403. Trump's Gulf Billions: Saudi, Sanctions, and Ceasefires

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Okay, well look, when I started the week, I thought we would kick off possibly with the UK and immigration, but I think we should do that in question time, not least because we've had lots of questions on it.

I think we should focus the whole episode today on foreign affairs, foreign policy, but starting with Trump in the Gulf, because there is so much going on that kind of relates to that visit.

Lots of talk of different ceasefires, business deals, who's in and out in geopolitics.

So let's stick with Trump.

And I think one of the things you said to me over the weekend, which I struck, is that it is partly this week a story of three conflicts and three potential peace deals, all of them involving nuclear-armed states.

So Israel's got a nuclear weapon and its conflict Gaza.

Russia obviously got a nuclear weapon, its conflict with Ukraine.

And India and Pakistan both with nuclear weapons with a conflict over Kashmir.

And as I thought about it over the weekend, and we can get into this in more detail, I was really struck by two things.

One is how each type of conflict comes from a very different type of nationalism and would have to have a very different type of solution.

And the second thing is how much all of them are a product of populism and a new world of populism, which drives this kind of conflict more than it probably would have done in the past.

But anyway, back to you first on the Trump visit, which is maybe a way of bringing it down to Earth.

Yeah, so he's just landed.

We were speaking on Tuesday morning.

He's just arrived in Riyadh.

Both of his terms now, his first visit, has been to the Gulf.

Not to Europe, not to Latin America, not to China, but to the Gulf.

And I think we're going to hear a lot about business.

And I think there's a very interesting...

story developing which I think could become a problem for them.

It's focusing around this plane, the gift from Qataris to Trump.

But actually it's the interlinking of political, personal and professional and commercial interests.

You talked last week about

Trump boys being out there sort of seeding the ground.

Yeah, this is an amazing gift.

So the idea is basically it's a sort of Air Force One plane with the most unbelievable amount of electronic equipment, which costs $400 million.

Of course, everyone's terrified that actually the plane's going to be potentially full of stuff that could spy on the American president as he's moving around.

And people have calculated it would take three years to do all the tests to remove all the equipment that could be dodgy and probably cost more than the cost of the plane.

And a couple of things on that.

I mean, straight after the inauguration, he said, I'm thinking of making my first visit to the Gulf.

Depends how much they pay.

You know, last time they gave 400 billion, so I'm thinking maybe this time 500 billion and I'll make my first visit to Saudi Arabia.

And sure enough, Saudi Arabia has offered investment of much more than that.

UAE has offered over 10 years over a trillion.

And Qatar has offered this amazing $400 million plane, which we're told Trump apparently is intending to use while he's president, and then he's intending to give it to his presidential library.

And that, I think...

Every library needs a plane.

Absolutely.

Because the library has to fly all over the world.

Exactly.

It's presumably not sitting there with the bookshelves because I'm not sure there's going to be much on the shelves.

I think he's going to be using it, isn't he?

I can remember Jimmy Carter, when he was president of America, having to give up his peanut farm

because people were so worried about the potential for a conflict of interest.

I think I'm right about that.

He gave up his farm.

This is a level of,

I mean, how is it anything but corrupt?

And the fact that yesterday he got challenged on it by, I think it was somebody from ABC who he immediately condemned as fake news and all that stuff.

But we're talking about...

This is more than a gift.

I mean, I've been with prime ministers and presidents when you're exchanging gifts, and it's usually some sort of antique that you're not allowed to keep because the value is over a thousand pounds.

Or a watch or something.

Exactly.

Well, I remember Jospin when he gave us a horse and we didn't quite know what to do with that one.

But a plane.

This thing's called a flying palace.

So there's that, there's a business stuff.

Can I just come on the horse?

I mean the horse is literally the worst possible gift.

And if anybody's thinking of bribing world leaders, golf leaders often give horses.

And the problem is, if you're really serious about accepting the gift, you've got to move the horse over to the United Kingdom.

Then you've got to have a stables for it.

You've got to feed it.

It's a really expensive game.

You can't own it.

You're not allowed to keep it as your, if it's a racehorse, you can't race it.

And this is the, it's actually basically, this is what the Burmese story of the white elephant is, which is that it's actually so expensive looking after the white elephant that you've been given, you bankrupt the whole kingdom.

What did you do with Jospa's horse before we get back to the...

I honestly can't remember.

I can't remember what we did.

We did kill it.

It wasn't stored in the Foreign Office.

No, we didn't kill it.

I think we must have given it to Stable somewhere.

Somebody worked out that this plane, if you remember the fuss of Keir Starmer and his freebies, this plane would buy him, I think it was for like 21 million pairs of the spectacles that he got grief for.

Anyway, let's go to the serious stuff.

I'll tell you there's one thing that immediately comes to mind, and this sort of relates to Gaza as well.

You get the feeling that Trump and Witcoff, his special envoy, are losing faith in Netanyahu.

It's interesting.

