Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey.
Speaker 1: It's Tuesday, March twenty four, twenty twenty six. Carl Sanderlan's
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Speaker 1: What's Donald Trump's end game in Iran? What does victory
Speaker 1: in this war look like for the US? And why
Speaker 1: did Donald Trump think he could go it alone and
Speaker 1: then change his mind? Our Washington co respondent Joe Kelly
Speaker 1: is here in just a moment. This was Donald Trump
Speaker 1: on the weekend, posting on his favorite platform, truth social
Speaker 1: We used an AI voice to read his post.
Speaker 2: If Iran doesn't fully open without threat the Strait of
Speaker 2: Hormuz within forty eight hours from this exact point in time,
Speaker 2: the United States of America will hit and obliterate their
Speaker 2: various power plants, starting with the biggest one first.
Speaker 1: By late Monday Australian time, Trump had changed his tune entirely,
Speaker 1: saying he would delay any assault on Iranian power infrastructure
Speaker 1: by at least five days, and that America was in
Speaker 1: positive talks with the Iranian regime on the total cessation
Speaker 1: of hostilities. Joe Kelly is the Australian's Washington DC correspondent.
Speaker 3: He seems to be swing from one extreme to the other.
Speaker 3: There are all these contradictions in his position. You know,
Speaker 3: Iran is militarily decimated, they're beaten. Yet he's called on
Speaker 3: allies and partners of the United States to try and
Speaker 3: help clear out the Strait of muz and not just
Speaker 3: the United States allies and partners, he extended that offer
Speaker 3: to China as well. So I think on Friday he
Speaker 3: posted that the United States was very close to achieving
Speaker 3: its military objectives, and then, of course the next day
Speaker 3: we got the Truth Social Update where he was providing
Speaker 3: a forty eight hour deadline, which is a massive escalation.
Speaker 3: So we are seeing these massive shifts from the President,
Speaker 3: and in my view that points to again a sense
Speaker 3: of spontaneity, perhaps not a clearly thought out strategy. Now,
Speaker 3: supporters of the United States president will say this is
Speaker 3: all part of Donald Trump's game, where he likes to
Speaker 3: maintain a sense of unpredictability. But I think there's also
Speaker 3: a flip side to that, and the flip side is
Speaker 3: it looks like chaos and a president who doesn't really
Speaker 3: have a plan. I mean, the price of gasoline at
Speaker 3: the pump has gone up about a dollar. It's hovering
Speaker 3: about four dollars now, so that's a massive increase in
Speaker 3: prices in just less than a month. So I think
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is facing economic and political crisis point here,
Speaker 3: and it's going to be fascinating to see what he
Speaker 3: actually does.
Speaker 1: Claire, I think one of the things we can be
Speaker 1: sure that he doesn't want is a twenty year Afghan
Speaker 1: style mission to change a country. He doesn't want to
Speaker 1: own Iran for the rest of his life. But he
Speaker 1: does have an investment, a personal investment in the Middle
Speaker 1: East working out. You know, he's on the Board of Peace,
Speaker 1: his family is deeply involved. He wants to turn Gaza
Speaker 1: into the new mar Lago. Apparently, so Donald Trump personally
Speaker 1: and as president needs to win here bombing the power
Speaker 1: stations in Iran, that would send around back to the
Speaker 1: pre industrial era and make it kind of impossible for
Speaker 1: there to be a functioning state there. How do you
Speaker 1: think he steps his way through all that? I mean,
Speaker 1: does that mean do you think that bombing the power
Speaker 1: stations is actually an empty threat?
Speaker 3: Donald Trump's playbook usually, and this is what makes him
Speaker 3: so fascinating. I think as a politician is to engineer
Speaker 3: a sense of crisis, or to embrace a sense of crisis,
Speaker 3: to create opportunities for himself, to create leverage. But this
Speaker 3: is in the middle of a very serious conflict in
Speaker 3: the Middle East. So it may be an attempt to
Speaker 3: engage with the regime to try and negotiate, And it
Speaker 3: may be an attempt by the president, like he has
Speaker 3: so many times, to try and find creative solutions by
Speaker 3: embracing this sense of confrontation and crisis. But I'm just
Speaker 3: wondering this time around, Claire, whether the Iranians are going
Speaker 3: to go for that. More broadly, I think, actually this
Speaker 3: has been one of the strongest until now, I should say,
Speaker 3: one of the strongest points of Donald Trump's second term
Speaker 3: and first term in terms of his foreign policy. He's
Speaker 3: cured the Abraham Accords, which was so critical in trying
Speaker 3: to normalize relations between Israel and the Arab world. And
Speaker 3: we also had the ceasefire that he oversaw between Israel
Speaker 3: and Humas in his second term. So his record on
Speaker 3: the Middle East is strong, and I think he knows
Speaker 3: that his historical legacy is now on the line with
Speaker 3: this conflict with Iran, and the stakes for him are huge.
Speaker 3: This will certainly go on to define his legacy and
Speaker 3: at least his second term.
