377. The Iran Distraction: How the Middle East Mega-Drama Redraws the Map for Kyiv

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Hello, and welcome to Background You Crane

with me, Roger Moore House, and Patrick Bishop.

Ukraine is very much on the sidelines this week,

as the world watches the mega drama being played out

across Iran and the wider Middle East.

But that does not mean that what is happening there

is not of great consequence for all the participants

in the Ukraine conflict.

At many levels, the Iran War will have a significant impact

on the fortunes both of Kiev and Moscow

in the weeks and months ahead on the battlefield

and on the negotiating table.

That's right, isn't it, Patrick?

Yeah, I think that is indeed so, Roger.

Even at the most nitty-gritty level,

I'm thinking here about ammunition,

and the ability or willingness of the Americans

to let their imagery of anti-air missiles

into sector missiles, as well as the,

to carry on being sent at a price it has to be said

to Ukraine by the European NATO members

to Kiev and to help them defend their space.

Now, in the last couple of days, of course,

Israel and American allies in the Gulf,

particularly those Gulf states have been burning through

their inventories, particularly Patrick missiles.

They're all used in by Jordan Kuwait,

Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.

So, as we've seen, Allah, from the television footage,

I mean, they're being fired off with an incredible rate.

Israel still has some patches, but we've got our own

homegrown versions of it, the David Sling,

and, of course, they're their own Iron Dome system.

Anyway, thousands of these have been fired off,

and there are concerns contradicted by Donald Trump,

but we don't necessarily believe him,

saying that these stocks are going to be running low,

pretty soon.

So, obviously going forward,

there probably will be a scarcity

and given Trump's current priority is very much focused

on Iran, I think that Ukraine is going to be

towards the back of the queue when it comes to their allocation.

So, that is something that is going to be quite trouble.

Yeah, so I mean, it would be tempting to hope that,

you know, any potential shortfall in this respect

might be offset by the fact that Iran will no longer be able

to supply Russia with various bits of kit,

not most notably the Shahid drones,

but as we know, the Russians mostly make their own Shahid type

UAVs, which they called Geran IIs,

they make them domestically at a massive facility in Tartistan.

Nonetheless, you know, there is considerable Iranian

technical assistance, so, you know, Russia is reportedly

making hundreds of these, if not thousands of these a day,

and Iran has supplied technology for newer versions

of those drones, including the jet-powered Geran III,

until recently, at least, I mean, one would imagine,

perhaps, that that technical assistance would be winding down

at the moment, if not stopped entirely.

Iran has also been supplying artillery shells

and other, you know, conventional ammunition.

So, again, presumably, that will dry up.

But I'm rather less concerned about the logistical fallout

from the Iran conflict than the diplomatic consequences.

Well, me too, Roger, I mean, it's hard to see this,

ending neatly.

We don't really know what Donald Trump wants,

but my suspicion is that he's not really expecting

some, you know, West friendly democratic

leaning kind of regime to replace the mullers.

I think he's probably got something.

He's got anything specific in mind.

It's probably something along the lines

of what emerged in Venezuela.

So, you're basically replacing, you know,

one difficult dictator with a more malleable one.

So, I think what's the most likely outcome here

is a kind of messy draw with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard

Corps badly under my weakened, but still standing.

And then Trump is faced with two quite tricky choices.

I mean, one is hanging on in there

and, you know, trying to further degrade their capabilities

and thereby landing America in another potentially forever

war of the type he swore that unlike his predecessors

in the White House, he was never going to get involved in it

or he could walk away.

He's got to give in his track record that says a stink

possibility, but that, of course, brings the risk of looking

both reckless and weak.

However, having said all that, you know,

Trump would define victory himself.

It would be on his terms and he could well

stand with some reason to say that having killed

or the top leadership having further degraded

the New Year weapons program and set it back.

God knows how many years destroyed many of the ballistic missiles,

the organism of fire, of actually the whole inventory,

one might imagine by the end.

