one thing that's really interesting now
4:38
some of the stories that are coming out of Tehran, I've got friends in Iran
4:42
they say that the Iranian government, who they loathe, hate, detest, have been very savvy about
4:50
this. They are rebuilding the parts that have been bombed in the centre of the city very quickly
4:54
because they don't want people to feel that the war is being lost. They realise how important it
4:59
is to keep morale up. So they are going around, they are rebuilding it. And there's another thing
5:04
which is sort of extraordinary. If you look at some of the sort of Instagram posts, the TikTok
5:08
posts, some of it, which is pushed by propaganda, they are making some of these IGC fellas into kind
5:14
of TikTok heroes, right? They're mass murderers. I almost found myself, I didn't do it, but I almost
5:19
found myself retweeting one of those videos they put out about Donald Trump because it was so funny
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Well, and then I just thought, best not, best not. Yeah, I mean, it's that's where we are now
5:29
you know, they're slightly winning the social media war. And the concern that some Iranians in the diaspora
5:37
and talking to friends of theirs at home have is that Trump has actually pushed Iranian people
5:44
closer to the government that they loathe. That they're actually starting to win the hearts and minds of people at home
5:51
I mean, you know, not that they don't want to overturn it. Of course they want to overturn it
5:54
They've been living under this dictatorship, this theological dictatorship for years. more to this than horrendous war. But they don't trust Trump, right? If they were pro-war at the
6:03
beginning of this, if they thought that Trump was coming in to save them and to liberate them and to
6:07
change the regime, they're not seeing that now. No. They just want it gone. You know, they want
6:11
somebody who's going to, you know, not bomb their houses. And I get a daily delivery from my colleagues
6:16
of Truth Social posts from Donald Trump, as I'm sure you do as well. He constantly goes on about
6:21
this being the Obama deal and Obama's terrible deal, terrible deal. Is it closer to the truth
6:27
to say that once he ended that deal in 2018 that in a sense opened the door to iran enriching and
6:35
enriching and enriching in a way that couldn't be inspected as regularly as as effectively as he
6:39
could under the deal look this was in the bin in 2017 but it was one of the first things he did
6:44
um in his administration and to be fair i followed trump around in 2015-16 on the campaign trail
6:51
and all the republicans were saying the same thing you know ted cruz was saying we're going
6:55
to rip up the Iran deal. I think Rubio was saying rip up the Iran deal. So they all framed it in the
7:01
sort of spirit of Obama's made this terrible compromise. You know, why has he got us to sign
7:06
up to something which looks like a terrible compromise? It's only once that deal was in the
7:11
bin and things didn get better and the enrichment did carry on And we understand now that you know of course they have enriched way past their sort of needs for you know energy or sort of security
7:24
It does look as if they've sort of, you know, gone through sort of nuclear enhancement that is pushing at the very limits of what they actually need
7:33
So, yeah, you have a choice. Do you want to keep an eye on that? Do you want inspectors to be able to look at that
7:38
Do you want to be able to say, well, you know, we thought we had a deal here
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We're going to slap more sanctions on you. Or do you want the whole thing to go literally and metaphorically underground
7:47
Underground, yeah. And at the beginning of the ceasefire, the first one, if you can call it that
7:53
Iran made the Lebanon-Israel situation a deal breaker, or it attempted to anyway
8:01
And then we've quickly found ourselves in a position where talks between Lebanon and Israel
8:05
are showing some small signs of hopefulness again, see where that goes
8:11
Do you think if that can yield something, that that does help the Iran-US situation
8:17
or is that just a thing of its own? Well, I think it helps Lebanon, which is good
8:23
And I think it probably makes Iran think that they can start to have some of those conversations
8:30
with Israeli government ministers. but I'm not sure it solves the Trump problem at the end of this, does it
8:39
I mean, which is that they think of him as quite capricious and quite feckless
8:43
and, as you say, you know, we're all kept up to date via Truth Social at 4am, right
8:50
I mean, here's time. So you're sort of reading one thing and you're..
