The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - How Trump Lost His War And Is Pretending He Won

Episode Date: May 25, 2026

Donald Trump is not a good liar. Everyone knows when he lies, and it's not a good look. It's a Monday on The Bridge, and Dr. Janice Stein is here to give us her take on what is really happening. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. Just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge. It's Monday. Dr. Janice Stein is here. How did Trump lose the war in Iran? That's our question. You'll hear her answer. Coming right up.

And hello there. Welcome to one Monday. And that means welcome to yet another week. As we approach the final days of May. We'll be in June soon. and we're only about a well, we're a month away from the break for the bridge, the annual summer hiatus

as in past years will be gone from near the end of June until Labor Day. We'll be back a couple of times for special Good Talk episodes in July and in August and it will be an encore every Wednesday through the summer of some of our best programming from the last year. So I hope you'll stay with us for those.

But we still have a month to go. And today's an important program as it always is when Dr. Janice Stein for the Monk School at the University of Toronto joins us, which she will be doing in the next couple of minutes. But first, our regular housekeeping that we do on Mondays, which is basically to give you a sense of, well, what the question is.

for your turn for this week for Thursday. And it's, well, it's what we do always on the last week of the month now. We started in January. It's been very successful. It's an Ask Me Anything program. So you can write in and ask me, whatever you'd like to ask. I may be able to answer it. I may not be able to answer it, but I'll certainly give it a try for those of you who are selected.

Now, if you followed the AMAs, the Ask Me Any, things of the past few months, you realize that we have a lot of letters come in. So I get your letters in early. Some from past shows that didn't get on, we still have, or we may use some of those. But if you have a fresh idea on and ask me anything, please send it in. But please also remember the basics.

You write to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. You include your name. and you include the location you're writing from. All right. This is important. You have to have the answers in before 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. All right, that's really important. 6 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday is the cutoff.

And finally, I guess the most important condition of all, you have to keep your letters short. 75 words or fewer is the rule. All right? And I tell you most of the best letters are are much less than 75 words, are much fewer than 75 words. Okay, so those are your rules.

Think about it. And if you have a question for me about anything you might want to ask me, go ahead about my career, about my past, about how way we do podcasts, about my feelings about this, that, or the other, go ahead and ask. The worst that can happen is I'll say,

you know, I can't answer that question. I'll give it a try. Ask me anything this week on the bridge. Okay. Why don't we get to it? There's a lot in this conversation with Dr. Stein this week. as we approach what appears to be the imminent end of the war in Iran. You know, the war that Trump lost.

The Trump war, the Trump lost. Let's hear the discussion. Here it is with Dr. Janice Stein from the Monkshul, the University of Toronto. So Janice, both sides say they're close to a deal, but clearly there's no deal yet. at least as we record this conversation. You know, I've read a lot over the weekend about who says what about where they are, but what are you hearing?

Why don't you lay the ground for us? The most charitable way, Peter, I can describe this, is a loose framework agreement to solve an issue that the war created so that they can get back to. the negotiations that were ongoing before the war started. That's in a nutshell. Sorry. I know.

It sounds so pathetic. When it's put that way, I mean, you know, billions of dollars of infrastructural damage in Iran, hundreds, if not thousands of people killed, some American service people killed, billions of dollars expended by the, um, you know, um, you know, um, you know, Americans on the war effort. And that's what we got after whatever it is now, two, three months. Yep, that's what we got. And it's not a done deal.

That's the other thing. It's important. They were closer on Saturday. And then we saw the usual thing that happens. Well, Iran said, well, no, no, no. That's not what we said. And the United States said, well, if that's not what you want to, So he said that I'm going to slow this process down.

So this is not done. Even the framework agreement is not done. Well, where does the resilience on the part of the Iranians come from? Because, you know, one would have assumed after the pounding they took that they would be on their hands and knees begging for an end to this and agreeing to everything. But they clearly, you know, when I look at what's supposedly the shape of the deal, it looks like they're winning on every front of it. Well, so part of the ambiguity here is what they've said in private to the Pakistanis, which they have said they will do once this framework agreement is in place. So officially, Peter, this is just about reopening the straight with no tolls.