And also demonstrated the kind of flimsyness really

of the Iranian regime's pretensions.

It's not so much, yeah, that I think they've got a law

kind of structural strength in the country,

but all their kind of wrenching, raving, and threat

and death and destruction to Israel and the West

is shown to be, okay, they've done a lot of disrupting,

but haven't actually done much destruction.

So they are revealed as being a bit of a paper tiger

by all this.

But I think the bottom line of this is that this is going

to blunt his appetite further from adventures.

We've got the midterm elections coming up.

So I don't see him getting involved in another major

from policy initiative any time soon.

And I think that may last for the rest of his presidency.

Now, well, we are left wondering, aren't we?

Why Trump was so eager to go to war in Iran

in the interests of Israel, essentially?

But so reluctant to do anything to help Ukraine prevail

over Russia, which would have been a much easier proposition

in line with his seal of what he'd be seen

as his great peacemaker.

And costing not a single American life,

but will probably never know the answer to that one.

But I think we can safely assume that Trump is now

out of the picture as far as Ukraine is concerned.

And it's kind of consistent with the line of travel lately,

isn't it, Roger?

But how do you think this is going to all play out

the criminal?

What is in their mind?

What is in Putin's mind at the moment?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's been interesting,

just on a wider point for I come to that.

It's been interesting to see how with Ukraine

so taking a back seat to Iran, at least this week,

how the conflict with Russia still looms large,

at least amongst the commentary out

and also in the imaginations evidently

of many of the world's leaders.

So first up for those of us that have been covering Ukraine

over the last couple of years, and particularly covering

that the pummeling that it takes night after night

from Russian drones and Russian missiles,

it was intriguing to say the least

to witness the collective fit of poll clutching

an outrage that accompanied a couple of drones

being fired towards the British RAF base

at Acroteer E on Cyprus this week,

so which was a fraction of what Ukraine sees every single night.

Beyond that, of course, Trump, of course,

he had to have his say, he always does.

And he posted on Truth Social this week,

boasting, as you said, about American supplies of missiles.

He didn't need to mention Ukraine in that scenario,

but he couldn't resist hurling insults

at Ukrainian President Zelensky in that process.

And he referred to Zelensky as P.T. Barnum,

the great circus in Presaria, presumably,

because in a sense, damning Zelensky

is a purveyor of smoke and mirrors

and nonsense in a sense.

I mean, this, of course, is what Trump does.

We know he shoots from the hip

and we shouldn't take things too seriously,

but I think I still think that was rather telling

that he couldn't resist the opportunity

to hurl another broadside at Zelensky in the process.

Poochin, to come back to your question,

I think must be feeling rather conflicted this week.

And on the one hand, after Assad and Maduro

both shuffled off the scene, yet another of his chums

in his partner in crime, the Ayatollah Khamenei,

has now reached the end of the road.

Literally, the much-vaunted friendship with Russia

that he had appears to have helped him not one job.

So it's almost as if being chums with Poochin

is proving to be a life-threatening condition.

You'd hope that Lukashenko and President Xi

are perhaps checking under the bed

before they turn in tonight.

On the other hand, the conflict with Iran

will, on one level, also be welcomed by the Kremlin.

For one thing, Poochin will, for the time being at least,

not be under any pressure from the White House feeble,

though that pressure always was,

to pretend to be interested in the charade of peace talks.

In addition to that, U.S. attack on Iran

has, of course, handed Poochin a very powerful propaganda weapon

because he can argue that Trump and Netanyahu

are doing exactly the same thing in Iran

that he's been condemned for trying to do in Ukraine.

So conflicted opinions, I would suggest,

in the Kremlin at the moment.

One depressing aspect of the story, Roger,

which I'm sure you've noted is how weak Europe

has been in this story.

You know, as a player on the world stage,

it's really pretty much non-existent, isn't it?

They've played virtually no part in this,

neither American or Israel, nor indeed Iran,

gives a thought as to what they're going to do,

what they think, how they're going to act.

