The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Iran, Trump, Oil -- It's A Janice Stein Monday

Episode Date: March 30, 2026

So much to catch up on today and once again Dr. Janice Stein of the Munk School at the University of Toronto is more than a match for the questions. Questions on the Iran War, Donald Trump and "how it's all about oil." 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. You're just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge. It's Monday. That means Dr. Janice Stein. We talk about Iran. We talk about Trump. We talk about oil. That's all coming right up.

And hello there. Welcome to yet another week. We're edging towards April, just a couple of days away now. Final days of March. Mondays means Dr. Janice Stein. And she will be here in just a few moments' time. Got a bit of housekeeping to deal with, first of all, including your question of the week for your turn this Thursday.

So I'll give you some time to think about that, and you can come up with an answer. The country's political landscape changed a little bit. Yesterday, the NDP finally elected their new leader, and to no one's real surprise, I guess, because we've been suggesting it for, well, for weeks, if not much. that Avi Lewis would win. Well, he did win, one on the first ballot.

So the question is, for this party that only has a handful of seats, it doesn't have official party status, but has a great history in terms of affecting progressive change at times in the country, but is trying to get back on its feet. So the question to you this week is, now that the NDP has a new leader, what is your view on its future? So it's whatever your view may be.

You may be somebody who has voted NDP in the past, or you may not. It doesn't matter. I want to know what your view is. Now that the NDP has a new leader, what's your view on the party's future? So here are the conditions. You know them well. 75 words or fewer for your answer.

It can't be over 75. And most people have managed to figure out a way to give their answer in a lot less than 75. You have to include your name and the location you're writing from. You have to have your answer in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time this Wednesday. All right? and you write to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com.

Look forward to reading what you have to say on that question. Coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, it's a more buts conversation, and it's another good one. Two issues on Moore Butts this time round. immigration What happened? How did immigration become a dirty word? That's one, and two is polling.

There have been a lot of polls, and there are a lot of pollsters. But they all seem to be coming up with the same answer in terms of what the landscape looks like right now. So we want to talk about that, the impact that has. Wednesday, Wednesday will probably be,

a, what do we call it? We call it an end bit special. And there's some really, really good ones this week. Thursday, your turn, the random branter. Friday is Good Friday. So as the week moves on, we'll think about what we're going to do on Good Friday. Usual home for good talk.

May well be. We'll see. See how the week goes. All right. Let's get to business on today. And the business of today is Dr. Janice Stein. So with no further ado, let's begin that conversation for this week. Janice, I want to start this way this week because every once in a while somebody will ask me about this. They'll say, how does she know what she's talking about?

So obviously, you know, I say, listen, Janice got sources all around the world. She talks to all the time. But let me ask it this way. And you're prepping for, say, an interview like this or some kind of a session. If there's one place you go to before you go into that interview, one source of information, what would that be? That's a really hard question here because actually I try not to go to one place. Right. Because if I only go to one place, I'm only going to get one perspective.

and I'm actually going to miss some of the news. So I really try not to do that. So what are the top two or three, knowing that we were going to talk about Iran, about the Middle East today? So what's on the New York Times website? What's on Al Jazeera? Because it's really important that,

and they're a great repository of news coming out of the government. and some of what's at Loutes here is not linear times and vice versa. And if I can squeeze it and it. Depends how early we start on Monday. The F.T. In London, because it gives you all of Europe that's in and up for about what's happening right now in this part of the world. Well, we're going to talk about the FT in a moment because Trump was babbling away to them yesterday and made some headlines, as he always does.

Okay, that's an interesting list, your list. Yeah. BBC, BBC not on there anymore. No. You know, they used to have great reporters on the ground. Really, what I'm trying to catch up on Peter is reporters on the ground. So who's got the best news bureaus with people actually on ground? One of the others it does, but their website,

is not the best. And if you have to listen, that takes more time or read. That takes way, listening is the worst because it's much slower. And reading is faster. But probably CNN has more reporters on the ground. It's not their New York people, but they have a reporter in Jerusalem. They have a report in the Gulf. They have a report of the North.

