Breakfast With Beau | Monday 2nd March 2026
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 19 minutes
Words per minute
148.12433
Harmful content
Misogyny
3
sentences flagged
Toxicity
61
sentences flagged
Hate speech
74
sentences flagged
Summary
It's Monday morning on the 2nd of March, in the year of our Lord, 2026, and there's not much in the news to talk about this morning, so we take a look at what's been going on in the press over the past weekend, including the news that the UK is to join forces with the US in a new campaign against Iran.
Transcript
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I hope you are. Sincerely, genuinely hope you are. I hope you've had a good weekend.
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Are you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, rocking and rearing for the week ahead?
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I hope so. Let's go. It's Monday morning. It has just ticked past 8 in the a.m. Greenwich Mean Time
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on Monday the 2nd of March in the year of our Lord, 2026. As always, I'm joined by producer
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Little Harry. How are you this morning? Good, sir? Morning. I'm good. Great. And you are the
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glorious band, the chosen few, my band of brothers and sisters. Thank you for joining
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me. Without you, it really isn't a thing. It really isn't, is it? So thank you. Before
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we get into it, quick bit of housekeeping. One correction, probably the worst error I've
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made on the Bo Show, just quickly to say, just to recognise it. On Friday morning, I said
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it was odd the print media hadn't gone with the by-lection results. Well, I failed to realise
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that the result didn't come through to like 5 a.m. or something. So there's no way they
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could have printed it. So that was my first real fail, I think, on the Bo Show. Happy
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to put my hands up and say, sorry about that. Got it wrong. I mean, it's not that bad, is
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it, if I fail? It's not really that bad. But nonetheless, I got it wrong. So, fair enough.
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I do want to point it out. I want to try and be as accurate as possible. Beyond just opinion,
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just actual fact, if I get it wrong. Fair enough. All right, let's jump into it. I mean,
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bit of a slow news day today, I think. Not much happened over the weekend. Pretty dull,
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kind of nothing in the news. Of course, I'm joking. The second, or perhaps even the biggest
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war of my lifetime kicked off over the weekend. I would say probably second, but I think Iraq
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2003 is bigger because of the ground troop elements. But in terms of the restructuring
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of the balance of power in the entire Middle East, arguably bigger even than that. Possibly
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the biggest war in my lifetime, and I'm in my mid-40s. So, you know, it's a biggie.
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It's a big one. Difficult for the Nothing Ever Happens crew to sort of square that circle.
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Well, should we just jump straight into it? I woke up Saturday morning to the news, as it did
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everyone, to the news that Trump and Bibi finally pulled the trigger on Bibi's dream
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of bombing Iran back to the Stone Age. Sort of. There's more to it than that, isn't there?
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All right, well, let's just get straight into it. Okay, what is the actual print media in
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the UK talking about? As you can imagine, most of it is with a UK slant. So it's not talking
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often about... Sometimes it's talking about the grander picture, but often it's just talking
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about the use of UK bases and things, which I'll talk all about, but I don't want to spend
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half the hour talking all about that. So probably might even whip through the front pages a bit
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so we can get on to talking about it in more general, more sweeping terms. Sound good to
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you? I've got no immediate feedback, so that's just what I'm going to do. All right, the papers.
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Britain backs war on Iran and Trump fails to press on. So one of the first things to say
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is that when all this was being planned, you know, by the Pentagon really, they'd asked
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the UK if they, the US military, could use bases, particularly that Diego Garcia in the
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Chagos Islands, but also the big RAF base that we've got on Cyprus. And whenever stuff goes
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down in the Middle East and the UK is involved in it, which usually we are, that base on Cyprus
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is of key strategic importance. But apparently what it had been, it's not that Starmer and
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the UK government was particularly pro the Ayatollah or anything like that. They're not, to be fair.
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But they just thought it was, it might be illegal. If the United States and Israel were to unilaterally
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start a war, a full-scale air campaign against Iran, without going to the UN, with Trump not
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even asking Congress, that that might be, that might be illegal. And that the British government
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didn't want anything to do with that if it were, after the fact, shown to be an illegal action.
