The price of oil is surging today after missiles pounded Iranian refineries, causing the stuff to rain from the sky. Iran says it will respond by attacking oil facilities across the Gulf, which will cause economic chaos. That’s why Senator Lindsay Graham debuted a new justification this weekend: Change the regime, control the oil. Meanwhile, Mojtaba Khamenei is the new Ayatollah; replacing his assassinated father. Far from being a US or an Israeli pick, he’s a radical hardliner with the singular mission of saving the Iranian regime and he enters the war in the mood for vengeance; with much of his family obliterated. It’s hard to see how this doesn’t spell chaos for President Trump, for the United States, and for the rest of the world. Joining Piers Morgan to discuss this is CNN’s chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour, Article 3 Project senior counsel Will Chamberlain, American presenter Owen Shroyer, former Trump spokeswoman and deputy communications director Caroline Sunshine and former MP and host of The Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart. Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: Cardiff: Get fast business funding without bank delays—apply in minutes with Cardiff and access up to $500,000 in same‑day funding at https://Cardiff.co/PIERS Polymarket odds on US forces to enter Iran - https://polymarket.com/event/us-forces-enter-iran-by Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
|
Time
Text
Short-Term Pain For Long-Term Gain00:02:05
I think this is one of the most successful military operations that we've seen from the United States.
Will has his White House talking points down almost 100%.
I'm not sure there was an original thought there.
We're a week in and people are already losing their composure over this.
The number one trending hashtag on social media the last nine days has been hashtag sendBaron.
So if that tells you anything about where the American public is at, they don't have an appetite for sending ground troops to the Middle East.
If you want to say 90% MAGA supports this, then you have to account for at least 40% of the people that were once MAGA are not MAGA anymore.
Otherwise, it makes no sense.
President Obama once said that he could see his poll numbers rise and fall with the price of gas.
That doesn't bode well for the current President Trump.
Prices surged this morning after missiles pounded Iranian refineries, causing oil to rain from the sky.
Iran says it will respond by attacking oil facilities across the Gulf.
Economic chaos is inevitable.
That's why Senator Lindsey Graham, the unofficial spokesman for war, debited a new justification this weekend.
Change a regime, control the oil.
Oil prices up 27% in a week.
You've got the president wanting a $1.5 trillion defense budget in 27.
The idea that the Pentagon is about to come to you for $50 billion on these strikes to Iran.
How are you going to answer?
Best money ever spent.
What's it worth to America to take down a religious Nazi regime who's trying to build a nuclear weapon to deliver to America?
That's a really good investment.
When this regime goes down, we're going to have a new Mideast.
We're going to make a ton of money.
Well, making the case for war needs to happen at its outset for all the reasons I explained last week.
You can't plausibly declare victory without first defining what victory is, and you have to bring the public with you as they shoulder the enormous cost of war in lives and in dollars.
There is belatedly a clear message on the spiking prices, but we're hearing it after the fact.
A Personal Battle For Survival00:08:31
This is a short-term disruption for the long-term gain.
Short-term pain for the long-term gain.
Short-term pain be for long-term gain.
We're going to have some short-term pain with long-term gain.
Short-term pay for a long-term gain.
Some short-term pain, yes, but we've got some long-term gain.
Short-term spike for a long-term gain.
Some short-term pain for American consumers.
We may have to deal with that in the short term.
Short-term and temporary.
Temporary, short-term pain.
It's going to suck in the short-term.
Some short-term pain.
Short-term pain.
We have to focus on the short-term.
and long-term.
Hopefully, this is a short-term pain.
And when it comes to short-term, well, the Iranians might have a different view.
Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
Moshtaba Khameni is the new Ayatollah, replacing his assassinated father.
Far from being a US or an Israeli pick, he's a radical hardliner.
He has a singular mission of saving the Iranian regime, and he enters the war in the mood for vengeance, with much of his family obliterated.
And just as the pro-regime Iranians don't even need to change their chance, it looks like Iran won't be changing its strategy either.
Their mission has always been to sow chaos.
It used to be in the shadows through proxies.
Now it's in plain sight.
Chaos for oil prices as refineries go up in smoke.
Chaos for the Gulf as tourism and business are choked off.
Chaos for the Iranian people.
And from where we sit today, it's very hard to see how this doesn't spell chaos for Donald Trump, for the United States, and for the rest of the world.
Well, joining me now is Christiana Manpaul, the chief international anchor for CNN and host of the X-Files podcast.
Christian, I can't think of many better people to talk to to try and make sense of this chaos.
Can you make sense of what is happening right now?
Yes and no.
You correctly said that there has been no articulated cows as bellai, but most importantly, no articulated end game and end strategy by Israel and the United States.
On the other hand, Iran did clearly tell all its Gulf neighbors that if it was going to be in what clearly is a battle for battle for regime survival, that it would A, attack Israel, B, attack the U.S. bases in the Gulf states, and C, start attacking their economies as well, given that a lot of the strikes are happening from that region and from those bases.
So they say it's not chaos.
It's we have no choice.
This is a battle for survival.
But I think what you started by saying is clearly what they're doing in the Gulf is turning the Gulfies against them.
So that's not good if they want to make friends and influence people, especially influence Trump to try to stop the war by ratcheting up the pain.
But I think the most troubling thing, as you pointed out, is that now more than a week into this war, which remember was described as necessary because of an imminent threat for which there was no evidence provided.
And most people don't believe there was imminent threat.
So it's a war of choice.
No support for it in the United States in terms of polls, 60% plus against it.
No case made to the public, no approval from Congress, et cetera, et cetera.
And you know what?
I'm just looking across at a clipping I had from weeks before.
Trump offers few details as strikes on Iran loom.
That's even before the war, much less now.
So this is a problem because as you pointed out in some of the clips you had, one of the conditions that Trump has put is unconditional surrender.
And as you mentioned, the person who's now become the so-called supreme leader is more of the same.
And this is a hardline religious, some might call it fanatic, but a religious, deeply rooted, multiple layers of administrative, you know, 47 years of building this regime that ain't going to cry, uncle.
It might be beaten, but it doesn't look, and who would it surrender to, by the way?
There are no Americans on the ground.
Who does it surrender to?