So he's going to Saudi, he's going to Qatar, and he's going to the UAE.

Israel is not that far away.

He's not going to Israel.

The Witcoff, it seems, has been the one who's been directly dealing with Hamas to get this hostage out, the last American nationality hostage who was released yesterday, not involving the Israelis.

And the other thing that's fascinating,

this dropped out in Trump's bilateral with Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, when he suddenly announced we're stopping bombing the Houthis in Yemen.

And because the Kearney thing was quite big news of itself, it sort of went under the radar.

But when you drill down into the detail of that, again, I think it's a bit of a hit on Israel because essentially the deal they've done with the Houthis is that the Houthis have agreed to stop bombing American interests as opposed to other interests like they say they will still be targeting Israeli-linked ships.

So this feels to me like there's a bit of a move against Netanyahu and the Americans taking this over on their own terms.

Yeah, I think there's a number of them, isn't there?

So as you say, the U.S.

negotiated directly with Houthis without Israel.

They've been negotiating directly with Hamas without Israel.

He's been praising Erdogan.

He's starting talks with Iran when Netanyahu has actually been pushing for

strikes against Iran.

He's talking about lifting sanctions on Syria when Israel is very, very clear they do not want sanctions lifted on Syria.

And he's talking about a strategic defense partnership with the Saudis, which again was only supposed to happen once they've normalized relationships with Israel.

So I think you're absolutely right.

There's a sense that Trump and Witkoff are no longer prioritizing Netanyahu's concerns.

But, but, but, but, but, but.

That is still quite a long way from them pushing ahead with a peace deal with Gaza.

And there there's been some very, very interesting things.

I mean, again, it's probably Trump just trying to create headlines.

But, you know, he made a statement about considering recognizing Palestine as a state.

There's a lot of ifs and buts there.

Number one, extremely unlikely he would ever do it.

I mean, that is very, very aggressive from Netanyahu's point of view.

Secondly, he hasn't really described what he's...

I mean, if what he's saying is at the end of a peace deal, when the Palestinians have done all the right things, we will eventually recognize a Palestinian state, then that's no different really from what people were talking about in Oslo.

But if, in the very strange situation, and it is important to understand Trump is pretty unpredictable and peculiar, as we see with the tariffs, he actually were to announce the recognition of the state of Palestine, that would be a very, very major issue for Israel, because in particular it would mean that the settlements would become very, very difficult going forward.

Every future settlement would be happening in a Palestinian state against the explicit interests of the United States.

And Israel is so dependent on the U.S.

69% of its arms imports, for example, comes from the US.

But it's much more than that.

Really, the entire project of Israel, the entire project of the settlements, would have been unimaginable without American support.

And therefore, there's a real limit to what Nethania can do to challenge Trump, not least because the Democratic Party, particularly younger members of the Democratic Party, are turning very strongly against the Israeli decision.

He needs Trump.

The other thing, again, yesterday, he literally just dropped it out when talking about something else.

Because of this style he has of sort of, you know, and we've compared it to a reality TV show where he's the camera, and we will see this over the next four days in this golf visit.

The cameras will be on him all the time.

He will be throwing out all sorts of, you know, angles and distractions.

And you've got to try and keep your focus on the big picture.

But it was in one of these pool sprays where I think he was talking about something to do with health.

And he suddenly talked about lifting sanctions on Syria.

When we interviewed Al-Shara, the president of Syria, he was very clear with us that, you know, that was the big goal.

Getting America to lift sanctions on Syria was the big goal.

And there's now even talk, there was an American congressman who, a Republican congressman, who visited Syria last week, who met Al-Shara, who met lots of the big players, and who did an interview with the Jerusalem Post.

He wasn't, you know, he's going right into the heart of the debate and saying, we need to take a risk on this guy.

Now, you and I got flack and still get flack just for talking to the guy, okay?

If you're the president of America and you suddenly decide, yeah, we are going to take a risk on this guy, and suddenly sanctions get lifted on Syria, I mean, again, how does that go down with Bibi and crew?

Just to remind people, the issue here, of course, is that Ahmed al-Shara was the head of al-Qaeda Syria, and before that had been part of al-Qaeda Iraq.

And from the point of view of Israel, he is seen as a dangerous terrorist taking over a country next to them.

Israel has been conducting lots of bombing campaigns, it's seized territory and it's supporting the Druze and it seems to be trying to essentially weaken and balkanize the country and making it clear that they need to get rid of El Shara.

And they've been putting a lot of pressure on the State Department, particularly on Marco Rubio and some of the assistant secretaries under him, not to lift those sanctions.

And Mike Waltz, who was the National Security Advisor, seemed to be pretty much on that side.

Let's hold a hard line on this.

And to continue to sort of play devil's advocate, one of the things that's happened since we talked to El Shara is firstly

the atrocities connected with the Alawite communities where there were attacks by the Alawites against the government and then government militia attacked Alawite villages and killed a lot of people.

That was one series of issues.