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So that was, that was the UK's government position in the first instance, is no, you can't use Cyprus,
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you can't use Diego Garcia. And on the first day, on Saturday morning after the Cobra meeting,
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that position remained the same, or quite, kind of. The UK said, Starmer said he would
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put UK planes in the edges for purely defensive purposes. Well now already, you know, another
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24 hours, 36 hours after that, he's done a type of U-turn on that and said, OK, the US can
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use our bases, as long as it's for sort of more defensive purposes. But once you let them
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use it, you can't really stop them. Once you give the US Air Force the green light to use
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your runways, you know. Starmer can't, at that point, Starmer can't really stop the Joint
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Chiefs from flying wherever they want, effectively. But anyway, alright, that's a relatively small
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detail. Or is it? Or is it? Alright, so Britain backs war on Iran. We came out and we said,
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as did Macron. We've had, on Saturday morning, we had no idea this was like imminently going
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to happen. It was going to happen this morning. We weren't told. We weren't invited, one way
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or another, to be involved. We weren't told about it. We found it, basically, we, Starmer
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and Macron and various others, most others, we found out about it through the news like
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everyone else. Just not invited to be part of it. Probably for the best of that, isn't
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it? I mean, it's Israel's war, isn't it? Basically. Although, that's not entirely fair either, is
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it? I mean, Iran did export terror all around the world. I mean, there was loads of Iranian
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terror cells found in Britain, weren't there, last year? Just last year.
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Alright, well, okay. And Trump vows to press on. That was yesterday, Sunday. I've been
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glued to the news. All weekend. Absolutely glued to the news. I mean, I'm a news junkie
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anyway, right? And it's, even if it wasn't my job, I'm a bit of a news junkie anyway, and
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it's my job. It was like, on 9-11, or during the war in 2003 against Iraq, just glued to
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the TV, for like two, three days straight or more. Just glued to it. Yesterday, a lot
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of the news, the angles coming out of the corporate mainstream media, was that Trump hasn't got,
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for some reason, they've decided, amongst themselves, that Trump hasn't necessarily got the political
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will to keep this going beyond a few days. Because at first, in the first instance, Trump
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said, or the Pentagon had said, this will be, quote, a multi-day operation. Not a multi-week
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operation. Not, we'll keep going for as long as it takes. Not that. It was just a multi-day
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operation. And so, where a few Iranian missiles got through here or there, people started saying
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in the media that Trump hasn't got the balls, basically, to keep this going for very long.
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Well, I guess, in reaction to that, Trump has come out and said, explicitly said, no,
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we'll keep this going for at least a few weeks. Or different things, said a few different things
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over the weekend. One time, they did say, as long as it takes. And another thing more recently
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was that he said something like four or five weeks. So, in other words, it's not going to
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be over in the next couple of days. But then there's talk that he will sit down with the
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Iranians again, but whether that's all a bit fake, really. You know, like the negotiations
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with Kushner and Wyckoff in Geneva. Okay, you can sit down at a table. It doesn't necessarily
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stop military action, does it? But okay, Trump vows to press on. Right, let's look at the
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actual headlines then. The Daily Telegraph. Britain backs war on Iran. Well, to a limited
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extent. It's certainly against the regime. Certainly against the regime. You know, Starmer
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doesn't recognise that the theocratic Islamic regime is a bad one. It says, Trump says regime
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ready for talks to end attacks. Attacks. Yeah, they probably are, aren't they? They got
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hit very hard. We'll get into that in a moment. Number 10 claims mass evacuation to save thousands
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in Gulf. That's sort of the biggest story in the British print media. That, really. Oil
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prices to jump 10% as OPEC nations cash in on conflict. So, a couple of things there.