Speaker 1: For sure coming up. So is this even technically a war?
Speaker 1: The United States has not actually declared war here, and
Speaker 1: of course that's a power that rests with Congress. Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: as president is commander in chief of the United States Military,
Speaker 1: so he can really do whatever he wants, but Congress
Speaker 1: does hold the purse strings. You're reporting, Joe that Pete
Speaker 1: Hexth is talking about or there are reports that he
Speaker 1: is going to request two hundred billion dollars from Congress
Speaker 1: to fund this war, which is no doubt very expensive.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Are we're inching towards an actual
Speaker 1: formal declaration of war here or Congress getting involved in
Speaker 1: some way?
Speaker 3: I think the problem with this request is that there's
Speaker 3: no political consensus around this war. In Washington. This is
Speaker 3: a highly partisan conflict where the Republicans and the Democrats
Speaker 3: are divided on either side of this question. So in
Speaker 3: terms of this being able to get through to be
Speaker 3: approved by the Congress, I don't like the president's chances
Speaker 3: of that at the moment. And Chuck Schumer, when he
Speaker 3: was asked about this, said that the request for two
Speaker 3: hundred billion dollars was preposterous. Now, to put it in context,
Speaker 3: that's more money than the United States has provided in
Speaker 3: assistance to Ukraine, which is a conflict that's been going
Speaker 3: on for four years. So it's a lot of money.
Speaker 3: And I think it also shows that the United States
Speaker 3: is concerned about their munition stockpile. This was one of
Speaker 3: the issues that was put on the agenda that people
Speaker 3: had expressed concern about before this conflict began. The United
Speaker 3: States wants to make sure that it has the capacity
Speaker 3: city to be able to sustain this fight. And really
Speaker 3: there is a clock on this conflict at the moment
Speaker 3: from the United States perspective. So look, it's a lot
Speaker 3: of money. It would amount to a de facto war
Speaker 3: authorization vote in the Congress, and it goes to the
Speaker 3: fact that there is no consensus around this, and again
Speaker 3: it's an insight into how Donald Trump operates. He didn't
Speaker 3: try to build a consensus and he didn't consult with
Speaker 3: his allies either, Claire, which I think is one of
Speaker 3: the fascinating things that has emerged. A couple of weeks
Speaker 3: into the conflict, the United States President started asking for
Speaker 3: help to unclog the strait of hermus but none of
Speaker 3: the groundwork in that coalition building discussing this beforehand, was done.
Speaker 3: And we saw that in again very bombastic Trump fashion
Speaker 3: with Prime Minister Takaichi of Japan, where he said, we
Speaker 3: wanted the element of surprise.
Speaker 4: One question, why didn't you tell us eyes in Europe
Speaker 4: and Asia like Japan about the war before? Are so
Speaker 4: we are very confused about Japanese.
Speaker 2: Well, one thing, you don't want to signal too much,
Speaker 2: you know, when we go in, we went in very high,
Speaker 2: and we didn't tell anybody about it because we wanted surprise.
Speaker 2: Who knows better about surprise than Japan? Okay, why didn't
Speaker 2: you tell me about Pearl Harbor? Okay? Right, He's askab me,
Speaker 2: do you believe in surprise?
Speaker 1: It was so awkward.
Speaker 3: I think that the Japanese Prime Minister wished that question,
Speaker 3: which was asked for the Japanese reporter, never came up.
Speaker 3: That's for Sue and she the floor.
Speaker 1: She wanted the floor to open up and swallow her hole,
Speaker 1: didn't she.
Speaker 3: I think that's what it looks like. But I think
Speaker 3: that's perhaps one of the issues Donald Trump is facing
Speaker 3: this conflict player he didn't build a political consensus around it.
Speaker 3: And it also goes to this sense I think of
Speaker 3: US unilateralism and the new Trump doctrine, the Dunroad doctrine,
Speaker 3: America First foreign policy, it's no longer working the way
Speaker 3: it typically has within the multilateral assistant to the same extent,
Speaker 3: and Donald Trump wants to do things on his own increasingly,
Speaker 3: and we saw this with Venezuela. I think it's quite
Speaker 3: telling this conflict Operation Epic Fury came after Venezuela because
Speaker 3: clearly Donald Trump was very confident and encouraged by the
Speaker 3: performance of the US military in Venezuela in securing the
Speaker 3: outcome of removing and extracting Nicholas Maduro there. So I
Speaker 3: think in some ways we're seeing maybe the limitations of
Speaker 3: this new go it alone American unilateralism, and it's causing
Speaker 3: a bit of tension within the traditional United States Alliance network.
Speaker 1: Joe Kelly is the Australian's Washington DC correspondent. Thanks so much, Joe,
Speaker 1: Thanks Claire. Joe Kelly is the Australian's correspondent in Washington DC.
Speaker 1: You can read all the latest on the situation in
Speaker 1: the Middle East right now at the Australian dot com
Speaker 1: dot au