Netanyahu's Influence

Yeah, I I love the comments that uh Trump made against Netanyahu, which can only have been leaked by him because the two would have been speaking on a confidential, uh highly confidential telephone line, where he asked Net and you are you effing crazy, you've got no effing judgment, uh, and you'd be in prison if it wasn't for me. Um gosh, uh those those remarks could equally have been made the other way back, I think, but uh, and they both would have been right. Um look, uh well, I heard the deal. Um, you know, you always start off with an element of hope, uh, because all of us want this war to start, uh, to stop. And you know, what gives me some hope is that for the first time the Iranians, the Americans uh and the mediator prime minister, Pakistani Prime Minister Sharif were basically saying uh they'd reached an agreement. So that looks pretty good. But you your question was a good one about um whether this can still be derailed. It could be derailed uh either by Netanyahu or Hezbollah. But Netanyahu has got a vested interest in a track record in this regard. He is standing uh for election uh before too long. He really wanted that war to go on. He he has advantages from fighting a war and and running uh for an election. Now, you know, Israel wouldn't have the capacity to fight the way they are if it weren't for grants uh uh in military aid from the United States. So Trump can pull um the uh the plug on him, and so Trump has got an element of control over Netanyahu. But you know, I suppose what we should consider is what the hell this war of choice that uh Trump and Netanyahu entered into without telling anybody else, uh has actually achieved because the the three things that they set out uh uh don't don't really persuade me that a lot has been achieved. The Strait of Hormuz will be reopened and the American blockade will end. But hang on, before this war started, the state of Wormuse was was already open, so no no gain there. Uh the second thing was that um it would stop the war in Lebanon, and we've already discussed um the dangers involved in that, but it but it needs to, it needs to be a comprehensive agreement. And then the third thing that you've already touched on is the Iran nuclear deal. Now, for our listeners, Obama had negotiated uh uh a deal back in 2015, uh, together with the Europeans, seemed to be working. It had uh inspection rights for international inspectors to go in to make sure the Iranians weren't enriching their their uranium to a weapon grade level. Um and then Trump pulled the plug on it. So for all of the costs of the war, we'll get to that in a moment, um, what actually has been achieved?