A bigger set of issues is that we talk to him a lot about the constitution changing power and it's becoming increasingly clear, I think, that he's holding off really pushing ahead with elections or thinking about democracy.

And most disturbingly of all, he has brought in foreign fighters into quite senior positions, including an Uzbek al-Qaeda activist who he's put in effectively as a minister.

So you can see why the concerns are not just from Israel.

They're also coming from more liberal voices.

They tried in Damascus, for example, I had a friend in Damascus yesterday who was complaining that they'd just been on a bus where militias had tried to make the men sit at the the front and the women at the back so the men can look at the women.

And there had been actually basically a protest by the Damascenes and it hadn't happened.

All that's happening in the background.

But it's very interesting, as you say, that Trump, and this is, I think, the final part of the story, why is he then doing it?

Well, he's doing it because

he's clear he doesn't want to put any money up and because the Saudis have made it very clear they want sanctions lifted.

The Qataris have said they want sanctions lifted.

And the Turks have said they want sanctions lifted.

And all three countries have said that if he lifts sanctions, they will basically pay for stuff.

Qatar will pay for the civil servants.

And

they've already had permission to start paying some of the civil servants.

So, the Republican congressman, his name is Marlin Stutzmann from Indiana, and I got the feeling, I don't know this guy, and I don't know whether he's close to the MAGA lot or not, but it was very interesting that he was because we talk a lot about how you kind of have to flatter Trump to get his attention, to get his ear.

And he set this meeting with Al-Shara in the context of Al-Shara's willingness to sign up to the Abraham Accords, which is all about normalization of relations with Israel.

And when you think about what their historical traditional view of Israel is, I thought that was very, very interesting.

So this stuff's moving.

And you mentioned the Turks there.

The Turks who have now seemed to resolve this

long-standing, decades-along fight with the breakaway Kurdish party, PKK.

Yesterday, when they were announcing it, there was the Turkish foreign minister, and who was standing alongside him?

Our friend, the Syrian foreign minister who helped get the interview with Al-Sharra.

So what you're seeing are these moving parts into the middle of which flies Donald Trump with, as you say, nobody quite sure what he's going to do and how he's going to do it.

This is a very, very, very important week for all of these relationships.

And right now, it could change, but right now it feels to me like the Israelis will be feeling unhappy and vulnerable, the Saudis will be feeling very strong and very powerful, Ditto the Qataris, ditto the Emiratis, and the Turks and the Syrians.

And we have to watch Iran.

I mean, one of the central things that may come out of this visit to the Gulf, and again, the White House keeps throwing out different messages.

I suspect it's unlikely to be a major resolution of Gaza.

It's certainly going to include statements about new relationships with Saudi on defense and AI.

And in fact, he's bringing with him a lot of the sort of central villains.

I think Elon Musk is on the plane.

Zuckerberg.

Zuckerberg, Sam Altman are all turning up.

But Iran is going to be very important.

And the Iran story is, again, very, very interesting

because traditionally, when people tried to understand why UAE had become close to Israel, why Saudi was considering becoming closer to Israel, the story was that they were relying on Israel to work with them against Iran.

Iran was their common enemy.

And the high point of that was about sort of 2015 when there were recorded conversations from a UAE minister apparently calling for the US to bomb Iran.

Fast forward 10 years, they seem to be much less worried about Iran.

Partly because Iran has been revealed to be weaker than it was, partly because they no longer think that the fundamental threat posed by Iran would be against them.

They don't think Iran is likely to drop a nuclear bomb on Riyadh.

They think they're more likely to drop it, if anywhere, on Israel.

And also because Mohammed bin Salman seems to have totally changed his view from a much more confrontational attitude towards Chinese brokered deals with Iran.

And so I think it's going to be interesting to watch, and it's also going to be particularly interesting to watch UAE, which was a bit of an outlier and a little bit more sceptical about Iran.

Will they come together if Trump pushes ahead with the deal?

This morning, the head of UNRWA,

which has been declared sort of PNG by Israel, but the head of UNRWA has come out and essentially said that the Israelis are using starvation as a weapon of war.

And of course, the Israelis are dismissing it, but there was some, I don't know how much of the news you watched last night, there was some unbelievable footage on ITV and Channel 4 that I saw.

I mentioned last week that the girl who was looking at pictures of herself when she was healthy, but

they were in a hospital with these babies that were, you know, you've seen kids like this in Africa where their eyes are popping out, the ribs are coming out through the skin.

It was absolutely horrific.

I still can't for the life of me understand why it's not being called out more than it is.

Including by our own government and by the American government and by the French and by the Germans.

I mean it is, it is, it's just gone beyond anything that I think we ever imagined was going to happen with the international community not getting stuck in and really trying to resolve it.

Interesting things happening in the British Parliament.

Some of my former Conservative colleagues

more on the right, in fact, kind of Brexit voting Conservative colleagues coming out now, very strongly critical of Israel status.

