Is the world now a safer place? | Iran War Briefing Day 85 with Sean Bell

Added: 2026-05-24

[00:00:00]So, it's day 85 of President Trump's four to six week war against Iran. Ever since the ceasefire was called in early April, we seem to have got ourselves in a bit of a stalemate. The straight of muz is closed. And interestingly, President Trump claimed that the world would be a safer place following his attacks on Iran. But is it? On the 28th of February, President Trump launched a military campaign against Iran. Three clear objectives. One of which was to destroy Iran's nuclear capability. One was to destroy its ability to launch those nuclear weapons by using ballistic missiles. And the third one was to stop it threatening its neighbors. The initial strikes were very successful at taking out the Iranian leadership.

[00:00:42]Ayatollah Hermeni and many of his acolytes were taken out in that first strike. But a week later, Mushtaba Hami shown here was installed. And it demonstrated the resilience of the Iranian government. The um leadership is like a hydra. You might cut off one head, another one grows back. And it demonstrates that the Iranian leadership is very resilient and actually determined to survive and therefore almost certainly didn't deliver the regime change that President Trump might have wanted. Meanwhile, of course, the bombing campaign on the wider country continued a pace. The US is the global superpower when it comes to military capability and was able to strike targets across the whole of Iran with a degree of impunity. There's no doubt they degraded Iran's conventional military capability, but what success did they have against its nuclear facilities? The danger of course here is you want to stop Iran developing nuclear weapon, you have to remove the intent.

[00:01:36]And the only way to do that is through diplomacy, through negotiation, and to provide incentives for Iran to pursue a different path. The challenge, of course, is if you use bombing that you don't actually stop intent. All you do is potentially put the nuclear programs back by a few months, maybe a couple of years, but that's like mowing the grass.

[00:01:55]They will grow back again. The challenge, of course, here is that despite the evident military supremacy of the United States. The Iranians have not capitulated. They have still control of the straight of Hormuz. They've recently issued a new map that demonstrates where they claim they have control. And of course, the Iranians have significant leverage in any future negotiation. America has not delivered strategic success with its military campaign as yet. What is also unclear is exactly what the US strategy was in Iran. When I was in the military, we used to war game this scenario regularly. And whilst the conventional military of the US would completely overwhelm Iran, inevitably Iran would end up putting its foot on the throat of the global supply chain of energy with a straight of Hormuz. And we're in an entirely predictable situation and stalemate. So what are the wider implications for global defense of all of this issue? Well, most of the institutions like NATO, the United Nations, International Criminal Court and International Court of Justice were formed over 80 years ago at the end of the Second World War and have formed the bedrock of international security ever since. But of course in 2022 when Russia, a member of the United Nations Security Council, decided to invade Ukraine, it completely undermined the credibility of United Nations.

[00:03:13]Meanwhile, on the NATO front, the United States has threatened some of its NATO partners, particularly Denmark, over the future of Greenland. And then the US decided to go into Venezuela and pluck out Maduro and then go and launch a war against Iran without consoling or consulting anybody in the United Nations or any of its alliance partners. Why is that important? is important because how can the rest of the world be critical of Russia's invasion of Ukraine when America seems to have done a similar thing both in Venezuela and Iran? And more critically, how will China view this in its deliberations about when or if it decides to invade Taiwan?

[00:03:52]Particularly of interest as well is where does this leave the United Kingdom? Well, there's no doubt there is a significantly more dangerous global security environment. The other issue of course is how much that the UK can rely on President Trump and the United States to be the firm bedrock of our national security or whether we look need to look elsewhere. Also though we're no longer a member of the European Union which takes us away from one of the biggest alliances on our doorstep and the UK military is configured for wars of choice expeditionary warfare not for wars of national survival. None of those issues can be resolved quickly or inexpensively. So where does that leave us with a fundamental question of whether this is a safer global environment? Well, throughout my time and since my time in the military, the global security environment has been dominated by diplomacy, negotiation, and respect for other countries. That era is over. President Trump has introduced a new global order of survival of the fittest. And bluntly, the UK is not match fit.