BBC Sounds, Music Radio Podcasts. Good afternoon. Welcome to any answers. So Iranian and US negotiators are now in Pakistan. They are having negotiations, but tellingly, in separate rooms, separate places, separate talks ahead of these peace negotiations. And already we're hearing that Iranian state TV is saying these talks, even these talks, could be cancelled if Tehran's conditions are not met. There are stumbling blocks between these two countries. But the question that was asked on the programme is simply this, has Iran won this war? Has it already won this war? What do you think? And what do you think about the beginnings of this conflict? And how has it reshaped global politics in your view? 03700, 100, 444. What does it mean for us, for our security, for our food, for the cost of our fuel? Do you feel less safe than you did before? And in all of this, just tell me, when you look around the world, who are our real allies now? Does NATO even have a future? 03700, 100, 444. And let's zoom in on energy security in particular. Is it time to start drilling for oil in Scottish waters? We'd love to hear from you on that. 03700, 100, 444. And when it comes to welfare, which party has got it right in your opinion? Are we paying too much for our welfare bill? Are we not paying enough for our welfare bill? And when you hear this being debated, I just wonder how it impacts on your life. 03700, 100, 444. You can text us on 84844. Let's start though with the big global picture and what is going on right now in those talks between Iran and the United States. J.D. Vance has shown on many pictures, on many news sites shaking hands with the Pakistani Prime Minister. Where are they going to get to? And has Iran just already won? Christopher Hawgood is our first caller calling us from Denmark. Where in Denmark? It's a big place. Christopher, where are you? 03700, 100, 444. Northern suburbs of Copenhagen. OK. Right. So tell me, from the northern suburbs of Copenhagen, what do you make of this? Has Iran won? 03700, 100, 444. I believe that Iran has won diplomatically, although they United States and Israel are capable of bombing Iran to a pulp, which is what the Israelis would like to do. But I think that Iran has done, it is what's called asymmetric warfare, where Iran cannot beat the United States and Israel militarily, but they can beat them as the result of the diplomatic results. I've got something here from Sarah Mulholland, who says, actually, forget about Iran and the United States. Putin is the beneficiary of this war. He's raking in the winnings of lifted sanctions for himself, diverted resources from Ukraine. However, I see innocent losers in this illegal war, not least the thousands of Iranian civilians, who have been killed. I think that's right. Let's go to Brian Ratner, who's calling us from Halifax. Hi, Brian. Oh, hello there. Is it easy to say who's winning and losing in this? I don't think it is at the moment. I think we need to wait to see what the outcome of the talks in Pakistan result in and whether the ceasefire holds and whether the conflict restarts. I think it's too early to say who's winning and losing. I'm not sure that it's a simple answer to that question in any event. In some respects, each of the parties will claim some victories, and other victories in other spheres of the conflict. It's not a single answer you can give to that. Okay. Tell me about your view on our positioning, the British government's positioning in all of this. The reason I kind of contacted was I think one of the panellists at the start of the discussion made reference to this entire war, which is a line that our Prime Minister, Starma, has said on many occasions. I just don't think that that is the case, whether one supports the intervention of the war at this point or not. The reality is that Iran poses a real significant threat to the West and to our country. In a number of different ways, firstly with continued ambition to develop nuclear weapons, that's a very significant threat. Secondly, in the development of long-range missiles, and thirdly, in its promotion of terrorism in the West, and there have been reports of 20 terrorist threats filed in the last year alone. Okay. You're saying it's clearly our war, but if it was our war, and the points are as obvious as you make out, then surely it would have been good to ask first, wouldn't it, to have consulted NATO Allies first, wouldn't it, before launching a bombing campaign? That's an absolutely fair point. Without consensus, how can it be our war? Because I think that the narrative that our government should be promoting or presenting in relation to these events, should incorporate a narrative that includes an analysis of the real threat Iran poses. And yes, things could have played out in a different way, but the way given that they have played out in this way, to almost sort of back off in a very timid way, to say we're only involved in this defence. It doesn't seem to me to be presenting the correct picture to the public. And it allows the narrative that, perpetually, others, many people say, this is an illegal war. There's lots of people who have no knowledge of international law who make these claims. There is an argument that could be substantiated for it being a legal war. And I think it's about building up a robust defence of the concerns around Iran, and