300. Trump's Middle East Doctrine: What Will it Mean for Ukraine?
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Hello and welcome to Battleground with me, Patrick Bishop and Saul David. Well, Saul, I don't know about you, but in the past days...

I've been experiencing very strange and completely novel sensations. There have been moments during the extraordinary drama that's been playing out in Iran where I felt a sneaking respect and even admiration for Donald Trump's handling of the situation. Maybe, I thought to myself, maybe, just maybe, he does indeed have

have some of those leadership qualities that he believes himself to possess in abundance. Now, I don't want to get too carried away here, but think about it. I mean, only one short week ago, we appeared to be in very familiar Trump territory as he swung dizzyingly between bellicosity on one hand and talking of lasting peace on the other, which left us all wondering whether he had any sort of plan at all to

to bring an end to the Iran-Israel conflict. Well, today we're looking at a different man, apparently, someone who's acted with great decision, launching a spectacular strike at Iran's nuclear weapons program, admittedly with results that are far from clear, and then using his imperial muscle to impose a ceasefire on the warring parties. And in the process, he's called out Israel,

Israel's unruly leader Benjamin Netanyahu in salty language that no US president from either party has dared to use on him to date. So do you share my feelings on? Well, up to a point, Patrick, I think we're long enough in the tooth to be a little bit cautious at this point. I mean, as you say, the effectiveness of the joint Israeli-American strikes is still open to question with a leaked US intelligence report.

saying they weren't that effective at all and far from obliterating the key nuclear weapons development sites, may only have done limited damage that will set the program back by months. Now, predictably, this has been met with an all caps rant on social media by Trump against the New York Times and CNN, who ran the story.

Steve Witkoff, Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, called the leak intelligence assessment treasonous. He said he had read all the damage assessment reports and that there was no doubt the three nuclear sites were, and I quote, obliterated. Well, who knows, frankly, Patrick, it'll be some time before we can say with any certainty how successful the raids were. But one thing they may have demolished, though, is the old taco joke, meaning, of course, Trump always chickens out.

That looks a bit lame now. And he's also made it abundantly clear that he was not going to put up with any nonsense from Israel, who clearly didn't think the job was finished and were intent on regime change, something that Trump says he is not interested in, although he hinted at one stage during this process that he might be. We've all seen that clip of Trump

boarding Marine One to head off to the NATO summit in The Hague, in which he declared that both Israel and Iran didn't know what the fuck they were doing. He included Tehran, but the sting will be felt mostly by Netanyahu. Yeah, really quite extraordinary, wasn't it? I think there'll be a few cheers ringing out at him losing his rag like that. He doesn't often do that, does he? But he'd really obviously had enough, particularly, as you say, of the

with Netanyahu. And Netanyahu clearly, I think, at every stage through this conflict, thought that he could lead Trump by the nose into a war that they would carry on. It would be dictated by Israeli considerations. And so Trump

has made it clear that's not actually the case. It's well known he doesn't like Netanyahu. Not many people do in Israel or anywhere, and not just because of his bloody crimes in Gaza, but because I think Trump has intuited that Netanyahu thought he could play him. Now we'll come on to the paradox, the obvious paradox between Netanyahu

This display by Trump and his extraordinary indulgent attitude to Vladimir Putin later on. But the message is that this is Trump getting into his stride and we should fasten our safety belts. It's been...

spelled out recently by J.D. Vance a couple of days ago, posted on X. We're now seeing the birth of what he is calling the Trump doctrine. So it's now dignified as such. He said, we're seeing a foreign policy doctrine developed that will change the country and the world for the better. Now, the elements are one, to clearly define an American interest, two, negotiate aggressively to achieve that interest, and three, use overwhelming force.

force if necessary. That's all a bit different, isn't it, from the kind of American first philosophy as we understood it before. Much more kind of forward leaning, I would say. But anyway, one way or the other, Trump is now the unchallenged big dog of global power politics. And he's already got NATO completely eating out of his hands, hasn't he, Saul?

Yeah, he has. And you get the impression that the other NATO leaders gathered in The Hague appear to be like medieval princelings awaiting the arrival of the emperor and falling over each other to lard him with praise. I mean, just listen, for example, to the extraordinarily fawning message which NATO Secretary General Mark Rutter, and you would have thought he knew better, sent to Trump just before he set off and which the president immediately shared with the world on social media.

Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, wrote Rutter. That was truly extraordinary and something no one else dared to do. He told Trump he was flying into another big success at the NATO summit where member nations have basically bowed to Trump's demand to boost defence spending to 5% of their gross domestic product, or at least all except Spain. It will be your win, concluded Rutter.

Trump will be looking for concrete action, of course, and Britain for One is eagerly demonstrating at least the appearance of doing his bidding. Yeah, I mean, in that kind of chorus of praise for Trump, the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer's voice is among the loudest, and he's actually backing words with action. He's just announced that Britain's buying a new squadron of fighter jets that can drop tactical nukes on Russia.

So these, of course, are American jets. There are 12 F-35As, which will carry American ordnance, nuclear ordnance, B-61 nuclear gravity bombs. And this is actually a real reversal of British defence nuclear policy. We gave up our airborne nukes all the way back in 1998.

And after that, our nuclear capacity was restricted. So there's, of course, to those four Vanguard-class Royal Navy submarines, but that's the only way we can actually fire a nuke. But on top of that, he pledged the 5% before actually departing. Now, we've said this before, Saul, but I think it's worth mentioning again. There's a lot of smoke and mirrors involved in arriving at that figure, not necessarily

All of the planned increase of that 5% will come direct or go into the defence budget. It's only 3.5% of that money is earmarked for what are called core defence, i.e. bombs, bullets, boots, and the rest is going to come from what constitutes a very elastic interpretation of what defence spending is. This is something that Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, pointed out very recently. He referenced it last week, Saul.

The category is so wide that, according to some accounts, it includes providing broadband for rural areas. Somehow that comes into the category of national defense. But just the icing on the cake, of course, is that in his desperation to please Donald Trump, the prime minister is actually defying the wishes of our king, Charles, by saying that Trump is going to get the full monty of bells and whistles in

state visit only in a few months' time. The King wanted something a little bit more restrained and made this clear. He's particularly concerned about Trump's threats to Canada, which of course is one of King Charles' domains. But Keir Starmer has defied him and says, no, he is going to be all singing, all dancing before September, I think it is, isn't it? But anyway, let's finally talk about what all this means now.

to Ukraine. Why hasn't Trump shown the same backbone in dealing with Putin as he has when handling the Iranians and the Israelis? We weren't surprised to hear that Vladimir Putin is already trying to get in on the act, to insert himself into the ceasefire process, make himself useful, try and get a bit of advantage there. And Trump revealed that on June 24th, he got a

a call from Putin who said that he was offering his services to help resolve the conflict between Iran and Israel. And I'm quoting the Donald here. He said, as you know, Vladimir called me up. He said, can I help you with Iran? I said, no, I don't need help with Iran. I need help with you. So this is a

change of heart, a little straw in the wind there. What do you reckon, Saul? Again, I'm a little bit cautious on all of this, Patrick, and we might be moving in the right direction, but this also could be absolutely another false dawn. We've discussed before the issues that Trump has with Putin, or at least this kind of love-in, we can't quite understand where it all comes from, does

Putin and the Russians have something on him? Does he just admire him as an authoritarian, anti-woke leader? You know, historians will judge this all in the future. It's interesting that the possibility of Trump high on praise and success might now turn his attention once more to Russia. If you follow the logic of the Iran play, he should now get tough with Putin as he did with Iran and Israel because it actually produced some results, or at least has done up

till now. That would probably mean a fairly tough approach with Ukraine too, as he's used all along. He sees all conflict as an infantile waste of time in which both parties share the blame for starting it. But he is due to meet Zelensky at the NATO summit and here to tell us what the mood like is in Ukraine following the Iran-Israel drama is our old friend, Asgol Kruzelnitsky. Asgol, it's good to have you back on the podcast. It's good to be back.