And I saw Mark Pritchard and Nicholas soames and others saying recognize the state of palestine and i've got it wrong and all that stuff i mean nicholas holmes i think has always been more on that side but pritchard was more of a surprise and there have been other mps what's helping me from the tory party saying we want you to speak out more about this so there's clearly a movement within the conservative party which is interesting on what's happening just to remind people Effectively now for over two months, there has been a blockade on food going in.

And medication.

And Smotrich, who is of course on the far right of Netanyahu's coalition, is calling for a permanent occupation of Gaza.

The current plan seems to be not quite a permanent occupation, but it is that Israel will mobilize four to five divisions, involves calling up 70,000 people, put them back into Gaza, effectively segment Gaza into at least three different sections, try to move the population to new white area settlements in the south, so sort of, I don't know, new tented settlements in the south, and then contract with the US military contractor to bring in supplies.

They're talking about bringing sixty trucks a day.

That's about a tenth of what you would need.

And it's really mad because

the UN has systems in place which it's been running, has an enormous amount of experience about how to deliver that aid.

The idea of trying to bring in a tenth of the amount with completely untested people while moving two million people at the same time is an absolute recipe for disaster.

And the problem, unfortunately, seems to be that, although, as we've said, Trump seems to have lost interest in Netanyahu in the issue, he's not really stopping him from doing it.

And I don't think there's any sign that he's actually going to do anything to intervene.

He's not going to impose sanctions on Netanyahu.

No, he's going to hear a lot about Gaza, though, in these meetings that he has in...

Because, of course, the Saudis, the Qataris, and UA are coming at it from different perspectives.

They all

frankly don't want the whole region to be beset by conflict and they don't want to be picking up the tab the whole time.

And they don't want the Palestinians leaving them.

I mean, the one thing people don't talk about is that none of these countries want more Palestinians in their country.

The role of the media in this is incredibly important.

And I know it's hard and sometimes I'm a bit, maybe a bit too critical because it's very, very hard to get in there.

I'm assuming that the footage that I saw last night was, I don't know whether it was people on the ground or it was stuff that was filmed by the people there.

I don't know.

But I do think there is, and we fell victim to this, I think.

We were very much trying to be fair to both sides on the one hand, on the other hand.

And I think that one of the narratives that the Israeli propaganda machine has been very effective at pushing, particularly on people who maybe haven't followed this closely over the years, is that this whole thing kind of started on October the 7th.

Whereas actually, what we're seeing more and more of, particularly from the Ben Gavir and Smot Rish, and we talked about the Louis Theroux documentary on the settlers, is that in a way that they seize this opportunity, horrible though it was, to drive this agenda of annexation and essentially to wipe out the Palestinian occupied territories, which in that interview the the settlers wouldn't even call Palestinian occupied territories and you know there's a documentary that's been made by an independent basement productions who make very very good films they've they've spent months and months documenting the death of doctors medics nurses etc working in gaza and the sort of systematic destruction of healthcare facilities and the bbc has been sitting on it now for months and every week coming up with different reasons why they can't show it, trying to relate it to the film where, remember, there was a documentary before, and one of the kids that was featured, it turned out that their dad was a senior member of Hamas.

Because of that, sitting on this, when all the fact-checking has been done, and I do think

there is this sort of double standard here.

And I'm only mentioning the BBC because it happens to be sitting there.

But I think you then look at the way that America, America, some of the American media covers this.

So I think if when you see those pictures of those kids, and again, there was footage last night of these young kids screaming, holding these pots, four guys stirring what looked like rice or something in these pots, and these kids screaming to get near them, and then food flying.

It was actually, you know, the reporter used the word feeding frenzy, and it's the first time I've ever fully understood what that means.

They were in a frenzy because they could see food there.

So then you see stuff like, you know, UK lawyers for Israel, which is, you know, as it says on the tin, these are British-based lawyers who essentially support Israel.

And they've made the rather astonishing claim that the blockade might be good for the people of Gaza because the Gazans had a bit of an obesity problem.

And also that it might even lead to greater fitness, which will help life expectancy.

There are no cigarettes going through, for example.

I mean, that is sick.

That is sick.

I'm sorry.

I don't know whether they've apologised, but they should.

So there's Trump there.

Let's hope he does get the message that actually he does have a responsibility for some of this going on.

I don't think he'll feel the responsibility, but I think equally the Saudis, the Qataris, and the UAE will make it very clear that they are not going to pay for the reconstruction of Gaza under the current situation, that they're not into the idea of somehow funding it if it's under a partial Israeli occupation.

Should we take a quick break though, and maybe after the break, come back and expand this conversation to talk also about Ukraine and Kashmir and how Trump plays into that and how populism and conflict play into those things?

Cool.

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Welcome back to The Rest is Politics with me, Roy Stewart.

And me, Alistair Campbell.

So I was thinking, if it's not too pretentious, that it's worth maybe comparing these three conflicts and the three potential pieces.

And what struck me is that they are conflicts about quite different types of things and particularly different types of nationalism.

nationalism.

