The Why? Curve

As Iran gets pounded by the US and Israel, how are the Arab nations of the Gulf feeling about the resulting disaster to their economies, and the missiles and drones landing on their cities? This wasn’t a war they wanted, and they are being left to pick up the pieces, including getting access to the Straits of Hormuz to export oil and gas. Dr Mira Al Hussein, of the Centre For The Study Of Islam In The Contemporary World at Edinburgh University, joins Phil and Roger to discuss the Gulf Arabs concerns about this conflict.

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The Iran war is not going down well in the US. Donald Trump's MAGA movement is badly split - this was the president who promised an end to 'forever wars' and provide a stable economy, yet troops could soon be on the ground in Iran and the price of filling up your car keeps rising. So how damaging is all this going to be for the president in a year of crucial elections? Or - if he somehow wins a great victory - could it be the saving of his presidency? Phil and Roger ask Paul Whiteley, Professor of Government at the University of Essex

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With the Iran war not going entirely as planned, does Donald Trump have his eye on another easier regime-change much closer to home? Cuba has been on his to-do list for a while, but the signals are that he needs a quick win right now, and Havana fits the bill. The Communist regime there is on its knees anyway, with its oil from Venezuela cut off, and its economy falling apart, 67 years after the Castro revolution. So could Cuba cut a deal, and what would that look like? Professor Joseph Gonzalez of Appalachian State University, North Carolina, who is writing a history of US-Cuba relations, tells Phil and Roger a surprising number of Cubans would welcome a new dose of US neo-colonialism 

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The US attacked Iran without even trying to get the UN onside. It’s made it pretty clear it doesn’t feel the need to work within the UN charter, or any other rules it doesn’t like. So when the world’s biggest power ignores international law and does what it wants, has the whole system broken down? Are we now in a world where nations are unconstrained? Or has that always been the case, and the rules were just a fig-leaf to conceal the realities of power politics? Phil and Roger ask Dr Ben Murphy, Deputy Director of the International Law and Human Rights Research Unit at the University of Liverpool.

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The US aircraft carrier groups were in place to threaten Iran as talks were still happening - and they helped launch the war when Donald Trump felt the negotiations were not going as he hoped. Iran’s foreign minister said Trump ‘bombed the negotiating table’. So is this the new pattern in big power geopolitics? Talk, but have a big stick waiting to ensure concessions. Or is it a return to a nineteenth century imperial style of big-power domination and intimidation? Andrew Latham, Professor of Political Science at Macalester College, and Senior Washington Fellow at the Institute for Peace and Diplomacy, talks to Phil and Roger about the return of gunboat diplomacy.

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A government with a thumping majority that can't seem to run the country. U-turns every week and a permanent sense of crisis. And none of this is new - Johnson, Truss, Sunak, May. The country doesn't seem to be able to find a set of politicians who are able to get on with running things. Or is it just that we won't let them, because every problem becomes a social-media-fuelled crisis? Is the Starmer administration just a symptom of a system that doesn't work? Tom Skinner, a former special adviser to five Conservative prime ministers, tells Phil and Roger what it feels like inside a Number Ten under siege, and what needs to change to make the UK governable again. 

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The internet transformed the world with free information on everything for everyone, but is that era ending? The Chinese and Iranians can control what their people can see and read, and in the West there's a growing push to stop the young and vulnerable from getting access to violent, disturbing or pornographic material. Tech firms are being threatened with regulation unless they impose safeguards. Does all this signal the internet turning gradually into the 'splinternet', with the loss of a valuable freedom, or is it an overdue reassertion of sovereign power over Silicon Valley? Scott Malcomson is a fellow of the German council on Foreign Relations, and back in 2016 wrote the book "Splinternet: How Geopolitics and Commerce Are Fragmenting the World Wide Web". He tells Phil and Roger how things have changed since then.

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Champagne on the beach of a private island in return for cosy deals and confidential memos - has the Epstein saga lifted the lid on a world of elite partying and low morals at the heart of political and business decision-making? Could the conspiracy theories about global control by hidden cabals have a kernel of truth? Ronen Palan, Professor of International Politics at City St George’s University, tells Phil and Roger it’s not a new phenomenon in the world.

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Have we just, quietly, passed a key stage in human evolution? Scientists in California say they have created - not adapted - a virus. Artificial intelligence has enabled them to write the genome from scratch, and while a virus isn't, by definition, alive, they say they have the means to go further - to create life. What this could bring is a massive leap forwarded in treating disease, but it could also bring terrible risks - designer babies, insuperable biological weapons. Is this a technology anyone can control? Adrian Woolfson, co-founder of the biotech company Genryo, and author of "On the Future of Species: Authoring Life By Means of Artificial Biological Intelligence" tells Phil and Roger about the astounding opportunities and dangers.  

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Is Reform UK looking increasingly like Conservatives 2.0? High-profile defections like Robert Jenrick and Suella Braverman help add experience to Nigel Farage's party, but will they also mean it's not really the new force in UK politics many of its adherents want? And, as Kemi Badenoch's Tories drift further to the right, where do centre-conservative voters go? What is the future of the right in Britain? Tim Bale, Professor of Politics at Queen Mary University of London, tells Phil and Roger.

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