The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Iran War -- Trump Delays One Threat But Things Could Still Get A Lot Worse.

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

It's now Week Four of the Iran War and Trump delays one threat but things remain very tense. How bad could things get? We ask those questions of Dr Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto as she makes her regular Monday Bridge appearance. 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. The Iran War, is there a deal in the offing? Or is it just another Trump-Tacco moment? All that while the threat carries on. That's all coming right up.

And hello there. Welcome to Monday. Welcome to The Bridge and Dr. Janice Stein as she makes her regular Monday appearance. Well, we usually record Dr. Stein in the early morning on Monday, which we did today. And shortly after that recording and she was off to classes of the UFT, strange, another one of those strange, you know, social media posts from Donald Trump came out as he had been threatening to bomb a Iranian power station probably tonight or tomorrow morning.

And he says that there being talks with Iran over the weekend. And they look promising. And there could be a deal. So he's extended his threat another five days. The Iranians, meanwhile, are basically saying, talk. We didn't talk. Now, there's some confusion around all this, obviously, as there often is around the Donald Trump.

Trump tweet. But nevertheless, the situation as it stands is the threat still about bombing power stations and the impact that might have still exists. The timeline has changed a bit. But there's hope one assumes that there could be some kind of an agreement reached. But it's very unclear at this point. I still want to run Dr. Stein because it is a really good conversation. about how consequential things could be

and just how bad this war could get if nothing changes. So we're going to do that. But first of all, before that conversation, this week, Thursday, your turn, and the random renter, of course, but your turn is an Ask Me Anything week. This is the last week of March,

and as we said, the final week of each month, we'll do an ask me anything. So that really does mean ask me anything. Doesn't mean I'm going to be able to answer it, but I will try. And it's usually stuff about how we do this job, how we do the podcast, stuff about my career. Many of you like to ask questions about that.

So don't be shy. Ask me anything. Answers must be in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. You send your letters to the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at Gmail.com. Include your name and the location you're writing from. And most important, keep it under 75 words, right? 75 words or fewer.

And that's a hard rule. Over 75 words, it's not going to make it. All right. So let's get to my conversation with Dr. Janice Stein. Once again, conversation was recorded just before Donald Trump's latest tweet about, oh, we're having good talks with the Iranians. The Iranians say, we don't know anything about talks. But whatever the case, the threat of bombing power stations has been extended to five days.

So this conversation was recorded. just before that new social media tweet, but it's really a good conversation. So don't get fooled by the first minute. Here we go. Dr. Janice Stein with her regular Monday conversation here on the bridge. All right, Janice, I've got lots of questions today,

and I think a lot of people have a lot of questions. So let's get at it. Let's start with the ultimatum that Trump has laid down in terms of hitting power stations and starting with the biggest power station that Iran has. And he says he'll do that anytime after later today. Real or bluff? What do you think?

No, no, it's cute, in all honesty, with Donald Trump. It actually, unless it's for a second, it's real. And I would, it's a guess. I would think it's a bluff more than real. But if you take it for a moment, it's real. Just think about this. The strategy was from a volcano uprising inside Iran. And then you threaten that you're going to knock out the power infrastructure,

which is going to do two things. First of all, infuriate all of Iran's population because they're already struggling so terribly. And then secondly, prevent any communication. whatsoever. So you look at this and we say this is just incoherent from the ground up. My sense is the deadline will pass.

It's something like early tomorrow morning in Canada for 48 hours. And, you know, there could be, I don't think it's going to affect Iranian decision making, which is itself a problem because it's so difficult for people for the decision makers inside Iran

to communicate. with one another. So if you have a blackout, think about Bellin again. And there'll be some token strike and we'll move on. I do think this is coming to a boil because the damage from the war is so enormous to everybody else. Okay. Let's get to that in a moment. I want to deal with this. He makes this statement almost 48 hours ago now that this is what he's going to do. Would you assume that he has talked to his military commanders about this before he says it?