That's pretty hard to enforce over the longer term, as we've seen, but they would make a commitment to open the streets. They have told the Pakistanis that they will either dial back their enrichment, their enriched uranium, de-enrich it in the English, but that effectively says. So that big stockpile of uranium,

they will de-enrich it. And again, that was not there, before Donald Trump walked away from the agreement. It only, they only built it up when he walked away. They have also said that there will be some agreement, some understanding, and this is even vaguer, about a holiday from enrichment. In other words, they will not enrich for a period of time.

Those are all things they have told the Pakistan. And the Pakistanis have told the Americans, but there's no formal agreement. So there is more here than what this framework agreement is, but it relies. And this is so hard to get to on reasonable good faith between the two of them, that each is going to believe what they've told the Munir, the Pakistani negotiator, who's a very, who's highly regarded by both of them, who's tough. And for Pakistan, this is a very high-stakes deal. How can the Iranians hold out as long as they have?

I don't think they can for much longer, frankly. I really don't because the state of their domestic economy is so terrible. It really is. So I mean weeks, that's all. But Donald Trump can't hold out any longer either. we know that about him and so this is a contest between

two governments that lost a war that's the easiest way to describe this and it's a struggle to minimize their losses I don't think it's correct to say the Iranians won and the Americans lost they both lost and so did the Israelis everybody lost but you know the

major headline in that I mean nobody would nobody would argue that the Iranians have lost on a straight damage to their country basis. But the headline in the way you just framed it is that the U.S. lost this war. Yes. There's no question, Peter. I mean, how can you argue otherwise the disagreement that's been, you know, this negotiation to open up the Strait of Hormuz that was open before this war started, right?

That's what it's about. the concessions on the issue as Donald Trump finally defined it over the last three or four weeks they will not have a nuclear weapon well that remains to be negotiated in this 30 to 60 day ceasefire it took the Obama administration

two years they're promising to get this done in 60 days and look you want me to make a real effort here to put the most positive spin I can on this. Let me try that one. The Obama deal, if it had, if Donald Trump had not walked away from it, the Obama deal would have one more year to go now. So there would be a huge escalation of tension as that deal was in its last year

because it had a sunset clause, and that was its biggest problem. It had a sunset clause on Iran's restrictions to enrich uranium. So this was a crisis that was going to come one way or the other, not this way, but it would have come. What this war has done is bought, if these negotiations succeed at the end of 16 days, has bought another 10 or another 15 years. before Iran is free to walk down this road.

Well, let me pick up on this, on the nuclear part of this for a minute. First of all, before, because I want to do a, you know, a comparison with the Obama deal from, was it 2014, somewhere around there? That's right. First of all, nowhere in these leaked stories of the past few days, Does it suggest that Iran is agreeing to end its nuclear program? We're just talking about enrichment, right? And just is a bad word.

I mean, that's a big deal. But the fact that they would still pursue a nuclear program. Yes, that is correct. There's no commitment to end its nuclear program. And right through all the negotiations with the Obama administration, and to be fair, you know, to John Kerry and Wendy Sherman, who did that deal. I think we all have a window now on how difficult it was to get there. The Iranians claim they have a right to enrich.

They have signed the nonproliferation treaty. There is no right to enrich, by the way, in that treaty, just for the record. There is not. But they claim they have a right to enrich under that treaty. and it is astonishing, Peter, how much importance they give to this program, given that they say, and they're going to say it again now,

that they are never going to develop a nuclear weapon. If that's true, it is a mystery, why they are willing to suffer the damage that they have, to maintain a program, to, you know, to, medical isotopes. That is a very high cost that they're paying to do this.

So there's a piece here that doesn't fit the puzzle in Iranian behavior. There's no question about it. They are also allegedly promising that there'll be some holiday 10 years, 15 years on enrichment.

None of that's written down. That's what they've told the Pakistanis. But that's all. That's what they've said. so a nuclear program will continue. And at some point this weekend, the Pakistani suggested that the Iranians have also promised that they will no longer have secret enrichment.