so that we, as the public, are not so kind of intimidated by what's going on. That's the right word. I think that as a public, we need to be aware of the concerns and why this is an important issue, not to simply just say, it's illegal, we shouldn't be involved, blah, blah, blah, which is what the narrative that's around in much of the press and in much of the representation on television and in the news. Does it help your case when the most powerful man in the world, arguably, Donald Trump, talks about bombing a civilisation to annihilation? No, it doesn't. But doesn't that matter? It doesn't negate the reality that Iran presents a significant risk. And I'm not supporting Trump in the ways intervened and the language he uses, but regardless of that, Iran does still present a very real threat. And people need to understand that. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You've made the point. Okay. Yeah. And you have very clearly, and I'm grateful. Thank you very much, Brian. I appreciate it. This is from Robert Taylor in Nottingham. That's lighting up on this. This has been the biggest foreign policy failure in my lifetime, and I'm 75 years of age. Iran holds all the cards, says Robert. Jeffrey White says America's war was ill-advised and unnecessary with no apparent vision of what would follow destruction of the regime. The Iranian people deserve better. John Thorpe from Clacton on Sea, it's just backfired on Trump, making him more unpopular. Iran has discovered a new weapon in oil blockades. The regime, meanwhile, remains unchanged. Another John saying now Iran can possibly charge shipping for the, using the Strait of Hormuz, making billions where previously they didn't. America's just lost this war, and it was a war they needed to have started. Let's speak to Grace Dorton, who's calling us from Ealing. Hi. Hi. Yeah, first of all, the shipments were mentioned, and I think that we should be cognizant that the conflict is having a really brutal impact on living costs in poorer parts of the world than our own. So we're concerned about the cost of living being impacted here, but the situation is also actually exacerbating situations of literal starvation by blocking shipments of fertilizer and essential humanitarian aid. So we should be aware of people who are even more impacted than we are, in addition to obviously the poor Iranian and Lebanese and other people in the region directly impacted by the fighting. But I think that Trump will have kind of enlivened animus against the West. He's kind of assisting the theocratic regime of Iran in its assertions that willing death to the West is a righteous mission. He's kind of showing some of the Iranian people that the West is, or can be terrible. Well, so I mean, you're talking about, you know, sort of the civilian population who may not have been with the regime. The regime certainly always sung from the same hymnsheet that the West is the enemy. I mean, they've always, quote that loudly and proudly that, you know, everything wrong is in the West. We are fighting an existential threat. Yeah, well, I'm very aware that the vast majority of the Iranian people are not at all supportive of their regime and have suffered horrendously because of them. But I think that if the Iranian regime wants to convey to the population that they're right to hate the West, Trump will have helped the regime in doing that. So can I just put another throw another thing back because we had another caller just before you who was saying, you know, actually, we need to reframe the argument to present it honestly. So let me just reframe it in a way that that he might approve of, which is you've just talked about, you know, the fertilizer situation having a much more profound effect on those who are on the border line of starvation. You've talked about a regime that now has even greater reasons to convince their population to hate and commit acts of terror against us, you know, and that includes the people sitting listening to this right now, in which cases they're not a moral imperative to say, you know what, enough is enough. We've put up with this for long enough. You cannot have control of stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz. You cannot be driving people to the edge of starvation and or causing, you know, prices to spike and markets to crash. That cannot be in the hands of one regime. Well, I was completely concocted that, but how we define moral becomes quite complicated. A little while ago, Trump said that he is only constrained by his own morality. And one of the big problems we have in the West right now is that the most powerful man has no actual morality. He has been trying again and again to convince us that he's somehow on the side of God and he's fighting his holy Christian war against Islam, but he's completely misunderstood Christianity and Jesus' message, which is not that some people are good and some people are bad and we should just crush our enemies as he seems to think. It's been ridiculous seeing some of the stuff coming out of his administration. He's got such a sort of third Messiah complex. We should be aiming to want peace and to love our enemies and not to just keep making conflicts even worse. That's what Trump has been doing. So of course, the Iranian regime is evil. Of course, they should not have the power that they do over the