Iraq. They have somebody in Iran. That's invaluable. When there are people on the ground who are seeing things. And some of the, you know, we give CNN, you know, the CNN can be a controversial place at times. But they're reporters on the ground, especially in the Middle East and in Ukraine and Russia are really top-notch journalists. They've been around for a long time. They know their stuff. They don't get, they don't get fooled. Yeah. They have a very good team that moves like that. And they just tell you different stories.

And then you put it all together and you say yourself, well, what makes sense? Right. Yeah. But New York Times number one for you, really. Yeah, it's, look, it's got a huge team. It's probably the largest platform now. You know, it's behind a paywall. and so it can afford to do really good things because it's behind a paywall.

And it has really good, it does two things probably better than anybody else, honestly, because it's got depth. It's got really good investigative reports. So it will go deep on something. And that's really invaluable. And then it has really seasoned analysts who take a step back. David Sanger, for instance. David's seen it all, right?

Yeah. And he, you know, let me put it this way. The people that I look for have really good, you tell me what I could say on the air, BS detectors. Right. Exactly. They know when somebody's spinning, right? And they'll tell you.

The, you know, the paywall thing is an important factor. I mean, New York Times has done extremely well over the last 10 years, while a lot of other places have faded quickly because of lack of funds, loss of subscribers, all of that. Not the New York Times. It's actually built its subscriber base. because of good journalism, but good journalism costs money. That's right.

And people forget that. They want everything for free. No, no. And it's not cheap, the New York Times. I mean, it's so expensive. And it built its base. It's really interesting. They have the best travel section, apparently, and cooking section, right?

Right. Well, but that supports the news. So it's really great. And then I should say, I have a group of friends all over the world, in the least, in your family. And there's chat groups. Now, a lot of that is unreliable, but interesting. No, I better to do. Right.

Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the news that we're looking at this morning. You notice I didn't say Twitter. I noticed you didn't say Twitter. You know, I maybe go to Twitter once a day and take a quick scroll. But there's so much garbage on Twitter now. That's right.

It's so often a waste of time. Yeah. Okay. We mentioned the FT, the Financial Times, and the interview that they did with Trump. You know, Trump is a wily guy. You know, he does a lot of interviews. He phones reporters in the. middle of the night reporters phone him as you talked about last week because they have his his mobile

number and if he decides to talk to them there's always a method to the guy's madness you know so he decides he wants to talk to the financial times because he knows that's going to be playing Sunday night and Monday morning as the markets open around the world and what do they want to talk about they want to talk about oil and he knows they want to talk about oil so he has already his little lines of you know I want their oil I'm going to take their oil, you know, I'll do what I want with their oil, all that kind of stuff. What did you make of it other than the performative nature of Trump in that particular interview? Yeah. So you're absolutely right Peter to talk to talk about performance because he times a lot of

his comment to market movements, right? And so this is a deliberate attempt. And that's okay. Other presidents have done that too. but nothing light with the consistency that he does it to move the markets. But there is some truth to his emphasis on oil. You know, with George Bush, when he invaded Iraq, everybody said it's all about oil. It's all about oil. Well, for George Bush Jr., it actually wasn't all about oil.

He had no desire To really to Here's what this is It's to control oil markets for Trump For Trump I think it is A lot about oil I think there's part of this

Is driven by this By this sense that you're going to control oil in the Caribbean And the Venezuelans Because they're small And there's not a lot of global investment in Venezuelan oil. They acquiesce and now Donald Trump controls this, you know, whatever Indian oil reaches international markets. I think he wants the same thing out of the Gulf.