So tell us, Asgol, the key question Patrick and I would love to know. Are people in Ukraine at all hopeful that Trump might now be ready to apply the sort of pressure to Moscow that he has just done to Tehran and Tel Aviv? I've been talking to a lot of people since I arrived back in Ukraine last week. The whole Iran bombing scenario developed whilst I was there.

here. And people, of course, have wondered how this will play out as far as Ukraine is concerned, whether this will somehow benefit Ukraine. I've spoken to a variety of people there, civilians, military people. To tell the truth, nobody is holding their breath that Trump is going to somehow do the right thing. We know that his relationship with Putin is somewhat mysterious. Saul's just mentioned that

There may or may not be some sort of compromise, blackmailing material against Trump that's being held by the Russians. I don't know if there's sordid videos of him indulging himself with prostitutes, but I think it's more likely that money is at the core of it and that there were indications.

during Trump's first presidency, when the Mueller investigation happened, there were so many financial connections. I think that much of his wealth is to do with Russian involvement in his property empire by way of some sort of probably money laundering. But what does he think about Ukraine now and his approach?

apparent success in Iran. I don't think that many people think that this will lead to a dramatic and positive change by Trump towards Ukraine. What they do know is that attention has been distracted already from what's happening in Ukraine. And Putin, the Russian leader, seems to have taken advantage of this. And he's in fact mentioned it to his people that one of the benefits of the Iran bombing, even

even though Iran is supposedly an ally of Russia, is that it'll deflect attention from Ukraine. And indeed, the number of aerial attacks on Ukrainian cities has stepped up quite dramatically. Last night, the city of Dnipro suffered 18 deaths.

dead, plus dozens of people injured in a massive air attack, the kind that over the last couple of weeks has hit Kiev several times, the capital, other cities such as Sumy, Zaporizhia, Kharkiv.

And so, to sum up, people aren't very hopeful that the events of the past week or so in Iran will somehow make Trump more sympathetic to Ukraine. Yeah, it's interesting that these city attacks are still going on, isn't it? I assume that the rationale is that they are trying to force Ukraine to work its way through its stocks of Russia.

anti-air missiles, etc., in the hope that America will not be resupplying them again.

As time passes, that's the only logic I can see to this campaign. Is that how you see it? I think that that's correct. That's one of the main reasons is to get the Ukrainian anti-air defence forces to expend as much of their missiles as possible. The best system that Ukraine has got are patriot, American-made patriot systems. And these are rapidly running out of

And the Russians are staging these massive drone attacks where a portion of the drones they send don't really carry an explosive payload, but they're designed to draw Ukrainian air defenses to expend energy.

and waste ammunition on things that won't explode on impact. Another reason that Putin is conducting these strikes and not seemingly worried about the huge casualties of Russian forces on the Ukrainian battlefields. Recently, the

number of Russian dead and wounded surpassed 1 million, according to many Western intelligence sources and other reliable independent sources. But this doesn't seem to have stopped Putin carrying out these kind of attacks either in the air. And many of the targets that are aerial targets, the Russians would say it's an accident that they've hit another high rise or a hospital or a school. But to

I think as well as other observers from Western countries, it's clear that these attacks designed to instill terror and diminish people's morale in the hope that somehow they'll pressure the Ukrainian government to sue for peace, even though possibly

Putin has made it clear that he's not interested in a real, honest compromise of a peace. He wants Ukraine's full surrender. NATO, where Zelensky and Trump this week made an interesting assessment earlier this month that Putin was being fed up

incorrect information by his own military generals and his own intelligence services, all of it made to look as if the Russian forces on the ground are making more progress than they really are. The NATO conclusion was that this is part of the reason that Putin isn't hesitating, isn't trying to draw back or scale down his attacks. He thinks that despite the huge losses that

And the feeble gains that they make, maybe a few hundred square meters per day, that as long as they go on, they'll wear down Ukrainian resistance. And the feeling is that this summer we'll see this collapse.

kind of grinding warfare by the Russians continue for the next few weeks or possibly months. I think that we'll finally see what Trump's decision is with respect to Ukraine. The big question is, is he going to just abandon Ukraine, indications that he has realized that his

boasts about being able to make a quick peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia are rubbish, they're never going to happen. And he's now looking for a way to extricate himself from the embarrassment of having boasted about bringing about a quick peace within 24 hours. Well, as always, that was fascinating stuff from Ask Goldie. He hasn't finished yet. So do join us in part two to hear what he had to say next.

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It's interesting, Asgol, that a lot of the messaging from the Ukrainian government recently has been about purchasing weapons from America, not being given them. And that, of course, will go down very well with Trump if indeed he authorizes the sale of more

weapons. But the other thing Ukraine can do, of course, is make its own weapons. We've spoken a lot about its drone technology, AI, the extraordinary mission recently to knock out a lot of the Russian strategic bomber fleet. But also, I should also mention, I want to ask you about the development of the so-called Sapsan ballistic missile. Now, on the 13th of June, a couple of weeks ago, Ukraine announced that it was going into mass production. Apparently, one of these missiles

has already been used successfully on a target inside Russia. They have a range apparently of up to 300 miles that could go all the way to Moscow. This could be a game changer, of course, a ballistic missile being very difficult to knock out. This is what's causing so much damage in Ukraine currently. Asghar, what have you heard about this missile?

