March 27, 2026 - Does even Trump know if he's escalating or de-escalating in Iran?

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Listen today, James O'Brien, Alexa, send a comment to LBC.

It's 1149, you're listening to James O'Brien on LBC.

I know increasingly you're not tuning in for me.

You're tuning in for the monsters I've created on this program,

Henry Riley, who will be with us in the final hour of the program.

And Simon Marks, who is with us now for his regular dispatch from DC.

Shall we begin with the religion stuff?

Because I've kind of teed that up for you with an earlier caller.

And it's definitely you were the first person

that alerted me to the direction of traffic here.

And it's profoundly worrying.

Yes, it is, James, absolutely.

And of course, Henry Riley and I would be nothing without you.

Let's be clear about what took place yesterday in that cabinet meeting.

And it's not a cabinet meeting.

Okay, we all keep calling this a cabinet meeting.

It's not a cabinet meeting.

It's a gathering of members of Trump's cabinet for a TV show.

And it's the Trump show, where they are required,

beautifully to anoint him with ever increasing amounts of baby oil

in a bid to fluff his ego.

And yesterday's was a classic of the genre.

And once he finished speaking and he went on for a very long time yesterday,

I think the whole thing lasted almost 90 minutes.

He turned to Vice President JD Vance, who of course paid

absolute tribute to the president's unique decision

to go in militarily against Iran in conjunction with the Israelis

and lined up solidly behind the war.

Even though, of course, JD Vance is known to be

a skeptic about this entire military operation,

because he was the bloke back in the 2024 election campaign

who was assuring President Trump's MAGA supporters

that under no circumstance would a second Trump administration

engage militarily against Iran, because it was none of America's business.

It was oceans away.

It was up to the country's regional allies to take care of the situation.

And then he sent an astonishingly jarring message to members of the armed forces

in a country, and I cannot emphasize this enough,

where there is a constitutional separation between church and state.

Take a listen.

They're fighting at a time where we're about to enter as Christians,

the most important week of the Christian calendar,

the Holy Week that celebrates the return of Jesus Christ to Jerusalem.

And so I want to say to all of my fellow American Christians,

but particularly those serving in the Gulf,

that I wish you all very blessed Easter,

a very blessed Holy Week,

and we continue to stand behind you.

It continues to support you every step of the way.

Now we've already discussed on the program some of the Evangelical Christian messaging,

the Christian nationalist messaging that has been coming out of not only the White House,

but also the Pentagon, where of course Pete Hagueceth,

the self-styled Secretary of War holds a weekly Bible meeting.

And in fact, this week's was actually shown on video for members of the public to observe.

But seconds after Vice President J.D. Vance,

their pierced the constitutional separation of church and state.

And we've seen hundreds of troops in the Middle East,

complaining to an NGO here that monitors the religious freedom of soldiers.

They claim they've been given these Christian nationalist orders by their commanding officers.

And of course, the armed forces here are not uniquely Christian.

There are people serving from all faiths in the armed forces.

But then seconds after Vice President J.D. Vance said what he had to say there about

sending Easter blessings to Christians serving in the armed forces,

Marco Rubio then laid it on with a trowel in terms of his description of the Iranians.

Fanatics.

I mean, the notion that we are couching this in those terms,

of course one can argue that the Shia clerics who run Iran are indeed religious fanatics.

But the comparison and contrast of those comments with what Vance had said just moments earlier,

once again, underscored that in the minds of many of the people prosecuting this war

from the United States side, there is a real religious zeal that is driving a lot of this.

There's an earlier call of cited project 2025, which we haven't talked about for a while.

There's ethno-nationalist Christian right.

All four of those words are relevant here, aren't they? All four constituent parts of that

description. And the Christianity bit is creeping up on the outside lane at the moment,

it feels. Yes, absolutely. If you look at the people that were sitting around the table there

yesterday, they included Russell Vote, who's the head of the Office of Management and Budget,

and who absolutely is one of the leading lights and was not only in Project 2025, but also

in the Christian nationalist movement that aims, and there's no question about what the ultimate

aim is here. They want this country not only to move closer to God, politically, they really want

it to be a theocracy. They reject the notion of the constitutional separation between church and

state, which is why so much of the messaging regarding this conflict is not only alarming,

because it appears designed really to go to people, not just the sheer clerics in Iran,

but people who follow the Muslim faith all over the world. I mean, you know, to portray this

as they have done since February the 28th when the conflict was launched, as something of a crusade,

