Has Trump thrust the US into another forever war?

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1:00Or is it to establish clear military superiority for Israel across the Middle East? We're going to take you to the streets of Beirut to find out. I'm Kylie Morris. I'm Hamish McDonald. This is Global Roaming. Well, hello, Kylie. It is staggering, really. I think that the pace at which this is all unfolding and not just unfolding, but expanding the language that you're seeing coming out of the United States, the President Trump, starting to talk about how he's a US president that never says no boots on the ground. Beyond that, the way in which this is engulfing, and I don't think that's too much of a stretch, engulfing the whole region. And of course, so many Australians stuck over there, not sure when they'll come home. You're kind of hearing the messaging come out of the Australian government.

2:01This uncertainty about how they're going to extract over 100,000 Australians from a region now very much at war. We're recording this on Tuesday. It is day three. I think we're hearing a shift in tone in terms of the messaging out of Washington as well. Hamish, and that's part of what's keeping us off balance. Trump and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, are now trying to make the case to the American people as to why this is necessary. I think there's a Reuters-Ipsos poll this morning saying that just one in four Americans say they're back these US strikes inside of our... I mean, if you were a Trump magazine supporter, what would you make of what's happening now? What would you make of what's happening now? How would you receive the justifications that you're hearing when there's very little evidence, physical evidence, anyway, of what Iran has done on American soil? You know, if you wanted to sort of place it in that kind of Trump-Maga-America first mind frame,

3:05you'd be asking, wouldn't you? Why would we do this? We're also coming to this through the prism of Iraq, Afghanistan, which are the wars, the kinds of wars, the forever wars that Trump said. He would stay away from. That's why, part of the reason why you might have voted for him if you're a Maga supporter. And that's why I think it's interesting to hear Trump saying things like, this was our last best chance to remove this regime. It's not a war of choice. The American homeland is under threat. We're hearing that stated over and over again to try and, I suppose, force home the message that it's a war of self-defense. Almost, I think that's what they want voters in America to think. And we're hearing that shifting purpose. Is it about nuclear dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions? Is it about their ballistic missiles? Is it about, as Trump calls it, the evil nature of its leadership? Because the ballistic missiles, that's the case that these rallies seem to be making that it's not just about the nuclear program, but this huge stockpile that they allege

4:07Iran was trying to build up would have posed some sort of existential threat in itself, which, you know, that's a more nuanced argument about the power of those sort of weapons. Kylie, to the point you're making about forever wars. I don't know if you've heard it yet, but Pete Hegseth, the Defense Secretary, or he calls himself the Secretary of War, had gave a press conference and I think articulated a much stronger argument behind why they're doing this. I think if you're listening at home, sort of brace yourself, because this is the full Fox News MAGA nexus in both language, attitude, and substance. To the media outlets and political left screaming endless wars, stop. This is not Iraq. This is not endless. I was there for both. Our generation knows better and so does this president. He called the last 20 years of nation building wars dumb, and he's right.

5:11This is the opposite. This operation is a clear, devastating, decisive mission. Destroy the missile threat. Destroy the Navy. No nukes. Israel has clear missions as well for which we are grateful. Capable partners, as we've said since the beginning, capable partners are good partners. Unlike so many of our traditional allies who ring their hands and clutch their pearls, hemming and hawing about the use of force. America, regardless of what so-called international institutions say, is unleashing the most lethal and precise air power campaign in history. What do you make of that? It's powerful in its messaging. I think you can hear very clearly what his purpose is. I mean, I would quibble with a couple of his... What are you speaking directly to you, Rice? He's talking about this traditional media. He's talking about people who say he think, you know, that Iraq...

6:12Who remember, you know, I covered the Iraq war. I was based in Afghanistan. I know how these wars turn out and I can tell you they're not... It's not simple and straightforward and they don't necessarily ever achieve the purpose that they set out to achieve. Interestingly, of course, Keir Starmer. We have seen Keir Starmer drawing a line in the UK about levels of cooperation that they're prepared to offer the United States mission and his government, you know, saying that they don't believe in regime change from the skies. So it's very clear how unilateral, I guess, this is... I've got to say, if I was a senior general in the US military, I would be worried very much about the lack of clarity that I think there is about the purpose of this, because unless you know exactly what your goal is, when can you pack up your things and go home? I think what's interesting is, you know, you're seeing a couple of American jets come down over Q8. You're seeing a death toll, a death count on the US side.