You know, they will no longer locate these powerful centrifuges underground, deep underground. And the inspectors will come back. So that's the game from this war. It's essentially a return to the Obama agreement with one difference that there may be a moratorium, five years, 10 years, nobody knows where they are yet on enrichment. That is the only difference. It's not endlessly open either.

Did the Obama deal, was it supposed to prevent enrichment? It was supposed to allow, enrichment only up to 3.67 percent, which is good enough to make the medical isotopes, but you cannot make any kind of weapon. And there were inspections. And the Iranians did not violate that agreement. As far as we know, they did not. As far as the inspectors ascertained. Now, on this deal, if there is a deal, there were no, right. And, No enrichment at all? Or are they still debating that?

They're still debating this. But what the Iranians have said, and Peter, this is the astounding part, before the war, before this war, before this negotiations that were going on, before Donald Trump decided to go, the Iranis had put a five-year holiday from any enrichment on the table. before the war. So that's what makes me say they will come back to it because it was already on the table. But that was there before this war started. So fair to say, fair to say, the Trump administration got something that the Biden people did not,

which is some sort of holiday from enrichment, a complete holiday. would stop enriching for some period of time. That's the big difference. But, you know, three to five, three to five years is nothing. They've got, you know, the next three to five years, the Iranians are going to be worried about a lot of things other than enriching uranium. They've got to rebuild their country.

Yeah. So, you know, they... Well, that's what the hard line, that's, when you talk to some of the people in the Pentagon, that's what they say, right? that look, the damage to the infrastructure inside around is of such order of magnitude that they're slowed down anyway. It doesn't matter what the fine print says. They have to do something to restore that economy because it is, frankly, in desperate condition. Even a hard-line, you know, army-led, which is what this is, a hard-line, army-led government cannot sustain this.

But the Iranians were on edge anyway in January about the economy. It's infinitely worse now. So they know they have to do something. Their petrochemical industry is gone. They're steel industry. They have nothing left to export but oil, frankly. Okay. Just before we leave the Obama deal in comparison,

what's your sense at this moment, the bottom line of what we think we know about what this deal could be? Is this a better deal than what Obama got? If, if, and the Iranians are busy backtracking, and the Americans are busy backtracking right now. So first let's put on the table here. This framework agreement is not a done deal yet. We have to, you know, it could.

That was the one thing Donald Trump said yesterday that I believe, the one, this could take several days to do. I think that's accurate. And if it gets done, so I think that's really important. If what the Pakistanis have been told is correct, there would be a holiday from enrichment. And the reason I tend to believe it, Peter is the Iranis put on the table themselves before the war.

We would get a holiday from enrichment. There might be one other improvement, and this one is probably, more significant. There would be what we call surprise inspections. One of the problems, and you said if we believe that the Iranians had stopped, well, what was the grounds for believing? The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency,

was sent inspectors. But they didn't just show up. They notified the Iranians that they would come. There was usually 30 to 45 days advance notice of a visit. Well, I don't need to say more, right? Any smart government can hide whatever they need to hide in a period like that. So one of the changes this time might be so-called surprise inspections where you give 24 hours notice that you come.

and that would be, that would be a significant difference. Would it justify this war? Those two differences? Hard to know. What was concerning, we were at the end of the JCPO another year, too, but I can't remember 18 months, what it was, as these negotiations dragged on, the Iranians, except for putting, you know, the one bit of progress in those negotiations

was five years of no enrichment. But that was all. It was a tough negotiation, Peter. You have to ask yourself again and again if we can get above the details here. Why are the Iranians so committed to preserving a program which they, They say they will never commit to a nuclear weapons program and put everything at risk for that because they knew they were. Well, I mean, the answer to that question to me would be because it's having it as a deterrent. Yeah.

