Iran: America is at war, so Australia is at war

This episode of New Politics was released on the 13th of March,

2026, and produced on the lands of the Wongal and Gadigal people.

What happens when a superpower launches a military operation that's designed to show

its dominance but exposes all the limitations of these dominance? But if there's no real plan

behind the United States attack on Iran and it's led by religious fanatics in the White House

and within the US military. It seems that Australia has now joined the war with the United States

and just at the time when the Prime Minister should be showing all of his trademark caution

he's throwing it all away in the wind. I'm Eddie Jockovich. I'm David Lewis. All of this is coming

up in this big episode of New Politics. I just wanted to mention the true North weekday

independent has published 500 editions and that's quite a bit of an achievement and

that's a daily newsletter published every day by Janice Fravelle and quite often we get asked

by the good people who listen to New Politics and read our many articles that we publish online.

They say that we love you stuff but is there any other media stuff out there? And

David, of course there is and you can find a lot of independent journalism at true North

weekday independent. It comes out every day and it promotes us, New Politics, promotes the shot

with Michael West Media, Bogan Intelligence here, Deep Cut, Deep Classified Australia,

Women's Agenda, Punters Politics. There's a whole lot of other stuff out there as well. I've just

known a few and it collates all the great articles published by independent media in Australia and

sends it out every single day. So it's put out 500 editions and congratulations to Janice

Revelle for putting it all out there, check it out. There's a lot of independent media out there

in Australia and you can find a lot of it in the one place at true North weekday independent.

So check it out. Congratulations to Janice and that remarkable achievement. She's always been

a big promoter of New Politics so I'm very happy to see that they're doing well and all best

to the team over there. I just ask you because there has been I think an attempt to have a

different kind of unified messaging, a unified rationale. Certainly from the Pentagon we heard

Secretary of Defense Pete Heg says say America is winning decisively, devastatingly and without

mercy. What is your understanding of the of the progress of this war on Iran? Well first of all

I have no idea why we entered this war because Donald Trump has one story and Marco Rubio has

another story. Rubio says we got dragged into the war by Israel. He's effectively said that that

this was a defensive action because we worried there was going to be an attack on the United

States. Donald Trump says no. In fact we dragged Israel into this war. They have lots of different

goals. They seem to be targeting the nuclear program, the missile program. Trump seems to be talking

pretty regularly about regime change, cheerleading the Iranian people to come out into the streets.

It's really unclear to me even after having sat in the briefing yesterday why we entered the war

and what the goals are. It looks as if it's pretty open ended that we may be at war with Iran,

bombing Iran for months if not the better part of this year. This is about as incoherent, incompetent

and confusing a rollout of military action overseas as I've ever seen.

Operation Epic Fury was supposed to send a message that the United States and its proxy

Israel still control all of the activities within the Middle East, West and Asia region,

but the attacks on Iran over the past few weeks might end up with all the results that they were

not actually looking for. Instead of reinforcing American power, this action might be revealing

all the cracks in a structure that has dominated the region for almost 80 years. And

David, the world is a different place to what it might have been during the post-war era and

Cold War, that's all over. And there's a bigger shift that's starting to challenge all of this,

and it's coming from China, it's coming from Russia, and a new wave of emerging political

blocks, which also includes Iran. And there's also deep and darker ideological forces that are

influencing decision-making within Trumpland and the White House, including a growing evangelistic

influence that's looking at geopolitical issues in terms of theology and theocracy,

and that's mainly through Christian Zionism and Pentecostalism. And I think that for Australia,

there's a lot of issues that can't really avoid here. The United States is becoming more volatile

and more unpredictable, and the world itself is going through this uncertain phase in global

politics, and instead of keeping a healthy distance from the United States and from Donald Trump,

it doesn't need to cut it off completely, but it's just going the opposite. It's getting much

closer to the United States, initially through Orcas, and now through sending military hardware and

personnel to the Middle East, seemingly at the behest of the United States. And I just think that

this is a big mistake, and it's going to cause a lot of problems for Australia.

I know that there's a lot of younger people worried that they're going to be conscripted

to a Middle East. Another Middle Eastern war that Australia has no real business being in.