So Russia is really about Putin with this 18th century kind of almost imperial fantasy, which isn't particularly ethnic.

I mean the greater Russia can include Chechens, can include lots of different peoples.

It's about hegemony influence.

Israel is instead feels much more sort of late 19th century, early 20th century nationalism, which is all about blood and soil.

This is our land, this is our people, this is our ethnicity here.

And Kashmir is fundamentally about partition.

It's about where a border is placed and about these two different countries, Pakistan based on Islam, India initially conceived as a secular multi-confessional country.

And that means that the solutions are quite different in each case, right?

In the case of Ukraine, you could almost imagine a sort of land deal where Putin gets a bit of land, but he would want influence over Ukraine.

In Kashmir, you might imagine something to do with making the border more porous, you know, maybe more like the Good Friday Agreement, more trade going back and forth across border.

Israel-Palestine, on the other hand, is so existential because this is sacred land for two different peoples living in the same place.

And my gut instinct is that that's the least likely one that Trump's going to want to get involved in because as soon as you get away from a real estate developer dealing with land deals to really complicated questions of identity, religion, shared land, you've lost Trump's attention entirely.

Okay, let's go through them one by one.

So ceasefire was the word that was kicking around everywhere last week.

India, Pakistan.

And again,

Trump was straight out of the traps taking credit.

I watched a lot of NDTV.

I'm coming slightly hooked on NDTV because it's

New Delhi television, and it's this sort of very lively 24-hour news station.

But I watched this very, very, very long briefing by the Indian military.

They were going like hour by hour through the whole story.

And I have to say, Mr.

Trump's name did not come up once.

There was a hotline.

The guy, the head of the military, revealed this, he had this hotline to his Pakistani opponent.

And essentially what's happened is both sides have claimed credit victory in making the other back down.

Which is quite a good thing.

Just before we get there, just to remind people who've not been following it day by day, since we recorded last week, we did a sort of almost emergency question time podcast on this.

We recorded at a time where there had been the terrorist attack in Kashmir, and India then saying Pakistan was behind those terrorists, responded by attacks driven by planes against terrorist camps, killing some people who seemed to have been closely related with terrorist groups.

Pakistan then shot down Indian planes, including, it seems, at least two advanced fighter jets that India bought from France.

India then responded with attacks which went straight against the air defense systems in Lahore.

Pakistan then responded with missiles and drones, which hit a number of Indian military bases, killing a number of Indians.

At least five Indians were killed in these attacks, possibly more.

India then responded again with strikes to airfields and again to air defense systems, which killed 11 Pakistani soldiers and wounded 78.

So when we set this up last week, we said this is really going to get out of control if for the first time, unlike the previous times, they actually start killing each other's soldiers and targeting each other's bases.

That happened.

And as a result of that happening, I suspect that is possibly what has made them pull back a little bit.

Now, what they were saying at this briefing, this guy who was in charge of the briefing, Lieutenant General Rajiv Gai, so the ceasefire had happened, but it was very interesting to watch the body language and the rhetoric.

This was all about

essentially what they've done.

in response and of course they were not attacking civilians and they were doing all the usual sort of caveats that both sides were doing accusing the other of attacking civilians.

But he basically was going through all the things that they might do, that they could do, that they would do.

The other thing that was extraordinary, anytime I've been to India and Pakistan, and particularly if you go to one after the other, it's surprising the extent to which Kashmir, even for people hundreds of miles away from Kashmir, it defines their politics.

And it was interesting at a press conference to see journalists who were starting their questions by saying, may I thank you on behalf of our readers and viewers and listeners for protecting us in the way that you've done.

It's very much that sense of

national embedded pride.

But they've dialed down for now, but I think it's still very, very volatile.

And then the Pakistanis came out and said, we had three dozen countries involved in the negotiations.

But I think what's happened,

I think what's happened is that the military between them, bearing in mind that essentially, although they've got a civilian prime minister, the leader of Pakistan essentially is the military head, that the military between them with these constant, there seems to be constant communication going on between them.

So they've dialed it down for now.

It's fascinating also because J.D.

Vance had said it's none of our business and Trump had said yes.

And then claim he spent two days doing nothing but deal with it.

Yeah.

So it is interesting and it's a reminder of this new world, which is a world where, on the one hand, the populism generates these things in all these three conflicts.

Because I think what happens is if you're Netanyahu or you're the Pakistan Chief of the Army Staff or you're Modi or definitely if you're Putin, what you've got is this incredibly strong ability to

weaponize nationalism.

And you've got a sort of support base, a voter base, that does not reward you for compromise.

It rewards you for confrontation and attack.

And that's building up and that's why we're seeing these conflicts now happening more frequently.

at the same time as the US is retreating.

So the US, the UN, all the traditional institutions that brought peace are barely featuring.

And of course, the other thing that happened, Rory, and how closely you follow sport, was the cancellation of one of the most important sporting competitions in the world, the IPL.

