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Israel-Iran: What does the road ahead look like for MAGA? | LBC
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Jun 22, 2025
Simon Marks joins Paul Brand with the latest on Trump's potential moves, after the US President announced a two-week wait to decide on involvement with Israel and Iran. The US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard previously testified that Iran was not building nuclear weapons. The President told reporters: 'I don't care what she said', adding that Iran was 'very close' to making one. Now the DNI director has changed tune, saying they could be produced 'within weeks'. Tucker Carlson, a longtime ally of Trump, also said in a newsletter that he was 'complicit in the act of war'. This comes as Pakistan says the President should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, after helping to diffuse cross-border tensions between them and India. Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp #lbc #simonmarks #israel #iran #netanyahu #middleeast #ukpolitics #keirstarmer starmer LBC is the home of live debate around news and current affairs in the UK. Join in the conversation and listen at https://www.lbc.co.uk/ Sign up to LBC’s weekly newsletter here: https://l-bc.co/signup
View Video Transcript
0:00
Morning to you, Simon
0:01
Morning, Paul. Thanks for joining me this morning. So, what do you think Trump's strategy is here
0:06
Because as Tony picked up on the messages there, it is a very difficult situation for him, isn't it
0:12
He might want to get involved, but his MAGA base certainly doesn't want him to get involved
0:17
And now he's given this kind of two-week hiatus while we've all got to wait to see what he does
0:22
Yes, I mean, I think Donald Trump is battling with Donald Trump
0:26
in the same way as the MAGA base is battling with the MAGA base
0:30
And Tony's absolutely right to identify some of those very prominent voices
0:33
that over the last week, from within Donald Trump's America First wing of the MAGA movement
0:41
have absolutely been urging him under no circumstances to get embroiled in Iran
0:46
They have a variety of different reasons for advancing that argument, but primarily they don't identify any national security interest for the United States in the conflict
0:57
And they say, if you cast your mind back to Donald Trump's second inaugural address on January the 20th of this year
1:04
as he had done on the campaign trail last year, he made it absolutely clear that he wants to be remembered for the wars that he doesn't get into
1:13
and the wars that he ends rather than the wars that he starts
1:17
So you've got this very active now group of influencers, Tucker Carlson, Joe Rogan, Candace Owens, a whole host of them, urging the president not to get embroiled
1:28
But then equally, you've got the more sort of pro-interventionist wing of the MAGA movement, symbolized by people like the president's own ambassador to Israel, Ambassador Mike Huckabee, the former secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, many of them evangelical Christians, all of them arguing that U.S. support for Israel needs to be absolutely ironclad
1:52
And this is Donald Trump's big opportunity to go in and make history by once and for all derailing Iran's nuclear ambitions
2:01
And I think what we've seen over the last week is Donald Trump, you know, tussling with himself
2:06
There's part of Donald Trump that wants to embrace that kind of Richard Nixon madman theory of the American presidency, as Nixon did with regard to the Vietnam War
2:17
he always wanted the North Vietnamese to be on the back foot, wondering what he was capable of
2:23
just how crazy could he be. And then there's the Donald Trump who really covets being the man who
2:30
brokers peace because he wants the Nobel Peace Prize Take a listen to what Donald Trump said yesterday to reporters on an airport tarmac so you can hear the roar of Air Force One in the background But he a man who thinks he should already have had the Nobel Peace Prize
2:47
and if you listen to this, he clearly covets it. Well, they should give me the Nobel Prize for Rwanda
2:53
and if you look, the Congo, or you could say Serbia, Kosovo
2:58
you could say a lot of them. You could say, I mean, the big one is India, Pakistan
3:04
I should have gotten it four or five times. I should get it for the..