7:14And you're hearing the president talk to the New York Post and say, I don't have the yips with respect to boots on the ground. So when I say this is not just continuing but expanding, that's just three days in that that's the language we're now hearing. I think we need to spend a moment also talking about the Iranian side, Kylie, we're talking a lot about the US. More than 500 people killed, we know, so far, inside Iran, that's according to the Red Crescent Society. This must be absolutely terrifying in the towns and cities of Iran to feel this kind of an onslaught and to not know what the future brings, not to know where it's going to be safe when they're going to feel a sense of safety, security and peace again. Let's take you to our good friend Heidi Pat. Now a correspondent for Al Jazeera, formerly of Radio National, an Australian journalist based mostly in Syria. In fact, we spoke to her last when she was in the northern part of the country, covering the story of the Australian women and children trying to relocate.

8:18We find her right now in Beirut, 52 people have been killed, at least in Israeli air strikes in Lebanon. She's amid all of the chaos. Heidi, welcome back to Global Rhyming. You're in Beirut. I think you've just arrived there from Syria. What have you been seeing, hearing so far? Yes, so just before 3 o'clock this morning, I was actually already awake, but most of the residents were working up by a series of loud explosions, which was air strikes on the southern suburbs of Beirut, but you could hear them all across Beirut. You know, in suburbs of downtown and areas where all of those multiple strikes that we saw in September of 2024, you weren't really hearing those in downtown. So that gives you some indication of how loud these were. Heidi, we can hear you're in a car now. Are you somewhere safe? Where are you going to? Yes, so I'm just driving through downtown Beirut. We've been up all night ever since those strikes started. You know, not just in the southern suburbs of Beirut, but also in southern Lebanon

9:21and in the Bekhar Valley, which is in the east towards the Syrian border. And you're already seeing people from Dahia, from the southern suburbs. They've been trying to get out of there. The traffic is just horrendous. People are fleeing on foot and in their cars. And we're driving now down along the Corniche, which is the sort of seaside boardwalk of Beirut, where people have been, you know, they're starting together. You can see, you know, it's just after six o'clock in the morning. The sun has just come up at the streets full already. There's people, you know, sitting and waiting and trying to sleep in their cars, walking around. And it feels very, very much like it did when I was here in September and October of 2024. And again, there was just hundreds of thousands of people displaced. You know, they were setting up, they were sleeping on the streets, setting up tents and things along the waterfront. And there were stocks sort of capping out for weeks, because the bombing campaign went on for so long. There's this ongoing process here in Lebanon at the moment, with the parliament and the Lebanese armed forces, they're supposed to be disarming Haspola, you know, moving them out of areas of southern Lebanon.

10:21And there was a deadline for that to have happened by the end of last year. And it didn't. And it clearly didn't because we've seen, you know, those projectiles which were launched from southern Lebanon into Israel in the middle of the night. And that is what has sparked the Israelis saying that they needed to respond to that. And that's why we've seen these, you know, these strikes here, you know, in Beirut and across Lebanon, you know, Israel saying they violated the ceasefire. But if you've been in Lebanon at any point in the last year, you'll know that the ceasefire has been violated by Israel nearly 11,000 times, according to accounts for human rights organizations who've been tracking this. This first wave of strikes hit just before three o'clock in the morning. People were asleep ordinarily. I mean, I say ordinarily what, you know, what can possibly be ordinary about war. But the people of Lebanon were getting these warnings via Twitter from spokespeople for the Israeli military who would issue these forced displacement orders and say, you know, we're going to hit this building of this suburb and you need to move away for your own safety. There was none of that for that first wave of strikes. So people, you know, they might have been nervous.