That was massive.

For them to, I mean, cricket is an obsession in India and Pakistan.

They've got 280 million paid subscribers to watch the IPL, 370 million spectators.

The brand value of this cricket league is $12 billion.

Wow.

And it's not now not happening at all as well.

Well, they've now, because of the ceasefire,

I think they've got 16 games left and they're bringing them back

starting this weekend.

You mentioned the drones there.

Just a quick one on the Houthis.

One of the reasons it's said why the Americans felt it was about time that they stopped the bombing campaign is because it was becoming so expensive.

They'd lost a fighter jet worth $60 million.

They'd lost several really, really expensive drones.

So we talk about, I think we talk, maybe this is a way into Ukraine, because you've talked before about the way the military, the nature of military conflict is changing.

I think we think about drones as these sort of little things that fly around because we see them, you know, when we're at a football match, you sometimes see a drone going above filming you when you're doing documentaries and stuff.

We're talking about unbelievably sophisticated and expensive pieces of kit that are now and and the Ukrainians, it seems, are now the sort of best in Europe at manufacture and use of this.

Well that there's a amazing bifurcation because of course traditionally,

certainly over the last few decades, the defense industry has been dominated by these companies, Raytheon, Northrop Gumman, BAE Systems, who produce these unbelievably exquisite, expensive bits of kit, which take so long to produce that the procurement people have signed a contract for one thing.

And sure enough, as two years go on, they want to change the specs on the radar or the intelligence equipment, and then they have to pay these companies even more.

Meanwhile, at the other end, there are these very cheap drones being produced.

So, you know, Iran produces drones, and Ukraine has basically been able to produce drones for about $1,000 that are able to do a lot of the things that these drones worth millions are able to do.

And then when the British Army goes back to these defence contractors and says, okay, here's this lovely $1,000 drone that the Ukrainians built.

Can you build one for us?

The defence contractors say, well, absolutely not, because it doesn't work for their business model.

Their business model is all about producing stuff that that costs millions and takes a long time.

Thousand-dollar drones are not in their business.

And you're also right that what we're seeing in India-Pakistan, as in Ukraine, is how central drones aren't to warfare.

What didn't happen this time compared to Kargil is it wasn't about infantry soldiers confronting each other.

It's non-contact warfare.

We're returning to a sort of funny world that H.G.

Wells imagined where everything's happening in the air.

Now, where are we on Russia-Ukraine?

Again, it's it's been unbelievably busy this week.

I thought one of the most significant,

you know, how I love photos and whether they become historic.

I don't know whether this one will.

It partly depends on what now happens.

But the picture of Zelensky, Macron, Mertz, Tusk, and Starmer kind of on a sofa and a couple of chairs, with Macron holding a mobile phone at the other end of which was Donald Trump.

And this was them preparing to set this 30-day ceasefire ultimatum to Putin.

And then

the other photo was Putin

in Moscow late that evening, very unusual because they like to sort of show that they're in control the whole time.

So it was definitely a specific reaction.

And the picture that I saw was the wonderful Steve Rosenberg's head.

The back of his head was in the shot because he was in the front row.

The media had been told it was going to be a full-scale press conference.

It turned out just to be a statement from Putin where he made this offer of direct talks in Istanbul on Thursday, which, if they do happen, I suspect Vlad will not be there.

Rather smartly, I thought, Zelensky straight out the traps saying, I'll be there.

So again, it felt like stuff was moving, but then you start to think, well, hold on a minute.

Is this not just Putin playing another game to kick things down the road?

No, you're completely right.

The story is changing.

And this is a sort of difficult thing in dealing with Trump.

Because

one way of looking at it, if you're a kind of Trump supporter, is you kind of give him immense credit and you say this is the art of the deal.

And look, Rory, you know, all you and Alice have been talking about for the last half hour is that, you know, he may be, you know, on the cusp of bringing a deal in Iran and he's moving away from Netanyahu and he's putting pressure on Putin and he's solved India-Kashmir.

So this all ticked him.

But of course, the real theme is unpredictability and him often losing interest.

Strategic uncertainty, apparently they call it.

Strategic uncertainty.

But there's no doubt things have changed.

So put the clock back, when we were talking at the time of this famous, I mean, talk about images, that meeting between Zelensky and Trump, where Trump and J.D.

Vance humiliate him and Zelensky tries to stand up for himself.

And then this followed by weeks of Trump repeating Putin's talking points, making it clear there will be no security guarantees for Ukraine, cutting off for a time American intelligence support for Ukraine, recognizing Crimea, and Witkoff, as you've pointed out, going for these

seven individual meetings with Putin.

The last one of which you pointed out, they were talking about girls during the meeting, right?

So all of this symbolizes.

It also turns out that his interpreter came from the Kremlin.

He went on his own.

There's a very interesting piece in the Huffington Post today, defenders of Witkoff saying that he's shaking everything up, that the swamp doesn't like it, but he's, you know, Trump's got complete faith, et cetera.