Strait of Hormuz. But Trump is really not helping. He is making everything worse. He is essentially doing a similar thing to what the regime are doing. Okay. All right. Thank you. Maggie on text says we should have stood shoulder to shoulder with the United States and the Iranian people, the Ayatollahs have waged war on us and its own people for decades. They're in people, I think. Jenny says Trump's tenure will end fairly soon. Surely, the American people will see the error in the vote and vote in someone more reasonable next time. Paul says currently there's only one who's winning and thanks to Donald Trump, that's Putin. He's profiteering from the whole rising cost of oil. Jim Miller says Israel's aim is to destabilize surrounding countries so that it can expand. If Iran loses, the whole world loses. Can we talk about we talked about enemies and our last caller was saying, you know, look, take the Christian moral of turning the other cheek and showing love to your enemy. Can we talk about our friends? Who are our friends in the world right now? What has this shown us about who we can count on in the world in a really unstable world right now? John Williams calling from Manchester. Hi, John. Have you got any thoughts on this? Who do we count on? Nobody at the moment. We're on our own. You've got Trump in America. You've got Russia and you've got Palestine and Israel, sorry. And they've all got nuclear power. And in the last two or three years, they've slaughtered, murdered thousands and thousands of innocent people. So what does it say that if you've got that bomb that you can drop, you're safe because no other country will attack you? Well, it's just the head. I mean, that was the thought process, mutual short destruction that, you know, two countries wouldn't be stupid enough if they were armed to the teeth like that to launch and they would cancel each other out. Okay, if not them, then who? Who do we count on? You say no one at all. How can you exist in the world without friends, without any kind of relationship? You said, you said, we've no friends at the moment. We're not friendly, fully friendly with Europe again. Right? A lot of countries, pure countries in Europe don't like us. Trump and America, everybody thinks, well, America will look after us. Well, he's just told us that I don't think America in the future will look after us. I think we've started, we've got to start looking after ourselves with Europe because that's the nearest ally. And unless we get them countries together, even Germany is building an army up now. And they was told after the last war, for the last 20, 30 years, you cannot build an army up, but they know what's going to happen. Now, we've just sent a ship to either, Keir Starmer said, oh, well, we'll have to send it just to save our face. Well, it didn't work because Keir Starmer's not strong enough. He does all the little old things like, you know, giving children the breakfast, morning breakfast, but he's putting his face out to that. But he's been flying around Europe and the world for the last 18 months. And what has he done? He went to China and he knocked 10, was it 10p off a bottle of whiskey? But they don't know, but just listen, unless we've got a strong person in charge of us, right, for the next 10 years, we're going to be at the bottom of the pile. Nobody's going to help us. But what's happening in Israel and Palestine's been slaughtered, Israel only did that for themselves. They didn't do that for us to save the world. They did it for themselves. And Trump still, he tried to help himself by taking Canada. Yeah, okay. But what you're saying, what you're saying, which is interesting is that, you know, the world is filled with unreliable strong men, if I can put it that way, but we need a strong man too. Exactly. And this man's not strong enough. Okay, but hasn't your argument sort of proved the point that strong men are dangerous men more often than others? No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I'm not saying the money in Israel is not a strong man. He's a coward. Okay. All right. He's been dictated to by the Orthodox Jews. Okay. But, you're moving us on to a conversation we had a few weeks running, which is what's going on in Israel and Palestine. But we're talking about what's going on in Iran now. Look, I take your point and I'll throw that out there. Who are our friends? John says we have no friends, but what we need is a much stronger leader. He also said we need to get closer to Europe. If you want to have a call on this and the future of NATO, can we exist without the United States, without NATO as we know it here and now? Does it even mean anything? 