Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Welcome to The World in 10. In an increasingly uncertain world, this is The Times' daily podcast dedicated to global security. Today with me, Stuart Willey and Alex Dibble. As many predicted, both the US and Iran seem to have taken the off-ramp, along with Israel, agreeing to a complete and total ceasefire, which was proudly unveiled by Donald Trump.
It came hours after Iran launched missiles at a US military base in Qatar. The ceasefire announcement caused many around the world to breathe a sigh of relief. But will it hold?
The US president is furious at the renewed prospect it might not. He's hit out at both sides, accusing them of breaching the deal. With us to put it all in context and look at what may happen next is The Times' foreign correspondent Richard Spencer. Richard, you've covered a great many peace deals in the Middle East and beyond. Will Trump's angry words, including dropping the F-bomb, change anything?
They can do. I think in this case, it's pure theatrics, I have to say. I don't know why Iran sent off this missile. The ceasefire itself was quite mysterious. It came out of nowhere. But it is a proper ceasefire, I think. Clearly, there was negotiation. It was announced in a very Trumpian fashion in a social media post. There was this rather extraordinary element of it that, you know, one side had to ceasefire first and then the other one 12 hours later, which is not a
not a methodology that is often used in ceasefires, shall we say. So I think that's all the confusion. I think there is a definite theatrical element around it in that if you look at the way Trump talked about the whole Iran-Israel war and his involvement in it, there is a sort of clear thread there. He has effectively come in on the side of Israel, obviously, and
The way he's done so sort of conforms pretty much to the way that Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, asked him to. And he, of course,
always said he wasn't going to just do Israel's bidding and get involved in Middle East wars to his MAGA base. That was supposed to be what he wasn't going to do. So I think he now has to sort of slightly do this sort of theatrical performance to show, to suggest that he's as angry with Israel as he is with Iran. But I think the vents on the ground would tell you something completely otherwise.
Perhaps theatrics, but at the same time, I don't think I've ever heard an American president be this publicly critical of an Israeli prime minister, even as commentators point to Israel's history of breaking ceasefires. What would it take to keep all sides compliant this time, do you think? The fact that it's in the interest of all sides. You're right, you haven't heard...
of the United States dropping the F-bomb about Israel before, but then you haven't heard the President of the United States dropping the F-bomb before. So it was far more real criticism than anything that Trump has made of Netanyahu. I mean, let's say if you're doing exactly what someone you're talking about wants, as Trump has done since he came to power, I mean, he's
He's not restrained Israel in any way over Gaza. He didn't intervene after Israel ended the ceasefire. There was a ceasefire and Israel ended that at the end of stage one of a three-stage ceasefire. Israel said, we're not going to go to stage two, carried on and started the war again.
Trump didn't complain about that. And then when Israel bombed Iran, Trump praised him and then joined in. So I think this idea that Trump is in some way furious with Netanyahu and desperately trying to restrain him is not borne out by events on the ground. The presentation is unorthodox.
But the reality is consistent with what you'd expect. How do we expect Tehran to navigate this truce? Do they trust America or Israel after the last few weeks? No, but then they never did.
Iran doesn't want to get bombed anymore. It's been pretty much pulverized. It's been calling for a ceasefire, obviously, since the war began. Israel always said it would carry on bombing until it had achieved its goals. And President Trump said he'd obliterated the nuclear program. And since that was the goal, it would look a bit odd for Israel to carry on bombing too much longer after that. So
So that's the guarantee of the ceasefire deal. What happens after? Now, this is a really interesting question because...
What Trump and Netanyahu have always said they didn't want was to be sucked back into some sort of endless negotiating process while Iran constitutes a nuclear program. Now, that is what is, you know, possibly open to Iran now. Maybe it could have these negotiations that Trump wants, spin them out, and in the meantime...
try and reconstitute what's left of its nuclear program. Who knows what Iran will try and do? I don't even know if they know themselves. They'll be working that one out.
But I think what they're looking at, what the Iranians are looking at is now over the medium term. You know, where do they go internally for the next one or two years? Can they try and maintain the nuclear track that they've been keeping to? And can they use the negotiation process as a cover for doing so? Or does that just risk, you know, Israel bombing them again in a year's time?
Richard, you touched there on Israel saying it's met its initial goals for this war. Iran says it's come out victorious, as does Donald Trump. Can they all be right in claiming victory here? Well, that's, you know, this is the Middle East, so anything's possible. You know, Iran is a country. Sure, it hasn't won the war. You know, it didn't manage to fight off
Israel's bombers and certainly not America's bombers. It's been pulverized. It's lost much of its nuclear program and much of its military command and all the rest of it. But, you know, it will say, well, the ideology remains and it's the ideology that's key, you know, the ideology of resistance to Israel and the West. And so long as we, the regime, are here, we are still alive and therefore we are victorious. I mean, it's kind of nonsense, but it's also gibberish
given, Israel says, we want to end the threat from Iran full stop. We want to obliterate, to use Trump's term, the nuclear program. You know, the very fact that bits of it remain and the regime remains, maybe that is some sort of victory for Iran. It's not
It's not a victory in a neat Western sense. It certainly isn't a victory where, you know, the good guys have won and the bad guys have lost and we can all start again. It's a conclusion, temporary probably conclusion to a war which will leave many things unanswered. So as we come to that temporary conclusion, President Trump's given us detail about the staging of the ceasefire coming into effect, but not about an end point. Do you see this lasting?
So I do see the last thing because I think it's in both sides' interest too. The real question is if Iran starts to show signs of reconstituting a nuclear program, which Mossad clearly has very good intelligence about Iran, so Mossad will probably discover some signs of that if it happens, whether Israel is going to revert to bombing later. So I don't know whether that's
six months or a year. My suspicion is that Trump will want some sort of negotiation process and Israel will not take part in that, but will go along with it. You know, you might see
Steve Vitkoff, the US envoy to Middle East, traveling to Qatar or Oman to meet Abbas Arachi, the Iranian foreign minister or some other envoy. Then you might see the European leaders getting involved. You know, we saw the E3, as they call the foreign ministers of Britain, Germany and France getting involved. I
I kind of doubt there'll be the full six-party talks apparatus that we saw before the 2015 nuclear deal. But who knows? That's also possible. I think Trump wants to claim any deal for himself. But the red line of that deal still remains. Will Iran give up its ambition to enrich uranium on its territory? There's all sorts of compromises being put forward, even last week.
There was this compromise where the Americans were saying, well, you can have a dedicated facility for uranium enrichment, but not on Iranian soil. You could have a facility that's run by an international consortium that specifically to make enriched uranium for your purposes, for your nuclear power reactor and your medical research facility, for example. Iran said, no, no, no. What about having an international consortium research
run that facility but on Iranian soil because our issue is our principle that any country should be allowed to have a uranium enrichment on its territory within the terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty so that's its red line its principle and America says no you can't so that red line remains and it's pretty hard to see a compromise on that red line it has to be one or the other
Richard, thank you. That's The Times' foreign correspondent, Richard Spencer. With the moment of greatest peril seemingly behind us, Iran will now be looking to rebuild after 12 days that have seen its military and its government targeted. And Tehran's allies will be crucial. Hear more about them in our episode last Thursday, why Iran's allies are nowhere to be seen. But for now, that is it from us. Thank you for taking 10 minutes to stay on top of the world with the help of The Times. See you tomorrow.
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