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First of all, the thing about the British mass evacuation of thousands in the Gulf. Yeah,
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different reports are saying there's something in the order of 90,000 to 100,000 Brits or
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expats in the Gulf region. You know, whether it's in Qatar, Kuwait, but mainly like the UAE,
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the United Arab Emirates, down by the Horn there with the Straits of Hormuz. There's certainly
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tens and tens of thousands of British people in the region that are at some limited, perhaps
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not all that limited, risk of being blown up one way or another. Many, if not most, commercial
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flights are just stopped because, again, they can't guarantee they might not get hit by a
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missile, one way or another. Yeah, so the big story is, and I don't want to spend loads
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of time on this, but I'll talk about it because it's in the news, but I won't bang on and on
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and on about it this morning, is that Britain wants to, needs to, thinks it wants to, need
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to get those people out. Fair enough, isn't it? There's loads of people, Brits in Dubai or
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something. If anyone doesn't know, the United Arab Emirates, Severan Emirates there, and Abu
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Dhabi's the biggest one, and Dubai's the second biggest one. And the main two are Abu Dhabi
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and Dubai. The other ones are really, really little, fairly, relatively inconsequential.
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But Dubai is probably, arguably, the most important one because the airport there is
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like the busiest airport in the world. If you've ever flown beyond that, if you've ever flown
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to India or Thailand or Australia or anything like that, you may well stop over in Dubai.
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Dubai is like one of the busiest travel hubs in the whole world, right? And the whole,
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and it massively, massively depends on tourism, doesn't it? And so that's a worry for the Emirates
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there, that tourism will be wrecked, and all the flow of people through there will be wrecked.
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Well, it will be, won't it, to some degree. So there you go, how to get them out, because
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that airport in Dubai is just not, it's closed, right? So you have to get them overland to
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Saudi Arabia, through the Arabian desert, get them to Saudi Arabia, and then flown out from
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there. So it's a little bit of a logistical, little bit of a logistical nightmare.
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Yeah. Okay. I saw one clip on Twitter yesterday of Andrew Tate. I believe he was in Dubai. It
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looks like he's in Dubai. And he was saying, it's a weird take from Andrew Tate. He was
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saying, just to his camera phone, saying, oh, anyone that thinks this is a war, you're
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mad, you don't understand reality, that's crazy, you don't know, you don't know anything.
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This is just an event, call me in two days, nothing's happening, basically, sort of, kind
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of, I'm paraphrasing, but that's what he said. Like Andrew Tate knows what he's talking
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about. Who told Andrew Tate he knows anything about grand strategy and geopolitics? He should
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probably stick to things he knows about, like kickboxing and cigar and cigars, being some
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sort of unconvicted wannabe pimp. Andrew Tate talking about grand strategy. Oh, but we live
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in a matrix, according to him. Okay, bro. Okay, bro. Oh, Harry, you're a Zoomer, you're a real
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life, you're 20 years old, right? What do you guys think of Andrew Tate? Is he, like,
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really cool and everyone loves him, or is he a bit 2020?
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Yeah, he was, like, he was kind of big, way back when, when I was, like, actually, just
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secondary. But we kind of figured out that he was retarded. He doesn't really have anything
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good to say, I don't think. None of it's. Oh, well, there you go. The authentic opinion
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of a Zoomer there. Andrew Tate should stick to things he knows about, like moving through
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the world suffering from mild retardation. There you go.
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All right, let's move on. Dubai's in a bit of trouble, because that's one of the grander
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things to talk about, is that how, after Iran was struck and the Ayatollah and a lot of the
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Iranian regime were blown to pieces in the very, very first salvo, that Iran struck out
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all over the place, attacking nominally, supposedly, US and Israeli assets in, well, everywhere,
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Kuwait, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, all the UAE, even in Jordan, even in Riyadh. There's reports
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of some explosions in Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia, all over the place. In Oman, they're definitely
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supposed to be friends with Oman, Iran are. So they're striking out all over the place.
