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I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Iran The Latest. It's Tuesday the 10th of November 2026, the ninth month of the war between the US and Iran. On today's episode, they think it's all over, is it now? Donald Trump declares the Iran war effectively at an end, plus Iran's fridge attack and how the US prized open the Strait of Hormuz. I'm very happy to announce we are joined today by our favorite old salt, Tom Schaaf. Formerly of the Royal Navy but I think it's about time you start putting on your CV you were you were a commander in Iran the latest really. You seem to have been here longer than you were there. Yeah. Good to have you with us Tom. Let's start with this declaration. Is it the end? Let's just go through what Donald Trump has said. So this is him speaking at a White House press conference where he played down concerns that the US would escalate its military campaign. Here's what he has to say. More oil has come out of the Strait over the last week than at any point in the in the history of the Hormuz Strait. So we're doing very well. But at this point, it won't be necessary. Taking the military action doesn't seem to be a very necessary thing. But we're locked and loaded, ready to go for any reason that changes. Israel and the entire Middle East are protected from Iranian danger and threats. And we're seeing momentum toward the end of... This conflict, I think it's going to be ending fairly soon. Well, fairly soon anyway. Despite playing down the Iran threat, however, the U.S. State Department has warned Americans against traveling to Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Yemen, citing security concerns and limitations on its ability to provide consular assistance, although that doesn't really sound that new. And meanwhile, Mohsen Rezaei, Iran's top security official, is standing firm on Iran's demands. In a post on X, he called on the U.S. to surrender to Tehran's seven conditions to end the war, accusing Washington of spreading fake news about imaginary talks. Abbas Arragchi, Iran's foreign minister, said the war will not end either through military means or by increasing sanctions, but only through using the language of respect. Speaking to Iran's IRNA news agency today, he urged the U.S. to act on Iran's demands and conditions, which are stated in the two-day plan and are still on the table. So that's the diplomacy in the markets. The price of Brent North Sea crude, the main international benchmark, has dropped to under $90 a barrel for the first time since August, amid these growing hopes that the war could be nearing its end. Tom, you've been with us throughout this conflict, guiding us through the Strait of Hormuz. You know, we've sailed together these rough and rocky seas. Is it all over? Only in the mind of one person, the president. And I think what's extraordinary is that not only is the way he's saying it's over and Iran is saying, no, it's not. It's the fact that this is probably the fourth or fifth cycle where we've been through exactly this before over the nine months. The emphatic declaration of victory, the annihilation of their nuclear capabilities, Air Force, navies, whatever, followed by, you know, we've got the deal here. And Iran going, I mean, they even memed him at one point saying, I think he's negotiating with himself. And here we are again, a couple of months later, in the same cycle. Now, of course, what's changed is the absolute beating he just took in the midterms. Why? That's, you know, and the vicious criticism from his own vice president on this war. So he's, if he wasn't in a corner already, you know, the paint has just got even closer to him. The tone has changed. Just a little bit more from him. So he was writing on Truth Social the other night. He had a behind-closed-door meeting with the Qatari Amir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Thank you, Marnie. Qatar obviously kind of hosting and brokering the talks. And the latest from them, by the way, is that both sides are saying positive things, whatever that means. Anyway, this is what he had to say. I had an excellent conversation with Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdul... Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al-Thani, the Prime Minister of Qatar, wherein much was discussed with respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran. Most importantly, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait and others would prefer the status quo. The status quo. In other words, a continuation of the greatest naval blockade in history and the new Operation Iron Gate. Therefore, land and sea. All have agreed that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon. That is a non-negotiable. Should there be any change with respect to developments in the Middle East, the United States of America is locked and loaded and ready to go. At this point, however, that seems to be quite unlikely. Israel, the entire Middle East, are protected from Iranian danger and threats. We are seeing positive momentum towards an end to this conflict and will ensure that America's interests are at all times protected. At the conclusion of this military engagement, the