00:00Jonathan, does President Trump have Iran over a barrel?
00:06No, I don't think so. I think he militarily, of course he does. Militarily, he's completely
00:14dominant. But what this war is showing, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's all very well having
00:22military dominance. But if it doesn't translate into political outcomes that you want, then it's
00:27all a bit of a waste of time. And, you know, he can keep flattening Iran all he wants. But
00:32actually,
00:33politically, he's showing no sign of success at all. In fact, politically, he's shown himself to
00:39be rather weaker, because the big threat to the world that the Iranians have always held over
00:45them, i.e. the closure of the Hormuz Straits, has been shown to be a valid threat. So, you know,
00:52politically, it's not clear that he's actually achieved anything. And domestically, you know,
00:57this is an appalling outcome for him. You know, the MAGA are so anti-forever wars,
01:03and yet this looks like becoming a forever war. You've got the midterm elections coming on. You've
01:07got the damage that he's doing to the global economy. You've got the Gulf allies threatened
01:12their salination plants and their energy plants. And you've got the tech bros now coming in with their
01:18data centers in the Gulf, which are threatened again by Iran. And the tech bros, crucial to the
01:25United States stock market. If Iran damages the data centers there and puts back American advances
01:35in artificial intelligence, then so much for the American stock market. So I think he's in a real
01:41pickle, Trump. He really is in a pickle. You've got loads of voices saying don't do it. But
01:45unfortunately, and the final thing we haven't mentioned is that there are more than two people
01:50in this debate. There's a backseat driver in all this. And anything that Trump wants to agree,
01:56Netanyahu has a veto on. So you're three people in this debate, and they've all got different
02:01objectives and it doesn't work.
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