So the military might be doing a certain thing, but the politics of how you get out of it, and I'm talking from the US side now, is still incredibly unclear, Piers.
Yeah, and this son of the Ayatollah, the new, as you put it, so-called supreme leader, who now will have a massive target on his back, presumably, but he is somebody who's coming in who's reputed to be at least, if not more, hardline than his father.
But also, he's just lost his father, his mother, his wife, and several children, I think, in this war so far, which is, you know, enough.
You know, I remember interviewing Netanyahu a few years ago for CNN, actually, and I went to his office in Jerusalem.
And there he has a picture of his brother, who was the commander in the raid on Entebbe.
And in fact, he was the only, as you know, the only person who lost his life that day.
And as Netanyahu began to tell the story, he began to cry on camera as he was talking to me.
And it really stuck with me because it made me realize how personal it all was for him.
And I feel the same way in a different way, but about this new supreme leader.
He will be deeply grieving the loss of his closest family members here.
And he's already a radical hardliner.
The idea that he's going to suddenly throw the towel in, surrender, do any kind of deal, I think is for the birds.
Well, look, on the face of it, it looks that way.
It's really interesting that you bring up the personal aspect from Benjamin Netanyahu, who you know that some have suggested that for President Trump, it is also somewhat personal because there was an assassination attempt.
They say it was backed by Iran, all of that kind of stuff.
And one that didn't get so far as to fire any weapons is what I'm talking about.
But still, you know, personal.
Even do you remember George H.W. Bush?
They say the war against Saddam Hussein was also partly personal.
Talking about the Iranian side, though, before this happened, I was in Doha at the annual Doha Forum and I met with the deputy Iranian foreign minister.
And he was waxing on about how they were trying to restrict this is before the demonstrations that they put down so brutally and so bloodily.
This is at the beginning of December.
Oh, you know, we're letting women walk around without their veils.
We're doing this, we're doing that.
We want to make a deal with the United States, et cetera, et cetera.
But he said, in June, you know, there was this 12-day war.
They killed so many of our leaders.
And he said, there is now blood between us.
So imagine they said that in June, way before Khamenei and the others.
Now the leader of their revolution has been killed.
Now, from what I gather, Piers, this was because Israel felt A, it had a target of opportunity, B, it felt that you go in and you get the head first.
And that, they hoped, thought, was going to collapse or accelerate the collapse of the rest of the regime.
If the head is gone, the country is demoralized.
Those who are left are demoralized.
The leaders will want to, you know, perhaps try to, you know, call for an end to this or whatever.
They hoped and planned for it to be the first big blow in gradually cracking the regime.
Well, that hasn't worked.
And as you say, by appointing Mojtaba, who was not necessarily in the front running before this, before his father was killed, A, as you said, they have a new supreme leader called Khamenei, and B, one that is pretty hardlined.
The truth is, we don't know a huge amount about him.
He may decide to be pragmatic.
It's unclear.
But what we do know about him is that he has very close ties to the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
And it's right now the IRGC that is in charge.
And if anybody wasn't clear about that, what happened over the weekend showed it.
You remember the so-called, and we're talking in degrees now, relatively, the moderate president, secular Masood Pezesh Kian, actually came out and apologized to the Gulf allies, to Turkey, to Azerbaijan for stuff that was going their way.
Within seconds, Trump decided to go on true social and say, see, they're surrendering.
Within further seconds, I'm probably exaggerating and collapsing the time, but minutes, let's say, the IRGC came out and said, no, sorry, I don't know what you're saying, Mr. President, Pazesh Gian, my president.
Iran's Strategy To Intimidate Tourists00:10:14
No, we will still continue to attack as long as they are allowing their countries to attack us.
So they sent more missiles.
So you can see who so far is being empowered by this war on Iran, because it is a war for their very survival now, unlike others.
Small businesses drive our economy, but securing capital is a constant struggle.
Of the 36 million small businesses in the United States, over 70% report needing additional capital at least once per year.
Big banks are burying owners in mountains of paperwork for months.
If you want competitive bank rates without all those frustrating bank delays, visit our sponsor, cardiff.co/slash peers, for up to $500,000 in funding.
Cardiff's application takes less than five minutes and has no impact on your personal credit.
Approvals happen in minutes.
Banks try to lock out small businesses.
Cardiff has the key.
Big banks may not want to approve your business loans, but Cardiff does.
If you've been in business for at least a year and you're pulling in $20,000 a month in revenue, apply now for up to $500,000 in the same day business funding at cardiff.co slash peers.
Again, that's cardiff.co/slash peers.
Real growth, fast funding.
Yeah, I mean, the two things that really strike me.
One is there's been no uprising of any significance by the Iranian people.
A lot of that, I suspect, is driven by completely rational fear following what happened to the protesters in January, where up to 30,000 were slaughtered.
The IRGC clearly have a grip on the country.
It's also clear that I'm sure the American military and the Israeli military are scoring a lot of damage against the Iranian forces and against their military capability.
I'm sure that's happening.
But there's no sign of that fueling any kind of rebellion.
But also, what is happening at the same time, which I think could be incredibly impactful, is that the strategy of the Iranians to go after the Gulf states, but to do it in a way which is really intimidating tourists and expats who live over there and so on, could completely change the dynamic of those countries.
They are run by rulers who have built new business models around sport, entertainment, and tourism.
I'm talking about Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Dubai and other places.
But you're seeing an exodus of people now from these states who are because the safety that they took for granted has been just blown out of the water.
And at the same time, you're seeing obviously the economic pressure of the Strait of Hormuz being pretty much closed.
And you put the combined effect with the rocketing oil prices, rocketing gas prices, the huge impact which it inevitably will have on inflation, not least in America.
That I think you're going to get huge pressure from the rulers of the Gulf states to try and bring this thing to an end because their whole new business model, which has been trying to move away from oil, which they know is eventually going to run out, is literally going up in smoke here.
It really is.
So let me take that part first and then go back to the people's movement inside Iran.
So of course, I mean, basically, what you're saying is a fact that for decades, the Gulf states, the Persian Gulf states, have been banking on stability and security to allow all these people from all over the world, stability and security.
Those are the key words, right?
That it's a safe place, it's a permissive place for all those activities that you just laid out.