Well, you know, a potential deterrent against. Potential deterrent. You know, let's talk about what changed the result as a result of this war. all right one of the Iranians discovered the strait for a moose

which that is a real asset that they can deploy regardless of what's on paper

they can close that straight anytime now they know they can and they know that is

something that every Gulf state doesn't want to see right the whole world doesn't

want to see they have a valuable asset they have never used before, they finally used it. That's far more valuable to that than a nuclear program. There's going to be under surveillance forever, frankly, by everybody.

That's number one. Number two, and I hate to say this, the United States discovered that its missile defense program doesn't cut it because when you're spending a million dollars to knock out a $50,000 drone, that is not effective. And we're going to see a radical change in what the United States is going to do over the next few years. And that may have bought them time, frankly. When you look at everybody is saying what a risk this is in the Indo-Pacific because they've left themselves so exposed. I actually think about it the other way.

They've learned something very valuable before they were tested. in the Indo-Pacific, because a version of this could have happened there, too, frankly, and it wouldn't be much tougher for them. So you're going to see wholesale changes in how the United States buys and what it buys. I hope Canadians are paying attention in that way. I was going to say, I mean, we're on the verge of spending billions, and I wouldn't say in conventional weaponry, but certainly it's not, Yeah. It's not they haven't learned from the lessons that the Americans are learning from,

or perhaps they have been. I don't know, but it's a big decision being made. It's a slog, Peter. It's a slog because it really is a slog. And because the Americans experience this, you know this, you experience this close up and you get a sense of where the deficiencies are and what has to happen and what has to change. There's a lot. There's much more of a sense of urgency. They are already thinking about the next generation technology. So, by the way, must the Chinese be when they watch this? The third big change that comes out of this, no matter what that framework agreement says, the Gulf states are going to build pipelines. They are going to build pipelines. Now, look, one catastrophe that did not happen, and I wondered

why it didn't during this war. The Red Sea, on the other side, is within range of Iranian missiles. And that could have shut down all the oil that was coming out through the overland pipelines. And so that remains a challenge going forward. But there's no question.

The Emirates, the Saudis, the Qatari's are going to find other ways of exporting their energy. So that over time, that street And time is not forever. Those countries get stuff built. It doesn't take 13 years to build a pipeline in Saudi Arabia. They will get stuff built.

So that strategic asset that is so important to Iran the Strait will still be important, but nothing like how important it is right today and over the next two years. The Americans had a partner in this war, the only partner... Israel. Israel. The only people they talked to or gave advance warning of what they were going to do were the Israelis. If America clearly lost the war...

So did Israel. Did Israel lose the war? Yes, yes. There's no question. And look, from a military perspective, the Israelis had more, they had less expensive missiles because everything that was made at home is less expensive, right? And that's what we're seeing now that countries are able to make

on the offensive side really cheap missiles that are very effective. And Ukrainians are leading the way, which is astonishing, just astonishing. Ukrainians are leading the way now in making missiles that can mock out other missiles, defensive missiles, at home, far more cheaply, too. So that's what we will be seeing. And so from a military perspective, you know, Israel had to, had no choice, ration the missiles, the defensive missiles it used, because it was no way to predict the end of this war. And in the last two weeks, Iranian missiles were getting through.

in ways they weren't in the early weeks. So for them, too, this is a wake-up call. Much more important, Peter, the political relationship that they had, the one between Netanyahu and Trump, I think, is not what it was when this war started. Detanyahu told Donald Trump, this would be short, this would be fast.

Those stories that were late that we haven't talked about, about replace about Ahmadinejad being the, I mean, they defy belief, frankly. And there was some kind of, apparently there were conversations with him. He hates, Ahmadinejad hates this group of people.

He made that clear when in his last days of presidency, and that's why he's been under a house arrest, more or less. So it's a credible storyline that they would think of doing this. but what the benefit would have been. I mean, this was their Dulcey Rodriguez that Donald Trump was hinting at in those early days. I think their credibility, the Israeli credibility, and the Mossad credibility,

is so damaged with the Trump administration that it will be impossible for them to restore. There's no question. And this administration was the most friendly administration to that, to the Israelis, that's imaginable. There's no successor Republican nominee or Democratic nominee that would give Israel the room for maneuver. Anything like the room for maneuver that Donald Trump has given.