He's careful because the Saudis have so much money invested in his family business. in the global real estate business and the global virtual business. It's really astonishing. It's not. I can't find the right words to describe this. The Pakistanis are the mediator of choice right now because the Pakistanis nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize and because they're big crypto investors. So unless you run those two stories together,

you're missing what's happening. But I think Donald, so when Donald Trump says something off the cuff, like, well, we'll co-manage the Straits of Pormuz, the Ayatollah and I. There's, it's there, it's there. He thinks about himself. It's hard to think about Donald Trump and the United States, it's himself, with two big footholds in international oil markets. and the Gulf matters to the world. Anybody who thought we've moved beyond Middle East oil, I just had to think again after this last month.

It'll take another 30 years before we can do that. You know, it's interesting that I quote. I've seen it a couple of times in the last week where he talks about the Ayatollah and me were going to control us. Yeah. You know, a month ago, when the invasion started. It wasn't about him and the Ayatollah. The Ayatollah, he was going to get the Ayatola, and they were going to toss the Ayatollah and that whole theocratic regime out, right?

Yeah, yeah. Now it suddenly seems like he's accepting that regime. Yeah. There are different players at the top, but it's still the Ayatollah. It is, and there are harder liners in that regime than there were in the past regime. I mean, I've never just, I would really be hard pressed to describe Ayatollah Ali Khanini, the father was a moderate. This is the guy who said, kill all those protesters, right? It's really hard to use the word moderate. But these are even harder liners. But right from the beginning, right from the beginning, I think he had a very heavy content that somehow with the new regime with some of those people that they had been talking to and who were killed in the first strike he's open about it they were having conversations

there were three people on his list there must have been some back channel conversations with some of those people in that building who were killed at first morning and oil must have been part of those conversations and why do I say this, answer your listener who says, how does she know what she knows? Because in the buildup to this, which I started to pay attention to, I think we talked about in January

when I started to saw the movement in military forces. So I asked people both in Washington and in our embassies. And I heard the word, well, several times. So I wasn't surprised when I started to talk this. It was there.

Okay, because I, you know, I, I just wonder whether it's been oil since day one. Or as you think it has been, right? Yes. Because we didn't really talk about oil. No. The way we talk about it now at the beginning. Yeah. And we didn't really talk about oil until the Strader-Hormuz became, you know,

lynchpin to what the, what the story is all about. And I think we, everyone sort of generally agreed that he, he missed that. Like he, as much as we all talk about the straight of old moves, he wasn't. He wasn't thinking about it. He didn't have a backup plan for it. Nothing in there. And we're seeing the consequences of that still today. You know, that's, he really is punishing part of the story.

I can tell you, Peter, academics are going to be ready about this for years, right? Here's somebody who's actually interested in oil, has some kind of hazy concept that, you know, the United States is going to control or have a finger on oil supplies in the Caribbean and the Middle East. And General Kane says to him, well, you know, the Straits of Hormuz could be a real choke point here. and he laughs it off.

So how do you put those two pieces of the story together? If you're interested in oil and your chief military advisor brings it up and says, well, there's a problem. There's a choke point there. You think he would pay attention. But he dismissed it in those meetings. And we know he did. What do you take out of the Financial Times interview of the last 24 hours?

What does it say to you about where we are? and what he's thinking? So he understands, he understands now that he cannot end this war with his traits before moves closed. That that, even he cannot spend on his victory, right? That's so even he. So, you know, he's saying things now.

Well, 20 shifts, the Iranians have allowed 20. ships have allowed these ships to transit through the straits. That's out of respect for me. So is he looking now for a way? Because Iranians have said the only ships that will not go through are ships from Israel, ships from the United States, and their enemies, which are countries that have American bases in the Gulf. That's everybody pretty well. Is he looking for a way to say, well, if they're allowing Chinese ships to go through, which, by the way, they didn't. It's really surprising the Iranians, they stop to Chinese ships from going through the straits. But if it's that the Iranians will open the streets or open the straits to those they wish to go through, well, that's a potential off-rank for Donald Trump, because he says,

the straits are open. The other one, and we're going to come to this, this is a much harder one, is what everybody, if you see these, this expression on Twitter, you'll know what they're talking about. H-E-U, H-U, H-U, H-U, H-U, H-U, that's the acronym, that's olive. That's the other one. It's very hard for him to leave that alone and say this is a victory. If he doesn't address those two problems, he can't spin it. And so there are more troops there now, Peter, they are expeditionary troops. They're the 81st airborne.