So I've been talking to some people from there, people in important positions, and they, A, there's no love loss between them and Iran.
They always have thought Iran is a threat and it needs to be controlled, but they didn't want this war.
And I find this interesting because some people say, oh, they really did want it.
They just didn't want to say it publicly.
But they're saying that they're surprised by the massive retaliation of Iran.
And they kind of knew this was going to happen.
Certainly on my program, the Saudi intelligence minister said, well, I'm surprised that Trump was surprised or Israel was surprised or the Gulf states were surprised because Iranian officials came to each and every one of the governments there in the lead up to the war saying this and this and this is what we're going to do.
So Iran's apparently its aim is to create enough pain there for them to weigh in with Trump and to try to stop it.
So that's one thing.
But the other thing is they also say, look, because I asked them, how are you going to continue having American bases on your territory?
Because the very basic contract that these bases would also be used to protect you is not happening.
The Americans have sent all the Allies have sent all their anti-missile defenses to Israel, but apparently none to the Gulf that we can tell.
So what's the, you know, what do you get out of having these bases other than, you know, being sitting targets?
And they said to me, look, it's very likely that we're all going to have big conversations after this war about what we do and whether we're going to keep hosting these bases.
I don't know what they're going to decide, but I think it's interesting that it's now for the first time a real active thing.
The other thing is, a lot of these governments have told me, well, some, that they believed that the talks in wherever they were, the mediated talks with in Geneva through Oman with Witkoff and Kushner and the Iranians were close to producing an actual satisfactory deal on the nuclear.
So that was one thing.
They really thought that was going to happen.
And the Omani foreign minister even went to the US and said that publicly to the administration and to the news organizations.
You're right about the people of Iran because nobody is going to come out under the bombings, right?
I mean, that's the fear first, that the bombings could really kill them and that their regime will kill them.
And right now, the regime is bringing out supporters and they are intimidating those who might be protesters, who are not on the streets right now.
So that's not happening.
And the other thing is that don't take anybody's word for it, except for the, you know, the American intelligence group, the DNI, was reported by the Washington Post and the New York Times that in a classified briefing, they told the administration that even a long war would be unlikely to topple the theocracy.
Add to that, Trump saying that he doesn't mind if he deals with a religious leader and he doesn't really care about democracy for Iran.
You have to wonder what's in it for the Iranian people right now, although they desperately, desperately want an end to this ruthless regime.
Yeah, it's an extraordinary situation.
Just want to end, Christian, with this breaking story today about the Iranian women's football team who've been competing in Australia and have been denied its reported asylum by Australia.
And Donald Trump has intervened and said Australia is making a terrible humanitarian mistake by allowing the Iran national women's soccer team to be forced back to Iran where they will most likely be killed.
Don't do it, Mr. Prime Minister.
This is Anthony Albanese.
Give asylum.
The US will take them if you don't.
Thank you for attention, as Madam President Trump.
The point being that the Iranian football team lost its last group match in the Women's Asia Cup on Sunday and they had earlier not sung the Iranian national anthem.
And the belief is that if they go back to Iran, they will face potential death.
What do you make of this situation?
Should Australia rethink its decision?
And what do you think of Trump offering to step in?
Well, this is the first time hearing of it.
So I'm just thinking on the fly right now.
I do remember what you're talking about because we also reported it that they were not singing the national anthem.
Then the next day they did sing the national anthem.
We assume that they were pressured to do that.
I would say that given what the regime has done to the dissenters in the street and then the rounding up of anybody who might have participated in the protests or even helped the wounded protesters, i.e. doctors, they have rounded up tens of thousands of them and they're in jail.
So I would say the Iranian team, women's team, have good reason to be very afraid.
And I'm just thinking, I mean, I read this, I'm assuming it's true.
The Sri Lankan government gave asylum to the surviving sailors who were torpedoed by the United States.
Remember a few days ago, an Iranian ship that was not in, it was in international waters.
It had come from exercises in India.
It was torpedoed.
A lot of people were killed.
And some were rescued by the Sri Lankans.
And they apparently have taken those.
They've demanded asylum and they've gotten it, apparently, these sailors.
That's the news.
So I would say that Trump is right.
His instinct is right, that the U.S. should take them.
And Prime Minister Albanese should grant them asylum because of what might happen to them and send them to the United States, because Trump has also asked these people to come out and to protest under bombardment and even when they were in the streets.
And he said, help is on the way and it was never on the way.
So I think it is basic humanity to make sure that these women, and remember, women are under particular targeting in Iran and other places.
They need to be secured.
Their lives need to be saved.
And I think the government of Australia, I don't know the details, but really needs to take a deep, hard, good second look at its decision.
Yeah, I think just to clarify, I think they haven't actually made a final decision yet, but they've been dithering and they haven't said they can have asylum.
I think that's what the debate is about.
The Opposite Of Trump's Platform00:15:54
So we'll see how that plays out.
Christian, always great to have you on our sensor.
Thank you very much indeed.
Thank you, Piers.
Well, join me on a different kind of panel now.
Three people who've all supported President Trump's re-election, but have varying views on the Iran war.
Will Chamberlain, Senior Counsel at the Article 3 Project, Owen Schroer, who's the host of the Owen Schroeder Show, and Caroline Sunshine, former Trump spokeswoman and deputy communications director in the 2024 campaign.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Will Chamberlain, let me start with you.
Just looking at this completely objectively, this looks to be brewing up to be not just a hell of a mess, but potentially a presidency defining mess for Donald Trump and something that could cost the Republicans not just the House in November, but their increasing rumor-mongering in Washington.
It could cost them the Senate as well, which is unlikely.
But you've got to say, if this war turns into a disaster, that could happen.
What is your take on where we are with this?
I just have the completely opposite take from you.
I think this is one of the most successful military operations that we've seen from the United States.
The only possibly more successful one, I would say, would be the Venezuela strike, which, I mean, you can see the political effect of that.
We already have diplomatic relations with Venezuela and flights to Caracas.
But, I mean, we opened this war by killing 50 of the top leadership of Iran within the first five minutes.
That's unheard of.
I mean, everybody, I feel like, is kind of operating under, you know, we still all have PTSD from 2003 and the mistakes of Iraq and Afghanistan and aren't looking objectively at what has happened and the incredible competence demonstrated by the combined forces of the United States air, you know, the United States Navy and Air Force and the IDF.