I'm less worried about conscription being introduced. The Vietnam conflict casts a very long

shadow over Australian politics, and I think conscription isn't something to be worried about at the

moment. That point you made about the Prime Minister's usual caution. Finally, he's listened to us,

he's decided to be less cautious. But for the wrong reasons, I'm the wrong issue.

Not like that. Orcas doesn't actually have a clause that if America goes into a war,

we have to support them militarily or the UK for that matter. We can, I think the Australian

position is to support the war, but it doesn't actually have to send troops if it doesn't want to

essentially. Whether the Prime Minister's caution comes back on that, because that will cost them

electorally. It's the Labor voters who go first in these types of conflicts if it gets to conscription.

And of course, Labor has split over conscription in 1917, which was essentially

deeper splits. It was the stress point of deeper splits. And we have similar deeper splits at the

moment. It's not Catholic and Protestant this time. It's pro-Palestine and pro-Israel sections

in the Labor Party that I think the next great fault line will be along. Of course, success and

electoral success covers this stuff. And nicely, while you're winning the divisions don't seem

as important as when you're losing. Well, I hope we don't get conscripted, David, because it's

going to do the podcast while we're on the call of duty in Iran. I know. It's not going to be good.

But one of the big questions that a lot of people have been asking us over the past couple of weeks,

about these attacks. And they have been going on for two weeks. Well, what is this

all supposed to achieve? And I guess it was supposed to be a show of strength by the

United States. And sure, you're going to get that with all that footage of buildings being

bombed in Tehran and other parts of Iran as well, all of those oil deposits being bombed as well.

But it's hard to see what the real purpose is here. And I don't think that we're dealing

with all of this. But this is what a lot of military experts are saying, what is the purpose

for all of this except for creating chaos, I guess. But that idea of trying to reshape the region,

well, that's sort of approaches becoming less effective. But the United States is behaving like

it's still in the 1950s. And the world has changed quite dramatically since then. And as we've

said in the past, the United States is still the most powerful military force in the world.

That hasn't changed. But I think that what has changed is the ability for any military force to

control these kinds of air coming. I'm not suggesting that they at norm in the 50s and 60s

when he was any sort of success nor was Afghanistan. But the point that I'm making is you just

don't win these wars by just thinking that you'll win these wars. You've got to have competent

military leadership, competent political leadership as well. And it's got to be a clear

military strategy. I think there may be even over the past five to ten years. There are new

alliances that have been created. There's the BRICS alliance of which Iran is a part of since

two years ago. That's primarily an economic and trade group. But the United States sees this

BRICS initiative as a threat. So there is a possibility that the US action at the moment is all

based on reducing the influence of BRICS. It's already got Russia on the outer over its

war on Ukraine and just pointing out the Russia and Israel be carrying out the same kinds of

war crimes in their respective wars. Israel is behaving far worse, but it's Russia on the

outer. I don't don't know any of these actions, but just wanted to point that out. And

this is all related to that rules-based international order. That's all we've been pretty much

hearing about with all this justification. So all based around the rules-based order, which is

current for US imperialism, but I think it's just to make sure that the world operates according

to the rules set by the United States. But I just don't think the United States is actually in a

position to be able to do this for too much longer. It is no doubt that the world has changed.

There's no doubt that the United States has lost a lot of its legitimate power. People aren't

looking to the United States for leadership in the way they used to. The rules-based order is

really an attempt for the old power structures to say we're in charge, live with it. We will

break a law, but you have to. Of course, rules are no good if they apply differently to different

people in a way that's not fair or just. Trump is the symptom of the, but one of the ways this

manifests is that he's not taken seriously as a president in a way that Obama was in a way that

even Bush or Biden were. They were taken seriously as presidents, partly because they took the

role seriously, even if we disagreed vehemently with them or not. The second Bush, George W. Bush,

pushed what they were able to do and probably transgressed, but were likely to get away with some of it,

but tried never not to take away the seriousness of the office of presidency, knowing that once you

lose that legitimacy, you're gone. Trump has never worried about legitimacy. He's much more of an

authoritarian or even dictatorial leader, which is saying something after Bush. He's less worried

about this stuff until it starts to affect him, until world leaders shun him at things. He's not

being treated the way Obama or even Hillary Clinton was. I think the other thing we've got to do

is know that there are people in the White House, as you said, who are basing their whole foreign

policy on a very flawed theology that's presented as the inevitable unfolding a history. Now,

there's no real such thing as the inevitable unfolding of history, but these are people who will

listen to their heart, and their heart always comes up with stuff they agree with. It's really

funny. The heart never says, oh, we need peace and we should leave this bit of the area alone and

go and look after the poor in our area and be humble and be meek. It's all about I'm going to help