That is the most highly trained force that can deploy in 18 hours and fight its way. When I see that, an additional 10,000, I still think there's heat. there's a plan for, there is a serious plant for escalation. What that is, I don't know, because to me, right now, there's no good option in the United States. They backed themselves in, and there's nothing that they can do that will work from a military point of it. Well, so we're talking ground troops. Yeah, that's what, that's what's been sent to the region. And ground troops translate to real casualties.

That's right. That's right. That's right. That's why governments do. That's why they don't like to do them, right? Bomb from the air. You lose functioning nobody. I mean, a month of war, what's the U.S. casualty right now?

13, something like that. 13, dead, three or 400. Wounded. wounded. Yeah. But those numbers can escalate very quickly if you start putting thousands of people on the ground. Yeah. And it's unclear what they sent me.

Again, for everybody who looks at this from the military point of view, let's just talk about this for one minute, Peter, Karg Island. Yes. Okay. That's very important to the Iranians. It is how they export their oil. It's where their oil infrastructure is. And the military infrastructure on the island has largely. been taken out.

But when you put ground troops on that island, that is within shooting range from the Iranian coast. All right. And all you need are missiles in underground caves or, you know, or mobile trucks that can come out. And before you have a drones and on an island like that, U.S. forces would be easy targets. That's so you're exactly about to talk about casualties.

Go up or down, develop, and talk about other islands. It's fundamentally the same problem. It's not occupying the island that's hard. It's holding the island when there are still missiles and Iran has capacity to fire off drones and it has thousands of drones. It makes them. And what's your plan with these islands? You know, after you've taken them assuming you take them, then what are you going to do?

Well, that's right. Implicitly is you're going to stop Iranian oil from, so just think about this one. You're going to stop Iranian oil from transiting through the straits in an effort to put pressure on Iran to agree to open up the straits. But when you stop the oil, you make the international oil crisis worse. A couple of points that you, before we move on, a couple of points that you've raised that we should just, you know, give a little more further information on. One, by the way, is whenever he talks about the vessels going through the

Straits of Hormuz, he talks about boats. Yeah, boats. They're not boats. They're not boats. They're ships. There actually is a difference between a ship and a boat. Yeah. The other thing you mentioned, which is really quite important,

is that, you know, the enemy to Iran, the enemy Gulf states are those that have U.S. bases on them. Right. And those U.S. bases are of interest to Canada, too, because that's where we are. Yeah. We stationed at you, especially the one in Qatar, I think. That's right. Where the Canadian forces are. And that's why we already heard they were kind of targeted or there was a hit on a,

a Canadian operation. Nobody was hurt, fortunately, but never lost. But it could happen. And it could happen. Exactly. Okay. Let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's let's what I think you're just something that I'm keeping my eye on.

Okay. Yeah. How do you, there's a stalemate now, right? Um, Iranians. No, everybody's lost so far. That there's no winner in the sport. Everybody's lost. The Israelis have lost.

Their population aren't sheltered. The Americans have lost. Look what's happened to global oil. Markets Iranians have lost. You know, tremendous destruction of their infrastructure. What can break the stalemate? The only one of the things that could break the stale night is if the Saudis decide to join the war. Because that would be a dramatic loss for Iran.

it would be everything that Iran has tried to avoid. If the Saudis, if the Saudis join the war, Iran faces huge obstacles in exporting its oil. So the counterbalance of that is to try to play the Chinese as a negotiator. There's two. Before that could happen, right? There's two, okay. That's why it's not only Pakistan's nomination of Donald Trump.

