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Edward Luce, US National Editor at the Financial Times, and Marc Sievers, former US Ambassador to Oman, give their analysis on Trump's threats earlier today against Iran. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #shelaghfogarty #iran #LBC #trump #simonmarks 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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0:00
Is he going to deploy ground troops to seize Carg Island
0:04
I mean, you could almost hear in that clip of the president on Fox News the I'd like to do it, but I'm not sure the American people will tolerate it
0:12
Is that what he's seriously contemplating tonight? I don't think so. I think that this is almost certainly blasted
0:20
We've been here before. He was talking in early to mid-March when the war was really beginning to go wrong and expanding of taking Karg Island then and seizing Iran's oil, which is a phrase he's actually been using since the 1980s
0:35
I think that this is a sort of a cry of frustration that the Iranians are not coming to terms with him on terms that he would like for the for this putative deal
0:50
And it's an attempt to bluster that we've seen many times before on more dramatic scales, like wiping out Iran's civilization and bombing them to the Stone Age
1:02
I would be shocked if Trump talked himself into putting actual boots on the ground
1:09
He dropped 49 Tomahawk missiles on Iran last night at a time when his government officially claims the war is over and that a ceasefire that began on April the 7th is still in force
1:24
That's not sustainable, is it? Well, it's sort of been going on and off like this for more than 100 days now
1:31
So, I mean, why not 200 days? There is no obvious way out of this that does not involve Trump's humiliation
1:41
Trump accepting a deal that involves giving Iran money, a lot more money than it gave
1:47
than Obama administration gave in 2015 with the original deal, and probably on weaker terms
1:53
So there is a way out, and that involves Trump climbing down. But he's loath to do that
2:00
And therefore, another 100 days of this is by no means inconceivable
2:05
You had a terrific column in the FT earlier this week in which you said that Donald Trump is now at risk of becoming another Jimmy Carter
2:14
Can you explain to people why you believe that? Yeah, I mean, I should sort of stress that no two human beings, let alone American presidents, are less alike than Carter and Trump
2:25
But they have one thing in common, which is Iran. The Iranian hostage crisis which went on for 444 days basically drained Carter of credibility on the global stage He allowed those 52 American hostages and their fate to really be the barometer of his success as a president
2:46
And that gave Iran, the Ayatollahs, real leverage over him, which they never relinquished
2:53
Trump has given Iran immense leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, one that he had never used before
3:00
and has lost control of the situation. Israel, Iran, they're really dictating the pace and possibly the length of this Operation Epic Fury
3:13
And that makes and that gives Trump in this respect a Jimmy Carter sort of what I call a scent of impotence
3:21
And as far as public opinion is concerned, clearly it's hardening. The numbers of people that are telling pollsters they disapprove not just of the war, but of his handling of the economy
3:35
That's also intensifying. Republicans on Capitol Hill must be terrified by what he's been saying today
3:43
They are. I mean, they're facing, you know, real obliteration in November
3:47
even though there's been quite a lot of gerrymandering of district boundaries going on
3:52
But you do have a significant section of the Republican Party who are urging Trump to, quote, finish the job
4:01
And whether that means bombing into the Stone Age or Iraq style actual invasion of Iran, they never quite specify
4:11
But the likes of Lindsey Graham, you know, are very vocal. And so Trump's being pulled in all kinds of directions
4:18
He did not know how this war would end when he begun it
4:23
And if you don't have an exit plan when you start, you're never going to find the way out
4:29
Tell us how you read the latest situation, both on the blockade and these latest attacks
4:34
Well, I think President Trump had this option of trying to forcibly open the Strait of Hormuz for a number of weeks now, probably a couple of months
4:45
There was a decision to put that on hold and to pursue a negotiating track instead, and also to focus the first part of those negotiations on an agreement to reopen the strait
5:00
But throughout that period, the Iranians either made commitments and then didn't deliver
5:09