Jesus return. Jesus promised it two thousand years ago, said not more than one generation will pass

before I come back. Let me tell you. We're still waiting, but I think just looking at some of those

historical factors, it just seems to me that the United States is trying to wage the wars from the

past, or it's looking at past history to God in the future, and history is always, well,

current affairs are always changing, the world is always changing as well, and it just seems like

it's basing its current action in Iran on previous activities in Libya, in Iraq, the

backgrounding in Syria that it got into as well, and those of more or less been successful campaigns,

whatever we might think about it, also known as peric victories, and they're trying to do that now

in Iran, and the way that they've operated in the Persian Gulf area or Middle East,

West Asia area is that all of this stuff is based on having those military bases. In so many of

the Gulf states that have been developing over the past 50 or 60 years or so, and they've made

key deals, they've used blackmail, financial control with corrupt authoritarian governments,

such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and to me it's a lot there. Well, the total world, mafia,

sanctions, punishment, blackmail, assassinations, everything to keep those countries aligned with

the United States, and quite often it's against the will of the people who live in those countries.

And I guess I've brought this issue up quite often already, but you just wonder how long

they can keep holding this process together for, and I'm pretty sure that Qatar and Bahrain

would probably quietly happy about those Iranian attacks on those US bases on their own territories,

but the upshot is that the Persian Gulf, it is one of the most energy and resource-rich regions

of the world, and the US wants those resources cheaply or for free by stealing it, and I think

this is probably what it's all about, but they might not be getting their way this time around.

There are analysts who say that America has lost the war already. There were rumours that

American Navy withdrew from the Gulf. I don't know how true any of that is, but the fact that

this stuff is being said, I think, says a lot about how much regard US firepower is held in

at the moment. It's gone from being, we hate it, but we're scared of it too, we hate it.

And of course, when your leadership is seen to be weak, when your leadership is seen to be

incompetent, you're going to lose, and the big worry is, of course, that the leadership will

either double down in some kind of way, either by trying to have a limited nuclear war or by

sending more troops over, none of which will be good for Trump. And of course, Trump is about

how he looks more so than how does America look? Even Bush had his eye on how does America look?

How can we maximize profit for the big American companies? Trump is about how can I maximize profit

for myself? How can I be revered and feared and loved and everything that great leaders copyright

trademark? The dear leader. Dear leader, why can't I be revered like Kim Jong Un or even Vladimir

Putin? And what history has showed is that it's not often that these end up terribly well.

For every Franco, there's a Mussolini at Chuchesco, a Hitler, Idiomin, Saddam Hussein,

on and on it goes. You end up on one side of the ledger or the other. And Trump's heading up

to the larger side of the ledger by the looks of things. On you referred to this briefly before

David, but there is another factor that doesn't really get discussed too much. And that's the role

of religious ideology within American politics and also within the military. And it's hard to

imagine the United States as a theological state or a theocracy, but this is what happened in

the White House just a few weeks ago. I pray for your grace and your protection over him.

I pray for your grace and protection over our troops and all of our men and women serving

our armed forces. And Father, we just pray you'll continue to give our president the strength

that he needs to lead our great nation. As we come back to one nation under God's

individual liberty and justice for all of us. We pray you are heavily blessed upon him.

And Jesus, thank you. So that was a group of Christian Zionists and

evangelists and Pentecostals praying with Donald Trump in the White House. And

here's Paula White. She's the senior spiritual advisor to Donald Trump. And here she is speaking

in tongues. And strike and strike until you have victory for every enemy that is aligned against

you. Let there be that we would strike the ground for you will give us victory God. I hear a

sound of abundance of rain. I hear a sound of victory. The Lord says it is done for angels are

being released right now. Angels are being dispatched right now. For angels have even

been dispatched from Africa right now. They're coming here in the name of Jesus from South America.