Why should anyone care when the reactions to this,

what is a world-shaking event has been as usual

as we could predict, divided, and hesitant.

So the continent's big three, that's, of course,

France, Germany, and the UK,

did manage to issue a joint statement to the weekend,

warning Iran that they were going to take

quite defensive actions.

It's been a little bit of an interesting wordplay, hasn't there?

The linguistics of all this are kind of quite baffling sometimes.

So, you know, apparently we're taking,

when we send off our jets,

we're apparently taking defensive, offensive action.

But anyway, I would go away from the semantics to the reality,

and that is that we are very, very much on the sidelines,

and of course, tying ourselves in knots, you know,

trying to appease Trump.

Of course, Keir's dharma, rather unexpectedly,

did actually share it with the back,

but instead, the Britain was not going to allow

the Americans to use to quite a pretty poor basis,

actually, at fairfilling blistership.

And Diego Garcia, the Indian Ocean,

has jumping off points for the initial American attacks.

And of course, got into Trump's bad books as a result.

So the press conference the other day,

Trump feared that stama's refusal showed that, quote,

this is no Winston Churchill we're talking about,

to which I immediately thought stama should have responded,

and you're no Franklin Roosevelt.

That would have got me, and I think a lot of other folks,

cheering, but of course, stama was too wet to do so,

even if it had occurred in.

So, you know, what we've seen is that European leaders

have been very careful choosing their words,

not pointing out the illegality of the action,

let alone the wisdom of it.

Of course, no one wants to annoy the boss.

But apart from that, it's notable how uncoordinated

it's all been.

I mean, what does Europe actually want

to be, want regime change?

There's no clear voice.

I'm the only thing that has come out from the land,

apart from calling another meeting,

which, of course, the first reaction to everything came out,

whether it was a credible transition

that Iran is urgently needed.

Well, yeah, no, sure, not as they say.

But Europe has been revealed once again,

that's been brilliant at coming out

with all these constructs, these ringing rhetorical utterances

and not very good on acting.

Notice that on that issue we've talked about last time,

of getting a degree of independence.

And the central strut of all that,

this policy of the strategy,

if it's going to succeed, of course,

is the French independent nuclear deterrent.

So I was fascinated to see that Sweden,

Germany and Poland have actually directly approached France

and say, can we come under your nuclear umbrella?

And of course, the UK plays a part of this.

We do have, we are the other,

UK and Poland, Europe,

literally we are tied fairly closely

to the Americans in terms of the kick we've got.

But it's all very interesting, isn't it?

And the one that are being pretty pessimistic

about the kind of a way that Europe has reacted

to the United crisis.

But on the other hand, there is an underlying will,

isn't there to change that dependency

and to try and forge something

that looks a bit more unified and a bit more serious?

Yeah, and I think that aspect of the French,

as you said, nuclear umbrella being extended.

I mean, so it's a very interesting development.

I mean, it remains to be seen

where Britain might fit in that.

Of course, as you say, we have our own nuclear deterrent,

but one closely tied and integrated to the Americans.

So that could potentially be a problem.

But I just wonder, historically speaking,

where Britain potentially would fit beneath that French nuclear umbrella,

perhaps they'd extend the umbrella to Scotland,

but not to England.

I mean, maybe the older alliance would kick in at some point here.

I'm joking, of course.

But there are always these sort of tensions.

Particularly in Anglo-French relations.

So I wonder if they'll come to the fore in some way in this respect as well.

But you're absolutely right in that wider point.

And it is fascinating to see Germany, actually,

for once, I would say, really making some bold moves in this respect.

And now we all know, for obvious reasons,

Germany has a horror of military involvement

and of being seen as returning to its bad old ways ever since 1945.

And even in the current Iran situation,

it did feel the need to spell out very clearly this week

that it does not plan to boost its military presence in the Middle East.

Never mind, take part in any offensive action.

But nonetheless, this relatively new German government of Friedrich Merz

is still nudging the country into a new direction.