The combination of the two forces has, I mean, put Iran completely on the map.
The missile strikes are down 90%.
Drone strikes are down 85%.
And it's been a week.
You know, people are talking about forever wars.
I mean, those wars were 20 years.
We're a week in and people are already, I think, losing their composure over this.
It's a really remarkably effective operation.
A momentary spike in oil prices.
I mean, it's not going to shape things.
I mean, think about how quickly the news cycle moves in the modern era.
In a week from now, I don't know that you'll be talking very much about this, Piers, given how much, how fast things move.
So I doubt that you're going to be able to do that.
Okay.
Let me respond to that.
I mean, I think that, look, again, I'm just sitting here trying to be objective about what I'm seeing with my own eyes.
I have very vivid memories of 2003.
I was the editor of the Daily Mirror newspaper in the UK.
We were the labor-supporting paper, so Tony Blair's supporting newspaper, and we took an anti-war position.
And, you know, I remember all the arguments in the run-up to that war.
I remember the initial early military spectacular success that was enjoyed by the Allies in Iraq.
But then I remember the cold, hard reality setting in of what followed that and no real plan for what was going to happen with Iraq.
The rise of ISIS, the fueling of al-Qaeda, and so on, complete mayhem followed because it hadn't been properly thought through.
And what concerns me about this is not actually the clear, obvious military successes that have been enjoyed by the American and Israeli military.
As you would expect, the American military is the most powerful in the history of the planet.
It's not that so much.
It's just that I think that with their responses, the Iranians are being quite tactically smart.
What they're doing is they're trying to put the fear of God into people living in the Gulf states, many of whom are expats from other countries.
They're trying to get them to leave, which many of them are doing.
They're trying to destroy the business model of places like Dubai, which is it's a fun, completely safe place to come.
And they're doing that by hitting hotels and airports and so on.
And at the same time, they're controlling ruthlessly the Strait of Hormuz, where 20% of the world's oil flows.
And, you know, that is extremely concerning, not just because of the huge spike in oil prices and gas prices, but also because of the geopolitical element to that, involving China's reliance on it and Russia's involvement and so on.
So much as I'd like to be as optimistic as you are, I look at it and think, you know, they may be being defeated in terms of military firepower, but the regime remains intact.
They've replaced one Khomeini with another.
The IRGC clearly have a stranglehold over the country.
The combination of the bombing, putting the fear of God into Iranians so they're staying in, and the IRGC's control means there are no rebellions on the street that we can see.
So Trump's idea that this would be an organic rebellion off the back of the bombing roads by the Iranian people is not happening.
And I'm looking at it thinking, well, okay, maybe it will be over in a week, but I'm not quite sure how this ends as simply as you think it's going to.
All right.
So there's probably about five or six big arguments that you made there.
So I'll try and address each of them in turn.
First, let's start with the Straits of Hormuz.
I think you're overstating the extent to which the Iranians have control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Their entire navy is at the bottom of the ocean and the Americans are there to guard it.
And I think the only really remaining threat is some of the missile threat from the South, which is being aggressively degraded by the United States.
You made a really big claim, and I think this is extremely important.
You made a claim about how the other Arab countries, because they are being bombed by Iran, that this is a sophisticated strategy that's going to get them to question their continued work with the United States.
I think it's the opposite.
I think they all realize they no longer want to live under Iranian blackmail.
And I think they look at Iran flinging missiles in every direction.
I mean, a couple of days ago, they flung missiles at Azerbaijan.
And that's an important thing to realize because the leader of Azerbaijan, Olyev, was the one leader in the region to give condolences to the death of Khamenei.
And how did they respond?
By launching missiles at a school in Azerbaijan.
And you said that.
So just to be clear, on this point, just to be clear, just crystal clear, I'm not saying for a moment the Gulf states won't continue to support America.
In fact, the complete opposite.
I do believe it's been a massive strategic error, actually, by Iran to go after the Gulf states in the way they have.
But I think from a tactical point of view, there's no doubt that in the short term, it has put the fear of God into people.
And I think it may question the resolve of the Arab Gulf states, the leaders, to want this war to be remotely prolonged because they can see that the longer it goes on, the more damaging it gets to all of their collective interests.
So I'm not, in fact, you know, I think they are falling in behind America in terms of they hate what Iran is doing.
We saw that from the Qatari prime minister overnight in an interview with Yalda Hakeem from Sky News saying that.
But that doesn't mean they want this war to continue.
So the question then becomes, if there's a lot of pressure on the economics of this war, never mind the loss of life and so on, on the economics of the war, then how does this actually end?
So I think it actually ends up working the opposite way.
I think that what the Saudis and the UAE and Qatar and Bahrain will decide is they don't want to permanently live under the threat of Iranian blackmail.
And that's what this would be.
If they made an early peace because they were scared about their economics, then Iran would just hold this over their heads indefinitely while they built up a huge ballistic missile capability while they restarted their nuclear program.
And then basically these countries would be at the mercy of Iran.
I think so what that means is that the Arab countries will decide in their own interest that they want this war finished and that even if somehow the United States steps out of the way, I think they'd end up finishing it on their own right, taking advantage of the weakened Iranian regime right now to try and impose their will on it, even if in a world where the United States retreated from the scene.
Okay, let's bring in the other two guests.
Owen Schroer, what do you say to Will's argument?
Very bullish, thinks that this is ending quickly and it's going to be a massively big win for the United States and Israel.
Well, I think Will has his White House talking points down almost 100%.
I'm not sure there was an original thought there.
The one thing he missed was you're not supposed to call this a war, Will.
You read a book in the last episode.
You're not supposed to call it that.
Here we go.
You insulted me.
We can do this all day.
I'd love to, Will.
I also find it funny that he keeps saying Iran blackmail, another talking point that is coming from Western media, as if we didn't just see the Epstein list and all the connections to Israel revealed with that.
He says Iran blackmail.
As far as the conclusions that we're reaching here, I'm not so sure.
I'm not so sure about these conclusions about the Gulf nation states.
You know, when this thing first broke out, they said, oh, it'll be all the NATO countries and the EU countries and the Gulf nation states, everybody lining up against Iran.