This is a cold wake-up call for the Netanyahu government. You know, when the Ahmadinejad story came out in the last week or 10 days, Like you, I was like flabbergasted. Come on. When this guy was the president of Iran, he was seen as the most evil man in the world, you know, by the Americans. Venatical. Right. And now suddenly he was the ace in the hole.

He was the guy who was going to be their puppet when this war ended. It made no sense unless the whole thing about his positioning 10 years ago, was phony, that it was staged, and then in fact he was in their back pocket all along, which is as unbelievable as what we're looking at now. Yeah, you know, I think, I don't think he was then. I think what happened is he hates, he hates these guys, he hates Chimini. He hates Chamini, he hates them. and he's been in, you know, out of office.

He's been under house arrest. They knew how much he hated them. And I think his hatred for them is what made him become, frankly, what he was. But it's obvious an asset. Let me put it this way. He hated Chaminie more at this point than he hated the Zionists, as he would call him, the Israelis. But if you're going to do this, Peter, if you're going to do this, Peter, if you're going to do this,

you break out, the plan depended on this. You break out your asset before you sort of bombing, right? You make sure he's secure. You make sure that there's a force around him. It was so, and it was so ham-handed, frankly. So there's a strike on his house. to disrupt the people who are monitoring that house,

and he's injured in the process. And we haven't seen him since. This is not what you call a professional performance. No, I'll say. No. Last question on this before we take our break. And it's still on the... One other big one, I should have added on the Israeli side.

One of the big issues that's going back, and forth right now is, is Lebanon part of this agreement or not? The Iranians. The Iranians wanted to be. They're saying it has to stop. And that was actually going to be my question. Can the Americans trust the Israelis to keep their hands off Lebanon? Right.

Well, so the Iranians said to the Pakistan, it's no deal unless Lebanon is part of this. Donald Trump has a call with Netanyahu on Saturday. And you can imagine. Well, how pleasant that conversation was for him. So Trump says in the readout to the call, no, I've assured Netanyahu that were his ballot to attack, Israel would have the right to defend itself. Well, yeah, you know, any country has a right to defend itself

under Article 51 of the UN Charter. So frankly, nothing means very much here, right? the Iranians want a total ceasefire in Lebanon. Negotiations are going on between the Lebanese government and Israel in Washington. Isbalah is furious about those negotiations, doesn't want any part of them, wants them to stop. And it's just issued a call this morning, Monday morning, for the Lebanese people to go out in the streets to overthrow the government that is negotiating with Israel in Washington. Well, I can tell you that's not going to happen

because people are inside Lebanon are furious, again, that Hezbollah has pulled Lebanon into this conflict. But how easy is it? Some Hezbollah fighter is going to fire off two rounds. That's going to constitute an attack. Yeah. So don't.

Donald Trump would have to pull out all the stops here to say to Netanyahu, nothing, nothing, nothing for 360 days while these negotiations are going on. Yeah, maybe good luck with that. Good luck, good luck, and good luck because here's the law, too, again, think about the dynamics, every reason to disrupt this right now. You know, we ask why would Israelis observe this? But why would they? Too? Well, aside from all the other damage that this has done, this Trump war that he lost,

aside from all the other damage, is the relationship between the U.S. and Israel going to be different than we've seen in the past, like significantly different? Yes, I think it will be. And why do I think it will be, Peter? You know, when it became apparent, we've always described Donald Trump as a transactional president. He doesn't have friends. He does business deals. And, you know, Canadians have felt that more than anybody else

since he returned to the presidency. When it became obvious that the Mossad prediction was not, was wrong, this government was not going to crumble, there was going to be no regime change. That was it. Frankly, Israel, Netanyel, was cut out of most of these

conversations. He had to go, and Israel does have friends in the Gulf. He had to go to his friends in the Gulf for updates about what was happening in real time.