Germany is now the single largest donor of military aid to Ukraine.

And it's plans to spend more on its defense budget by 2029

than France and the UK combined, according to Note 10.

And of course, all of those figures always are slightly up in the air.

But it's nonetheless a rather intriguing headline.

More than that, Germany wants to build

the largest conventional army in Europe as well.

And 80 years after the end of World War II,

far from the rest of Europe being alarmed by this prospect,

seems to be delighted by it.

Of course, to some extent, you would say this should be right and proper.

Germany is one of the most successful economies on the planet,

never mind the European continent.

And one, unlike Britain, which still has a sort of functioning industrial base

that could actually make this sort of step up

with rearmament in a rational, the sensible way.

So it would make sense for Germany to take a lead on these issues.

And more than that, I think for those like me

who have long argued that the Germans should essentially move on

from their hideous past and step up and play a political and military role in Europe

that is commensurate with their economic strength.

This is music to the ears.

To the rest of Europe, there may be the same sentiment,

but there's also, I think, a rather more opportunistic sense as well

that says, well, thank God Germany is stepping up

because it means that as a result, we don't have to.

So we'll see how this pans out.

As we always say, Patrick, I think we'll believe it when we see it

with European promises.

And as you said, they're very good on rhetoric and a bit less good on action.

So with all of this, we'll just have to wait and see how it pans out.

Yeah, it would be a historic realignment, wouldn't it?

I mean, what you are likely to see if this does get anywhere,

does get the traction, does move forward, is Poland and Germany doing the heavy lifting.

Now that really is a historical seismic historical shift, isn't it?

Yeah.

And one of them would be much welcome.

You got absolutely what I was talking the other day about

about how things might line up in Europe.

I admitted to mention Poland, but Poland, of course,

is going to play an enormous part in bolstering European defenses

and if this does get anywhere, the idea of a kind of military alliance,

a kind of European, NATO, mini NATO, if you like,

then Poland's going to be a huge part of it.

Who would have thought that in 1945 that looking forward 81 years,

you'd actually see Germany and Poland shoulder to shoulder.

So we've got to grasp hold of these kind of little signs

that things can get better.

Have we watched it wherever we see them?

Yeah, indeed, absolutely right.

And I think it's absolutely right that Poland should play that role

and let you say it would be truly historic if that were to be the case.

OK, that's it for this afternoon.

Join us after the break.

We've got a bunch of really interesting thought-provoking questions

which we'll do our best to answer.

Welcome back.

OK, we've got an interesting question here on Brothercoe's statement,

really, from Evermore's, who enlightens us about how heating in Ukrainian apartment blocks works.

Now, this is important, of course, because when we read in the news

that missile struck Ukrainian cities last night

and X number of people are without heating,

we sort of, you know, we get what it means,

but we actually don't know the actual technicalities.

I mean, why so many people are affected?

And Evan says that the reason is these buildings and the infrastructure

are part of the Soviet legacy,

where we've seen that ourselves, our visits to Ukraine.

There are sort of copies who see them in Yugoslavia,

all the way, I suppose, to Siberia.

And so you've got these kind of, you've standard high-rise housing blocks

and they're heated by, in Kiev, for example, by thermal plants

which supply entire areas with thousands of dwellings with hot water,

with heating, et cetera.

So if you take out one of these several parts,

it will have an impact on thousands of drawings and people.

And, of course, further collateral damages done

when hot water pipes are cut off.

It needs the water freezes and pipes when the thought comes

that, of course, they're fracture and you get sort of, you know,

leakages all over the place and the heating systems down function.

So, with a very bad windsert in regular minus 20 degrees centigrade temperatures,

the rushes are probably well, how vulnerable these systems are to attacks.

And Evan says he first learned about this when he was visiting Leningra back in 1991.

I think one of the problems about those heating systems

is that you can't actually regulate the temperatures.

So, if it is a mild winter, you're roasting

because the heating is cranked up to some high level than it's necessary.