Well, it hasn't really been that smooth.
It seems like a lot of them want to maintain good relations with the U.S., but they're not so sure about what's going on with this war.
And, you know, you bring up what happened with Azerbaijan.
They come out and say, okay, we're against Iran.
And then they get hit with a bomb and you don't even scratch your head for a second.
You don't even think for one second that could be a false flag as if these things don't happen.
So I think that there's a lot of they came out and gave condolences for the death of Khamenei and then got bombed.
Okay.
Well, we'll see how this all turns out.
I don't think it's going as smoothly as Will likes to represent.
Like I said, I'm not sure there's an original thought there.
This is the neocon.
Will represents the neocon faction of right-wing politics that we thought we defeated in 2016.
We thought we defeated again in 2024.
This is the opposite of what Trump ran on.
And that's the big thing here.
We can debate about war and foreign policy.
These things aren't going anywhere.
The problem is this is a total betrayal of Trump's base.
This is exactly against everything he ran on.
And the 1984 Orwellian nature of the Board of Peace launching war after war after war and sitting here screaming about how Iran is firing missiles all over the world while Israel is in a war with seven separate countries at the same time.
The irony and the hypocrisy should not be lost on your audience, Piers.
Okay, let me bring in Caroline.
You were a former Trump spokeswoman.
Where does all this sit with Donald Trump's repeated mantra when he campaigned in the 2024 election of America first, no more interference in foreign wars, particularly in the Middle East?
And now here America is in the biggest interference imaginable in the Middle East, taking on Iran in this full-blooded, full-throttle way.
Where does that sit with how he campaigned?
Yeah, Piers, you know, first and foremost, I love the American military.
I love our troops, just like millions of Americans do.
And that's why we were so excited when a candidate like Donald Trump came on the scene and talked about no more involvement in the Middle East and no new wars.
And I would go on TV and say that on behalf of the president during the 2024 campaign, and I was proud to do it.
I was enthusiastic to do it.
It wasn't just that President Trump was talking about that, no more involvement in the Middle East.
Criticisms of our past involvement in the Middle East were extremely valid.
An indictment of the neocon political class establishment and their record in the Middle East.
It was the passion with which he talked about it.
You know, you can go back to 2016 and you can see the fire in him, the passion that he was talking about it with.
It really electrified people and moved them to put him into the White House.
And so he said no new wars.
And I think people are confused right now in the base as to why it looks like we now are in a new war in the Middle East.
You hear this talking point going around that 90% of MAGA supports this war.
But that's not mathematically possible.
Because if you look at the coalition that elected President Trump into the White House, if that was true, right, if 90% of MAGA supported this war, Nikki Haley would be in the White House right now as president.
Marco Rubio would be president.
I mean, the American people had a chance in 2016 to elect literally anybody else besides Donald Trump who were all on stage in that Republican primary saying we would love war with Iran.
They had a chance to do that again in 2024 by picking Nikki Haley as their candidate, but instead they picked Donald Trump.
I also think if 90% of MAGA supports this, I don't think your show would be getting the views that it's getting.
I don't think Megan Kelly and Tucker Carlson's show would be getting the views that it's getting.
You know, polling is sort of an outdated way of collecting information.
You know, they say Vietnam was the first living room war, but it looks like this is the first war in the social media age.
And social media is a way for you to see in real time how the public is perceiving something.
We certainly use that on the campaign, I can tell you.
Social media is a more accurate representation of public sentiment.
You can track it in real time versus polling.
So this idea that 90% of the coalition supports that just quite literally isn't possible when you look at the wide swath of people, independents, moderates, Muslims in Dearborn, Michigan, young men who all joined President Trump's coalition specifically because they were really excited about the promise of no new wars.
And I guess that would be my question to Will, though, is, you know, first and foremost, do you think that this is a war?
Because, you know, the president has been on the phone with reporters, a lot of them who he calls the fake news, you know, Politico, CNN, Axios, New York Times, on the record in those phone interviews calling it a war.
The Secretary of Defense has called it, Secretary of War, excuse me, has called it a war.
But the President hasn't publicly come out and said to the American people that it's a war.
So Will, do you think this is a war?
And is it a new war?
Well, it's a very good question, which I will get Will to answer.
What I would say, though, is I don't think America has declared war, correct me if I'm wrong here, but since the Second World War, and yet it has repeatedly gone to war.
And I do think it's a complete farce, I have to be honest with you.
someone who loves America and loves your Constitution and loves Americans.
The idea that you have not been waging war repeatedly ever since World War II is ridiculous.
And the idea that this is not a war when the American mighty military has gone in full throttle against Iran, both on land, at sea, every imaginable way you can think of, it's crazy.
Of course it's a war, isn't it?
Will why do we pretend otherwise?
I mean, I think it's a war.
I don't know what the legality of it is and why the president might want to avoid it.
You know, he might want to say, to use the language of the US.
Well, he doesn't have to clear it with Congress.
Well, the truth is they all do that.
I don't think anything.
They all do it.
Well, it's the same reason.
It's the same reason Clinton.
I hear you.
There's a really good reason not to do that.
It's a reason Clinton didn't do it with Kosovo.
It's a reason that Obama didn't do it with Libya.
If you don't call it a war, you don't need congressional approval.
Right, but then we don't get to do things like knock out 50 of the Iranian leadership in the first five minutes of the war, right?
We lose the element of surprise.
This isn't the 1760s where there's no telephone communication across oceans.
The sooner England hears about our wars, three weeks later when a ship shows up, instantly the moment we declared war, the Iranians would know what's up, and that would be the end of our ability to gain the element of surprise.
And that saves American lives.
If we're going to do a military operation, I think that we want the commander-in-chief to do so in a way that minimizes American casualties to the extent possible.
False Intelligence And Lobby Power00:03:17
And so I think that it's totally justified for him to do that.
I think, I'm sorry, Caroline, I just am not impressed by saying that the polling doesn't say what it says.
This is not just one poll that says 90% of MAGA supports it.
It's consistently across all the polling that's done, you have 80, 85% plus of Republicans supporting the president.
And I think that it's because they understand that the president is not conducting the war in the manner of George W. Bush that it's not stupid.
