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
00:41that 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. Indeed. The unintended consequences,
01:50the second and third order effects. I mean, I talk about these as the geopolitics butterfly effects
01:55are manifold. And one of them is that the combination of the oil price spike plus the fact
02:02that the U.S. Treasury has rolled back selectively some sanctions on Russia is a big, big boost to the
02:09Russian Treasury and for its war efforts. And so Russia is benefiting in a big way. And of course,
02:15Iran is also a longstanding military ally and cooperated with Russia on nuclear for some time.
02:25China and Russia are both supporting Iran, which the U.S. is at war with. And President Trump has asked
02:34China to send ships to police the Straits. And so we're really looking at the most unbelievable set
02:42of geopolitical bedfellows here. It is quite perplexing. And in that, the president has
02:47suggested that he would delay his summit with President Xi to try to convince them to help
02:52escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz. Tina, what does this conflict do to American and Chinese
02:59relationships? Well, 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 somehow,
03:14you know, persuade Xi Jinping to do something that he didn't want to do, I think is not likely to
03:21produce
03:22the result that President Trump hopes for. Remember that it was only a few months ago that China was able
03:28to
03:29marshal its superiority in critical minerals to force a U.S. climb down. And so we're in a situation
03:36right now where the White House is issuing threats to both traditional allies, NATO allies, Japan,
03:44for example, or South Korea, as well as China to say that it needs to police the Strait of Hormuz,
03:53because, you know, the pretext being the, you know, shared global economic interest, energy market
03:58interest. But I think if you look at the words, for example, of the German defense minister, this is
04:04not a war that we started. Nobody asked us about undertaking this objective. You know, it's pretty
04:12easy to see that no one is going to want to respond to the president's call so that if I'm
04:18an investor
04:19right now, I'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
04:34son if he's leading as well. But is it fair to say that the administration hasn't done well to formally
04:42lay out a justification for this war 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
04:54objectives are. And we don't know what the objectives are in this conflict. We've heard
05:00different things at different points from the White House. The regime is unpopular. The estimates
05:07from Iran experts are that it maintains around 20 percent of popular support, which is 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. Not only that, it also has a very
05:29sophisticated security apparatus. That's what came out when the mass protests. We've had several waves of
05:35mass protests in Iran have taken place. And we've got a traumatized, beleaguered population here that
05:42isn't armed. And so their ability and willingness to come out and overturn this regime is minimal at this
05:52stage. It's unpopular domestically. Iran's regime was unpopular in the region, not just with Israel,
05:59but with the Gulf states as well. But that is not the same thing as suggesting that it is fragile
06:05and
06:06about to break up. And that's where the real risk is that Iran is a is a weak or failed
06:14state. 92 million
06:16people in control of a major choke point in the global economy.
06:2093%.
06:2194.
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