Jonathan Savage talks President Trump's considered actions against Iran

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is John Mounts. As President Trump reportedly considers
action against Iran, what are the global risk? Yesterday, Trump
said that he's not made his final decision. I have
ideas as to what to do, but I like to
make the final decision one second before it's you know,
because things change, I mean especially with more joining US

(00:20):
now from London, Jonathan Savage. So he still hasn't made
a final decision. But what are some of the things
that he is considering.

Speaker 2 (00:27):
Yes, John is understood that the main way that Israel
is asking the United States to help is to help
it take out Iranian nuclear facility this deep inside a mountain,
and only the United States has the bunker busting bombs
as they're known, that could seriously damage this facility, and
only the US has the plane that can drop those bombs.

(00:50):
So that is the strike that we understand he is considering,
but he's also considering the consequences of such a strike.
Iran has said that any America intervention would be a
recipe for all out war in the region, and saying
that if a red line has crossed, a response will come.
In terms of what the response could be, there are

(01:10):
forty thousand US military personnel in the Middle East. There
are a great number of US military bases in places
like Iraq, Qaight, Bahrain and elsewhere, spread up and down
the Gulf. Any of them could be a target for
Iran's array of missiles and drones, and of course, if
the US is targeted, they may wish to strike back,

(01:32):
and you could see a cycle of escalation.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
And if that does happen, do we see a scenario
where there are boots on the ground or do we
think this will be mostly thought by drones in the air?

Speaker 2 (01:43):
I think mostly drones are in the air. I think
putting boots on the ground is a long way away. Now,
in strict terms, there are boots on the ground because
there are forty thousand personnel in the region. However, going
into Iran is something I think that would be quite
far down into the cycle of escalation.

Speaker 1 (02:01):
And if we do, if we do a strategic attack,
that's one thing where we take out that one bomb
dropped on that one bunker, and then their nuclear facilities
are done, then that it's very cut and dry. But
if it ends up being a more widespread thing where
we're you know, we have to decimate half the country
in you know, usually when that happens, the thing that
the United States does following that, you know, a few

(02:23):
years later, is then we rebuild the entire country. And
that can be very expensive, very time consuming, and also
very costly in terms of lives, because a lot of
times people aren't always happy that we're there, and we
get in world in these situations where we're you know,
fighting people on these one offs where they're not you know,
maybe they're you know, okay, the regime is gone, but
there's still people there who are not happy that we're

(02:44):
in their country, and so we could run the risk
of putting a lot of lives in.

Speaker 2 (02:47):
Danger, but also john not necessarily successfully. If you look
at Afghanistan, the Taliban or back in power after years
of US supporting the government there. Look at Libya where
Colonel Gaddafi was ousted and Libya is essentially got two
rival competing governments. And look at Iraq, where after the

(03:09):
fall of Saddam Hussein was widely now agreed, there was
no clear plan for what would come the day after,
and then what came after was the rise of ISIS
in Iraq and Syria. So and if there is regime
change in Iran, there are no guarantees as to how
successful any future regime would be.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
And I guess that is the danger. When we destabilize something,
we need to have a plan for what next. Thank
you so much for joining us. Jonathan Savage live from London,