on them or decided to take advantage of the opportunity to fire on ships to fire on neighboring countries to hit the civilian airport in Kuwait City and so forth And I think the president just lost patience with this approach and he decided to
5:26
go back to the forceful approach to open the strait. And that will, along with the blockade of Iranian ports and Iranian oil exports, that
5:39
will have a significant effect. And I assume that the intent is to go back to a negotiated agreement, but from a stronger position
5:47
So to give Iran a jolt, so to speak. A pretty major one, it looks like
5:53
Well, yeah, it does, doesn't it? We'll see exactly what happens. Well, yeah, I mean, it's difficult sometimes with this president, isn't it
5:58
Because he can be hyperbolic. But then we've seen him act in that way as well. So it's hard to predict
6:03
But so people know, he said the U.S. will hit Iran very hard tonight, vowing to assume total control of Iran's oil and gas markets and to take Karg Island
6:11
That's that major oil terminal off the coast of Iran. He says that they'll do that in the not too distant future
6:18
We also had this shooting of the ship that killed three Indian sailors
6:24
U.S. airstrike killing three Indian sailors. This is the kind of danger that the crew on board those ships is facing on a daily basis, isn't it
6:34
Yeah, it certainly is. And that's certainly a tragedy. And I'm sure there was no intent to kill any of the sailors. I know that the U.S. Navy has crippled a number of ships attempting to run the blockade and enter Iranian ports without any loss of life
6:53
So obviously, this very, very, very sad development. But this is the risk on shipping both directions. And that's another reason that we need to get this situation in the strait resolved. So it's open to international shipping to travel freely
7:12
I had an Iran commentator in on the programme last week who was saying that one of the failings of the West here, perhaps especially America, is that it doesn't understand Iran's mental or the Iranian regime's mental timescale
7:29
It's very different to the American one and the American, particularly with elections coming in November, the midterms, that has to be taken into account in a democracy
7:42
But in a place like Iran, it's no bother to them if it takes ages
7:46
That's essentially their thinking. Their thinking is longer term than Donald Trump's will be
7:52
That I think has been their assumption We see because they are losing a tremendous amount of revenue every day from the blockade of their oil exports There been predictions that they have to cap
8:06
their wells. It doesn't seem like that's happened yet, but the longer it goes on, the more likely
8:11
that becomes. And, you know, an authoritarian or totalitarian regime can absorb greater economic
8:21
damage than a democracy, certainly. But I think what the president is trying to do is to change
8:28
the assumption that time is working on Iran's side by increasing the pressure
8:35
We've been talking a lot today in Britain since midday-ish about defence, the defence of our
8:41
nation and how much we put into it, because our Secretary of State for Defence has resigned
8:47
saying that the prime minister and the chancellor are not taking it seriously enough
8:54
How would you categorize the risk to the West? So Britain being obviously a part of that
9:00
How would you categorize the risk? From this, well, look, Iran has developed ballistic missiles with longer and longer ranges
9:11
It's pretty clear that they're no longer just trying to be able to. They can hit Israel, clearly, but they want to be able to hit Europe
9:19
They're not there yet. They haven't, you know, there's no situation in which that's an immediate scenario
9:26
But I think that's the intent. When they tried to hit Diego Garcia with a ballistic missile and came fairly close
9:35
that showed that they have developed ranges well beyond the limits of their agreements
9:41
So that is a threat to the West. And certainly the prolonged closing of the Strait of Hormuz has a more direct impact on
9:53
European markets than it does on American markets. I think early on, President Trump wanted to see a multinational naval force to help keep
10:03
the Strait open. It became clear that nobody really wanted to join the United States in that effort
10:09
But there has been talk, as you know, between Britain and France about if there is an agreement
10:15
and an opening of the strait by agreement with Iran, that Britain and France might lead
10:23
an international force to patrol it and make sure that security is maintained and to remove
10:30
any remaining naval mines and so forth. So I think that could become a reality fairly soon
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