I even father assume that if you're in Paris,

where you get, if you live in an apartment block,

there's a guy down at the basement who actually sets the temperatures

not that you can do to change it.

So, I've experienced the same thing in Poland.

I was actually in Poland last weekend

and had exactly the same phenomenon Patrick of, you know,

being in one of these blocks.

And it being something like sort of, you know, 28 degrees in the flat

and having to open the windows when it's minus five outside.

I mean, it makes very little sense.

But I think it's all, I think it's all part and parcel of what Evan's describing there.

And next question is from James Spiller.

And he makes the point, or comment really, first of all,

that talking about the Ukraine cast,

being closed down the BBC's pod on Ukraine.

He says also voice of America's flashpoint Ukraine was winding down

even before Trump took office.

He said, there's a lot of less good podcasts out there,

but I feel like you guys on the telegraph

are likely to be the only consistently high quality English language

Ukraine podcasts.

Thank you very much James, much obliged.

Oddly, you're both British, yes.

Also London and Mark Galliotti seems to me to be the best Russia podcast,

despite his regrettable affection for them.

Yeah, that sometimes comes with a territory with these Russianists.

And his question, he says,

why do Western governments prefer the indefinite financial and military bleed

in a verticals of a hundred year peacekeeping commitment over a short term,

intensive investment to secure a decisive victory now?

Good question.

Some of the points that he mentions by way of answer potentially,

you know, the cost paradox that we are hesitant to quintuple aid for two years

to end the war yet we seem prepared to spend billions annually

for decades to manage a frozen conflict.

Also the strategic value, the idea of a peace dividend,

which could come come with a decisive victory over a long drawn out conflict

and the risk of delay that long term containment risks,

hollowing out and giving an unstable Ukraine and political and economic

liability going forward.

So I think he kind of answers in a way he's giving context to his own question.

I think, I mean, just to put my pennies within first Patrick on this,

I think you can see this as well in with the reaction to the Second World War,

actually, I think, you know, that democracies are kind of essentially

find it difficult to go to war, not least because, you know,

they have to square it with their populations.

It's sometimes a difficult sale.

There'll always be recalcitrant sections of the population,

not least because of the perceived cost and in a sense democracies

have to wait to be attacked to actually respond and to and to put their full shoulder to the wheel.

So I think in that sense, you know, that's one of the, I suppose,

the downsides, if you like, of being in a democratic system.

It's much much harder to to make these sometimes difficult,

but perhaps necessary decisions.

So that would be essentially how I see it.

What about you, Patrick?

Yeah, and I think you're absolutely right.

I mean, what, what James says is very sensible, of course,

you know, if we'd had the will to get right behind,

you came from the beginning, then this could all be over now.

Love lives would be spared.

A lot of money would not have had to have been spent.

The world would be on a better footing now.

So the simple answer is that, that if you're going to do what James proposes,

you need a steamy political will.

You need massive resources at your disposal.

Europe's not going to be able to do this.

No individual country in Europe is going to be able to do this.

Europe is not built.

The EU is not built to allow that kind of unity.

A purpose to take necessary decisions,

nor does it have the means to follow through, potentially it does,

but it's a way you're going to marshal all the economic potential

of Europe to push in one direction.

We said this many times before, hadn't we, James?

And of course, what you come back to is the fact that the only person

with the power and the means to deliver this is the presence of the United States.

And we've been quarreling this now for 15 long months.

And we have how maddening Trump's been unwilling to provide this leadership,

take this initiative.

Now, we've all said been saying for a long time

that if Trump really does want to leave his mark in history,

he's got in front of him a situation that would make him the equivalent

of Winston Churchill, who seems to be well a few historical figures

that he knows about and be at Mars.

So the truth is that with a few well-aimed blows,

he could bring down a regime that's far more of a danger to the West

than is the Theocracy in Tehran.

Now, that includes, when I say the West, I'm in America as well,

and they've got the biggest nuclear arson in the world.