3:08
I would think the Abraham Accords would do good with no. They won't give me a Nobel Peace Prize
3:14
because they only give it to liberals. Well, that explains it. Should have had it four or five times already
3:18
but I think that is clearly an issue in his thinking. What's he on about there, Simon
3:22
for people, you know, readers starting here? Because he wasn't president when the likes of the Yugoslav conflict were going on
3:29
What's he on about Serbia for? It is slightly curious. I mean, the Abraham Accords, one can understand him advancing that argument
3:36
And indeed, he's trying to expand the Abraham Accords, even telling the Syrian leader recently that now Bashar al-Assad is gone
3:44
They should embrace it. India and Pakistan, he's talking about stepping back from the brink of violence or rather heading off the violence that was underway just a few weeks ago over the disputed region of Kashmir
3:56
Where he's going with Kosovo and Serbia, I'm not entirely sure. Rwanda as well
4:01
I mean, that was 1990s, wasn't it? Rwanda too, yeah. Well, he's talking, when he talks about Rwanda
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he's talking about the peace that he's brokered between the DRC and Rwanda, which he has broken in the last few weeks
4:12
So, I mean, he does, you know, he's got a case to make on some of those issues
4:18
It is clear that this is a big issue for him. He went to social media talking about it yesterday as well
4:24
And I think it is reflective of the Donald Trump who earlier in the week
4:29
and this may have been a clue that we all missed, sounded absolutely beguiled by the fact that in the middle of this conflict
4:36
the Iranians had reached out to him. Take a listen to what he said on Wednesday. They want to meet, but it's a little late to meet, but they want to meet
4:44
and they want to come to the White House. They'll even come to the White House, so we'll see. I may do that
4:48
I may do that. That was the same appearance at the White House where he was saying
4:52
he likes to make decisions one second before they're due. Maybe he will, maybe he won't
4:58
So it was those comments that got more attention than Donald Trump there, even suggesting that
5:03
he sort of tantalised by the idea of welcoming Iranian leaders to the White House, which
5:09
would of course be the first meeting any Iranian leader has had with an American president since the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979 We talked about Donald Trump flip on Iran I want to talk about Tulsi Gabbard flip on Iran as well She the National Intelligence Director for the US
5:25
Just take us through what's been happening, because she's changed her mind quite drastically about the threat posed by Iran
5:30
So Tulsi Gabbard, as you know, as you say, is Donald Trump's Director of National Intelligence
5:35
And she's a controversial figure within the United States because Hillary Clinton voiced the criticism of Tulsi Gabbard
5:44
that many people have voiced, which is that she's a little bit too close to the Russians for comfort
5:49
So there is suspicion, certainly across Washington, D.C., of Tulsi Gabbard outside Donald Trump's Make America Great Again circles
5:58
and, frankly, even within them. Now, she is the Director of National Intelligence
6:02
She testified under oath in March of this year and said that the intelligence community
6:08
which she was representing in that testimony in the United States, did not believe that Iran had a nuclear weapon, was about to get one
6:17
or even that the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader, had reauthorized Iran's nuclear program
6:26
And so everybody listened to that back in March and thought, oh, well, you know, we're not going to war with Iran then
6:32
And indeed, it didn't seem like we were until Israel began its attacks last weekend
6:38
and then Donald Trump initially said he'd had nothing to do with it. and then in the subsequent days sounded more bellicose
6:44
He's now been asked twice about Tulsi Gould's comments back in March
6:49
and on both occasions he has insisted she was wrong. She was wrong to testify
6:55
She was wrong in the conclusion that she was representing on the part of US intelligence
7:00
Now, I don't think he's saying that she represented a false conclusion
7:06
I think he's saying the country's intelligence agencies are wrong about this
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And as you know, President Donald Trump has a long history of skepticism about the utility of the country's intelligence agencies
7:20
So she's under pressure. She was notably not invited to the White House for any of the national security meetings that Donald Trump has held
7:31
So she's really been frozen out. And there is speculation that she may not last long in Donald Trump's cabinet
7:38
but there has been this rift between the two of them and I haven't seen, is she making, is she stepping, walking that back now
7:46
and making a suggestion that she does actually think Iran has a nuclear weapon
7:51
I've not seen that. I'm not sure anyone lasts long in Donald Trump's cabinet anyway so she may as well start counting her days I just want to ask you lastly Simon about Starmer and Trump relationship because that was a big feature for us domestically here in the UK this week
8:05
Starmer was at the G7 and he was saying, you know, I don't think Donald Trump wants to get involved in Iran
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And then all of a sudden he's flying back to the UK having Cobra meetings saying, oh, I think actually maybe we need to be prepared
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for Donald Trump getting involved in Iran. How much of a genuine bond of trust is there
8:20
that exists between those two world leaders? Is Starmer sort of slightly, I don't know, blinkered really in believing that he has this special relationship with Donald Trump that actually Donald Trump just doesn't really have with anyone
8:33
I think if that is what Keir Starmer believes, and I'm not sure that he really does, but if that's what he believes, it's a very, very dangerous belief to put any faith in
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because we have seen Donald Trump in the past pull the rug out from under British prime ministers
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including Theresa May, when she became the first foreign leader to set foot over his transom in the White House the first time around
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And then he never held hands and he never bothered to tell her that as soon as she left the White House
9:01
he was going to announce a Muslim travel ban that, of course, did not go down well with either the British government or this country's Muslim and Islamic population
9:11
So I think all of these European leaders know they have to be unbelievably careful
9:19
The European leaders who are not Keir Starmer look jealously on the relationship that Keir Starmer has managed to forge with Donald Trump
9:28
And Donald Trump is open about the fact that he likes the UK, he likes Keir Starmer
9:33
You know, for the moment, at least, everything is rosy in the relationship, which may, of course, have something to do with Donald Trump's golf interests here and his business investments here
9:44
But all of these relationships with Donald Trump are absolutely entirely transactional
9:50
You can go from being flavor of the month one week to being on the outs the next week
9:56
And so any relationship, I think, is built on sand and it would be really dangerous to base hard and fast policy decisions on what you think is clarity about what Trump is planning
10:10
But I do think Keir Starmer, you know, when he said on Wednesday that he'd had dinner the previous night with Donald Trump and he was pretty convinced that Donald Trump was committed to de-escalation
10:20
And we all thought that Donald Trump was now sounding increasingly bellicose and wasn't committed to de-escalation at all
10:25
actually maybe the Prime Minister was right. All right, Simon, let's see what happens in the coming few days
10:31
You're going to have a busy week as well, because you are back sitting in for Iandale this week from 7pm
10:35
Good luck with all those shows, and thanks again for joining me this morning
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