As good as that was for them at a skill. And Donald Trump has this by regard for their chief of staff, their chief of their military staff, Munir, who's probably a single most powerful person behind the scenes in Pakistan. But the other thing is the Saudis and the Pakistani signed the mutual defense tree, which happened just before it happened. I'd have to look which month it was, Peter, but it was January and December. it was something like that.

It's very recent when it was. And that's a game changer, really. People paid attention to that. And why is that? Because Pakistan's nuclear power. And the Saudi Arabians are watching all of this. And they are the most likely proliferator if Iran actually goes nuclear. The United States said over and over.

If the Iranian is getting a nuclear weapon, we're next. And during this period of rapproch small that went on between the Saudis and the Iranians. Well, people said, well, you don't need a nuclear weapon. Your relationship with Iran is much better. They were never persuaded. Never persuaded. And so what the Saudis do now is really key.

And there's a close, close relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Okay. We sometimes forget, although I don't think we ever really, forget, but we just don't talk about it as much. But it's not just U.S. against Iran. It's U.S. and Israel against Iran. Yes. Israel is using this opportunity to pound, pound southern Beirut, Lebanon, going after Hezbollah.

And it's considerable. I mean, I saw a number in the last 24 hours that there have been a thousand dead in Lebanon. a thousand. 50% of the casualties. Okay, Iran, it's hard to get good numbers, but it's 1,500, something like that, 2,000. And in Lebanon, a thousand. So what are they actually accomplishing there?

I mean, is this the annual, let's pound Hezbollah? This, this, in a sense, tells you what didn't happen, Peter, you know, out of that, out of the strike on Hezbollah that took place, where Hezbollah, every, it was defanged, lost its leadership. When the, throughout the war with Hamas, Hezbollah never really opened the full force of fire that it couldn't. Because Hezbollah, before the pager attack, had a formidable force, 100,000 missiles that it could have fired across the war, could have paralyzed the whole country. Israel went first on that because for years the threat was not from Gaza, the threat was from the north.

Right. That's where there was this large missile force. And that the large degree explains the surprise that Hamas was able to achieve. There's so many intelligence assets were invested in the north, very, very little in Gaza on Hamas, because Hamas was seen as a much gooper. It could not pose a strategic threat. At the end of that, Israel said they'd been removed as a threat, but there's war starts. and Hamas fires missiles on day two in support of Iran. Now, why?

Because the relationship between Hezbollah, what was left of Hezbollah, and Iran tightened after the 12th day war. Iran essentially said, you know, we've been paying the paper. It's time now. If this happens again, you have to get involved. you have to fire. We need to have to have friends. And they fired his one. Well, that was a suicidal act, frankly. They fought five missiles. That was enough. And what the political context of this, I think, is so important. The Lebanese Prime Minister, the Lebanese president of president,

for the first time, had said to Hezbollah, you must just arm. And the reason, they had said that is as long as there was an independent militia that is larger than the Lebanese army is impossible for the Lebanese government, the Lebanese Prime Minister and President. For Lebanon, it would function, really, as a coherent country. You can't have a militia that's larger than your regular army. And I think there was a, there was tacit acknowledgement

between the president of Lebanon and the Prime Minister, we're trying to do this. We can't force it. We haven't been able to do it. And so I think the concern in the first few days when Israel moved against Hezbollah was not great. The Lebanese government was willing to look the other way because they want Hezbollah disarmed for their own internal domestic political reasons that don't have a lot of to do with Israel.

What's happened now is there's two areas of attack. One is fundamentally about five miles north of the Israeli Lebanon border. And Israel is talking about holding that territory because they're saying the Lebanese government has not been able to disarm. It doesn't matter how much further from the border you get, Peter. It's still not enough to protect the border communities that live in Israel just south of it because missiles are missiles or missiles and this just becomes, frankly, it's a mobilizing reason for supporters of Hezbollah because once again, Israel is inside Lebanon. But the real focus in the attack has been in the part of Beirut, South Beirut, which is where Hezbollah is concentrated and, many of its senior officers are and its offices are and it controls that neighborhood.