Ukraine has been trying to develop its own long-range missiles ever since America suspended military supplies to Ukraine for about eight or nine months. Ukraine knew that it couldn't rely on others to supply it, and it's been making its own weapons a lot of resources.

spent on developing long-range missiles. But on that point, some of the best news I think that Ukraine's had this year has been German Chancellor Merz's steadfast and unequivocal support for Ukraine. He said that Germany and Ukraine would be developing weapons jointly. Britain's Prime Minister, Sakhir Starmer, who's Ukraine's President Zelenskyy,

earlier this week, they announced plans to develop and build jointly missiles. And there are other such developments happening. The Danes have announced a joint factory that will be in Denmark. But

but we'll have Ukrainians building weapons there. Ukraine's hope is that this will accelerate this form of cooperation and that together with its European partners, Ukraine will be able to

protect itself against any sudden drop in an amount of American weapons supplied or indeed a total abandonment of Ukraine by the Trump administration. But there's more pressing concern, isn't there? This is all great stuff for the future. But what about this Russian summer offensive? This comes down to the basic problem that's always plagued Ukrainian strategy, and that is manpower. So

What are you hearing about the ability of the military to replace casualties and indeed the stock of young people who are prepared to actually serve? This has been an issue that's gone on throughout the war, for most of the war.

What can you tell us about the situation as it stands on the manpower front? There is pressure in Ukraine to further lower the age of conscription. When this full-blown war began in 2022, people could only be conscripted if they were over 27 years old. So has that actually happened now? Has that come...

what's actually practically happened? Last year, it went down by two years to 25. And is there pressure now, you say, to try to go drop even further? And what's being done about that? There's a lot of discussion about that everywhere else in the world. It's 18 or has been in both world wars, I think in the American Civil War, 18. And people realizing that Ukraine can't indefinitely be the exception. But they're also talking about

concentrating even more resources on remote-controlled weapons, drones, land vehicles, miniature tanks, mobile machine guns, which have already been used, and introducing more of those to compensate for the fact that Ukraine's population is a third or the quarter of Russia's, so that Russia has got a much bigger pool of people to dip into. Also, Putin doesn't care about what happens to them when they live away.

In Ukraine, it's a different attitude to life and death. There's two things happening. There's a discussion of further decreasing the conscription age, but also compensating for the lack of manpower by increasing capability of drones and other remotely controlled weapons.

weapons. Another thing is that the Ukrainian commander-in-chief of its forces, General Sersky, has mentioned that Ukraine can't just sit on the fence. It can't be on the defensive all the time. And I asked some military friends of mine at the weekend, what does that mean? How did they interpret that? And one of the interpretations by several people was that Ukraine might launch

another incursion into Russia of the sort that it did in Kursk last year, August of last year. But if it didn't work that time, why do they think it would work this time? Because the intention was...

never realistically to keep Russian territory. Ukraine doesn't want to expand its territory in an imperialistic way, they'd say, but it was to draw the Russians away. And Sersky, the commander-in-chief, says that indeed up to about 60,000 Russians were redeployed from battlefields in Ukraine to Kursk.

Yeah, and he's also, it's an interesting point, Asghar, because he's also argued that not only did it draw off troops that could have been used in the Donetsk area, it actually ate away at their capacity to launch what is now and has been for the last few months, the so-called Russian summer offensive, which hasn't really taken place, has it? And we're beginning to suspect now that it won't either. The Russian offensive may turn out to be a continuation of this sort of

slowly edging forward, losing large numbers of Russian troops daily, 1,000, 1,200 troops dead or wounded, rather than some dramatic surprise incursion. There is greater pressure by the Russians on the Sumy region of Ukraine, which is just on the other side of the Russian Kursk Oblast,

And they have moved into Sumy region. There's a lot of fighting happening there. The Russians have talked about taking the capital of Sumy region, which is called Sumy. Assessments by Ukrainians and NATO countries think that that's not possible for Russia, but that they will continue grinding away there. And another area that's been suffering greater attacks by the Russians is the Zaporizhia region.

region, part of which is occupied already by the Russians. The main city, the capital, which is also called Zaporizhia city, is experiencing a greater number of attacks and Russian troops have edged closer from the east. They've moved closer to Zaporizhia and the predictions are that area will become increasingly an area seeing combat and attack from

by Russia. But the attacks still go on further southeast in Pokrovsk, which is a familiar name to people listening to this podcast. I haven't heard that people expect a massive onslaught to capture one area. The Russians likely just to continue nibbling, trying to nibble away along the whole of the 600-mile contact line.