American people, the world will be far safer and more secure. Thank you. Read all of that text and to be absolutely thorough. So, OK, OK, OK, he's not saying the end, but the tone has changed. And he's talking about we've been talking for ages about, oh, there's going to be new strikes. We've been talking about this, you know, expert after expert sat in that chair or been on that screen. Look, it's all looking like the Americans are getting their weapons ready for a big go after the midterms. Sounds like he's actually saying, no, we're status quo. We're going to have a blockade, a bit like the blockade of Cuba that was going to last forever. ...or indefinitely, the least worst option? I think there are a few options here, all of which, of course, the success to Trump may well look quite different to success to pretty much everyone else, certainly in the region and perhaps internationally as well. So when we talk about these things in terms of what president of the US wants, that is obviously important, but it's not necessarily the defining. part of this. But if we look at it through his eyes, he's got to get out of this corner he's in. It's ruinously expensive. It's just cost him a historic beating at the midterms. Thank They're using all their intercepting munitions, all their strike munitions. They've put a massive dent in their stockpiles. And now they're having to regenerate that, but it's going to take time. you So they have to get out of this situation. The problem is, it's almost impossible to pick a very a course of action that... ...gets you out cleanly to the satisfaction of both America, much. Israel, Iran, and the rest of the region, because they all want different things out of this. So I still, in my mind, and I did a little bit of analysis on this the other day, and I went as far as putting some percentage probabilities against it, which is risky. Oh, great. I may not go through them, but let's say 40%. ...is the highest probability of the next course of action, which is victory strikes, by which I mean he hits the nuclear infrastructure again and hits some power plants, makes a noise, puts up a firework display, says we've now obliterated their nuclear capability, which is a term we're now familiar with, and then walks away. And essentially leaves a clatter of pieces behind him for everyone else to sort out. I still think that is the most likely course of action. But that's very different to what he's saying, which is not walking away at all. It's kind of staying there for the... Right. So is he talking about something different? Yeah. Are you saying he does this and then he stays? Or you're saying actually, no, he doesn't maintain this Operation Iron Gate. He goes home. Yeah, I think that's the most likely course of action is that victory strikes and walk away. The status quo option, we had it, I think, at something like 20%, 25%. Okay. So lower, where you just stay as you are. So they keep... So they've got two aircraft carriers there now. They've got a third coming. When's it getting here? Is that the Theodore Roosevelt? Yeah, Theodore Roosevelt, potentially the end of this month. Galloping on his horse. Could be a bit earlier. Depends. It doesn't seem to be in any hurry, which is interesting. Anyway, and actually not necessarily required to maintain the status quo. The third carrier is your victory strikes and leave. So we should keep an eye on her because when she arrives, as the carriers so often do with U.S. maritime policy, they do determine what next. But the status quo option doesn't involve three carriers. In fact, they're going to very quickly want to reduce to one because they can't sustain it. They've only got 10 carriers, 11, but 10 really. Yeah, you're going to have an indefinite kind of deployment. Right, and the Pacific Command are going, hang on, where are our carriers? So they can't keep three there. They can't really keep two. They'll want to reduce to one. And then you have these dueling blockades, just like we have now. So in this month alone, Iran has struck 12 times. Merchant ships 12 times just in this month. Nothing since Sunday. According to UKMTO, that's our last report on them. I don't know, how exhaustive are they? They're very exhaustive, but they're still reliant on people reporting to them. And there have definitely been instances in the past, like I say, as we've been around this boy a few times, where companies have not reported strikes because it's not in their interest for whatever reason. So yes, there may have been a tail off, but that's because it was a huge uptick So we've got this constant sine wave of strikes, which over the last, it's also always been quite unhelpful to look at this over two or three days. If you look at over months, over the last month, Iran have massively increased their strike rates. And now, of course, America is also reinforcing their blockade and striking back. So we have the dueling blockades, which we've had in place since, I think, about June or July. And the aim there is to squeeze the Iranian economy to the point where it collapses or invokes an uprising. And I think both of those things are very unlikely to happen. The Iranian economy collapse, that's been predicted for months now and