8:55
And it's changed by the time now. And it's changed by the time you get into work. And I suppose from Iran's perspective
9:00
what they hear the demand they hear from trump is no nuclear enrichment none we want it all we
9:07
want to see it we call it the powder doesn't it all the time give me your give me your powder give
9:12
me your powder we want to see it all they're not going to agree to that are they i mean look go back
9:17
to june when iran was being bombed by america first time around and israel we should say and
9:22
trump told us that all the nuclear sites have been obliterated i mean where are we right there
9:29
was the chance to contain it, to keep an eye on it, up until 2017. Then last year, they started
9:36
trying to obliterate it, to say, you know, we're going to completely obliterate the nuclear sites
9:42
Then Trump starts to admit, I think with the help of the New York Times, that they didn't actually
9:48
know how much had been wiped out or destroyed. And sure enough, the bombing starts again
9:54
which suggests that he has to recognise that they didn't really do the job or anywhere near
9:59
the job in June. I mean, is that the way you make them give up their stuff? Clearly not
10:04
if they're still controlling the whole world economically. It's interesting, though, isn't it? We still haven't seen this new supreme leader
10:11
Yeah. That's fascinating to me, because I think what we've seen as a result of that
10:17
whether he's alive, dead, well enough to lead, I don't know. But Iran can clearly still function
10:24
both diplomatically in terms of leadership, and as you've described from your friend's
10:28
information in Tehran rebuilding what's been damaged. Yeah, because they have this mosaic..
10:32
Depth to their government. Well, it's sort of, it's mosaic, they call it the sort of mosaic defence, which is cells, right? So instead of, I mean, when you say supreme leader, we've all got
10:42
that image of the pyramid, right? And the guy sitting like on the top of a Christmas tree
10:46
right? The sort of, you know, I've got the star and here I am. I mean, what this suggests is that
10:50
whether or not the supreme leader lived through that attack is almost irrelevant Because the IRGC are wide rather than vertical So they are each they each sort of control different parts
11:04
And then you've got the parliamentary speaker as well. I mean, I think there is, there is some talk of discrepancies between the IRGC and, and
11:13
what would have been the sort of, the parliamentarians. The sort of military versus the civilian kind of
11:19
Or sort of legislative, exactly. I couldn't possibly I don't know whether they're all on the same page
11:25
we don't know whether there are random acts being taken by random
11:31
cells that aren't really joined up and aren't getting sign off who stopped these ships
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it's the IRGC apparently but maybe the Speaker of Parliament is going no no no guys
11:42
don't do that we don't know it's fascinating that though isn't it
11:46
because our governance is so centralised for all our devolution here and there, it's still very centralised
11:51
Look, the truth is, we understand, I mean, little as we understand Trump's strategy
11:56
we can at least understand the words that he says and we can understand, you know, the sort of language of those around him
12:03
We genuinely don't know, because Iran is so closed, who is in charge, who's talking to who
12:08
or whether they like what's going on. How that system is functioning. Yeah, we don't know. But we do know it's this mosaic system
12:13
which means that it's not central command. That's the whole point, you know
12:18
it's much more diversified to give more people. And this is something they learned from the Iraq war in 2004
12:24
It gives resilience. It may cause some confusion, but there's a resilience in it as well, isn't there
12:28
One of the most interesting things you've said in our conversation is about the people of Iran
12:32
the Iranian people themselves. We can't forget in all of this. And that, you know, that when you've been taken to the top of the hill
12:39
as they were by Trump with those initial bombings and help is coming and all of that
12:44
and then you start to see that, well, what we're all seeing, the kind of mayhem and confusion, but you're living in it as an Iranian
12:51
I mean, that's something to go through, isn't it? You're not going to come out of that, even this short period
12:56
you're not going to come out of that necessarily thinking the same as when you went in. Look, I mean, to put it in context, we know that Iran is hanging these young people
13:07
young women, young men. Trump even put out a tweet appealing for the lives of six young women
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I mean, it is appalling. These are the people that were arrested in the protests in January
13:19
And we shouldn't undermine by this, like the horrors that are going on domestically in Iran
13:26
where they are trying to silence dissent. I mean, that's hard to stop by bombing, isn't it
13:30
Well, the point is that that is going on on the one hand, but it doesn't look as if when Netanyahu was saying, you know, this is the time to rise up
13:38
when Trump was saying this is the time to rise up, they didn't have a plan for the Iranian people
13:42
They didn't have an opposition leader. You remember how the Shah was deposed? the Shah was deposed because the Ayatollah had been waiting quietly in the wings for like two
13:50
decades right they were ready to go he was ready to go you can't just send people on the street
13:55
and say help is coming and then it turns out no help is coming but a lot of bombs are so you know
14:01
the people of Iran genuinely don't know that they're between a rock and a hard place right
14:05
they they they don't know where their help is coming from. Emily thank you really interesting
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conversation thanks Emily Maitlis co-host of the newsagents don't forget the latest episode drops
14:13
at five o'clock today, they're not doing that silly thing where they go live and compete for our listeners
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We're not at the end. Oh, did you? I felt so worried about you and your listeners
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Oh, no. Absolutely. We just, yeah. I'll take your head to head any day
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But I'm just going to talk to an Obama energy minister who wrote the last Iran deal, the
14:33
nuclear deal. Send him in. Yeah. When you're done with Iran. All right. Send him down. We'll talk to him
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