03700, 100, 444. Simon Ashford says neither Iran nor America has won. All that's happened is killing thousands of innocent people. Jillian says who's lost? The poor have lost. What little they have. Who's won? The rich. They've just got richer. Georgia says why so many people are unaware of the threat Iran is to the world? And Kay says we should support America in trying to prevent Iran from attaining a nuclear bomb. That would be a threat to the world. Look, I'm very happy to return to this subject, but a lot of you is not often. Normally, we get one topic that dominates, but we've got two today. So let's turn to the second and we can always return back to Iran and NATO in a little while, if you want to. We're carried like surfers on the volume and the waves of your calls. But energy. You want to talk about energy security in this country. Do we have it? Should we be looking now to drill more in Scottish waters to provide ourselves with more security, energy security? Anna Hughes is calling us from London. Hi, Anna. Hi there. Hi there. So should we drill, baby drill? I would say no. It seems that the issue here is not where we're getting the oil, but how we should move away from oil. So it's not about bringing the UK into reopening those oil fields in the North Sea. It's about looking at how we avoid using oil in the first place. So we know it's terrible for the climate, terrible to burn oil. It's also terrible for our energy security as now is becoming clear. So these kinds of crises bring into sharp relief how much our society is reliant on fossil fuels, so energy as you said, and food and transport as well. So I actually, I'm the director of a charity called Like Free UK that encourages people to travel without flying. And just to illustrate that, how that relates to what's going on now. If you wanted to go on holiday to say LA, which is great holiday destination, it would take 500 barrels of oil to get the plane there. But if you choose to take a holiday in Europe, for example, by train, which is a great destination as well, it would take precisely zero barrels of oil. So we're looking at how we can future proof our entire lives. And it's not about drilling for more oil, it's about moving away from oil completely. Okay, that will solve so many things. Yep. Okay, Anna. Thank you very much. Henry Marston's been in touch on this. If from rather, maybe increasing oil production away from the Persian Gulf would help stabilize the oil market. But in short term, that has to be done by increasing production on existing oil fields. Any new oil fields would take time to develop, probably years to develop. Anthony Powell on email says, whether without the North Sea, fossil fuel use is out of control and it's rising year on year, there's no transition to renewable energy other than some committed households and small communities. And our first caller, very passionately for that kind of transformation. Alan Marlow on email, 85% of UK homes have a gas boiler. The country should be authorising the production of as much as its own oil and gas as it can extract. Rowan Adams on email, we shouldn't be burning any more fossil fuels, we should not be getting any more out of the ground. Global heating is already bad enough. Let's take another on this. Judith Moss is calling us from Anglesey. Hi, Judith. Hello. Hello. Hi. Yes, I'm totally in agreement with the last two speakers and that those emailed you. I actually fought against wind turbines on Anglesey, which I don't believe should be producing energy for the amount of footprint they make, first of all, on land and in sea, and the noise they make if you're living near to them. However, I do totally support solar energy and the heat pump and batteries, which are now supporting solar power and heat pumps. When I first had solar panels on my house in 2012, I had a very good tariff and I took, I think, £800 a year back from the grid. Now, I don't think you can do that, but to have a battery to store the heat from the sun, my bills will be practically nil when I move to my new house, which I'm planning to have all this installed. How much should it cost you to make that transition personally? Well, if I was on a grant, it would cost me nothing and there was a grant until March. I think that the government are reconsidering that if they can possibly afford it with all the other terrible expenses they have to put at the moment, including welfare and wars. My goodness, I think Kirsten is amazing how he manages to juggle all the things that are being thrown at him. I totally support the way he's managing. I think he's an extremely clever man. Okay, so no. Yes, go on. Yeah, there's so many points on your discussion today that I would love to add to, but I'll try to keep to the point. What were you just saying? What did you ask? Well, I was going to say, look, can we summarize you in no more oil rigs? You don't believe that there's any need for any more oil rigs under any circumstances? Right. Particularly not that the North Sea, when it won't be benefiting us anyway, it's going to shareholding companies that again make huge profits out of it. We won't get anything from it, according to one of your presenters. Yeah, okay, but there are others who argue, look, it gets sold on the international market, which then there is a quid per square and we get cheaper energy in return. Well, in time, but not immediately, I'm certain. Well, but also what about those people who say, look, the transition is going to take more time as well, building more arrays for wind power, offshore, onshore, wherever, you know, that also takes time. Yes, well, solar energy is pretty quick to put up, I think. You can get on with that pretty hard. And it doesn't rely on sun, it relies on light. So we have a lot of light in the summer. Okay. I'm expecting my bills to cost me very, very little when I move to my new house, very little. All right, well, call us back when you get your first bill, Judy, that'd be good to know how much you've reduced it by. Lackland, McInnis is calling us from