11:22They might have been expecting something that they certainly weren't expecting anything and that exact moment. Heidi, I wonder if you could offer us a slightly broader and more human perspective on this. There seems to be quite a few people willing to say that they didn't particularly like Trump that don't tend to favor the actions of Netanyahu. But in this instance, they think a good thing has been done to free the Iranian people of a tyrant. What are you hearing on the ground from people, whether it's in Syria, whether it's in Lebanon where you are now? I was in Syria yesterday across over night into Lebanon and the mood in Syria when, you know, when those strikes began and you started to hear, you know, the explosions of missiles being intercepted overhead, you know, the building that I was in in Damascus yesterday was shaking. But the mood in Syria was just this sort of resigned, but grateful that for once this had nothing to do with them. You know, the country's been at war for such a long time. The Assad regime, which fell apart at the end of 2024 was an ally of Iran

12:26and Syria was full of Iranian-backed militias. And so they would have been a target at that time. And so they're just kind of grateful that, okay, the Assad regime is gone and our country is for once not involved. But here in Lebanon, people were sort of anticipating but they're just tired. And people have, I think, complicated feelings about what has gone on. To many people in the region who, you know, they have no love for Iran. There's many people in Lebanon that have no love for his beloved. But they have no love for Israel, either. Talking about Syria, of course, you know, the removal of Bashar al-Assad or the end of that regime followed a decade of brutal civil war. You know, with any number of foreign actors involved, there were militias, there were jihadis. Do you see parallels yourself with the risks that Iran now faces? And I think that is a great concern for people in Iran and across the region. And it's also, you know, it's put the Iranian opposition in a very difficult position in many ways, right? Because we had a popular uprising in these protests just a couple of months ago

13:28which were brutally suppressed. Thousands of people killed in the streets. And the accusation from people within the Iranian regime, at that time was, well, you know, these are western assets or it's Mossad or CIA-backed. And you know, the idea that it was just all a foreign plot. And so then when you have a foreign intervention of this kind, you've got widespread bombing by the US, by Israel. And you've got the U.S. President calling for people to go into the streets and saying, you know, now is your time. It's your once-in-a-generation chance to overthrow the regime. It actually puts the people inside Iran who do want to see the end of the Islamic Republic in a much more difficult position in some ways. Obviously, plenty of governments, plenty of regimes in the Arab world, a lot of the Sunni leadership, as well as the Israelis that have wanted to get rid of Hamunaif for some time. But what if the end result here is someone from the Iranian Revolution regard that takes over or some figure that is more reliant on their support?

14:30I mean, that doesn't really answer any of the questions that these other countries have wanted answered. Does it? No, it doesn't. I mean, every indication that we have coming out of Iran is that they have been preparing for this. They have known that there was a risk of a, you know, what they call like a decaptation strike of the leadership. And so the senior positions in Iran, whether it's in, you know, the like the Supreme Council or the leaders of military and intelligence branches, they reportedly have prepared three or four successes for each of those positions because they knew that this was a risk. And the Iranian system is very much built around the idea of it being able to continue and sustain itself, that it's, you know, while Al-Hameini was a towering figure and has been in Iran for decades, that it's not about him as an individual, that the regime in Iran is about a system. And I suppose that it goes to the point that's often made about the president of Iran not having much power. You kind of sing in a moment like this,

15:30how that diffusion of power, the spreading of power across different titles and roles is effective because in this moment where there is a power vacuum, you get this council of three, including the president, and then someone from the judiciary and someone representing the sort of religious voice, steering the country through what, you know, obviously is a difficult moment. Yeah, absolutely, but it's a difficult moment that they have prepared quite well for, I would say. You're listening to Global Raming from Radio National. With me, Hamish Moldold, and my friend, Kylie Morris. We're speaking to Al Jazeera's Heidi Pett, who's on the ground in Lebanon, as this conflict unfolds across the Middle East. The tentacles of war we can see spreading out right now. So, Kylie, I'm interested in your perspective on this and you're sort of, you're not wanting to see all of these conflicts as one thing, they have unique features, but is there a point at which something lights, a few lights that draws all of those things together?