hasn't happened. An uprising from within just seems vanishingly unlikely. I think we parked that a long time ago. The systems that they have in place to suppress that would be absolutely unbearable. And, you know, we had that. There was that moment in January, and that's gone. And I think now everyone I speak to who understands how the internal of Iran works suggests that an uprising won't happen. In other words, the status quo option, where they're whacking ships, Some of whom are running. quite extraordinary errands past them getting out to sea swapping their fuel and then the normal ship with a normal crew goes to its destination and then the sort of sacrificial ship goes back in and does it again and that's why oil is now flowing back out through the straits but a lot of that has been ensured by Saudi who of course needed the oil to move this stuff at the moment about this Bloomberg story today about um Saudi Arabia's uh shipping line Bahri, yeah they're called running vessels through. So this is how the oil is moving. This is what's enabling... So the narrative is, it's working, we're getting them out, we've prized it open. Yeah, we're getting the same amount of oil out through the strait. And that has on occasions been true in the last month, again, looking at it over a sort of month period. But it's been with very few ships. It's been over 138 ships on average before the conflict. Recently, it's generally been in single figures. But because they're huge and because they're doing this shuttle run, you can get an enormous amount of oil out. And that came about because the Houthis struck the east-west pipeline. That closed off that route to Yanbu in the Red Sea. So that shut one very useful door that Saudi had to get their oil out and other countries had to get their oil out. So they had to find another way, which is why, again, about a month ago, this shuttle run of some Bahri ships, I think there are others who have been doing it too, doing this sort of run past the Iranians, almost taking the strikes. That's not sustainable, right? That is not a sensible business proposition. Is it not? But that's where we are now. That's the status quo. Yeah. I have no record in business at all. Well, I mean, look, imagine you're a mariner on one of those ships. I mean, it's working, but it's not sustainable. There is some talk that LNG, I know Capler said last week, they're detecting... LNG loadings at Ras Laffan in Qatar. LNG ships getting out as well? Again, some... Because you can't do ship-to-ship transfers. No, but some of them have done the sort of AIS, the dark and dash at night. And they've been escorted by US autonomous ships and aircraft. So the U.S. will go in and essentially suppress all the Iranian surveillance capabilities on the coast. And then this thing turns everything off, turns its lights off, and comes out under some sort of autonomous escort at high speed and then goes for it. Again, you know, it can work, but that's not a business model. So not sustainable. This Operation Iron Gate, this kind of blockade of Cuba-style thing is not going to work. And so you think... Short term. It works in the short term. It's not sustainable. It's not, you know, and I don't think it'll work on the Iranian economy, which is the whole point of it. There's a few other things knocking around today about which kind of raise eyebrows. And I had a conversation in the newsroom about kind of certain sources trying to put a certain spin on this and kind of suggesting... I'll read out what they are and then I'll give you the spin that we've had, the suggestion we've had from some people. So... Several things. First of all, the supermarket hacking stuff, which if you're interested, you can read a piece about by Roland Oliphant, really good journalist, works for The Telegraph on the website, should be up soon. Just, yeah. I hear he's okay, though. Thank Anyway, the supermarket fridge hacks. France now blaming Iran for it. This is last night's supermarket fridge temperatures suddenly soar up 50 degrees, you spoil millions of euros of food. Suspicion initially obviously placed on Russia. Now the French saying that it's an Iranian hacking group very responsible for it. It's an outfit called Shahid Kava, an accused cyber warfare unit much. which is meant to sit deep inside the IRGC. The commander has a... $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. Now faces an international arrest warrant from the Western government. It's a disciplined unit fusing cyber espionage, industrial sabotage and psychological warfare, et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, main takeaway from that. And Akhtar McCoy has actually done a profile of them on the website. The Iranians hitting French fridges. Then, US military evacuating a number of aircraft from Royal Air Force bases again over the past couple of days. Three refuelling tankers diverted from RAF B, Mildenhall and Suffolk to Germany. Thank At least six US planes relocated, we're told. And the Wall Street Journal reporting that it was prompted by a new threat from Iran, which US officials were alerted to on Monday. you Then in Israel this morning, or overnight, A group that apparently purports to be an Iranian-linked activist group so