Stornoway. Hello, Lackland. I mean, it's a beautiful part of the world, but I'm guessing tricky to heat and light. Yes, it is. Yeah. Stornoway's motto is God's providence is our inheritance. And we should really, as a country, be using up as much of his gifts as we possibly can, whether that's oil, gas, or even reverting to coal, and to a lesser extent, a nuclear as well. I mean, my bill has gone up for oil from 74 pence a litre to 124 to this week, they couldn't even give me a price. I was expected to buy it blind and be told the price on delivery. So that's my thoughts. Okay. However, however, yeah, but you say they are gifts, they are not gifts without a price tag. I mean, these things aren't extracted for nothing. There's environmental damage, it is expensive to do, it takes time to set up new oil rigs. I mean, these things aren't overnight, you know, sort of, it feels like sometimes it's, oh, okay, if we could just drill more, our problems would be solved. No, I understand that. There's more to it than meets the eye, and certainly more to it in a few minute conversation on wonderful Radio 4. We have a wonderful country and the government should be put on a war footing, and they should all get together and sort matters out. Have a proper mix and be secure. The states of our news is only responsible for 20% of the fuel. So surely we could contribute to making up that gap. Well, why not instead of, you know, having you rely on oil and gas, which is expensive, and you're saying, look, I can't even get prices on it at the moment, because, you know, I'm so out of the way, and they're not even going to price things up, things are changing. Why not actually, you know, make sure that Lachlan in Stornoway has either a solar array or is close to some wind turbines or is connected up to the, you know, I was looking at this thing, there's the really interesting thing, National Grid Live, if you ever looked at it, it's a website. It's like 87.7% of the energy coming today was from renewables, according to this site. And I hope I'm reading it right. I'm sure I'm going to get completely flamed if I'm not. But, you know, we're already getting a lot from renewables. The fact that it hasn't stretched as far as Stornoway, is that reason to start drilling with all the attendant environmental damage that might go with drilling for more oil? I still feel it is until we get a proper benefit from the wind farms and solar and offshore, the planning and doing an offshore development up here as well. Even my own village, is going to be taking in about 200 plus workers. There's going to be a village set up for the workers regarding the wind turbines and the accessories along with that. So I'm not against any of that. But in the meantime, we should be using all the energy resources that we have. And the sooner the better. And this recent problem in the Middle East has magnified the need for that once again. Okay. Thank you very much. 03700, 10444. Anthony Powell on email with or without the North Sea fossil fuels out of control. Rising year on year. There is no transition to renewable energy other than some... Oh, I think I've read that one before. Sorry, apologies. Let's get to the thing I haven't read. Eileen in Edinburgh. Yes, we must drill and use our fossil fuels along with renewables. We need a dual approach, says Eileen. Leslie says, I've come back from Spain and Portugal, where diesel and petrol are cheaper than here. Excessive prices in this country are determined by UK government policies. Graham Hastings in Cambridge says, an unintentional consequence of Trump's illegal war could be to accelerate the transition to renewable energy. Kate in Kendall says, there is absolutely no point expanding North Sea oil production unless it's nationalised. So we control the extraction and it's only used by the UK. 03700, 10444. It seems to me that you're carrying us back to Iran now with your calls. I'm seeing a whole bunch of those appearing on my screen. So why don't we talk about that? Who has won the war, Jeremy Shepherd? Calling us from Huntington in Cambridge. Hello. Hello there. Hi. Hi. We're doing this sort of circling around to wherever you're going to take us today. And you're taking us back to the war. So tell me why you think, is it Iran? Is it Israel and America who's winning this war? Well, I think Iran is winning the war basically because they've realised now that they can control the straits of Hormuz, which was previously open to all shipping. The situation obviously, if there isn't an agreement in Pakistan, then obviously there's a change of Trump even attacking Iran again. And then Iran will then hit back at the states nearby, which actually supplied all the oil, which Western European countries rely on. And they can also, Iran can easily launch even basic missiles on shipping, any shipping that comes through, they don't want to come through. So they've essentially won the war because Trump can't defeat a country like that, which can basically hold Western European countries around some. The only option that I understand is that ships will have to go around through either Suez Canal or around the bottom of Africa. But whether that's a feasible option, I don't know. Okay. So what should be the course of action now? Look, they're meeting, they're talking. I'm just having a look at the latest as talks got underway. Donald Trump