That was terrific. Thanks very much indeed for joining us, Asgol. We'll speak to you again very soon. That was really interesting stuff, wasn't it? So particularly that suggestion that we might be looking at another bold Ukrainian move before too long. Yeah, it was. Absolutely. Okay, on to questions.

questions now, Patrick, but before we do, very, very quick cyber security update, again from our resident expert, David Alexander. And this is about China hacking the Russian military. He's brought our attention to an article in the New York Times last week that notes, as well as providing below-the-radar assistance to Russia, China is also reported to be conducting cyber intelligence gathering operations against them. Cyber intelligence groups attributed to the Chinese government and military have been detained

And David goes on to say...

This partnership, that is the so-called momentous era of collaboration and friendship, as Xi Jinping put it recently, and years of promises not to hack each other, China sees Russia as a vulnerable target. To be honest, says David, I would be more surprised if China wasn't hacking Russia. They are an equal opportunity hacker, as he puts it. It would go after any nation or organization they think has information they would find useful. And that, of course, includes us.

Well, he precisely saw, which makes the decision by the British authorities, the British government, to allow the Chinese to go ahead with the development of a massive new super embassy in London, which is perfectly placed between the political center of London, around Whitehall, and the city, the financial center of Britain. And it's bang-slap in the middle, right next to all these cities

cables which are carrying hypersensitive information. And we've just allowed them to set up shop there. It's absolutely extraordinary. Yeah, it is. And a number of people, of course, who have been long warning against China's malign intentions have been arguing against that, including, of course, the Americans. And yet the decision has been taken, a foolish one, in my view. It sounds like you agree, Patrick, and no good, frankly, can come out of that.

Yeah. Okay. Well, on to questions. Just an observation, really, I think, which we've taken note of ourselves. This is from Nick, who points us in the direction of an article on the BBC website about Russia's economy, which is a recurring theme, of course, of the pod. And the headline says it all, really, Russia's economy is down, but not out. This is according to their analysis. And Nick makes the point that if the oil price goes

rises. It did spike a bit as a result of the conflict, but it now seems to be settling down. But anyway, this is a movable feast, isn't it? It could quite easily go up again. And he says if it got up to $100 territory, this would be a get-out-of-jail-free card for the Russian economy and very bad news indeed for Ukraine. So let's hope that doesn't happen.

Okay, on to one from James, and he writes, I was thinking of the comparison between Putin's strategy in Ukraine to hit the shift

during the Battle of Britain. My grandfather believed Hitler lost the war by switching from targeting airfields to bombing cities during the Blitz, allowing the RAF to recover. I see a similar pattern with Putin, who largely avoids high-value targets in Kiev. If you look at the buildings around Kiev or elsewhere, that would have been useful for him to hit. They're almost all untouched, and the only exception is the GUR's HQ, which was hit in May 2023.

Otherwise, they've done very little to actually target these buildings. Why? Probably because their ballistic missiles aren't that accurate. But is there anything in this broader point, Patrick, that not going for strategic targets and going instead effectively for area or terror bombing is a mistake? Well, I think it is. I mean, history tells us that, doesn't it? I mean, what Askel was saying earlier about

Putin's intentions are being interpreted as basically an attack on morale. It's a political concept. You're trying to get people to turn against their government. Well, if that is the case, he hasn't been reading his history of the strategic bombing campaign of the Second World War, conducted mostly by the RAF, but later in conjunction with the United States Army Air Forces.