The sense that he was on the other end of the phone, gone, cut out completely for the last four to five weeks, I think that's what this relationship will look like for the rest of the Trump presidency. Okay. We're going to take our break, but we've got something else pretty important to deal with as well,

and we'll do that. One last comment, Peter. Okay. You know, because you've been reading the same stuff, and I've been reading, there have been some interesting things. What is this like, you know, is this Vietnam? This is Vietnam. And, you know, here's the difference between Vietnam and between Putin's war in Ukraine.

How long did it take Donald Trump to realize he lost this one and pulled a plug? It's really quite interesting. Yeah. Because normally what happens, what a leader of state of course even? And Lyndon Johnson was the famous one. And even Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger took three years. to stop it. It's because of what we call sunk costs.

If you've ever played any game of cards for chips or money, you put your chips on the one hand, you'll lose them. You don't leave the game because you've already got those sunk costs. You've lost and you're convinced that it just stay a little longer. If you just do a little more, you can get it back and maybe even do a little better, right? And that's probably the most powerful explanation we have for why leaders invest more in a war and keep it going, even though it's clear that they've lost it.

I have to say that this businessman dealer figured up quite quickly that he lost it, and it's three months instead of how many years in Vietnam or how many years in Ukraine. And that's what he keeps saying. You'll never hear those words come out of his lips, though, that they lost the war. Of course not.

But the bottom line is the Americans are getting pretty good at losing wars. Significant wars. You know, whether it was Vietnam or whether it was, you know, Afghanistan or Iraq, now Iran. I mean, what are the wars they've won? Grenada. Yeah. Venezuela. You know, these were not seen as potential losses.

No. In part because all those wars were, and we're going to be. talk about this, about regime change. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so was this at the beginning, no matter what he's saying now. That's all it was about. It was regime change.

Of course it was. And how long does it take to learn that you can't do regime change out of the barrel of a gun, Peter? Yeah. I mean, you could argue that they got that in Venezuela, but only because of, you know, one person being taken to jail. got the same crowd as the regime. But they found the asset that would do

what they wanted. That's not regime change, right? Right. Right. Okay. I guess that was... Let me take my break now. Yes. Okay. We'll do that. We'll be right back after this.

And welcome back. You're listening to the bridge, the Monday episode. That means Dr. Janice Stein from the Monk School of the University of Toronto. we're talking, well, we're talking any number of things about our changing world. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Glad to have you with us. Okay.

The battle over the horizon is Cuba. And we've talked about this for the last few weeks, that there was clearly preparation going on. They've moved another carrier. This is the U.S. aircraft. or into the Caribbean. There's much assumption here that they're going to make a move. It's a nice deflection issue, you know,

at a time when the Americans are trying to get used to the sense that they lost the Iran war. One assumes this would be an easy pickup, which is kind of ironic, really, because we've watched this for the last 65 years or whatever. There's always been this tension between the U.S. and Cuba. But this appears to be the moment where they could change Cuba. They could do regime change in Cuba. Yeah.

Here we go again. Here we go again. So tell me what your take is on this. So I'm astonished, Peter, but I think it's close. For one reason, they've moved the aircraft carrier. And look, inside the Panthers, on, the experience, people are desperate to get these assets back to the Indo-Pacific, frankly. They're very concerned that it's been denuded, that their missile interceptors, their

stockpiles have been denuded. They're very concerned about this. They're not keen on any, they're not going to use this as a sideshow. So the fact that that's been moved, the other thing that's going on is the surveillance over Cuba, the air surveillance over Cuba has really picked up in the last two or three days. And Marco Rubio's in India. I think when he comes back, because this is really his priority more than anybody else is, I think whatever move they're going to make, oh, and the other thing is the indictment of

for an incident that happened 25 years ago where pilots were shot down is now in place. There's a criminal indictment. So the stages all set it. And this does look like Venezuela. So, you know, Cuba, the regime, again, population, there's no energy. They are 22-hour blackouts. These have been going on now for. six weeks, how reliable are the malicious inside Cuba?