much. claims responsibility for a bunch of rather aggressive flyers being posted through people's doors in Tel Aviv. Thank you, Steve. Put it all together, it has been suggested to me that this is Iran getting ready for the next phase of conflict. These are the shaping operations of psychological warfare. Look, if I was an Iranian planner... Every single one of those things would be up for consideration. If you want a comprehensive plan, and I think we quite often militarily think about these things in terms of missiles and bombs and bullets. But, of course, as we're sort of discovering a little bit in the straightforward moves, that doesn't work on its own. You've got to wrap it in a comprehensive plan. And what we're seeing is Iran executing exactly that against us. So if there's an opportunity for malfeasance, whether it's in supermarkets, whether it's in... In banking, in undersea cables, in getting control of ships, for example, they will be investigating that. And it's therefore entirely believable that these things are strung together and it's connected. All the dots end up in Iran. Likewise, security at the U.S. air bases. We know we had the Fairford one a while ago. Here we are again with Mildenhall. I mean, one of the problems with these sorts of things is... Is that it's quite easy to execute. If you want to disrupt an airport, let's say Heathrow, you know, the phone call that does that. And that's been happening, of course. Yes, the phone call is about bomb threats. Bomb threats being thrown in to disrupt things. It's all part of the same package and it's all hybrid. It sits below the threshold of warfare. It's quite easy to execute. It's quite easy to make deniable. So, you know, if you were them, put yourself in their shoes, why would you not do all of this? And therefore, the French accusation that it's Iran isn't entirely believable. I suppose my question is why, what are they up to? Because, so one interpretation is that's them prepping for the next round of war. Okay, well, if they are, is that because they... They are going to spark the next round of war because they want it. Is it them trying to deter the United States and America and Israel from going into another round of fighting? Is it because they think that attack is coming now and it's inevitable and they're trying to get their shot in first? Or is it pressure and a negotiating tactic? I think it's even more fundamental than that. They just want to cause disruption. And that's it. And they will do that at every single opportunity they have. Now, if that spins off and makes it into a negotiating tactic, I don't think it's much of a deterrent. Because ultimately, if you've got three US nuclear aircraft carriers sitting off your coast, hacking French supermarkets isn't going to stop that happening. If they really wanted to deter that militarily, then they would have to look at... I suppose you could make the threat. You know, you show that we can do this, and maybe Allied governments, you know, pile more pressure on Donald Trump. So for God's sake. I understand how vulnerable we are. Could you please not? Yeah, I'm not sure it's that joined up. I really think it's more basic than that. They're just causing disruption in every single... They'll have a team working airports, they'll have a team working ships, they'll have a team working infrastructure, and they'll just be, right, and they'll have a plan, they'll have a map, and they'll just be executing it. Like I say, a by-product of that, a communications by-product of that will be the deterrence effect. And if you do this to us, we'll do this to you back. But I'm not sure that's what's driving this. Okay, so that kind of puts a pin in that theory. This foreshadows specific events or specific operations. I don't think so. I mean, again, the timing, it's very easy to join all these dots up and look at the aircraft carriers and go, okay, well, this is the time when the strikes will happen. And you can superimpose your own sort of theories of escalation on the events that are around you, and they may be right. I'm just, I'm always, I'm never convinced that it's that conspiratorial or at least that well-connected. Ultimately, you know, the way that they'll stop U.S. strikes isn't cyber-attacks in Europe. In fact, you know, that's not going to help at all. Perhaps a massive cyber-outage in the U.S. would have an effect. But ultimately, it's going to be how do they respond to more missiles coming in off the carriers and the U.S. air group out there. What do they fire back at that point? Can they stop the attack then? Because it's very clear that... Even the presence of their ballistic missile threat, of which they still have plenty, is not going to stop the US from doing these strikes if that's the course of action. I do want to mention one thing. I mean, everything they've warned about is we are going to regionalise the fact we're going to internationalise this war if you do that. So that's their deterrent. We're going to hit you back in places you don't expect. We're not going to let you confine this to the small operational window you want. So we're going to make it nasty. So they've got a deterrent message. One thing that might, I think it's worth mentioning