They've got an unquenchable thirst for creating trouble and mischief

all over the place.

So if he really wanted to, Trump could bring down Putin

in a year just by flooding Ukraine with weapons and backing

a full-frooted sanctions regime.

But for reasons which we keep trying to fathom,

and which we'll probably never know, he's not going to do that, indeed.

So I'm going to have a question here from David in Cambridge

about the various war documentaries that have emerged from the conflict.

He says that the Oscars are coming up and given 2,000 meters

to end he veke by a mystery of Chernov has been

deservedly shortlisted, the best documentary.

I'm interested to know your thoughts on this and other

documentary films about the war, which have been released recently.

David's obviously seen these, and so have you.

Haven't you, Roger?

So what do you think about the quality of those films that you've seen?

And what do they tell us about a conflict?

You know, it happens in bloody good documentaries,

haven't they, that really even though we study this pretty closely,

there's still eye-opening.

They still have a good documentary.

Still has the power to jolt you

and to make you see things in a different way.

Yeah, I did. I saw a long time ago now when it came out.

I saw 20 days in Mariupol, which David also mentions,

but this more recent one by the same director,

a chair of 2,000 meters to Andriifica.

I saw that probably about two weeks ago.

I think it is, it is absolutely astonishing, I must say.

And I would urge everyone to watch it.

I think it was on prime, I think that's why I saw it.

Essentially, it is about a Ukrainian mission

to try and take the remains.

You can only say it's the remains of a village,

which is Andriifica.

And the 2,000 meters to Andriifica is the distance

that they have to travel, and they have to travel up,

you know, what had been a sort of a tree line

or a hedge line between two fields.

And the fields on either side are both heavily mined,

so they can't, and obviously they'll be way out in the open.

So they can't go up, you know, up through the fields.

So they have to, basically, you know,

traverse this sort of tree line

against pretty, pretty robust, you know, Russian defense.

So it's 2,000 kilometers to get to the remains of this village,

where they have the task of raising the Ukrainian flag.

And it's almost, it's sort of reminiscent of, you know,

the worst days of the First World War

on the Western Front, at least.

But, you know, because you've got all of the modern blood,

and so often they will introduce you to a character

and give name, you know, give the name and say this guy was like,

you know, he was a student from Harkiv.

He joined up in 2022 with the full-scale invasion,

and now he's a sort of, you know, troop commander and so on.

And then, you know, it will say, you know,

by late 2025, you know, he'll be killed in such and such a sector.

So they sort of introduce you to these characters,

and then give you a gut wrench when, you know,

it tells you that this person essentially has not survived

even the making of the film, right?

And you're left with it right at the end.

They fight their way into this, the remains of this village

to raise the Ukrainian flag over the ruins.

And it is, there is something sort of curiously heroic

about the whole thing, but you are left with a,

with a sense of what the hell is all that for, you know.

I mean, it's astonishing.

The bravery of the men in doing what they're doing.

But also, I have to say, I don't want to sound all kind of,

you know, lions and donkeys and all that sort of thing,

but the futility of it is astonishing.

You know, and they're just sort of liberating the remains of a village.

There's not a building standing.

There's nobody there.

So it is quite, I mean, to get an insight into the realities,

the brutal bloody realities of the war in Ukraine,

is 2,000 meters to Andreevka is absolutely astonishing.

And I would absolutely urge people to watch it.

I mean, the other documentary that this Russians at war,

which I think was aired on the BBC recently,

a couple of weeks ago, and actually got, you know,

got some interesting headlines and some interesting coverage.

Not least, because I think the headline then was about,

there's a couple of instances of the first-hand accounts

of them seeing Russian commanders executing their own troops.

Often for, you know, the minor misdemeanors

or for answering back or whatever it might be.

David asked the question here, you know,

asked the an opinion.

He also says he's conflicted about whether to watch it,

given the controversy surrounding the film,

including accusations of whitewashing Russian crimes in Ukraine

through the humanisation of their soldiers.