16:31In a way, the thing that stops them all being drawn together is those age-old enmities, right? So, Lebanon, the Lebanese government is trying to strike out in a different kind of path for the future of itself and its citizens. Hezbollah is stuck in a bit of a time warp. Hezbollah is looking back to a power base that no longer exists or will shortly it seems no longer exist in Tehran. I'm interested in what the street, I think one of the things we learned from the Arab Spring was that there can be popular uprisings and that the street, the mood of the street, in places like Syria, in places like Iran, in places like Iraq even, can have a great deal of impact and you can see a joining up of people's movements. And so, I'm interested, I think, Heidi, in, how do people in, let's say, a place like Syria,

17:31does the American attack on Iran make Donald Trump more or less popular? And I guess for other states where you have these elites running the country without much democratic spread, is there a kind of a time limit now when you see the clerics falling in Tehran for the kind of authoritarian leadership that you see in other states in the Middle East? Yeah, I mean, the people in Syria have obviously very complicated feelings about this, right? The country has a long history of Iranian presence and expansionism in Syria. And so, there's many, many people there who hate Iran and they see its complicity and the abuses that were visited on the Syrian population and things like that. They're feeling really, I can't emphasize enough in Damascus, talking to people yesterday was just of sort of relief and to not be part of it, you know, thinking, okay, there's interceptions happening in the sky above us, but as far as where can stand Israel,

18:31which sees territory on our southern border, you know, in the last year and, of course, dating back decades and Iran, which expanded into the east of the country and had the Iranian back to militias killing people. If they want to go at it and the sky is above us, let them have it. Hey, Heidi, I know we've got to let you get off and get some of your own reporting done. I don't want to let you go, though, with asking you about these Australian women and children, you've been following now for some weeks and months. The warning was that if they weren't repatriated to Australia or decisions weren't taken soon, conditions might deteriorate on the ground. I know there's a slightly different picture at play inside Syria itself with this sort of Kurdish-controlled region. The camp that they're in is controlled by the Kurds. Do you have any indication of what happens to them now? Is that story over and done with to some degree for the time being as all of this plays out? I wouldn't say so. The Syrian government has indicated that it is planning to,

19:31you know, to take over that camp as part of this continued implementation of an agreement between them and the Kurdish-led SDF. And that, you know, while both sides all seem to say that that's going well, there's a couple of cool parts of that agreement haven't really been implemented yet, whether that's bringing the SDF into the fold of the Syrian Army or seeing, you know, serious deployment of Syrian security forces into Kurdish-majority cities like Kobani, or indeed taking over Rojkamp, right, which is where these 34 Australian women and children in addition to 2,200 other foreign nationals have been housed for seven years in conditions that really are terrible. It is quite pressing, I think, you know, speaking to the families of these women, they're still very worried about them and they're still really keen to get them back to Australia. Hi, Heidi. Thank you so much for joining us and do take care. I hope you get a bit of sleep soon. Thanks for having me. I'll do my best. Yes, I'm channeling your mum, Heidi. Do take care. Stay safe.

20:32So, Kylie, that's left me with a bit to think about. What are you pondering? If you've been to Lebanon enough, you'll know that these rockets fall or the missiles from Israel fall in the same neighborhoods. Those border villages on the Lebanese, Israeli border, whether Israelis have said they need to be evacuated, that is a highly contested area and has been for many years and is subject to cease fires. The cease fires fail all the time as Heidi was mentioning. So, the Middle East has been in the grip of all of these kinds of enmities, these many kind of battles for territory for such a long time. And I do wonder whether or not changing the guard in Iran maybe resets things a bit. I mean, this is setting aside the way in which that change is being carried out in Iran. You point to something, I think, which is critical in terms of understanding the Middle East.

21:32Is that status quo exists based on tensions. You know, it's not just the kind of pressure points of opposition pulling things apart, but sometimes they hold other dimensions of this together. And so, I think you're right in observing that there are unique factors in all of those different pockets of fighting and violence and I'm just not sure given the rapid nature of this change and the unanswered questions about particularly where Iran lands as a result of this, whether or not those existing enmities can continue to provide that function. And certainly when you think about the redrawing of the map, the sort of military supremacy of Iran, the role of Saudi in all of this, then I think some of those enmities may not be relied upon in the same way that they have in the past. Had you want to deal with a couple of listener questions that have come in over the past 24 hours? Because I think they're really interesting.