You know, in a normally functioning White House where you have underneath you, a national security advisor who has underneath her or him, you know, defense, the State Department, the intelligence, and they meet and they share information together, and they produce a joint assessment that goes up to the president, yes, you would think that would happen. That whole system is not functioning in this White House. The threats come out on true social, usually very late at night. And when they come out at that time and I can almost guarantee that he really hasn't had a serious

conversation with anybody and that's that's what in a way was most alarming here and truly the only serious person to have a conversation with is general Dan Kane the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that's all because look at a heck stuff what more is there to say Michael Rubio is the best, but he's national security advisor. He's secretary of state, and he's got one other job. I think he's a national archivist, and he doesn't have that structure under him because Donald Trump fired. A third of the National Security Council he fired when he went into the White House. So this is decision-making on the fly by a president in the White House.

late at night, which is when most of those tweets come up. Let's assume for a minute that's real, and that in fact he follows it through. Last week we talked about the possibility that Iran would hold in terms of its cards to play, the knocking out of desalination. You always got this word mixed up. It's either desalination or desalination. But whatever. There are plants to change salt water into real water around the Middle East.

And a lot of the countries that are bordering on Iran have these and are totally dependent on them. That they would strike against those. Does that make sense that they would consider that? Or would they even have the communications left to be able to pull something like that off? That's the big question. How good is it communications inside Iran among these decision makers that are dispersed because they can't meet, frankly. They can't meet for two reasons, Peter. They can't meet in person because intelligence is so penetrated inside Iran that they're terrified that Israel or the United States will know there's a meeting.

So they don't meet in person. well, you meet virtually, you know, we leave digital trails whenever we use any kind of electronic communication. So even meeting digitally is very dangerous because it's a signal of where you are. So the communication inside Iran is very, very difficult. From everything we understand, the commanders are completely dispersed. and they can, you know, they get a signal, launch an attack according to a prepared, pre-prepared plant that Ali Khomeini left before he died.

That's what's being executed right now. Now, they did one thing, which I was really, really surprised at, the Iranians. They launched an attack against the largest LNG. exporting capacity in Qatar. The Anatuck is different from all the other ones we've seen. Peter, it will take five years to repair that structure. And Qatar is one of the biggest LNG exporters in the world.

And LNG liquefied national gas isn't everything in a wide, wide range of product. So we are already at a point where this tit for tat, which is what we've heard in the last 30 hours, inflicted so much damage on the energy infrastructure. I think if I'm right, the head of the International Energy Agency said this is the biggest oil shock the world has ever known. It has taken more barrels of oil off the market than

1973 and a million more. We're perilously close to a huge economic supply shock to the world. That's got away with some of Donald Trump's advisors. Yeah, they seem to me to

have totally miscalculated that issue. There's no question. As much as it seemed obvious, you're going to attack Iran. Yeah. And you're not going to consider the possibility that you're going to begin an energy crisis, an oil crisis, an LNG crisis. Yeah. Yeah. You know, from again, when people talk, we lastly to the press in Washington, he was told.

he was told that it would very likely that Iran would blockade the Straits of the Burmose he laughed it off so it wasn't that the military didn't tell him they told him no no no that won't happen but they was no no no it seemed to me to have exposed some of his most senior economic advisors to be exactly what many of us were beginning to think they were as basically incompetence. You watch Besant

over this last few days and you go, what is this guy smoking? I mean, it's not good. No, no. I mean, it's two things. It's hard sometimes to find a coherent thread in what Besson says. But beyond that, it's so clear that he's so marginal, right,

that he's not in the inner circle. It doesn't have a sense of where the president is going to go next. But who does have a sense where Donald Trump's going to go next, frankly, on anything? All that Iran has to have left, Peter, is enough commanders who are dispersed when enough drones. You don't need very sophisticated equipment so that you can disrupt the shipping of the golf and you can take out some of the remaining infrastructure in a neighboring golf state. That's all they meet.

I'm sure they have. You know, just to tie the nod on Bessent, the he may not be in the inner inner circle. He may have been marginalized, but they keep sending him out to be the spokesperson. person, which is usually means you're, you're not far from the chopping block, you know, if that's the case. Well, also, I think he's the one that many people in the global financially we know. You know, they knew him from before.