I didn't get that, the humanisation.

It just, I mean, it just struck me, you know,

Russia has methods of war that it has had for, you know, decades and centuries,

which are always brutal.

And the people that suffer most, of course,

of the opposition, and usually the opposition civilians,

and often that, you know, their own soldiers are thoroughly brutalised

in the process as well.

So, in a sense, I don't really necessarily see that whitewashing,

you know, to as ever thus, with the ordinary Russian grunts,

unfortunately, hearing their viewpoint,

and particularly their viewpoint about the absolute brutality

and corruption incidentally of their own commanders.

I think that was a very interesting aspect,

and one that we really need to appreciate

and have as part of the narrative.

Because as we keep saying, you know,

if Russia is to collapse in this war,

which is possible still, you know, one of the key points in that,

and we've mentioned it a few times, is that the army has to turn.

And, you know, the more that there's discontent in the army,

you look at, you know, look at the example of 1917,

the more that there is this discontent in the army,

and a contempt for the higher-ups,

then the more there's a possibility of that happening.

So I think this is an essential part of the narrative

that we need to understand.

Yeah, absolutely.

And of course, what's going to happen

with these guys when it's all over?

You're going to have a bunch of traumatized,

brutalized men returning to their hometowns,

and I think we're going to see something very similar to what we saw in Germany,

going back to historical analogies,

after the First World War,

so you have men who know only violence,

whose solution to everything is more violence.

And, you know, hence the Freak War,

hence the kind of foundation stones, really,

that North Sudan was built on.

So next one from Jonathan,

greetings from Sydney, Australia, he says,

at the end of last week's episode,

he says, Patrick mused on a comment

about the US Secretary of State Marco Rubio,

asking, does he actually believe this stuff,

meaning his own speeches?

Let's not forget Rubio labeled Trump a con man,

back in 2016,

but was subsequently willing to sell his political sold Trump

in order to gain power,

when the cameras show a herd of Lincoln poops

called the Trump Cabinet.

Rubio always seems to look a bit awkward,

like he actually does know better.

So Patrick's question prompts this question,

he says, what does Marco Rubio really want?

I suspect the answer may be simple,

Marco Rubio dreams of just one thing,

which is that the US will finally bring about regime change in Cuba.

What do you guys think?

Where to after Iran, he says?

What do you think of that, Patrick?

Well, yeah, I mean, I do wonder what goes on in Marco Rubio's head.

I mean, he does have a track record of saying

some very rude things about Trump.

I mean, back in 2016,

when he himself was a candidate for the Republican nomination

for the, to be presidential candidate,

he was consistently very disparaging.

A con artist was just one thing he said about him.

He also mocked his personal physical appearance.

Remember that, all that stuff about about Trump's small hands?

Is that he had the worst spray tan in America?

And so on and so forth,

he always airports out the appalling vulgarity of Trump's personality.

He says the most vulgar person ever to espouse the presidency.

But more importantly, that he was an erratic individual

who should not be trusted with the nuclear codes.

Well, I think that is certainly true.

But of course, all that changed after Rubio was true

from the 2016 race he threw in his lock with Trump

and since then, it's been a prominent Trump cheerleader and sick of them.

So he showed himself to be the worst kind of opportunist,

a falsity and figure who'll cut a deal with the devil.

With the devil, if it gets him what he wants,

and what he wants, of course, is the presidency.

Of course, he's up against another equally devious rival

in the show, but JD Vance, who we should remember in the past,

has compared Trump to Hitler in 2016,

publicly in an article at the New York Times,

declared that Trump was unfit for office.

So there we have it, the two rivals for the succession

may the worst man win.

Okay, well, we'll see what happens next week.

These are exciting times, dangerous times.

Do join us next Wednesday for a cracking episode

of our, in our special forces series

when we were dealing with a second half

of the Iranian embassy siege in London,

where the SAS sprung prominence.

And of course, on Friday for all the latest from Ukraine.

Goodbye.

Goodbye.