took to TruthSocial as he does. And he said, Iran is losing big is what he said. I mean, and you've had, as I said at the top of the program, Iranian state television saying, you know, the Iranians are going to walk away if their terms are not, their key points are not adhered to. It doesn't sound hopeful. So what next? Well, basically, hopefully, hopefully Pakistan will bang heads together, basically, and say to the American delegation and the Iran delegation, come on, we've got to sort this out. It's no good. You're sort of fighting and arguing here, and then going back and throwing more bombs at each other. You've got to come to a piece of resolution, and you've got to come some sort of agreement to open the straight to Homoos to all shipping. It's going to cost a bit of money, I would have thought, because... So it costs a bit of money, meaning Iran is saying, look, two million per ship, per cargo ship. I mean, that's one of the numbers that are floating around this week. So what, the rest of the world just follows that and says, okay, hey, Iranian regime who's been really awful to your own people, who has, you know, threatened war and terror on the rest of the world numerous times, do you know what, we'll pay you for something that we didn't used to pay before. Is that an acceptable piece, do you think? No, no, no, because that could go on forever. You know, it could be a situation five, ten years time, Iran said, oh, you want five million pounder ship, you know, you agree with it basically. No, you can't have a situation where they can hold the world around some. The problem is Trump, he is such a bully, he doesn't have any idea about problem negotiation. He's a property developer who's obviously bought lots of sites in New York and around there. And if the site there hasn't come up to scratch or the owners don't want to sell at the right price, say, okay, that's the end of that deal. He's behaving like a property developer in trying to organise the world. And they can't do that. Well, I mean, you know, here's the art of the deal and he was a property developer. So, you know, probably that narrative voice is not one that is unknown to him. Listen, thank you very much. Let's talk to Brenda McCrimmon, who's calling us from now. I want to say this, right, Brenda, deeply with all my heart, I want to, and I'm going to mess it up. Is it Arakha in Scotland? Oh, Jordy. Even a broken clock is right twice a day, Brenda. And this is my moment. What's it like? What's it like in Arakha? Tell me where it is, because I don't know it. Beautiful. Arakha is in the Loch Lomond and Trossick National Park, and we're actually situated on Loch Long. Loch Long is two minutes from Loch Lomond. So, it's a sea lock, and of course, Loch Lomond is a freshwater lock. Well, I know, I know Loch Lomond, and I also know that is not a Scottish accent. So, tell me, are you American? And does that give you, okay, and tell me then, as an American, your fellow American, your American president, the things he's saying and doing at the moment, is he winning this war, do you think? Absolutely not. First of all, I don't think, I was in the military for 24 years, and I don't think anybody wins a war. Everyone loses, especially the civilians. But there's long-term suffrage to what is happening today. First of all, the Middle East, and specifically, I'm talking about the UAE, Dubai, Kuwait, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, they can't live without air conditioning, and they can't live without their desalination plants, either. So, all of those things are subject to attack and have been attacked. So, that's a massive energy loss, and it's a massive commerce loss for the European countries, for the United Kingdom. It doesn't hurt America's badly, but I'm sure that even the U.S. and Canada will suffer as a result. And, you know, just as a military person, I retired in 2018, but I am in contact with a lot of people still in the U.S. military and a lot of veterans. And I can tell you, I haven't met one, not one, who supports Donald Trump. Okay, so many questions. I mean, I was going to ask, you know, what capacity you served, and if it isn't too forward for me to ask, and if you don't want to tell me. It's okay. It's okay. I was in the U.S. Navy, and I started enlisted, and I retired as a commanding officer. Okay, so look, as a former commanding officer in the U.S. Navy, what is going on in the Strait of Hormuz? Is it a case where actually anybody can turn around to Iran and say, you're not allowed to control this anymore? Is there the capability, strategic capability, for people to rest control of the Strait of Hormuz from Iran? Or actually de facto, Iran wins because of its geographic proximity to the Strait of Hormuz and the way that they can actually choke it? Well, they can. They can always choke it. And that's why America, had they had any brains, they would have used their diplomacy through the State Department to negotiate and to talk to Iran, never, ever, ever should a war be started unless Iran attacked us directly on our own soil, which they didn't. So it's a violation of the Geneva Convention. It's an illegal war. And it would be also treacherous to put people on the ground, boots on the ground, the 82nd Airborne or 101st. These guys and gals are great fighters, but so is the revolutionary card. Okay. And so the whole