22:32And to me, they go to the core of some of what we're circling around here. From Jane, where are the Saudis in this? MBS, Mohammed bin Salman? Well, Jane, it's already been interesting the kind of approach to this from the Saudis early on. Publicly, there was a push with Donald Trump in the White House to try to keep stay out of Iran, not for there not to be attacks on Iran, but we're now understanding that privately, there was channeling from Mohammed bin Salman, that actually a move against the Iranian regime would be something that he would privately support. Of course, Iran traditionally has been a great rival of the Saudis. The Saudis are a Sunni majority. The Iranians are a Shiite majority. It's not only about religion and ideology, but certainly they have been great rivals and a point of tension within the Middle East. So the Saudis, one assumes, would be comfortable

23:32with the fact that there is potentially a change in leadership inside Iran, but they wouldn't like the prospect of instability, certainly economically, certainly to do with oil. Am I right, Hamish? Yeah, I think that's a great summary of it. From Bernie, another question, Kylie, what's the current verdict on the effectiveness of regime change by the US? Has there been any improvement, or is it never ending catastrophe? I reckon this is a really valid question, but I think it's an interesting moment for it to be asked because actually the countries that come to mind, Iraq and Afghanistan, offer two very drastically different perspectives on that. Iraq is in much better shape than what it has been for some time. The sort of sense of never ending catastrophe has at least reached a point of kind of functional governing to a large extent in Iraq after so many years of civil conflict. In Afghanistan, it's a different picture because it's the Taliban now back in control,

24:33the very group that the US intervention had sought to and international coalition intervention had sought to oust, and they now find themselves in open conflict with neighboring Pakistan. So a suspective urine of Afghanistan today, might say, well, the Americans came, they left, it went back to where we were in the beginning, but now we're fighting with someone else anyway. And Adrian has this question, Kylie. Has there been any legal sanction for Iran and what they've been doing for years with Hezbollah, the Houthis, Hamas, even the Melbourne Synagogue attack? Of course, the Australian intelligence agencies say that some of these attacks in Australia, anti-Semitic attacks in Australia were backed, funded, pushed by the Revolutionary Guard. Adrian says these were war crimes, so does that regime expect a response to be legally sanctioned? I think you're right, Hamish. Bernie, I've got a question too, and that is, have powers like the United States learned anything about how to do regime change better

25:35or more effectively. I covered the wars in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and what was very clear, certainly in those early stages, was that the wrong people were doing the wrong jobs that the approach, what didn't make a lot of sense, that they were culturally unaware and created problems themselves. So there isn't certainly a blueprint, and certainly there is no timeline for recovery once these attacks have begun. So it's a great question, and I think, as you say, Hamish, it's mixed according to where you look, but I would say also there are questions about what follows in Iran, and whether or not any of the lessons that were learned in other places are applied there. Well, I mean, I guess the West makes the argument, based on international law, that these actions by the Iranian regime have been illegal, I suppose the counter-argument to that, is that trying to stop Iran doing it without counter-attack,

26:35physical counter-attack, attack has been pretty ineffective. Yeah, and I think, I mean, evenness of the application of international law is something that we talk about pretty often on the show. Of course, Iran has faced lots of economic sanctions, so you might say that within the international system, there have been powerful states like the United States, like the European Union, who have brought economic sanctions against Iran as punishment for various activities, not only that moved towards nuclear, developing a nuclear weapon, but the other thing I would say is that Hizbala Huthi's Hamas, they're not states, and as non-state actors, it's much more challenging to bring any kind of legal action against them. I reckon let's leave the conversation there for now. I want to just drop one recommendation into this. We're going to put the link in the show notes. I see the ABC has re-upped. Is that the term?

27:35An episode of tape-mids you a leader that I did a little while back on Ali Hamanai, the Iranian Supreme Leader. It's a really interesting telling of the dynamics inside and outside of Iran around him. In that episode, you hear the perspective of those in Iran who support him, as well as actually one of the Americans that was held hostage in the embassy all those years ago. So I'm going to recommend that if you want some supplementary listening. As you ponder all of these questions and what's unfolding, I'd suggest take a listen to that. Global.roamingatabc.net.au is our email address. Keep your questions, suggestions coming. We know there's a lot on your mind, and we're eager to answer and deliver where we possibly can. Le Tika and Geraldine are back tomorrow in your ears on the ABC Listen app and at 11 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Radio National. Kylie, bye-bye for now. Bye, Hamish.

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