And there was a strong belief at the outset of the war that if you hit cities, then morale would slump and that you would actually get the population turning on its masters. I think this is completely deluded. And so it turned out to be the idea that ordinary folk are going to rise up against a totalitarian regime.

and is pretty answerable, I think. From what we know, and we know quite a lot, Moral hasn't been dented that badly by these relentless attacks on population centers in Ukraine. So yeah, I think he's definitely on the wrong track there. But it is a bit of a mystery why obvious high-value targets, the homes of important people, politicians, et cetera, symbolic targets,

Like the Maidan, you know, that hasn't been hit and so on and so forth. I haven't got an explanation for it. It may be, just as you say, because they're too well protected. I don't know. A second question from James, and this one's on the F-16s. He makes the point that the air power provided to Ukraine in the form of the F-16s is minimal. He thinks, and this is backed up by what he's read on Wikipedia, which is often quite accurate, actually, despite what some listeners may think.

says that the Ukrainians have only got seven F-16s. I suspect it's a little bit more than that. I mean, we've heard that I think it's the Danes and also the Dutch have given them a certain number of F-16s, but it isn't many. And James compares those alleged seven to Romania's 67. Now, Romania, of course, like a lot of the rest of Europe and NATO, is replacing its current air capacity with F-35s. They're expensive, but as Patrick already mentioned earlier on in the podcast,

has extraordinary capability. And you can see that capability over Iran, what Israel with its F-35s, but also other planes has been able to do there. It has dual capability. You can use it from aircraft carriers, as Patrick mentioned. Also, it can carry tactical nuclear weapons. But the broader point that James is trying to make is that if a lot of NATO is taking on the F-35s, why on earth

haven't more F-16s got to the Ukrainians where they really could make a difference. The US, according to James, has got rid of over 400 F-16s in the last couple of decades. And even Eldridge Colby, he says, famous advocate for restraint in the defense of the vulnerable, believes America should be giving Ukraine hundreds of F-16s. And he wants the USAF to pivot harder to F-35s that will be more helpful

helpful against China. And that is indeed exactly what's happening. It's a fair point, Patrick. I mean, it is absolutely extraordinary that the kit that the Ukrainians are using very effectively is pretty much second rate stuff compared to the frontline NATO kit that is being rolled out for most of the countries today, isn't it?

Yeah, that's absolutely right, Saul. Now, we've got one from Therese in Norway. She's a regular correspondent with us. Nice to hear from you again. And she says that a few years back, pre the main invasion of Ukraine, she says, I was of the opinion that World War III would be fought mainly with economics, politics, and organized migration as its main weapons.

and that armed conflicts would only be complementary to the main conflict. And that seemed to be the way things were going, wasn't it? Well, she says things have changed since then, and what she sees is a confused picture, which is quite hard to determine the actual picture.

structure of what's going on but her belief is that future historians will say that we're already now in another war that World War III is already ongoing and that although that war will never be declared by any party it's absolutely the case. Do you think there's something in that we're actually in a state of war? This is her question do you believe we're in World War III at the moment and what do you think she's also positing the idea that there will be some

event a kind of equivalent of the shots that echoed around the world the shots in Sarajevo when the arch-shoot perhaps further learned that his wife was shot and killed in Sarajevo in the summer of 1914 it's rather a sort of complicated question but I think what she's saying is that we're already basically in an undeclared war between the crinks between and the west essentially and

And perhaps some unforeseen event will then make that apparent and everything will kick off. Do you think there's anything in that analysis? Certainly, everyone's talking about war and there are all sorts of little niggling events which demonstrate the hostility of Russia in particular to us. I'm just talking about the UK here.

Do you think there's anything in Therese's analysis? There might be. Not definitely, but it's interesting. After the event, Patrick, people wouldn't have assumed that the original Japanese incursion into Manchuria in the early 1930s, or indeed its war against China in the later 1930s, would have

allowed historians today to argue actually that was the beginning of the Second World War. So we'll have to wait and see to a certain extent, but she may not be entirely off the mark here. I mean, as you say, Patrick, there's a lot of talk about war coming. Are we already at the start of it as far as the West against these powers? We could well in a year or two see two possibilities, Patrick. And again, a year or two ago, I wouldn't have thought this was likely, but it's definitely possible.

One, of course, that Russia attacks another NATO country. But given that Trump, even in the last couple of days, has refused to say that, you know, the so-called absolute...

point of NATO, which is Article 5, if one member's attacked, everyone's attacked and they'll all come to their defence. He's not endorsing that. And so it may be that Russia feels the possibility of attacking. And of course, it would be most likely one of the Baltic states, possibly Poland,

in the hope of a further advancement westwards. And that may be the spark that would lead us into what we would call in future as historians World War Three. And of course, the other potential scenario is an attack on Taiwan that is looking increasingly likely, or at least has done over the last six months, probably. So does Iran change any of this potentially?