and that of course was a term that George W. Bush used when he sent troops to Iraq back in 2003,

and we hadn't really twigged to the rise of this Christian nationalism ethos, but to be portraying

it in those terms is a very clear indicator of where they want to take this country, never mind

the way in which they view that the battle against Iran's government. And of course, it can also

sail perilously close and often right into anti-Semitism as well, but you're right to focus for the time

being on the posturing that it represents with regards to Islamic countries, even though of course

the divisions between Shia and Sunni make that generic phrase a little bit unhelpful in the context

of a civilizational clash or something like that. We've been talking, and you won't have been

up long enough to listen, but we've been talking about the deployment of the 82nd Airborne and

the 5,000 Marines who are making their way there. What's the feeling in America or what is the

reporting in America with regard to the likelihood of them actually parachuting onto

Carg Island or similar? Well, I can tell you what the feeling is on Capitol Hill, among some

Republicans who emerged from a classified briefing earlier in the week and said as members of

Congress had said a couple of weeks back that they were increasingly concerned that President

Trump is planning some kind of ground deployment of forces. I mean, you wouldn't really be sending

the 82nd Airborne if you weren't planning to instruct them to engage in some kind of ground

invasion unless you simply were trying to put psychological pressure on the Iranians to forge

the peace deal that one day you say you're truly interested in achieving, but then 24 hours later

you say you're not even sure you're willing anymore to go forward with it as the president said

yesterday. I mean, there are two potential military operations here, both of them deeply hazardous,

and neither of which the American public has been prepared for by the White House. One is

what could be a military opportunity to try and take control of Carg Island, which would involve

paratroops and others taking up positions on that island, which is the major port where 90% of

Iran's oil is loaded onto tankers that then sail through the strait of Hormuz. It is considered

the economic backbone together with the strait of Hormuz of the country, so it's a very tempting

target, but we already know the Iranians are strengthening and reinforcing their defenses there,

and there is no military analyst here that thinks you could engage in a ground operation in

Carg Island that does not result in a significant number of American casualties. The other option

that they may go after is using ground forces to try and recover Iran's stockpile of enriched

uranium that we almost, almost remind people, is the very same stockpile of enriched uranium

that President Trump claims he completely obliterated and destroyed last summer. That is now

said to be dispersed around the country, even though at the time of Operation Midnight Hammer,

the president insisted the Iranians had not been able in any fashion to squirrel their enriched

uranium away and it had all been taken care of by the military operation. Now suddenly there's

the possibility of ground troops engaging in an effort to recover that. Again, very, very hazardous,

and no chance of either of those operations happening without at least casualties and possibly

American fatalities. Oh, boy. I suppose my final question is the best case scenario that I

conjured up somewhat half-heartedly of him just packing up, going home, pretending that he's

secured a massive victory and hoping that no one ever mentions it again. That seems to be fading

that the odds on that are getting longer and longer. I think it depends entirely on the day,

and if you look at what happened yesterday, there was a real clue to what influences his thinking.

It was a lot of bravado in that cabinet meeting. As he said, he's not even sure he's willing

any more to strike a deal with the Iranians and spoke about even if there is a deal,

they've got a long list of targets they still want to strike before all of this is over.

And then, as the clock ticked to four o'clock in the afternoon here, and the moment at which the

financial markets up in New York were going to close for the day, in the minutes leading up to the

close of the market suddenly, we got this truth social posting saying, I've decided to kick

military action against the Iranian power plants down the road for another 10 days.

Talks are going very well. We're going to give them more of an opportunity. I'm not going to

bomb the electricity and energy plants until at least April the 6th now. And the second at which

that flashed up on my phone, then right off the back, there was the New York Times flash,

saying the markets are closed and the S&P had suffered its biggest fall since the war began,

and of course, oil had risen above $108 a barrel. So there's a direct connection between these

two things. And the Iranians, therefore, know that the more they can control the straight

of four moves, the more they can unleash, you know, deep anxiety and uncertainty on the world's

financial markets. And in the homes of Americans all over the country, who this Friday are figuring

out how they're going to fill the car with petrol or fill, you know, the trolley at the supermarket

with what they need for the next week, the Iranians know the more they can control that narrative,

the more President Trump is constrained in what he ends up doing here.

Simon, as ever, absolutely first class analysis. Thank you. And we will, I'm going to go on a limb

and predict that we'll speak next week. In the meantime, do have a wonderful weekend. It is

one minute after 12. I'm saying that to Simon, not to you. We've got another hour. Don't you

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