That's really, you know, over the years, there were militias that could be deployed inside Cuba to defend against the Americans, and that was legitimate. I mean, that's how those people felt inside Cuba, not clear if that holds any longer. So the question, and there are, John Ratcliffe, head of the story. CIA was there on a flight in which he must have laid out the deal. You can hear me stumbling over this because I find it so incredible that this would happen right now. The deal must include giving up Roe O'Castro and agreeing to changes to opening up the Cuban

economy, the kind of thing that Delci Rodriguez is now doing in Venezuela. I personally find it inconceivable that they would give up, Raoul Castro. He's, you know, the brother of the founder. But that's what must be in the works. And I think it could come very, very soon, Peter, very, very soon. You know what I find? what I find hard to take is the Raul Castro thing. I'm not saying if guys not guilty or what have you.

But this is for shooting down a couple of aircraft, as you said, quarter of a century ago, where they felt threatened in some fashion. The Americans blow up boats, boats in the Caribbean. They've never just detailed exactly who was on them, what they were doing. You know, they say they were drug smugglers, but, you know, we don't know. There's never been any clear thing. They shoot survivors in the water struggling to stay alive. And nothing.

Nothing. Nobody's held accountable. Nobody's demanded to give more information about what happened in them. We're not talking about a few. There were quite a few. You know, half a dozen or a dozen different boats and, you know, 100 people. I mean, it's pretty brutal. Yeah.

And yet they're taking Castro and they're going to use Castro as the reason they're doing this whole thing. Yeah. So, I mean, you heard my voice. I'm astonished literally for two perspectives. One, Castro's the cover for this, right? But I think it goes beyond that, Peter. I think not only did they find this incident until they could issue an indictment, but I think, For Rubio and for those refugees, Cuban refugees,

with a very large community in Miami, Castro is it, right? That's who it is. That's who changed their lives. That's who forced their families to flee. It's the Castro family, the Castro name. The revolution, it's all about Castro, frankly. And I think that's why he's the cover.

And the symbolism of bringing a, you know, of a Castro being turned on by the Cuban government, whether he's handed over to the United States or not, but of any government in Cuba distancing themselves from the brother of Fidel Castro. That's the end to the revolution once that happens. So I think it's a symbolic value. And I think this is Rubio. I don't think this is Donald Trump. I think this is Rubio. But what great timing.

You know what will happen in the United States. The media will turn to this story. It's a long, long, deep story in the United States. It goes back how many years, 60 years, frankly. That will be the story. Iran will fade because the strait is open. the negotiations will go on, just like they're going on over Greenland.

It'll be beneath radar. But I don't think, but this is not a diversionary story only, maybe the timing as such, but this goes to the heart of what Marco Rubio was wanted as Secretary of State. I think in some ways this is why he signed on to be Secretary of State

to get this one done. Well, we'll see whether he does. And, you know, Peter, how does this work? I mean, let me just say this, right? And because the planning is, we're very close to this. We're very, very close to this. So how does this even work on what is the is? With Maduro, they didn't know.

Right? They didn't know. They know here. what's coming. It will not be the same kind of mid, it can't be the same kind of midnight raid where he's caught in his pajamas, right, and doesn't get into a safe room in time,

which is what happened with Maduro. How does this work? And why shouldn't, you know, he's not going to go without a fight, Castro. Well, I'll tell you one place the Americans won't land. It won't be the Bay of Piz. No, it will not. It will not.

It will not. All right. We're out of time. Another great conversation. We'll see where we are by this time next week. Thanks, Janice. See you in seven days. See in seven days.

Dr. Janice Stein, Munk School, University of Toronto. You know, we've called Janice's segment every Monday, our changing world. And we did that whenever we started with Janice, but, you know, two years ago, more than two years ago. And it fits every week. Our world keeps changing.

And this has been another week of fascinating conversation. Love talking to Dr. Stein. That's going to do it for today. Ask me anything this Thursday. I gave you all the conditions earlier in the program. So think about it. Send something along. We'll definitely

read them off air and some of them will get read on air. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours and in 24 hours. It'll be a Moore-Buts conversation and well you might be surprised how we start that conversation tomorrow with James Moore and Jerry Butts. That's tomorrow right here on the bridge. Bye for now.