You have to understand this is not the, he created the space for negotiation after the 12-day war.
You need to remember, he hit those three nuclear sites and then immediately forced a ceasefire, including telling Netanyahu and Israel to turn the planes around when they had been struck after the ceasefire deadline.
He wanted a negotiation.
He wanted to be reasonable.
But the problem is the Iranians, it's like the Black Knight and Money Python.
They refused to accept that they were beaten and refused to make any concessions.
You need to just go listen to Steve Witcoff, who Tucker and everybody loved a year ago, explain what his negotiations were like.
They opened the negotiation by saying, we have 60% of rich uranium for 11 nuclear bombs.
We have an unalienable right to enrich, and we're not going to give you anything on the negotiation table that you didn't get militarily.
Like, what is President Trump supposed to do?
And if he cowers in the face of this, I would throw a million.
Okay, I'll let you go.
Hang on.
On this very point that Will just raised, and I'd like to bring Owen back in here just to respond to this.
But this is what Anthony Blinken, the former Secretary of State, said about Israel trying to pressurize Barack Obama to launch military strikes on Iran and saying they would just attack themselves if Washington refused.
Take a listen to this.
Back during the Obama administration, the Israelis were pushing President Obama to take military action against Iran and were warning that they would do it themselves if he didn't.
And he wouldn't because he thought the better way to get at the nuclear program, which is what we were focused on.
In the days after the October 7th attack on Israel, the horrific attack on Israel by Hamas, the Israelis were insisting that in the north, Hezbollah from Lebanon was about to attack.
And they wanted to strike preemptively against Hezbollah.
And President Biden said, look, we're with you.
We'll always be with you in defending Israel.
And if you're attacked, we're there.
But we're not there if you're going to start something.
And we came within about 30 minutes of having a war in the North based on bad information that the Israelis had.
No, I mean, I found that really interesting to be reminded of that because, you know, has Donald Trump been played here by Benjamin Netanyahu?
Has he been sold a pup?
Was he told, look, you know, they're going to go after us.
We're going to have to attack it imminently.
You're either in with us or you're not.
And they said, okay, well, we better come in.
I mean, is that what's happened here?
Well, I think you have two separate things happening.
I think we have to recognize the power of the Israeli lobby.
I think this is something that the average American is now very aware of, the power of the Israeli lobby.
And so now AIPAC is trying to find new ways to fund their candidates that don't go through APAC because it has such a negative stench on it now.
But then there's Netanyahu.
Shattering America's Built Order00:14:49
So APAC buying our candidates to essentially sell out America's best interests is one thing.
But Netanyahu is a completely different issue.
He's been lying to the American people in the United States Congress since the 1980s.
He's been saying that Iran has days until they have a nuclear weapon.
So obviously somebody's being dishonest here.
It wouldn't be the first time that Israeli intelligence has lied to us.
I could look at some recent times.
I think the whole story about Iranian drones off the East Coast, I believe that was false Israeli intelligence.
I think that the strike on that school that just happened in Iran, I think that was bad Israeli intelligence that we acted on.
So I think Israel has been giving us bad intelligence, whether intentionally or accidentally, for years.
And I find it funny that we sit here, and again, it's this blatant hypocrisy and irony, except it's not funny because we say, oh, we're saving American lives.
Well, at least seven American lives have been lost in this war so far that we know of.
We also had three people shot and killed here at a retaliation attack at a bar in Austin, Texas, where I live.
And as far as this number of 90% MAGA supports this, well, you can only believe that if you're counting the fact that the Mark Levins of the world who support this war more than anything, they get ratioed on every single post.
And so they're the ones that are supporting this.
They're the least popular.
Tucker Carlson, whatever you think of his politics, he's more popular now.
And so I just don't see these things adding up in real life.
And I think the issue is we've been dealing with this centralized media and even the centralized political narrative that's been able to kind of get away with lying and deceiving the American people.
Maybe that's because they were distracted.
Maybe that's because social media didn't exist before.
Maybe a combination of the two, but it just doesn't work anymore.
We're not buying these talking points.
And again, if you want to have a foreign policy debate, that's fine.
The average American is sick of what's happened in the Middle East.
And this is what resonated with that person while Trump was campaigning since 2015.
We have spent trillions of dollars, at least $5 trillion, trillions of dollars in the Middle East.
That's what we've done.
And we've gotten nothing for it.
We've gotten absolutely nothing but our blood and treasure in that region and nothing to show for it.
And so Americans are sick of it.
We would much rather spend a billion dollars a day as the cost of this war.
It's up to $10 billion now.
We would much rather see that invested in our own infrastructure, our own people, our own country, whatever it takes.
That's what this administration was supposed to be about.
So if you want to say 90% MAGA supports this, then you have to account for at least 40% of the people that were once MAGA are not MAGA anymore.
Otherwise, it makes no sense.
And if we continue to let these neocons co-opt the actual America first conservative movements, then we're never going to have any real right-wing or conservative victories for this country.
Okay.
I want to give Caroline the last word.
We've run out of time, but Caroline, just very quickly, polymarket, the prediction markets asked U.S. forces into Iran by March the 14th, 21%, March the 31st, 44%, and by the end of the year, 68%.
So they're seeing money coming in, quite a lot of money, a polymarket, betting that the longer this goes on, the more of a stalemate it is, the more pressure the Trump administration will come under and the IDF to commit troops on the ground.
What do you think this very quickly that would do politically for the Republicans with both the midterms and potentially 2028?
There's absolutely zero support within the Republican Party or outside of that electorate for U.S. ground troops in the Middle East.
I mean, the number one trending hashtag on social media the last nine days has been hashtag sendBaron.
So if that tells you anything about where the American public is at, they don't have an appetite for sending ground troops to the Middle East, especially for objectives that remain unclear and for a war that doesn't seem to have a clear purpose.
You know, the administration has offered two reasons for many reasons for going to war with Iran, but two of them have been in direct conflict with each other.
One has been that Iran was an imminent threat to the United States, and the other has been that Iran has never been weaker, and so that's where we had to strike.
Well, you can't be an imminent threat and as weak as you've ever been at the same time.
Both those statements can't be true.
And you see a lot of people who I think personally have not been loyal to the president in the past and certainly loyal to his ideology.