actually today, So today. The Ukrainians, Russians and Americans are all meeting in Abu Dhabi, in the Gulf, in the UAE for three-way talks, which suggests to me you can't really start a war that would... regionalize and probably blow up, you know, see UAE targeted at least until that's over. Well, I mean, the UAE, of course, took over 50% of the strikes in the first days of Epic Fury, even more than Israel, which were down at 30%. So, no, I mean, the one thing Iran and the Houthis have shown to be very good at is escalation management. They've never pushed this beyond the threshold at which point you go, OK, that's that. It's always been, you know, I'm not siding with Iran at all. And just for the record, the idea of going in there and crippling their nuclear capability forever is a really good one. But thereafter, this operation has been conducted poorly and incoherently across the region and with no real depth to it. So I'm not siding with Iran here at all. And having operated very close to them over many years, I've seen the things that they get up to, and none of it's good. The regime, to be clear, not the people, to make a line there. But they are very good at pushing to a point and then backing off and then pushing to another. So they achieved their... They're sort of regional hegemon status, which they're so keen on. They do it without wasting all their munitions in the first instance. They keep capabilities back, like mines. They keep keeping these things back for use on a rainy day. Are you still sceptical about mines, by the way? Because we've had a bunch of reports, the Iranians claiming that things have hit mines. You still don't buy that? No, I don't. It's still Iran saying we've used mines because it's in their interests. Yeah. To just keep saying it. I haven't seen any mine strikes reported on UKMTO. They often talk about a projectile or something. It's an unknown projectile. They would have said by now, and the signs would be pretty unmistakable. So no, I'm standing firm, hopefully not just in sort of bullish ignorance, but I'm standing firm on the fact that mines haven't been used up. How big is the block? I mean, I'm just trying to imagine it. I know I'm going down a rabbit hole now, but if a container ship or a tanker hit a mine, how big is that explosion? Well, it's a how long's a piece of string kind of question, actually. They vary hugely in size. You could get quite small influence mines that bury themselves into the seabed, and they're made of GRP, so plastic, effectively, so you can't detect them with your sonars. They can have really quite small warheads. Some of them have shaped warheads, so they'll come up and literally blast through. If you've got a double hull, they can go through both. And some of them are just enormous lumps of explosive. And then the shipping variation as well. Different ships have very different hull forms, very different levels of resistance. I'll just turn it over. Ultimately, being hit by a mine is really, really bad. As we now know, you can be hit by a drone, you can be hit by a missile, and merchant vessels have a high degree of survivability. A It's probably second only to a well-fired mine and well-aimed torpedo in terms of kind of kinetic effect. You ever hit by a mine? you No, I've seen plenty bobbing around. I was in a mine hunter once upon a time, so I know what they look like. I I know what they can do. know You've seen them go off? Yeah, we would blow them up. All right. I think we've gone over the news. There's a couple of things I want to flag. much. One is that it rained in Tehran over the weekend. Yesterday there were very clear skies and so clear that lots of Tehranis got out their phones. They started posting pictures, lovely pictures of the cityscape and the Alborz Mountains on which it's built. One One user posting, you can see all the way to the end of Tehran today because I've been up on those mountains. It's usually like covered in smog, like those old pictures of L.A. where you can't see to the end. And right Rain, does it mean that the drought is over? Sadly, not. Thank you. Mazhar Gudazi, the head of the National Drought Centre, now, I was speaking to the Iranian news site Kavat Online. don't know He says they're still not out of that seven-year you drought that they've been through. Thank you. They sunk about 100 wells in Tehran to get through. if you can very Last summer, he says, we've seen land subsidence of over a meter. hear me. Too early to celebrate, sadly, unfortunately. much. But I thought I'd mention that because we have talked quite a lot about climate change. I don't know. And what's happening there? You mentioned the Houthis. Thank Akhtar was telling me in the newsroom earlier, I think it's just worth flagging that there are reports that they are bracing for new offensives, a big push against Taiz, the besieged city there, and Aden. you Thank you, Aden. I don't know if you have thoughts about that. You talk about Taiz. very The humanitarian disaster that's unravelling there is off the charts and quite under-reported here. In fact, I think the reporting here quite much. often confuses Yemen from the Houthis, as if they're the same thing. And we've got to put an absolute firewall between