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And, you know, you expect it, right? Obviously. Even like the headquarters of the US Fifth
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Fleet. Okay. But now it does seem like, by the end of the, by the evening on Saturday,
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and all day Sunday, seems like they are striking sort of civilian infrastructure, though, in these
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places. Like blowing up the runway of a civilian airport. Or like, didn't the Burj Al Arab get
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hit? Or very, very close to it. Right? Individual hotels in the Emirates, or whatever, getting
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Well, okay, that just seems what's going on, among loads and loads of other things. One
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of the things, a broader point, I'll say is that, it is, it is big, I mean, state the
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obvious, but it is quite a big thing that's going on. The amount of ordnance that has been
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fired by both sides in this, the amount of missiles that have been going off from both
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sides over the, over the weekend. Gigantic. Gigantic. Not really seen anything like it since
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2003. Or maybe ever, really. An exchange of missiles on a grand scale. Like the Israelis
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and the Americans peppering Iran all over the place, from top to bottom, all over Iran.
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All sorts of stuff. It's quite a big action going down. Yeah, again, the Nothing Ever Happens
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crew saying, wake me up when something happens. Well, if you don't count this, then, er,
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it would have to be some sort of nuclear exchange or a mass extinction event or something before
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you count it as something happening. But okay, what was the other thing? Oh, got to talk about
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oil prices, really, because the Straits of Hormuz, that stretch of water going out into
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the Gulf of Oman, about 20% of the world's crude oil and lots of natural gas from Qatar, about 20% of all the
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world's crude goes through there in tankers. Thing is, though, interesting to note, that 90% of that
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goes east, ends up in China, South Korea, Japan, mainly China. So if the Straits of Hormuz are closed,
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which they are, because one or two tanks have gone through there and been hit, so the insurance
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companies are like, we're not insuring any tankers going through there. So the shipping just stops,
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basically, almost, entirely. China most affected. It's not like China hasn't got other ways of getting
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crude. It's not like they haven't got a big oil industry of their own. The United States doesn't
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need a single drop from there. It's completely self-sufficient in crude. So although it's big,
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although it's important, 20% of the world's crude oil just suddenly stopping, it doesn't mean like
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the whole world is going to grind to a halt or anything. You're not even close. Like Kuwait and
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Saudi Arabia can get their oil west through pipelines, if they need to, and they can.
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There's a way to get crude oil, again, through pipes across the Emirates into the Gulf of Oman.
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So it's not like the end of the world. So there you go. Oil prices jump 10%. I mean,
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that's not insignificant, but it's not crazy, is it? Like the price of a barrel of oil,
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at least this morning, was still something like, I think it was in the order of $80 a barrel.
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Which isn't crazy. It goes over $100 a barrel all the time. Well, not all the time, but that's
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a classic benchmark thing. Has oil, is oil above or below $100 a barrel? Well, right now, despite all
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of this, it's still not really close to $100 a barrel. We'll see how the markets move this morning.
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I'll just let you know, I used to work for an oil trading, oil commodities trading company.
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I was never a trader. I'm not going to claim I was actually a trader. I was involved in the
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brokerage side of things. But nonetheless, had to know about, took it upon myself to know a fair bit
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about crude oil commodities trading and things. So, okay, it's a big deal, the Straits of Hormuz and
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the crude oil thing and the price of a barrel of crude and all that sort of thing. But it's not,
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doesn't seem like it's, it's not tanking the world economy or anything close. Right? Most trading
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desks will have factored this sort of thing in a while ago. Because they're not stupid.
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Okay? I mean, it's a give and take. Some other markets will do well out of it. You know, gold
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will do well. Right? I've already seen this morning that, for example, Australian oil companies
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doing well. Because suddenly what they offer is of more value. For example. So, it is what
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it is. I wouldn't expect, like, the world's economy to be massively affected. It will be
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affected. But just not, it's not going to be some sort of implosion event or anything
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This guy, chasing the deadly thud of missiles around Tel Aviv in a Kia Picanto, says some, some,
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Telegraph journalist. Because it's about him, is it?
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The times, the venerable times, Trump vows to press on.
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President says, plan to eradicate Iran regime is ahead of schedule.