The Lebanese, the president of Lebanon does not, has beloved that, and that's where those casualties are coming. I guess what I find rather astonishing is that even after a month of this, and even after, what was his name, Nasrallah? Yes, it was killed. It was assassinated by the Israelis a year ago or more now, that they still can't, they can't deal with Hezbollah. They can't eliminate Hezbollah.

So this is a bigger question, right? Peter, this has been going on since 1982. Yeah. This is, okay. And there is no military solution to this problem. which is very hard. When you look at what's going on, there's no military solution to the Iranian nuclear problem.

There's no military solution to the Iranian nuclear problem. You have to have an agreement of some kind. There's no military solution as well as you have to have an agreement of some kind. And every time you try to do it militarily, and really in the wake of the Hamas attack on October the 7th, Israel gave up on diplomacy. And they have, as a result of that attack, their view is every time we see concentration of forces on our borders, we're not going to wait. Our intelligence failed. We're never going to take that chance again.

Well, that is only a recipe for continual fighting because there was no military solution to any of these. problems. Okay. We're going to take our break. We have a couple of things that we still want to get to, and we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Monday episode. That means Dr. Janice Stein from the monk school, the University of Toronto. We talked mainly about the Iran War, not surprisingly, but we have a couple of other things to talk about as well. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. to have you with us wherever you are listening from. Okay, somewhere here I've got a letter.

Yeah. I remember what your listener asked. Yeah, the listener was asking about dirty bombs. Yes. And whether, because I think you had suggested, and others have suggested that Iran could have a dirty bomb with what they got left over from their nuclear. you know,

attempts to getting nuclear, right. So, but our listeners saying that he'd read that you can't make a dirty bomb with the kind of enreched uranium that Iran has. Well, that was a really great question. That was a really, really great question. I'm really, really, really a knowledgeable listener.

And he's mainly right, okay? in the sense that you can't make the, if you want to make a dirty bomb, enriched uranium is not your best bet. Why is that for two reasons? It's degradable. You listen to was right about that. And it's not as radioactive.

It's not as dirty as other materials that you could use. So classic dirty bombs have highly toxic, materials in them that don't degrade as quickly because you're going to make it and you're going to keep it for a while. And so the question was really great. Why would anybody talk about the Iranian citizens a dirty bomb? This is in the context. And we're seeing, by the way, out of the Revolutionary Guards, because they tweet, Peter,

the Revolutionary Guards. So that's where it's really helpful to monitor what they're saying. So they are saying now that there's a faction within the new leadership that are saying, we want to walk away from the non-proliferation treaty. Well, walking away from the non-on, and only one other country has done that. And walking away from the non-proliferation treaty would absolve them of their obligation, not to use that enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. Take that a step further.

If you're Iran, you've been in two negotiations with the United States. You think you're making progress, and the United States uses it as cover to go to war, because that happened in June, and that happened now again. The argument is the Iranians are going to race for a nuclear weapon, all out as fast as possible, to be. build a nuclear weapon because then the United States will not attack them again. I think that's a very dubious proposition for that. That's a whole separate argument. But Rafael Grossi, who is really knowledgeable, who has had the international atomic energy, runs those inspectors

who are inside Iran. And by the way, is running to be Secretary General of the United Nations, very, very political. He's in the middle of a campaign right now. I'm very, very careful of what he says. He said, look, we need to get access to that in Mr. Raina. Everybody's aware that there is a, and he acknowledged that there is a risk of breakout here. That with what the Iranians have, you can make a small device, as he put it, within two weeks. so he affirmed some of the arguments and he's expert in this field he affirmed in that interview yesterday

he affirmed some of the arguments that everybody been having about how far or how close iran is now if you're if you're on and you don't want to go that far for all the reasons and there are a lot that's when you take some of that enriched uranium and you make frankly a lousy dirty bomb. But you say to everybody, we've made a dirty bomb. So it's much more for the impact that it would have on, frankly for Iran of establishing the terms of saying to everybody, you come back at us, it'll be entirely different this time than it was the other time. And that's where the risk is. Okay.

