Coffee House Shots
Are we on the brink of ‘all out war’ in the Middle East?
The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis, and unrivaled books and art reviews. Subscribe today for just £12 and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online, along with a free £20 John Lewis or Witch Wars voucher. Go to spectator.co.uk/voucher Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectator's Daily Politics podcast. I'm Oscar Edenson and I'm joined today by James Hill and Michael Stevens, Senior Fellow at RUSI. So, events have moved on fast since Labour Conference, with the mounting prospect of all-out war in the Middle East. This comes after reports that Israel are preparing a ground invasion of Lebanon to push back the Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah. Michael, could you perhaps to start with take us through the situation at the moment? Well, we're in the middle of what is quite a dramatic escalation, that has been bubbling for some time, and you could argue that since the Hamas attacks on Israel of October 7th, 2023, we were always going to come to this point. The fact that it's taken a year has, in some ways, surprised people who thought that actually this might happen a lot earlier, perhaps in April or even in March. But we're here. The Israelis have decided that they cannot tolerate the presence of an organisation firing rockets daily into their civilian towns and cities. 70,000 Israelis are absent from their homes, just next to the Lebanon border. And Israel has said that their military mission is now to return those residents to their homes, and they will not accept a situation in which they are not allowed to return. As a result, they have taken it upon themselves to launch some very surprising operations, blowing up pages, walkie-talkies of Hezbollah commanders and lowering rank members. And then they've targeted commanders with a series of precision airstrikes, followed by a mass series of airstrikes against missiles and rockets in civilian areas, which are being kept in houses and towns and villages. This has led to quite a high number of casualties, well over 500, in the last 72 hours. And of course, created a crisis where it does look like the potential for war is very real. The international community, led by the US and France, are pushing for ceasefire a 21-day ceasefire. At the time of writing, it does not look like the Israelis are going to accept that, because they are not convinced that a ceasefire would do anything to change their strategic situation vis-a-vis Hezbollah. And Michael, where do we sort of go from here? You mentioned there that nations have come together. It's called for a ceasefire, but what levers are at the disposal of the international community when it comes to trying to de-escalate here? There aren't many levers. Israel has been very clear that unless Hezbollah withdraws to north of the Litani River, which is about 30 kilometers off the Israeli border, as determined by U.S. Security Council Resolution 1701, then there is nothing to discuss. And until Hezbollah does that, Israel will continue to take military operations to degrade the Hezbollah fighters, to destroy rocket and ammunition dumps and supplies, and to make sure that Hezbollah cannot keep firing into Israel. So President Biden, Macron, and obviously Kiyastama has been part of this, so have the Saudis, the Qataris, trying to persuade the Israelis that a ceasefire is in their interests to allow for civilian evacuation as well. But I don't see a scenario in which unless they can get Hezbollah to agree to withdraw, and it doesn't look from what everything Hezbollah is saying that they will withdraw, that we can see and enter this conflict. Now, here's the really important bit. Does Israel launch a ground invasion? Now, we're certainly preparing for it. They've moved men and machinery up to the northern border in preparation for that. The chief of staff of the Israeli army has said they should prepare to go in on the ground. That does not mean it will happen, but they're certainly preparing for eventuality. I think the Israelis are hoping that with this continued course of airstrikes that Hezbollah will realize they cannot win, and that they will have to compromise. James Kiyastama delivered a speech last night, and is speaking again this evening. What should we expect from the Prime Minister? Well, I think what we can expect from the Prime Minister is a kind of reiteration of existing themes. One of the interesting things about talking about the Labour foreign policy is perhaps unlike what we saw in the global Britain era of Boris Johnson and his trust. It was a real commitment, I think, to what we might call legalism. It was interesting to hear when the prime minister spoke earlier this year to announce the harshly arms embargo to Israel. He very much phrased it as a legal rather than a political one. I think what we'll see is much more at the center of the doctrine espoused by Kiyastama and David LaVian legal approach, rather than a political one. We expect to see tonight similar themes warning about the conflict. Try urging this as to deescalate and obviously working alongside the US in terms of the rhetoric they'll be adopting, because obviously being that the UN this week, they'll have been a lots of coordination girl behind the scenes with the Americans and, of course, having a joint approach. Nice young Gaza, but more importantly also on Ukraine as well, where they're very much in lockstep. I suppose there's a question for both of you, really. Obviously, some of Kiyastama's domestic policies have been impacting his approval ratings. But you think there is a general feeling that on foreign affairs, Kiyastama has actually been pretty solid so far. Maybe Michael, if you start. Well, certainly he's had a lot of problems to deal with. It's not been a quiet first few months for Stama. I think on the Ukraine conflict that the Labour government has sounded all the right notes. Kiyastama's performance in the UN Security Council yesterday, where he very strongly took Russia to task for its behavior in Ukraine, came across well. I think it was well regarded. I think he took the right tone. I think he is sending the right messages to Russia that the UK is there for the long haul, and that there is no daylight here between NATO alliance members. So on that front, I think job well done. On the Middle East, well, I mean, this is a US-dominated