They're coming here. Now, David, I've always been told that you should not criticize the things

that you don't understand. But that was batshit crazy. You know, sure you can do all of that in

the privacy of your own home. But advising the president of the United States on key war strategies

and calling on the angels from Africa and South America. Well, I've just got a feeling that

that's not going to work so well. But maybe that's just me. But I think the problem is that the

Bible is now being used to guide the foreign policy of the United States as it is in Israel

pretty much. You know, this is what the Bible says according to our interpretation of the Bible.

Therefore, we've got the right to bomb Iran. And that gives us the right to bomb Gaza or Iraq or

Syria, still Venezuela and oil. We can do this to any country in the world based on what it says

in the Bible. And I think this growing influence of evangelical Christianity within American politics

has always been there. But I just think that this is a real problem. And remembering that there are

around a hundred million evangelistic Christians and Zionists in America out of a population of about

350 million or whatever it is. And this didn't start under Donald Trump. And I guess McCarthyism

had that same sort of zealotry. He was Catholic though. Joe McCarthy. But during the reign of George

W. Bush, well, it did have those strong Christian undercurrents. And there's nothing wrong with being

Christian or Catholic or Islamic or Jewish or whichever religion you choose to be like atheism is

pretty good as well. But when it starts determining all of your key political decisions and especially

military decisions and then using the Bible or religion to go after war, well, it's almost like the

crusades never ended. And they're trying to bring on the end times. And it's just such a dangerous

way to behave in politics and especially in a region which is so volatile.

Ronald Reagan has a lot to answer for because he was the one who brought in a lot of evangelical people.

And there was a big push to try and force Armageddon as described by a very particular and as I

understand it, wrong reading of the prophetic books of the Bible. And that faction instead of being

purged. And again, it's not about not being able to have belief that plenty of good people have had

very honest and profound belief and have expressed themselves in their worship through speaking

in tongues and what have you. But when that becomes a way of expressing power, it becomes highly

problematic. Sure, have it as a basis of your faith. Kevin Rudd, for example, he strived Jimmy

Carter in the States strived to make his faith the basis of his presidency. Didn't work so well,

but there were other factors. But no one doubted his faith. And he never believed that he was bringing

Armageddon into things that he believed that he was doing the best thing for America. Whether it

was or not is a whole other podcast discussion for a whole other time, but he was a model. And in

fact, many Eisenhower was a devout Methodist, as I understand it, although it's a different Christian

tradition as was Carter's. But my point is it's not the faith that it's a problem. It's how you

utilize that faith, which is the problem. And yes, I'd never judge anyone for expressing their faith

in the way that feels best to them. But when faith starts to impinge on public policy, we're

allowed to criticize. In the same way, we're allowed to criticize people who own personal decisions

on policy, not their personal life, unless that impinges on their job in some kind of way. But when

things enter policy, it becomes pretty much fair game to criticize and to question and to stress

test and to judge. And all roads always lead back to Australia, because that's where we are, David. But

once again, Australia is getting involved in someone else's war. And of course, it's always the

United States. We saw it with Vietnam in the 60s, 50s and 60s, 70s, Iraq in Afghanistan. And it

just always seems to be the same pattern. It always starts off with this small commitment, small

contingency that's sent over to whatever country it is. And this time around Australia has sent

around 80 Australian defence troops to the UAE. I think a couple of surveillance planes as

well. And then before you know it, we're fully engaged for 20 years or more. And then we leave

after 20 years wondering what it was all about. It happened in Vietnam and happened in Iraq. It

happened in Afghanistan as well. And we've got a situation where the United States says jump

and Australia then says, well, how hard do you want us to jump? So the question is, well,

is Australia at war at the moment? And once again, the Foreign Minister's Senator Penny Wong,

she doesn't seem to know the answer to that. Is Australia at war? Thank you, Senator Waters.

What I have made clear publicly when I've been asked that is that we are engaged in collective

self-defense. And the reason we are doing that is that we know that the Gulf countries

have been the subject of attacks from Iran, countries that have not participated in strikes

against Iran, but have themselves been attacked with a barrage of missiles and drones,

including civilian targets. That purpose of that deployment is to help the UAE and other

Gulf nations defend themselves. And in doing so, it also helped the Australians who are

the Australians who are resident. Senator Waters. A point of order on relevance. Are we at war?