Where rapidly, as happens every Monday, running out of time. Let me just, let's get a quick update on Ukraine because that war hasn't like stopped to watch this one. It's still going on. But I see conflicting stuff about, to whose advantage things are right now. Right. You tell me. Let's talk about the battle for the ground, what's happening on the ground.

I have to say, Peter, I've never seen inventiveness and on a part of an art. It's astounding three of things. It's just an outstanding store. They, right now, because it goes like. like a sea salt, right? And the Ukrainians adapt and invent and innovated and then the Russians come after three months later. Right now the advantages with Ukraine

because their latest generation of drones are so effective that, and this is a terrible way to talk, but this is the way military, and this is one of the measures the military analysts use, fewer Ukrainians are dying a month and more Russians are dying a month and they are able to recruit because of their drones because of the way they're massing their drones and they are targeting individual Russian soldiers right now. If that holds, that is an enormous problem for Russia because

they have a manpower problem. Both sides have terrible manpower problems. This is the first month when Russia has lost more soldiers than it was able to. recruit. That's where the optimism comes. And they effectively stole a spring offensive that the Russian army was prepared to launch. So that's why we're hearing some encouraging words on the ground. Diplomatically, what's happened? A big game for Zelensky, but a huge worry. Diplomatically, he's got 200 guys in the Gulf right now, in Saudi Arabia, in Kuwait, in Qatar. who are helping the Gulf states intercept with much cheaper drones so that they don't have to rely on those very expensive interceptors.

And Ukraine is the world's leader in this kind of technology. So all of a sudden, Ukraine becomes a valuable global asset. At the same time, Donald Trump is pushing hard on Zelensky to give up the remaining part of the Donbass in order to secure a deal. And the pressure is really intense. Well, we'll see what happens there. I saw that Zelensky was, I mean, the guy is mobile,

if nothing else. He's all over the place. And he was in the Gulf. Yeah. All over. And with, again, with the Saudis, right? There's a picture of Zelensky, with Mohammed bin Salman.

Because he has sent his people. I mean, I have, let's stop over the irony of this, right? Peter. Donald Trump doesn't figure this war out. Doesn't think through, doesn't do any scenario. His most important ally in the Gulf of Saudi Arabia. And who does Mohammed bin Salman turn to now for help with Saudi Arabia? It's fundamentally under attack.

Zelensky. and Donald Trump cannot see the valley. Now, what is it with him and Russia? That he's still flying, you know. That we don't know the answer to that question. I mean, we all suspect what it may be, but we don't know what it is. No, no. We do not.

But, no. Well, I'll give you a week to come up with the answer for that. That one I really don't know. And nobody knows, Peter. Nobody knows. Except the Russians. They know. Except the Russians.

Yeah. Okay. We're going to call it a day for this week. It was another great conversation. I appreciate your time. Thanks, Janice, for talking seven days. Let's do that. And there she is, Dr. Janice Stein.

And it was another great conversation. Can't miss with Janice. She always makes you think. Right? Don't, as we say, and as she says, not everybody agrees with her. And some people point out things that occasionally she hasn't thought of. And in a way, that's what John McClellan did. He's the fellow who wrote in about the dirty bomb question. So we thank you, John, for that.

That's going to do it for this day as we start off another week of the bridge. Glad you were with us. We'll be back tomorrow. More Butts conversation. You heard the question of the week about the NDP. They've got a new leader. What's your view of that?

Not just the leader, but what it means. Is the NDP going to make a rebound? They could sure use one. But can they? Your thoughts on the NDP, 75 words or fewer, and you know all the other rules. If you don't rewind

to the top of the program today, and we give you all that. Anyway, thanks so much for listening today. I'm Peter Mansbridge. It's been great to talk with you, and we'll talk again in less than 48 hours.