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Tehran's reprisals, breached offences of Gulf states and Israel.
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Yeah, a few getting through. Definitely a fair few getting through.
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So, let's talk about, for anyone who doesn't know, anyone who didn't watch any news over
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Saturday morning, they hit the Ayatollah's offices.
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It didn't emerge until much, much later that night, right to the end of the night, UK time
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The Iranians were saying, oh, we're going to put him on TV any minute.
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He's going to make a statement. He's definitely not dead.
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But as well as loads of the other leadership, something like 50-odd more of the leadership
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I saw this morning that Ahmadinejad has been killed.
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He was the president quite a few years ago, quite by the beginning of the 2000s.
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He was like 85, 86, and it was possible he would get assassinated.
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So, he could have died of natural causes at any moment.
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So, anyway, apparently they had all sorts of things in place to replace him as the Ayatollah
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Already they've got some sort of interim leader or interim committee, and they're going to
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And apparently in Iran, as well as not just the Ayatollah, but loads and loads of other
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They've got structures in place to replace that person, should they suffer from a cruise
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So, Iran have got things in place to replace the people, if and when they get taken out.
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So, okay, it's well and good, isn't it, that the, well, perhaps not good, but it's
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standard operating procedure in war to try and disrupt and destroy the command
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If you can sow confusion amongst your enemy's leadership, you do that.
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Well, if they can just keep replacing the people there, how good, I mean, it's a difficult
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A couple of things, a couple of things analysts have said, which I thought were of note,
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of interesting note, that it seems a bit odd that Iran, on that Saturday morning,
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decided to hold a meeting with lots and lots of their very, very top, most senior people
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in the entire government and military structure, to all meet in one place, one room essentially.
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Because even in recent years, Israel, that's how they've taken out loads of Hezbollah and
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Their intelligence is spot on, whether it signals intelligence, you know, whether they're just
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keeping tap of people's phones or whatever, or whether it's human intelligence, they've
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actually got people there, literally Mossad agents, watching everyone that's going in and
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out of certain buildings, even in the middle of Tehran.
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One way or another, it seems like both Israeli and American intelligence are able to keep
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tabs on these people, sort of kind of perfectly in real time.
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And so it's not a good idea to all meet in one place if you know you're on their death
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But anyway, that's what Iran did on Saturday morning.
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And so Israel and America took the opportunity to take them all out in one go, in one moment,
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And so it's coming out now, it seems, apparently it was coming out over the course of yesterday,
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that that was the idea, that America would move all the assets it wanted into the region,
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and then it would kick off, they would wait for the moment when they could attempt something
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And that would be the moment to start the conflict, start the war.
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I remember when Shock and Awe started in 2003, they tried to take out Saddam.
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They opened, Shock and Awe opened, with loads of attacks on Saddam's palaces all over Baghdad.
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They were obviously hoping to kill him immediately.
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You know, cut the head off the snake in the first instant of the thing.
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I mean, big news to wake up to on a Saturday morning.
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The next thing is, even if this air campaign is completely successful in what it is attempting,
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i.e., taking out everything of military note in Iran, taking out all their missiles, let's
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say, even if it can achieve that, that doesn't necessarily equal a regime change.
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According to Trump and Netanyahu, the plan is to just hope the Iranian people take control
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I mean, when Trump did his opening speech, a little eight-minute video that was released
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from Mar-a-Lago, he's using Mar-a-Lago as the situation room, basically.
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He's done it before, but anyway, that seems odd to me.
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At least be in the White House, or the Pentagon.
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But in that video, the first eight-minute video, he said, you know, once we've done
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what we're going to do, dear people of Persia, once we've done what we're going to do, go
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It's like, but, Donald, what if, for whatever reason, they don't or can't still, though?
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Talking to Nate about it yesterday evening for the State of Politics.
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One of the things he said, you would think they've got a full plan.
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Maybe they have got, like, a 4D, 5D chess brilliant plan ready and waiting to replace
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the Mullahs and the Ayatollah, that government, that whole regime.