You see Mike Pence and John Bolton who have come on this show championing this conflict.
But the question that I think the larger American audience is asking is, are we just going to be repeating the mistakes of the past?
And the question that I don't see these voices that are cheering on the war having to answer is, just answer bluntly, how many U.S. troops are you okay losing and how much are you okay having it cost?
And with every objective that you lay out, every goal that you lay out, you should have to answer how many troops are you okay losing?
What units do you want them to come from?
And how much are you okay with it costing?
Those are basic questions you should be able to ask if you're waging war and answer.
Yeah, and remember the words of one of America's great modern military leaders, David Petraeus, the general, who said, you know, the first question you ask is, how does this end?
And I'm not sure anyone's really got a firm handle on that.
Thank you very much indeed to my panel.
I appreciate it.
Joining me now is the former MP and host of the Rest is Politics, Rory Stewart.
Rory, welcome back to Uncensor.
Thank you for having me.
I was amused in a kind of ironic way to see you and your co-host, Alistair Campbell, debating this when it all flared up a week ago.
And Alistair giving the world a lecture about the need to adhere to international law when it comes to taking this kind of military action in the Middle East.
Some of us have long memories, Rory.
I remember 2003 when I ran the Daily Mirror and said the very same thing to your co-host, Alistair Campbell, repeatedly, when we said it would be a very bad idea to invade Iraq without a second UN resolution.
The wider question, other than teasing you about your co-host and your facial expressions have given me all the answer I need.
But rather than tease you about that, on the bigger picture, is international law now just finished as a concept?
You know, I keep hearing the argument from everyone.
Well, if the others aren't adhering to it, why do we have to?
If they're doing this, we should be able to do this.
You know, none of them even call them wars anymore.
The Russians call the invasion of Ukraine a special operation.
Now we're told this is not a war either.
This is, you know, a conflict or whatever it may be.
Are we just circumnavigating international law, do you think?
Well, let me take my defense of Alistair for Red, so we won't get called down that rabbit hole.
But you're right.
Listen, something fundamental has changed.
I think Trump's intervention in Iran is the beginning of a completely new world.
It's been going on for 18 months, the signs of this, but this has shattered the order that America built after the war.
America basically, after the Second World War, created a rules-based order, even if it was hypocritical, even if things went wrong, where broadly speaking, if you're a Western European country or you were in the Gulf, America seemed generous, relatively reliable, relatively predictable, and it followed process.
Now, you can disagree, but it went.
Presidents had conversations with Congress.
They were relatively consistent about what they were doing.
Occasionally, they try to go to the UN.
All that's been blown out of the water.
Suddenly now we have a president who has not consulted with his traditional allies and who has put the Gulf countries in a really difficult situation.
Had you been Prime Minister, Rory, as many people would have liked you to have been.
I think my mother's one of them.
I think I've had that conversation.
Had you been Prime Minister?
Had you been Prime Minister when Donald Trump made the call and said, we want to use UK bases to launch our aircraft from.
We don't need you to supply any forces.
We don't want you to be prior to be involved at this stage.
We just want to use your bases.
Would you have let the Americans do that?
Tony Blair, the architect of, of course, the Iraq war, along with George Bush, was emphatic at the weekend in a private meeting that he would have absolutely done that and Kia Starmer should have done that.
Would you have done that?
I think Blair is completely wrong.
Completely wrong.
This is an illegal, immoral, reckless war that is going to make the world a much more dangerous place.
It's already driving up the price of oil.
It's destroying the security of American allies in the Gulf.
It's not achieving what it's set out to achieve in Iran.
Anyone who thinks that this is the path to some lovely, liberal, democratic, stable regime in Iran at the moment, there's no sign of that.
And of course, it's a tragedy.
It's a tragedy for Britain.
You know, we've been a very strong ally of the US since the 1950s.
But we cannot be in a position where the United States does not consult with us, doesn't talk to us, has no interest in our views, and then just announces it's going to drag us into the war by using our bases.
But isn't the cold, hard reality that if we get attacked, and we're vulnerable, I mean, the UK armed force has been reduced to such a degree, you could put all the army inside Wembley Stadium and have a lot of empty seats.
We've been exposed, I think, with two ships which can't even leave yet for a week or two to join the action, even if we want them to.
You know, there's a general feeling from all our armed force leaders that we are, you know, really heavily vulnerable right now.
If we were attacked, say Putin decided to have a go, the first call we would make would be to the United States, to Donald Trump.
And what concerns me about this is I'm not disputing for a moment anything you say.
Many people feel the same way.
But this so-called special relationship, it does rely occasionally on doing things.
There was a very interesting piece I read at the weekend about Margaret Thatcher when Ronald Reagan, I think it was, wanted her help.
And, you know, she, her every instinct and every one of her advisors said, do not help.
But she slept on it overnight and went, we have to help.
They're our biggest ally and they're the one that we have to help in these moments, even if our instincts tell us not to.
That it actually, although it's in the short-term national interest to say we can't do this, the longer term bigger picture national interest of the UK is that we have to have the Americans on side.
Because when we get attacked, they're the first port of call.
I mean, unfortunately, Trump has shattered that world.
I mean, if we were in a world in which we felt we could rely on the US, in which we believed that he believed in protecting Europe against Russia, that he believed in NATO, that he respected European sovereignty, fine.
But he's trying to create a world in which he effectively says he gets to do whatever he wants, whenever he wants, and everybody has to come along with it.
And there's no quid pro quo.
It would be naive to think that because you helped him out somewhere, he would ever act except in his own national interest.
The only thing that Donald Trump would think about, if he was asked to do something, is whether it would help Donald Trump.
And secondarily, maybe his idea of what the US wants.
The idea that he shows loyalty, gratitude, forget it.
Look at the Gulf.
These people have given him airplanes.
They've invested hundreds of billions.
They've given him property contracts.
And without consulting them, he's basically set out to destroy their economies overnight.
That's what you learn.
I mean, you cannot be in a position with somebody who's behaving somewhere between a bully and a gangster, of saying to him, there's nothing we can do.
And that was the risk, actually, we almost had with Greenland, which is you had people like Mandelson, our disgraced ambassador in the US, saying, well, maybe we just have to give him Greenland because the really big picture is Ukraine.