arena. And of course, the UK can only do things slightly on the edges. So I wouldn't want to criticize Kiyastama for not reaching peace in the Middle East, right? I mean, Bill Clinton failed to do that. George Bush failed to do that. Obama failed to do that. So if Kiyastama can't do that, I'm not going to say that his premiership has been a failure. But certainly, I think it's very optimistic this 21-day ceasefire offer, and it's unlikely to work. I think that, you know, within the politics of domestic British, of the domestic British arena, obviously the Labour Party is struggling a little bit to keep all sides of the tent happy. There are people on the left of the party who desperately want a ceasefire and want Israel to be called to account. That is not happened. So of course, they're going to be critical. And then on the right-hand side of the party, and certainly in the right of politics in general, this notion of limiting arms exports to Israel, as seen as fundamentally undermining Israel's security and giving into pressure from Hamas and Hezbollah. So you can't really do right for doing wrong on that. I think he's trying to straddle both sides of the argument, and you inevitably end up making everybody unhappy. It doesn't mean he's done a bad job, but these are difficult circumstances. I think QSTAM has done reasonably well in terms of going to doing the basics diplomacy, really ticking off things like the European political community, tick that off at Bledon Palace, going to NATO, tick that off-scene, the Americans, doing things like the initiative with the treaty, with the Germans, managing to what develops there, going obviously the domestic weaknesses, perhaps on focus on Brexit, in terms of how he addresses that base there. I would then differentiate that from the foreign secretary who David Blamy has made, again last week, another unforced error. No one is asking the foreign secretary to blast his long-form musings on a sub-stack blog, as the new states were like this week. But that's exactly why he's done, he's written about an obscure conflict involving Azerbaijan, he's talking about liberating hotly disputed territory. And so I think the fact that now he continues to wade into these incidents, I thought they speak yesterday, I think it was important to see the foreign secretary standing up to aggression, but I do question perhaps the way in which he worded it in terms of almost drawing the link between his own family's experience of imperialism and that of what facing in Russia. Given, of course, we know that the British Empire is something that has a very mixed legacy in terms of the kind of global south that Britain is trying to keep on the side of the west against sort of Chinese overtures in the coming few years. So I do think that there'll be a question perhaps about David Lamy's own diplomatic skills or lack their role, as of course we approach America. I know when I interviewed Woody Johnson, who's likely to be the US ambassador again to Britain if Trump comes back, he said to people who have long memories, people who remember those comments. And so I do wonder if we're going to see more of these kind of things where the Prime Minister, who despite his complete lack of foreign experience, is actually doing rather well. And the foreign secretary seems to just be making a few needless gaps and unforced errors. I would completely agree with that. I definitely think Lamy's had a bad month and certainly in policy wonk circles, there are people already who have started the countdown to his exit. It didn't go down well talking about Nagorno-Karabakh in a way which was insensitive and clearly showed he didn't understand the problem. And I think that were it not for starmers strong performance over the last two, three weeks, you would be saying Labour have got their foreign policy knickers in a twist. I just want to point out one thing as well. Look, there's all these ambitions to be a global leader, to show leadership and protection of the international order and the rules-based order. The problem is, I mean, where's the money to do it, right? Like next year, the British Army has a £3 billion shortfall in terms of its procurement budgets, Rachel Reeves is going through the numbers right now as we speak, the strategic defence review is currently ongoing. We can have all these big ambitions that we want, but if we don't have the tools to do them and they're not properly financed, then you can be as good a performer as you want on the world stage, but you won't be able to see those policies through. James, just to finish, Kiyostama does risk being slightly undermined by the freebie story, which is continuing to rumble on in the background. What developments have we had there? This is the news that Lord Ali did provide for several weeks the use of his flat for Kiyostama to stay in over the past summer. Kiyostama said this was partly because he suddenly is somewhere quite revised for GCSEs. Obviously, you had people like Kiyostama and Neil at Brian, they'd say, "How on a set do you obviously know what's going to criticise you for spending your money on or having the use of somewhere to help with child education?" And yet, that's exactly what Kiyostama and Labour, he says, are going to do by effectively putting VAT on private school fees, i.e. places that work best for parents and what they think their children need. The other development is about the use of that flat again in terms of 2021 and when Kiyostama delivered a speech from that and whether he breached Covid guidance over the use of staying in one's residence at that time. So, it's just another day which Lord Ali flares up once again back in their headlines, like a sort of reverse-mocality. And it's just going to be another sign that, I think, he really wanted the leader speech on Tuesday to be a kind of reset without using the word reset. There was a lot of conference attendees, I was in Liverpool, we were very happy after that speech and sent it full if they've shrugged us off and then to have these kind of headlines back up again as we go into conservative conference, I think, is a sub-optimal look for the Prime Minister. Well, thank you James, thank you Michael and thank you very much for listening. And if you do enjoy the podcast and you're listening to us on Spotify or Apple Music, please do hit the follow button to be notified whenever a new episode comes out. (upbeat music) (gentle music)