It does, Patrick, but we're going to have to see how it pans out. I really do think the key proving ground for whether or not we can stop a third world war in its tracks is going to be Ukraine. And both of us aren't overly optimistic that whatever has happened in Iran is going to make much difference to the Ukraine conflict.

Yeah, it was a masterful way of bringing the question back to the subject in hand. It's all well done. We're going to finish with, we're running out of time here, so we're going to finish with an intriguing one, going back to Op Downfall, which seems to be a big favourite with listeners, doesn't it? That's your...

wheelhouse, as you would say, Saul. And this comes from Trevor. He says, I listened to your Downfall episode, very much enjoyed it. On the question of expected casualties, he says, he asked us to say what we know about a story he heard, which he thought might be true, but wondered whether we could confirm it. And this was that the US government was so

Convinced there'd be massive casualties that they manufactured enormous numbers of Purple Heart medals. Now, Purple Hearts is the popular name for the decoration which goes to American troops who were wounded in battle or to the families of those killed in it.

battle. He's heard that there were so many made that were actually not needed because they didn't have to invade Japan as a result of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. What he's heard is that the stocks are still sitting there awaiting use. And he asks if we know whether or not that's true. Well, as far as I can see, it is true. And there are still big stockpiles of them

I think 120,000 are still in the hands of the armed services and they're stocked at various military depots, but also they travel with major combat units and they're also held at field hospitals so they can be awarded awards.

without delay. Yeah, and I had an overall figure, Patrick, of half a million being produced. And remember, that was just to cover the first stage of the fighting. Downfall was going to be in two parts, the autumn of 1945 with the invasion of Kyushu and then the invasion of the main island the following spring.

And so they manufactured half a million by the summer of 1945, which weren't needed. And of that total amount, obviously about 350,000 have since been handed out or been lost or damaged in some way. So they still got another 160,000. It's extraordinary to think, and it must be quite poignant actually to everyone,

that every US serviceman injured, serviceman or woman injured today, he's actually getting a Purple Heart that was made in the Second World War. It's a great fact. So thanks so much for that, Trevor. Great stuff. Okay, well, that's it for this week. Do join us on Wednesday for another episode of Battleground 45. And we'll be back on the following Friday to update you on everything that's going on in Ukraine.

Hey everyone, here's that Jaws clip that we mentioned during the break. You can listen to the whole episode for free on The Rest Is Entertainment. There's no cast at this point as well. The cast is so last minute for this. It was nine days before principal photography was due to start. Two of the three main parts, Quint and Hooper, still hadn't been cast. Nine days before. So everyone's ready. Everyone's ready to go. You know, the whole unit is... Who are eventually played by Robert Shaw and Richard Rofus in the movie. And...

Those two have a massive feud. There were so many other different people that they considered. Now, Brodie, who was actually played by Roy Scheider, is a brilliant performance. He's so sort of... It's an amazing performance. Yeah, so put upon and like every man, but... Yeah, I mean, the other people considered were Paul Newman, Charlton Heston...

Robert Duvall, Gene Hackman, like definitely the last two of those could have done it. Yeah, so I think Charlton Heston was desperate to be in it. And Spielberg, again, you know what? He was smart right from the beginning, Spielberg. He said, the thing about Charlton Heston, he's too big a star. Why is he too big? Because you know Charlton Heston always wins. That's the problem. You know Charlton Heston is going to defeat the Shark. You don't know what Roy Scheider is going to do. You just don't know. So it's really important. Roy Scheider has the look of a man who could play.

Who could definitely be eaten. You'd be like, yeah, I can see it. I don't know if his agent is going to be saying he's going to be in it, but he can't be eaten. He could definitely be eaten. Charlton Heston eats sharks. Charlton Heston eats sharks. Again, another great title for the book. Roy Scheider actually heard Steven Spielberg talking about it at a party and Steven Spielberg was saying he'd had this idea for how he could get the shark to jump onto a boat. Roy Scheider thought...

I'd like to be in that movie. That sounds good. I like this kid. And he said, I would like to be in this movie. Anyway. Charlton Heston, by the way, vowed never to work with Spielberg after that.