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If I wanted the Iranian regime to collapse and be replaced by something better, and I was ready to expend blood and treasure to achieve this, and I wanted to make it all happen in a welter of death from above, with aircraft carriers and missiles and bunker-busting gravity bombs…

I'd start 10 years ago with the seeds of insurgency, and creating a government-in-waiting, and building slowly, and by now Reza Shah would be sitting on the Peacock Throne swearing in a new democratically elected prime minister.

Why hasn't this happened? Because the Iranian state is optimised to prevent exactly this. They're really, really good at repressing dissent and nipping insurgency in the bud.

Good thing the Americans and the Israelis aren't actually trying to do that, because they'd be failing.

I mean, we'd all cheer at that new democracy with a population of millions shrugging off the fanatical Twelver Shi’a Islamist dogma they've been schooled in from birth. The Iranians deserve freedom and prosperity same as everyone else.

But that's not why this is going on.

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Also, the Chagos Islands: Hamish Falconer says the deal is paused. Number Ten says it isn't. Right: It isn't paused; it's stalled.

Also, most of the viewers of this Substack are American. Is my talk about British policy too much… inside baseball?

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I noticed that Admiral Tony Radakin wasn't saying this. I also notice that neither of them seemed to have a force package in mind, so I’ve suggested one in this morning’s video.

I'll note that on Xitter, known for… being Xitter, my thoughts attracted some subtle racism. Somewhere in the Afterlife, Roald Dahl is smiling approvingly and thinking, ‘yes, she is a hook-nosed warmongering old b***h’.

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At about the same time I recorded this, Netanyahu got onto his flight home from Washington. He said, in effect, that President Trump was going to go back to the Iranians with all three Israeli demands: no Iranian nukes, no Iranian ballistic missile production and no Iranian proxies (Hizballah and the Houthis in particular) in the Middle East. President Trump posted to Truth Social that he’s going to get whatever deal with the Iranians that he’s going to get. Because the Iranians have been very clear that they’re only negotiating a freeze on their nuclear programme, Bibi is going to have a bit task to spin this visit as anything other than a disaster. As President Trump sits down with the bright lights of the Board of Peace to fundraise for reconstructing a Hamas-controlled Gaza, this is going to be difficult. Difficult why? Difficult because Netanyahu has to call an election before October, and he’s no longer going to be viewed as the victor over the Iranians (the way he was last Summer), or the victor over Hamas (the way he was last Autumn). As the major defeat of 7 October 2023 gets hung round his neck, he’s going to have a hard time getting enough votes for his own party, never mind forming a coalition.

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Witkoff and Kushner are going to Israel for meetings. The Israeli Chief of Staff General Staff is in America for meetings. Open Source sites are marking down every chalk heading into the region, and of course the USS Delbert D Black is steaming around the Red Sea (other ships are available). Subtle it ain't.

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Britain’s main export to China is cars, not Scotch whisky. A 5% reduction in China’s tariff on whisky isn’t going to add much to Scotland’s balance of trade with the People’s Republic. Maybe it’ll hit £180M a year? Compare that with more than £5Bn a year in British cars exported to China (and China’s 15% tariff on importing big diesel vehicles like Range Rovers).

Starmer was promised visa-free travel in China for UK nationals with no timetable for implementation. Not earth-shaking, because lots of other countries do too. We act as though there has been some sort of chill in UK-China relations because it’s been years since a British Prime Minister has visited. There was something that came up in the intervening period, though, wasn’t there? Something that made travel to China difficult?

Completely trivial: China’s tariff on imported British warships is, like China’s tariff on imported Scotch whisky, 5%.

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I’ve been made aware by my social media advisor panel (I have 20something daughters) that Substack does a fairly poor job of creating clips for posting to the socials. The ‘AI’ appears to be particularly good at creating thumbnails in which I’m blinking. I’ve also seen that YouTube shorts based on those clips do very well if I’m in front of a bookcase, less well from my desk in my study. I’m not sure what I’m going to do about this, because I’m not sure I care about how this appears on the Socials or on YouTube.

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Yes, European leaders need to be robust in responding to the American approach to Greenland, but the Governor of California telling the rest of the world not to truckle and bow to the man with the flamethrower is rich. If anyone needs to take a robust line with America’s Chief Magistrate it's the elected representatives of the American people. Gavin Newsom does a good line in snotty posts on Xitter, but if he can't deal with American politics, and needs Europe to put air defence batteries on Greenland to deal with American SOF insertions, his chances of becoming President much less succeeding as President aren't impressive.

Meantime, Ukrainians freeze, the USS Abraham Lincoln is steaming towards the Iranians who needed it last week. US policy process isn’t focused; the rest of the world’s can be.

I apologised to the producer for nearly swearing.

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