00:00Tina Fordham, founder and geopolitical strategist of Fordham Global Foresight. Tina, wonderful to
00:05see you. Matt and I were just speaking with Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, who
00:11repeated President Trump's word that this will be a short-term excursion. What is your understanding
00:17in whether there is an off-ramp that allows this war to be short-term?
00:23That was a spectacular interview, so congratulations to both of you on that. But
00:28my approach to looking at this conflict and indeed all of the geopolitical risks that are
00:34proliferating out there is a political science perspective. And so we were very early in saying
00:40that the likelihood that this would be a short war is basically fat chance. It's not going to be a
00:48short war. And any military strategist will also tell you that the enemy has a vote. And that's
00:54exactly what we're seeing right now. Another aspect which I think has been treated oddly by your last
01:01couple of guests is the notion of regime change either imposed externally or happening as a
01:07grassroots phenomenon, neither of which is transpiring at this stage. And that just adds to the low
01:15likelihood that it's a short war. Tina, I wonder what you think about the benefits Vladimir Putin gets
01:21from this war. I can't help but think we've taken our eye off the ball in terms of defending Ukraine.
01:28We've driven up the price of Putin's oil and now we're taking off the sanctions that held him back
01:35from selling some of that oil. It seems to me he could be giving a portion of those proceeds back
01:42to
01:42Iran to keep this war going because that's in his interests.
01:47Indeed, the unintended consequences, the second and third order effects. I mean, I talk about these as the geopolitics
01:54butterfly effects are manifold. And one of them is that the combination of the oil price spike plus the fact
02:02that the U.S.
02:03Treasury has rolled back selectively some sanctions on Russia is a big, big boost to the Russian Treasury and for
02:11its war
02:11efforts. And so Russia is benefiting in a big way. And of course, Iran is also a long standing military
02:19ally and
02:21cooperated with with Russia on on nuclear for some time. China and Russia are both supporting Iran, which the U
02:31.S.
02:31is at war with. And President Trump has asked China to send ships to police the Straits. And so we're
02:38really looking at the most
02:41unbelievable set of geopolitical bedfellows here. It is quite perplexing.
02:46And in that, the president has suggested that he would delay his summit with President Xi to try to convince
02:52them to help
02:52escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Tina, what what does this conflict do to American and Chinese relationships?
03:00Well, the idea that that would be, you know, that the threat of postponing the U.S.
03:06state visit to China, which is always a great honor for any visiting foreign dignitary, would would somehow, you know,
03:15persuade
03:15Xi Jinping to do something they didn't want to do, I think is not likely to to produce the result
03:22that President Trump hopes for.
03:24Remember that it was only a few months ago that China was able to marshal its superiority in critical minerals
03:32to force a U.S.
03:34climb down. And so we're in a situation right now where the White House is issuing threats to both traditional
03:40allies,
03:41NATO allies, Japan, for example, South Korea, as well as China to say that it needs to police the Strait
03:51of Hormuz
03:53because, you know, the pretext being the, you know, shared global economic interest, energy market interest.
03:59But I think if you look at the words, for example, of the German defense minister, this is not a
04:04war that we started.
04:06Nobody asked us about undertaking this objective. You know, it's pretty easy to see that no one is going to
04:14want to respond to the president's call so that if I'm an investor right now,
04:19I'm going to be asking what President Trump will do next to make good on these threats.
04:24Tina, you know, clearly very few people were fans of the Ayatollah and probably won't be fans of his son
04:34if he's leading as well.
04:37But is it fair to say that the administration hasn't done well to formally lay out a justification for this
04:44war and hasn't given us clear objectives?
04:49So if you're going to try to game out how a conflict ends, you need to understand what the objectives
04:54are.
04:55And we don't know what the objectives are in this conflict.
04:59We've heard different things at different points from the White House.
05:04The regime is unpopular. The estimates from Iran experts are that it maintains around 20 percent of popular support, which
05:13is not nothing.
05:14But what's more important is that this is a regime that has structures and institutions.
05:20And that's what's keeping it, you know, resilient, if not intact.
05:26Not only that, it also has a very sophisticated security apparatus.
05:31That's what came out when the mass protests.
05:34We've had several waves of mass protests in Iran have taken place.
05:38And we've got a traumatized, beleaguered population here that isn't armed.
05:43And so their ability and willingness to come out and overturn this regime is minimal at this stage.
05:53It's unpopular domestically.
05:55The Iran's regime was unpopular in the region, not just with Israel, but with the Gulf states as well.
06:01But that is not the same thing as suggesting that it is fragile and about to break up.
06:07And that's where the real risk is that Iran is a weak or failed state.
06:1492 million people in control of a major choke point in the global economy.
06:2137 million people in control of terrified, like CSO and mentally gender condemnation.
06:2189 million people in control of a major issue and familyhenacity, absolutely!
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