But it does appear to be operating almost in a vacuum, doing his own thing.

There's even this story about when he went to the UAE, he was on his private plane, the UAE weren't aware that he was coming, and

they actually thought this was some sort of hostile attack.

Now, it's very, very strange, but

we're going to have to get used to the fact that this is how Trump operates.

Yeah, and I think there's a pattern here, which we can get into a little bit more in tomorrow's podcast.

But the speed.

So, let's add to this the fact that there's now been, this week, a US-China tariff deal, a U.S.-UK tariff deal, And your man, Steve Witcoff, is simultaneously negotiating peace.

Your man,

simultaneously apparently negotiating peace, Russia-Ukraine, and also doing an Iran deal and also doing the Gaza deal.

And getting a hostage out.

And getting a hostage out and fly to UE.

And as you say, doing it with no apparent State Department support, bureaucracy or infrastructure around him, which means that these deals are very odd.

I mean, a normal trade deal takes months or years to negotiate because you're looking at the detail of ethanol tariffs.

The fact that Witcoff and Trump are able to do these things in a couple of hours implies they're not quite negotiations and deals in the traditional sense.

No, I mean, it's, and also, I know that he's really trying to undermine Congress deliberately, but ultimately, Congress does trade deals.

The president has the power to do tariff deals.

So, they're tariff deals is what he's doing.

That's what we should stop calling them.

They're not comprehensive trade deals.

The other thing I found really interesting about the Russia-Ukraine thing is so let's we know we're this is going to go on Wednesday, let's see if any meeting of substance happens in Istanbul on Thursday.

You're right, by the way, what you said earlier, it's interesting that Turkey becomes the place where they say this should happen.

But I think there was another really interesting thing today that relates to one of the things we talk about a lot, which is misinformation.

So picture this, if you haven't seen it already, and if you're on social media, you've definitely seen it, but let's say you haven't.

Then you're on a train.

It's a very, very important meeting.

These European leaders going to to meet Zelensky.

And Macron, Mertz and Starma are sort of, you know, being quite chummy with each other.

And then you notice that they look towards the door because the media are being brought in to take some pictures.

And

Mertz picks up a spoon.

Now, I think, as a sort of, you know, guy who doesn't imagine that Mertz has ever taken drugs in his life, I think he's picking up a spoon because it looks a bit untidy and he's probably been stirring his coffee.

Macron picks up a tissue.

Okay?

Maybe he blew his nose.

Who knows what the tissue is doing there?

Suddenly, all across social media with people doing slow-motion versions and cutting to fake video of these guys dancing together in clubs and all sorts of stuff, the story goes that what they've been doing is taking cocaine.

On the train, on their way to the city.

On the train, on their way to see Zelensky.

Like some of my conservative colleagues at a Bullingdon party.

Is that what they do?

That was the allegations.

Yes.

Come on, you remember all this stuff.

Is that what they did in the bullying?

Was it drugs more than alcohol?

That was certainly the allegation.

I didn't personally witness it, but it seems like you're an OK guy.

You're way above cocaine.

So, anyway, so there's this.

I'm not pretending naivety and innocence.

You see, I'm fully aware of these allegations.

Can I tell you something about cocaine?

This, maybe I'm just a very naive sort of person.

I've never seen cocaine in my life.

You've never seen actors.

I've seen police actors going into the House of Commons bathroom and snorting cocaine.

But what I noticed on, and this was absolutely swamping all of my social media feeds.

It was everywhere.

It's quite a good story.

All these worldly snorts.

I guess it's a good story.

But what is it was coming, you see, and this is Brody, you're falling for their trap.

Sorry.

What they like.

They like you to think it's funny.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

But it was coming from Russian accounts and from a lot of MAGA accounts.

Right.

So this was basically they were this was a perfect misinformation operation because it was a sandwich.

There's the European leaders taking on putin and trying to get their head on coke.

But they weren't Rory.

They weren't, for God's sake.

But I also think it's a kind of really remarkable story.

We're not taking this seriously.

It's a really remarkable story because if the least likely people in the world to be snorting cocaine on a train, I mean, this is not the Bullingdon boys.

this is Kier Starmer and Friedrich Metz, who are like...

I notice you didn't use Macron in that.

You say that Macron might have done it.

Macron, by the way, is coming on a state visit, Rory.

He's at least a bit young.

He's at least a bit younger.

If you were trying to make up a story,

it's the story that you'd make up that Kier Starmer and Friedrich Metz were like party boys who liked snorting coke on a train.

It doesn't seem very likely.

No, it doesn't seem likely, but we're talking about it, and yesterday it was swamping social media, which otherwise might have been swamped with stories about Trump's corruption on the plane.

Let's sort of get back to what's happening with the peace deal with Russia-Ukraine.

So, as I was saying, initially the story was that Trump was following Putin's talking points.

Now, things have begun to shift.

And we've got Kellogg, who's the US envoy, and Witkoff increasingly behind a vision for a deal.