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Maybe they've got some sort of brilliant plan for that.
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I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't, though.
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I wouldn't be surprised if that is the plan, just hoping the Iranian people take control.
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And then just hoping there's a completely peaceful government and completely peaceful transition
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But it seems like a bit of a long shot, doesn't it?
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Oh, you're going in to take out Saddam Hussein and all his henchmen.
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You're going to completely remove the Ba'athist party from Iraq.
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Well and good, I suppose, if you're a Pentagon planner.
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It's what I've been saying all along, haven't I, in the run-up to this.
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There's a terrible, oppressive, murderous regime.
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Don't want it to descend into a sectarian nightmare that lasts a generation, though.
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Well, at the moment, it looks like the plan is, fingers crossed, the Iranian people just
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sort of magically form a government that is peaceful and works perfectly.
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I hope, I just hope that sort of one of the things Nate said is right, that there is some
00:28:58.520
sort of brilliant plan going to come out of the Pentagon and the State Department saying,
00:29:03.680
oh, we've got this person, whether it's that Crown Prince Pahlavi or whoever, someone else.
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Trump's got a couple of different, apparently, got a couple of different people in mind who
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If sheik is a gamble, there's no other way of saying it, is it?
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But, I mean, there is also weight to the argument, isn't there, that it's not great to just leave
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that regime in there forever, just completely condemn the 90-plus million Iranian people
00:29:46.560
It wouldn't be great if Iran got a nuclear weapon, would it?
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So, of course, quick talk about then, quick few minutes talking about how popular it is.
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So, of course, the Iranian diaspora, i.e. people that are from Iran,
00:30:12.500
or even second-generation people that are from Iran, like Maya Tusi or something,
00:30:16.400
the vast, vast majority of those people, as you can imagine, are against the regime
00:30:29.320
In the rest of the world, Iranian people are happy about it.
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This would actually be Prince's Gate in Kensington,
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where the Iranian embassy siege happened in 1980.
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Got a long-form bit of content about that on Epochs.
00:31:00.080
Now, we know, don't we, it seems undeniable, well, I think it is undeniable,
00:31:04.600
that lots and lots of people inside Iran, probably, almost certainly, I'm comfortable to say,
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the majority, maybe even the vast majority of people in Iran, are unhappy with the regime.
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I mean, the economy's collapsed, inflation is through the roof, it's difficult to buy even simple things,
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like bread and cheese, simple things, people going hungry almost often.
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It's not great in Iran, and loads of people do blame the regime.
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That's not even to touch upon the religious repression, forcing women to cover their hair and all that sort of thing.
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But the other thing is, though, it does still enjoy some support.
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Still, among a few million other Iranian people.
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It's not 100% roundly despised by absolutely everyone.
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There was a big rally in the middle of Tehran on, was it yesterday?
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I mean, it's difficult to make the argument that every single one of those people were coerced into doing that.
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In fact, it might even have a, was it, there was,
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but there was one particular story that said you could see the crowds from space.
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Well, it depends what satellite you're talking about.
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The best satellites, you could see a single car from space.
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there was a massive rally in Tehran of pro-regime people,
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you know, crying and wailing that their beloved Ayatollah has been martyred.
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it's not as simple as that everyone is over the moon,
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that this regime is being pounded to oblivion from the sky.
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I think a lot of people are, perhaps the majority,
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So, I mean, again, I remember in 2003 when Saddam was toppled,
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once the US armoured divisions had entered Baghdad,
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done thunder runs through the middle of Baghdad and liberated Baghdad,
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there was a giant statue of Saddam and it got pulled down.
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Okay, in that moment, that's what it looked like.
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Okay, that jubilation lasted not very long at all.
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a sectarian nightmare that lasts a generation or more.
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It's such a melting pot of different peoples and ideas,
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It'd be very, very difficult for it to just suddenly
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I mean, getting a bit ahead of ourselves, really,
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All that is assuming that the regime does topple and fall.
00:36:36.040
UK planning to evacuate Britons from Middle East