And I've responded by being clear that we are engaged in collective self-defense for the Gulf

nations. And David, just going back a little bit in time because we liked doing that on new

politics. This is what happened in 1939. When the Prime Minister of the day, Robert Menzies made

this announcement. Fellow Australians, it is my millingly duty to inform you officially that in

consequence of a persistence by Germany and her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war

upon her. And that as a result, Australia is also at war.

So that message has changed a little bit. It's no longer Britain is at war. So Australia is at

war. It's changed to the United States is at war. And as a result, Australia is also at war. So

I just think that it confirms that Australia just doesn't have any strategic independence

anymore. And the Albanese government should have had that chance or used that chance to change

or dump workers when it first got into office. That's what they should have done. And we suggested

and we've suggested this for some time, David, that it would be wise for Australia to diversify

away from the United States. But if anything, the Albanese government has not listened to us and

we've doubled down on this relationship. And the Prime Minister of Albanese might not be as

enthusiastic as John Howard was in sending off troops to Afghanistan and Iran. But Albanese

is still doing this. And I guess this is the price of being so firmly embedded within the American

defense system. But it's also pretty obvious that if the United States is at war, then Australia

is at war. And as we've suggested before, I think this is going to cause a lot of problems for us

well in the short term, but also in the long term. Yeah, it definitely will. And as one of our

commenters pointed out, I think, when Menzi said as a result, Australia is at war,

there was no such thing as Australian citizenship there. The Australian citizen

ship back isn't past till 1948. And every Australian was a member of the British Commonwealth.

So Menzi's actually had a firmer legal basis to be able to say Britain's at war,

so Australia is at war. That's just the way it is. We are all British. Australia was much more

of a geographical market if you were Australian. Now there was Republican movements and all of that

as well. But legally, if you had a passport, it was a British passport. And I don't think I really

need to say this, but just in case we have new listeners, I don't agree that it wasn't a good

thing for Australia to join a war that was over the other side of the world. In a couple years,

it becomes a little bit more defendable or defensible with Japan, attempting to use

Papua New Guinea to cut Australian supplies off and Singapore and all of that. But there was a legal

justification that Menzi's had. This is a less clear legal justification. As I said,

Orcas doesn't automatically sign us up to any conflict just because America's in it.

There are those who read it as such, but if you look at the agreement, it's not really that.

But it could be a de facto arrangement because a lot of this military hardware is going to be

produced either in the United States or by the United States, in Australia. It's almost like it

does become United States property. And therefore, if they go to war, will they call upon Australia

to join that war, whether it's actually in the agreement or not? We find ourselves in a very

and needlessly difficult position. Orcas should have been at the very least renegotiated when

the new government came in to a much fairer deal in terms of logistics. Those four submarines

that we're not going to get in 40 years are really going to change the balance of power here.

I'll bid, David, I think it might be nine submarines that we're not getting in about 40 years.

Oh, no, even better. Even better. And of course, all that does is hurt our defenses as resources

going to that, not let alone our health system, our education system, our law and order system,

our infrastructure system. We've banged on about this in the past. But this is what happens when

you have a charlatan like Morrison negotiated deal that we come out in the by far the worst.

But then a government that decides to play it safe and keep the deal in place rather than renegotiate

it. And now is the time where you say we have friends in the Middle East. We have a lot of Australians

from Lebanon, from Jordan, from Syria, from on and on. We need to protect our citizens there too,

going to war with their country of birth isn't really doing that. And that's the other thing.

And I think you pointed this out, how the other nations that are allies with America now

finding themselves allies with Israel. It was such a poorly thought through attack. And Trump is

really feeling the consequences now, even if nobody's admitting it.

That's it for this episode of New Politics. Thanks for listening in. And if you value independent

journalism without the influence of corporate backing, join new politics at newpolitics.com.au

and support us directly. It's just $5 per month. And we always try to keep it very simple.

If you like what we do, please send some support out way. It keeps our commitment to independent

journalism ticking along. I'm Eddie Jockovich. Thanks for listening in and it's goodbye to our listeners.

I'm David Lewis. We'll see you next time.

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