And it's a deal which would involve Russia having Crimea, but in return, no demilitarization of Ukraine.

It's a relatively balanced deal where there's some kind of recognition for Ukraine.

And it's something that, and this again relates to what you were saying,

the policy of Starmer and Matcron and Zelensky, which is to seem as helpful as possible, as open as possible to what Trump's saying.

You gave an example of Zelensky saying, you know, I'll go and meet Putin, right?

Seems perhaps to be paying off.

Because what it does is it pushes the pressure back onto Putin.

Now, of course, I don't think it's probably going to result in Trump turning against Putin, unfortunately.

In the very, very optimistic scenario, if you were really hopeful for Ukraine, you would say Trump will eventually notice and Witkoff and Kellogg will tell him that Putin's screwing around and he might impose secondary sanctions, which means sanctioning countries like China or India that are buying oil from Russia, or he would provide more aid to Ukraine.

I don't think he's likely to go that far, but the signs of softening.

Here are some signs of softening.

Well, he did say the thing last week about, you know, is the guy tapping me up?

Is the guy tapping up?

He's bringing me me along.

And you reminded us last week that he also attacked Putin on VE Day and said it was America what won the war and essentially Russia would never have been able to do it without the United States, which is an incredible statement because, you know, Russia's sacrificed in that war, you know, whatever it is, 25 million people killed.

But what he has done in the last two weeks, and I've been talking to my friend and man I admire greatly Shashank Joshi, he's pointed out that one of the things that's changed since we last discussed it is that Trump has now released Patriot missiles, which were promised.

He's also allowed F-16s to go out for spare parts.

He's also allowed a small amount of the presidential drawdown money to go to Ukraine.

So all of that stuff's a sign of softening, potentially.

And so the middle best case scenario is not that he massively pushes down on Putin, not that Putin changes his position, because Putin's quite wily and he'll keep saying, you know, we've got to address the root causes of this and we need to.

The root causes basically Ukraine shouldn't exist.

I mean, that's what Peskov is saying the whole time.

I did think on the Russian reaction as well, Medvedev,

so this, that you have this meeting with the four European leaders on the phone to Trump.

And interestingly, when they did their press conference, Keir Starmer in particular said that the United States were completely on board with this approach.

And Medvedev put out a tweet saying you can put your peace plan up your pangender arses,

which I think as an act of diplomacy was kind of odd.

Do you know the other thing that maybe just to close off on this, we talk a lot about Trump's kind of vanity and the need to flatter him and his need constantly to be told that he's wonderful and to say that he's wonderful.

And he does seem to have this real

loathing of the fact that Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize.

Now, I would argue it was odd to give

the Nobel Peace Prize to Obama at the stage of his career that he got it.

But it was very interesting.

The reason I think why he was so quick out there saying, I did the India-Pakistan deal, when both the Indians and the Pakistanis are saying, no, you didn't.

And then Laura Luma, this right-wing conspiracy theorist that he's very, very close to, although she's criticised him over the plane, I noticed.

But she came out and said, you know, surely he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize there.

And it's clearly a really big motivation.

So, and let's just say, I'm not convinced it's going to happen, but let's just say that you do get some sort of peace deal between Russia and Ukraine.

It's very hard to see right now, but let's say there is some sort of progress in Gaza.

And let's say that India-Pakistan does dial down.

Let's say that as a result of the bombing of the Houthis, they do calm down a bit.

Then, you know, that's obviously what's motivating him.

So, I think we see this, we're going to see a lot of flattery.

And I saw the, I'm sure you saw as well as I did, the letter to Trump from 550 Israeli securecrats, spies and military and what I haven't commentators and so forth.

And it was interesting how much they were very critical of Netanyahu, but unbelievably flattering about Trump.

And so I think we're in for an orgy of flattery in the next few days and an orgy of big deals.

But let's see whether we get anything.

Just to wrap up then, with where Ukraine may go, because maybe we don't talk enough about the future.

I think there's a standoff.

On the one hand, Kellogg and Witkoff, who like the deal they've put on the table.

Vance and Steve Miller on the other side, who basically think Russia's got all the cards and we should just submit to Russia's terms.

Trump, who seems as usual to be flopping around from side to side.

But the best case scenario, I think, for Ukraine is that Trump will continue to be prepared to sell weapons.

He may not sell them directly to Ukraine, but if he can sell them to Germany and Germany can then push them on to Ukraine, and in particular Patriots, which is for the air defense, and the Haimars, which is for the long-range missile strikes, probably Ukraine can hold Russia back, and Russia has had a very, very bloody time.

They're really struggling to make progress.

But Putin still thinks time is on his side, he still thinks Trump will blink, and so he's not giving up any time soon.

Okay, question time tomorrow.

We'll do immigration.

I think we should talk about the Pope as well.

The Pope, the Pope seems to be a nice sort of chap.

And we'll see what else unless there's one here about.

Thank you.

See you then.

Bye-bye.