is tragic. And the Strait of Hormuz can be choked at any point. And in the past for years and years and years, diplomacy, sheer diplomacy has been used by the Sunni states, like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, with Iran. And so has the US used a lot of diplomacy. I'll be careful how I say this, but Donald Trump is an asset to Russia. And I know it's a fact. And the bottom line is, if you watch his moves carefully, everything he does on a daily basis is to benefit Vladimir Pugnan. Can I ask a question about your midterms that are coming up? Because I mean, you say that you've spoken to other service personnel. Is he in for a shock during the midterms? Or is it as the rest of the world always gets it wrong? That, oh, Americans must be appalled by this. They will vote against it. And then they don't in overwhelming numbers. They don't. Well, I think he is in for a massive shock. And when you look at the No Kings protest and you look at the protests against ICE in America, and you look at even Republican, I was a Republican until age 60. And I switched to the Democrat Party. I saw where the Republican Party was headed, and it was on the crazy train. So I jumped off the train as quickly as possible. And I think that most Republicans now, the ones that I talked to, and believe me, I grew up in a Republican state, Florida is very red. But most Republicans I talked to nowadays are saying Trump has just gone too far. There's very few magas that are holding on. I mean, even Marjorie Taylor Greene, what I saw from Donald Trump. I saw, I saw, I mean, you know, sort of Alex Jones, Nick Fuente, I saw an entire array of the, you know, one once cheerleading band for MAGA, or really laying into Donald Trump in the last 24, 48 hours. Brenda, thank you very much for speaking to us. Tom in Hereford, Trump has ruined the lives of millions of people in the Gulf region. He failed to evaluate the situation completely. He doesn't get modern warfare. Another one here, anonymous, surely the solution to the straight-up form is to create a workaround with overland routes and take the power out of Iran's hands. Okay, and on get back in touch and tell me the route overland in that region that you would take. Julie, Carol, calling us from Clapham. Hello, Julie. Hello. Hello, welcome. So you might have a take on what you've heard so far. Yeah, I think Trump's an idiot. I mean, the Iranian people were always already rising up against the government and the Ayatollahs. The Ayatollah was in his 80s and was about, you know, not going to last that much longer. So if he'd been clever and backed an opposition or, I don't know if she would have got a CIA in there because they're pretty grim, but he could have quietly done it over 10 years. But now the result of what he's done, he's helped the Green Agenda, which he hates because he goes on about drug, baby drill, but he's actually really helped the Green Agenda because no one's flying anywhere. He's messed up the tourism for Dubai, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, all of those states that are putting all their money into helping the tourists. No one's, no tourist is going to go there for 10 years. Okay. Okay. So I mean, you think he's done by accident a good job for all of the ideologies that he would normally hate. How about the ideology and the stance of this country and our government? Because let's circle back to that because we haven't talked about that for a while. So we've heard from Kirsten, whether this is, you know, this is not our war, but we've also heard that for defensive purposes, Diego Garcia would be allowed to be used by the Americans. I mean, what do you make of what our Prime Minister is doing? I think our Prime Minister is fantastic. And I think Daniel Alexander is a master of diplomacy and discussion. He is, I do rate him, he's brilliant. He was great on your program. He batted everything back. You know, the idea that these ships or the Scottish person said that the ships were standing idle, well, that's down to the tourists not putting money into the ships. And, you know, we do need a good, okay, okay, good ships. But I think we're not buying, we're not buying petrol cars or diesel cars. Everyone's buying electric cars. No, you know, people going to Australia from this country have to change in Dubai and places that's what's going on. Julie, Julie, I'm going to, yeah, listen, I'm going to, no, you have said it. So the green agenda is going to benefit from Donald Trump. Stefan Gamble, you've got one minute calling from Swinefield in Yorkshire. What was the point you wanted to make, Stefan? Hiya, Flower. First of all, I was still talking about the energy thing. Go on. You haven't got much time, Stefan. So Pithy, go on. Okay, they were still squabbling over. That's the fossil fuel, when there's natural fuels out there, unlimited clean fuel called geomagnetic energy, which has not been investigated. No, I'm quite willing to talk to anyone about it and tell them how it can be tapped. Well, I tell you what, we've got like 10 seconds, so no time for that. But thank you, Stefan. That offer is available if anyone wants to get in touch with Stefan. Chris says, with globally critical assets such as the Strait of Ormuz and the Amazon Rainforest, you take them under global control. Listen, that's it from us. We'll be back same time next week.