these two things, and to an extent, I think, separate it out from Iran as well. I think when the Houthis reignited a couple of months ago, there was a clear line to Iran. But post the midterms, we've got to start looking at Western Yemen. You know, they grow khat, that's a drug. Yes. And the dependency on that is huge. And it's almost... Guys chew that right in my flat, actually. Right, okay. They sit, they sit, they sit. Is it? Yeah. It's revolting and it does horrible things to your mouth. Yeah, but it's also one of the thirstiest plants on the planet. Is it? It's like double almost everything else. So in a country that's really short on water... And they are absolutely sucking the land dry and it's making the situation in Western Yemen is going to rumble on. Now, how this ties into the strikes against Iran. I've had half an eye on one carrier heading west into the Gulf of Aden to resume strikes against the Houthis. We haven't seen that yet. I wondered that once you've got three carriers, that might now be an option just to remind the Houthis of what this looks like, what it feels like, It's like, because they're operating with Quite a degree of impunity right now. But ultimately, in that situation, we've got to get behind the Yemeni government. We're giving them some humanitarian support. We're giving them some military sort of coordination, command and control support. RAF RAF are flying some sorties down there from Akrotiri, I think it is, up in Cyprus. Either way, we've got to really focus on Yemen you and make sure that we're doing all we can Long after Iran and that situation has resolved, if it ever does, very that problem is part of it, part of the issue. And if you're talking about strangling choke points, much. if you're talking about squeezing resources, everyone always talks about oil. But there's a lot more that comes out by ship through both those straits, whether that's LPG, whether it's AVCAT, aviation fuel, fertilizers. A really big one, microchips, helium. William, there's... About 20 on the list. A cat. A cat, of course. Yeah, a cat's local. But none of this, a lot of these things. Well, it's got to get to North London. Well, seemingly. I didn't know that until just now, but it makes sense. But the point is a lot of these things can't go by pipe. So when you look at the post-Iran infrastructure and go, well, pipes are clearly the answer. They're not. They're part of the package, but they're not a panacea. And as we've seen from the east-west pipeline into the Red Sea, they don't, this is obvious, but pipes don't move. And they're therefore very vulnerable to attack. I'm shocked. I know, it's extraordinary. But it's, you know, when people say it's the end of shipping, when people say it's the end of shipping, 20-plus U.S. airbases have been struck. So who says it's the end of shipping? People who look at Hormuz and go, shipping's done. Because we're too vulnerable to choke points. And if the international rules-based order and UNCLOS gets torn up forevermore, and every choke point becomes contested then, but of course that's nonsense. The ships move, and so when it comes to striking them, not a single US warship has been struck. 26 US air bases have been struck. It's a really obvious point, but pipes fall into that. You're not moving, you're therefore vulnerable, and they're quite hard to repair. I suppose we're getting to the crux of this, which is that, as sadly, as we know, this podcast is coming to an end. Nine months of war, and that kind of reflection. What is your takeaway of nine months of war? You think back to kind of where we were on the 27th of February before this all started and where we are now. Thank You know, where does this leave us in the world? Freedom of navigation and the ability to move stuff, heavy stuff around the world, unchallenged, for free, has underpinned global security for decades. To restore that freedom of navigation required a system of rules and laws, whether that's the United Nations Convention you. on the Law of the Sea, to coerce some form of behavior on the high seas to ensure freedom of navigation. Now, we've known for some time now that China pay little regard to that. From the Nine-Dash Line and their challenges in the Philippine Sea, in fact, there was a Hague ruling in, I think, 2016 that said their claim to the Nine-Dash Line was illegal, and they went, we don't care. So on the one side, you've got a superpower that doesn't really pay too much heed if it's not in their interest. On the other side, you had a U.S. superpower who absolutely had freedom of navigation hard-baked into their DNA. The US Navy, they do it all the time, far more than we ever did, and they do it globally because they've got the heft to do it. If they walk away from Hormuz, which I still think victory strikes and walk away is still the most likely solution, then that is them essentially saying, at a global level, we don't really care about freedom of navigation anymore, especially not over there. you know if it's here then that's fine but the but the you know the oceans are all connected it's not helpful that they're called different the point is also they i mean they've the one they gummed this up correct correct so they've caused this but