And, you know, we're too dependent on them for defense.
And this just plays into his hands because he basically thinks Europe's weak, the UK's weak, they just have to do what he says.
And that world has changed.
We cannot continue in that relationship because if you're in that kind of relationship, you will be abused forever.
But here's the flaw in that argument, which is that he may be right in his assessment.
You know, he was right when he said that the NATO member countries were not paying their dues.
I think he's been right to say that Europe has not stepped up properly when it's needed to in the last few decades.
He's right that America has to carry the lion's share of being the global police officer.
You know, you say, when does he ever help in Europe?
Well, he stepped in with Ukraine when most of his own party, in terms of his MAGA base in particular, didn't want him to.
He committed many billions of dollars worth of help for Ukraine and continues to do so, even though politically it doesn't do him any favours.
So, you know, I'm not convinced that if we didn't, if we had a problem and we were attacked, that Trump wouldn't come to the rescue.
I think he would.
But I agree with you.
He's an unpredictable beast and how you deal with him is very complicated.
But again, I come back.
If you were prime minister, it's very easy for us all to opine, of course, from our podcast rooms, and we both have lovely rooms, I think, as we're talking to each other here.
But when you're in the Oval Office and you've got to make these calls, or you're in number 10, there are different dynamics at play, aren't there?
Yeah, but I think that the clear decision has to be eventually enough.
You can't write a blank check to somebody like Trump.
You're going to look at his entire business career.
People who give him the impression that he has them over a barrel, that they have no options or alternatives, he will simply abuse them.
And you have to consistently and respectfully say no.
So what you have to say to him is, listen, you said that the US cannot afford to protect Europe anymore.
You said that we should be dealing with Russia and Ukraine, and we've stepped up.
You know, you've removed $50 billion of funding for Ukraine, and Europe and the UK is stepping up.
You're barely providing anything now for Ukraine, right?
You've in fact actually just made the situation in Ukraine worse because you've driven up the oil price, which will make Russia richer.
You've lifted the sanctions.
You're firing off all the Patriot missiles that could have been used to defend Ukraine.
So respectfully, Mr. President, we're going to take you at your word.
We are focusing on our interest, which is a country called Russia that has taken 20% of a European country, has casualties of 1.2 million people.
How does this end, Rory, do you think?
Because, you know, General Petraeus famously said about all wars.
No Sign Of Regime Change00:03:39
First question, how does it end?
And I'm really struggling to see how this ends in a remotely satisfactory way, because there's no sign of regime change.
There's certainly no sign of Iranian people rising up against the regime for perfectly good reasons to do with self-preservation at the moment.
And if you don't affect regime change, then what is the purpose of this war?
People hate this regime.
They're a bunch of horrible theocratic murderers who've killed tens of thousands of Iranians.
But there isn't an alternative emerging.
There isn't an opposition on the ground.
And this idea that just by killing Khomeini, you suddenly get a change, you just end up with his son.
Where does that get you?
Nowhere.
In the meantime, what you've actually done is you've destroyed all the faith in global shipping networks, oil, fertilizer, the economies of places like Dubai.
You've made everybody suddenly lose confidence in the whole world.
And you've given China and Russia a chance to say, well, if the US thinks it can behave like this, why can't we go around behaving like this?
And you've given other people a chance to go and get themselves nuclear weapons.
And there's no end.
The only end is when President Trump gets out of bed in the morning and decides to tell everybody he's won.
But in order to get there, we have this, you know, you were interviewing somebody who said he's like the knight in Monty Python who has had his legs chopped off and his arms chopped off and still hasn't given up.
Well, for goodness sake, what's the point about that knight in Monty Python?
He's not a threat to anyone.
There's no point continuing to try to demand a surrender from somebody who's not a threat to you and doesn't want to surrender.
If you were supportive, presumably, of Kirstarma refusing permission for the US to use our bases at the start of the war, are you therefore against the decision by Kirstalma two days later to allow the bases to be used and to now start committing our armed forces in increasing numbers to help the Americans here from a defensive standpoint?
Starmer's demented.
It gets the worst of all worlds.
He's managed to completely irritate Trump.
And then for some reason, two days later, he says, oh, actually, you can use the bases after all with some new terminology or undefensive.
I mean, look, you may be more sympathetic towards Blair, but do one or the other.
Either say, I'm with you, Mr. Trump, you can use my bases, go for it, or say, this is illegal, unjustifiable, and horrifying.
No, that's exactly what, to be honest, that is exactly what I said.
I said very early on that weekend, make your mind up, Prime Minister.
You're either with the Americans on this or you're not.
But to go from being not with them to with them in the space of 36 hours, I thought was ridiculous.
And that is not leadership.
No, it's insane.
He's ended up alienating the Americans, alienating the Iranians, annoying everybody who wants to topple the regime, annoying everybody who wants to stay out of it.
And his idea that he can chart a course through this with some funny legal argument makes no sense.
No, I think he's...
Look, what he should be doing is working with Europe, Canada, going to straight, Australia, Japan, South Korea, and saying, what's the world going to look like?
Because we can't depend on America anymore.
And then think about the next five to ten years.
What are the steps you've got to take to be genuinely independent?
AI, tech, cloud computing, defense, security, the dollar.
Think it through, do it together, come up with a vision.
Instead of which, what he's doing is flip-flopping.
Roy Stewart Returns To Uncensored00:00:59
Roy Stewart, great to have you back on Uncensored.
I look forward to hearing your defense of Alastair Campbell another time.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Bye-bye.
See you soon.
And an update on the story we mentioned at the top of the show concerning the Iranian women's football team in Australia.
President Trump says I just spoke to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, the Australian Prime Minister.
He's on it.
Five have been taken care of.
The rest are on their way.
Some, however, feel they must go back because they're worried about the safety of their families.
So that's an update to that moving story about the Iranian women's football team.
Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent.
The only boss around here is me.
To enjoy our show, we ask for only one simple thing.
Hit subscribe on YouTube and follow Piers Morgan Uncensored on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
And in return, we will continue our mission to inform, irritate and entertain.
And we'll do it all for free.
independent uncensored media has never been more critical and we couldn't do it Without you.