but either way i mean almost sort of forget that it's happened we are where we are um the oceans are all it's one ocean We call them different names, which is a little bit unhelpful, but it's all connected, and they're all connected by these vulnerable choke points. And so it's very common when I'm talking to people about this, they see Iran and the Strait of Hormuz as completely irrelevant, like it's not even a thing. And of course, unfortunately, a lot of the dialogue comes straight back to the channel and what's going on there. We're talking about what's the Navy doing in the channel. You say, well, we've got a ship in the Strait of Hormuz, and they'll go, well, what's... What for? I think there's a great misunderstanding about the connectivity of all of this. I'm wondering if you think that's actually changed, and maybe the reporting of this war in national consciousness has raised awareness of that debate and so on in a way, or shifted that a little bit. Well, if it has, it's not reflected in any of our policy decisions towards the way we might wish to defend them. You know, there's a lag here. The idea that a terrorist militia in Western Yemen can close a vital shipping point, that we should be able to respond to that. What if that terrorist militia brings that threat to a port on the east coast of the UK, for example? What's our plan to defend? What's our UK resilience, national resilience architecture? I think these conversations are starting to happen, but it's very, very slow. And we remain very vulnerable for years to come. And in the meantime... This sort of shock wave that might be about to be dropped over freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. Because if America walks away, what happens next is Iran then charges a toll for everyone. Service fee. Service fee, maintenance fee for the maintenance of the navigation aids. Pilot, pilot, pilot. And then they'll shoot you with a missile if you don't pay. So that is not freedom of navigation. You know, that's the opposite of that. So what incentive do the Houthis then have to stop? What happens in Malacca or Taiwan or, you know... Or Denmark. Right, I mean, Denmark's an interesting... Because it's one of the three that doesn't have an alternative. So if someone challenges Denmark, let's say... You know, well, it's pretty obvious who would. You can't get out. Same as Hormuz, same as the Black Sea. All the others have alternatives. So if Malacca is challenged, there is at least a route around. It's not ideal, and Malacca is so busy, it would be expensive. But Denmark is, I mean, the Baltic and the number of cable cuttings, the amount of Russian interference there. But you look at the rate of increase of activity from them, it's in line with the Iranians, of course, them. They're discussing this. They work closer together, don't they? I wanted to ask, bring it back to the Royal Navy a little bit. The Sun have been covering very closely, and I think fairly well, actually, this question of our nuclear deterrent. So a few weeks ago, we had this report that three of our four boats were out at sea, unusually, which raised eyebrows. Is there something crazy going on, or is it just suddenly they're back? Now it turns out HMS Vanguard... Returned to port on Sunday, just days after setting sail, amid claims of a major defect on board. This is HMS Vengeance, which was meant to relieve, Thank you, Steve. on a patrol carrying the nuclear deterrent, has already set the record for length of deployment at 210 days. Yes. So... So they're still, having set the record, are still at sea, unable to be relieved. What's going on there? Yeah, I mean, it's nearly seven months. Creeping around at four knots. You can receive 140 characters a week from your loved ones, something like that. You can't reply. I mean, I mean, it's quite extraordinary. We did it. we did it in the in the 90s when the old class of submarines the Resolution class were asked to run on longer and longer because the vanguard boats were late to be built and i'll come on to why that's important but the Resolution i think they did like 108 day patrol or something like that and i remember very clearly the navy saying we must never let this happen again it's it's psychologically unsound for the people for the crew for the ship's company and here we are double basically double that and now we get to the fragility of these aging boats because we delay The late Dreadnought. I mean, it was like we were deliberately making the same mistake again. We delayed the build of Dreadnought to save money, to kick that can down the road. And so the V-boats, the Vanguard class, are running on. And, you know, they had a depth incident last year, I think it was, where they ended up at an undeclared depth. It made it into the press, and it was saved by the checks and balances you would expect. The point is, we're running these things way, way too hard. Now, the fact that one sailed and had to come back in for a defect, that's quite common in naval terms. You know, quite often you sail, something happens, you can't fix it at sea, you go back in. But of course, if you're the only relief for the boat that's already been out for 210 days, this is really, really bad. So I don't exactly know what's going on. Of course, no one does. That's the point of the deterrent. I do know that there are some sailors out there who want to come back home because they've been at sea for seven months incomunicado and that there's a fragility not just to the relief boat but to the whole system. That system is standing in danger. And I mean, you know, to watch the previous Defence Secretary and Prime Minister walk off a boat that had been at sea for so long, its hull had physically changed colour. The sun faded because they... Clearly, it's shallow water. And yet, that have almost no effect on defense procurement and expenditure. It's kind of, that's where we are today. There's a lot of soundbites, there's a lot of sticking plasters, but if you look into the infrastructure that supports all of our Navy, it is absolutely wafer-thin. And periodically, I think Dragon, you know, unable to get a Type 45 destroyer to Cyprus at the start of March. Yes, this has been a running theme of this podcast, I think. Yeah, you know, that's the most visible example I've seen of the Navy's inability to make, do and mend. It's the Navy's greatest strength as we get out of the door. And we tape things up and we sail towards the sound of gunfire. Dragon and the 45 issue was the first time I've, I think, seen quite so visibly. Actually, we just couldn't do it. Is the Royal Navy still sustainable? Yeah, it is. And it's still full of great people. I mean, look at the crew of this submarine coming back. You know, it still has some of the best of us doing it. But we are absolutely wafer thin all through this podcast. We've, we've, you know We've had you on with other people on, and that, that frustration has been has come through a lot from from from a lot of you know people like you who are, you know, X or people who are concerned about the state of the forces? Tom this is probably your last chance to speak to the audience of around the latest Because we are going on a fair, our final episode is on Friday week week. So, I mean, is there anything you would like to leave us with? I think it really comes back to what does the global maritime world order look like when this is finished? I don't know what happens next. I've had a go at saying what I think Trump will do next. I know that Iran won't agree with that. I know the region probably won't agree with it. So when this does resolve, what does that mean to the business of global freedom of navigation? That lives in a Navy guy's heart. And we spent an awful lot of our lives, in my case, 18 years at sea, ensuring that we could deter activities against it and if necessary fight to protect it. Where does this go? And is the global rules-based order that held this together, albeit precariously and with varying degrees of success, but provided guardrails, if they've gone... You know, what does it look like next and that to me is profoundly worrying and the reason we should really be, you know, kind of expediting and ramping up our defense procurement and spending more on our on our security and resilience than we currently are. Former Royal Navy commander and veteran of Iran, the latest Tom Sharp there, with his final thoughts on the war in Iran for this podcast. Before we go, another bit of news. The political fallout of the war in Iran continues to be felt in Washington, where Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, is facing impeachment. Thomas Massie, a Republican representative, filed articles of... Impeachment against Mr. Hegseth on Monday night that will force a vote later this week in which congressmen will be asked to consider whether Mr. Hegseth violated the U.S. constitution in his role overseeing the Iran war. Well while we were recording Mr. Hegseth has been giving a press conference in the Pentagon. This is what he had to say. What one disgruntled and defeated congressman is attempting is not oversight and it's not accountability. It's a political spectacle A personal manifesto driven by ego and resentment. In the 250 years of our American Republic, no Secretary of War or Secretary of Defense has ever been impeached for carrying out lawful military operations. And in our case, successful ones at that, not once. Let's be clear about what this resolution actually does. It tells our enemies, Iran, the cartels, every adversary watching that the United States will actually punish its own warriors and its own civilian leadership for successfully executing lawful military operations. It tells them that a single rogue legislator loaded with personal animus for the president can attempt to veto national security decisions made by the duly elected commander in chief. It puts a target on the backs of American warriors. By signaling that Congress will undermine their missions in real time. This is not patriotism. This is sabotage. President Trump gave this department what it has not had in a generation. A commander-in-chief with the courage to lead and the resolve to win. I stand behind every one of these operations. I was proud to execute them, and I would do it again tomorrow. We'll have more on that story tomorrow. And yes, we are back tomorrow. We're still standing for a few more days anyway. Until then, that was Iran The Latest. Goodbye. Goodbye.