When he was first appointed, that was a kind of signal of reassurance. Oh, you know, it wasn't how it left. nobody knew Howard Ludwig, and the few who did, didn't have very positive things to say about Howard Ludwig in the negotiations they'd had with him. So Scott Besson was there to reassure the global financial community that he would keep the president on track, that this was a non-bonity. Well, nobody keeps on top. It's interesting, you mentioned Ludnik, because he's ever since he, he had the Epstein problem of a few weeks ago. He's kind of like disappeared.

Yes. Maybe he'll return. Who knows? He's definitely being involved in the Canada file. But you don't see him around anymore, or at least you don't hear from him anymore. Okay, I've got a couple of questions that I'm going to classify as the big questions. Okay.

I was in Ottawa this weekend. and with Will, actually, we were up there for a number of personal reasons. And we flew back last night. And at one point on the plane, Willie turned to me and he said, you know, Trump has, when asked if he would use ground troops, he's very careful. Well, careful is probably not the right word to use with him. But his answer is, an unobstance.

can rule them out, basically, is what he says. So Willie says, why doesn't anybody ask him whether he would use a nuclear option? Now, I know people run away from that question and for good reason, but the fact of the matter is, with Trump, I have no confidence whatsoever in how he would answer that question. Yeah. How do you think he'd answer that question? Well, there's an interesting backstop on and backstory on Donald Trump and nuclear weapons. And that's the only way I can guess how he would answer.

And this comes from early days, Peter, in New York when he had a conversation with Maggie Thatch, believe it or not, in the 80s. And he expressed an absolute horror of nuclear weapons and what nuclear weapons. and what nuclear weapons would do. And subsequently, he went on in a climate discussion, which he never liked the Arnold Trump. He said, look, there is no, the only serious climate crisis is nuclear winter. That would come if anybody were ever to use a nuclear weapon.

So this has been a through line with him. It's absolute appurrents of nuclear weapons. and a really deep fear about the damage that any use of nuclear weapons would cause. You know, there's this almost, there's two parts to Donald Trump. He hates violence. He hates casualties. And he'll use language. Well, it's horrible.

It's horrible. It's horrible. But it really does reflect a part of him that he hates mass casualty. my sense is that he would he would not contemplate under any circumstances using a nuclear weapon. And not for irrational reasons. And, you know, not from the usual kinds of strategic reasons that we have about when nuclear weapons would be used or not. This is a person who absolutely has consistently expressed any time he's spoken about. them totally foreign.

Okay. My counter to that would be the Donald Trump that we see now is vastly different from the Donald Trump of the Margaret Thatcher Day. Yeah. But among the only Margaret Thatcher, it's continued. But you're right. I think there's, and this is the imponderable. We are seeing for the first time now a trapped Donald Trump, right? We've never seen Donald Trump trapped like this in public.

And this is completely different from the tariff system, just so everybody understands why it is. The tariffs, when he gone into trouble on the tariffs, then he did with China, is easy. He just said, okay, I'm lifting the tariffs. And he could unilaterally end the crisis that he himself created. That's not true here. even if he were to say tomorrow we're stopping this war because and he would make it up it wouldn't matter there's another party here the Iranians and he unilaterally cannot stop this war first of all he'd have to stop the Israelis and I have no doubt that he can do that

because he's done it in the past but he'd have to stop the Iranians and he has almost no capacity to stop the Iranis. There must be a sense of being in a box that he has that he's never had before. And that's the difference here. And so

would he resort to a weapon that wouldn't change anything? Let's just, let's just follow that one through. What would he use? He would use only a tactical weapon in the battlefield on the ground.

It would change nothing, Peter, the morning after he would still be in the same bar. Okay, let's talk about that a little more, because we're clearly in a, and once again, it wasn't necessarily using it. It's not ruling it out. Yeah. You know, and you're using it as a threat. But let's look at it this way. We're clear, you know, this is clearly turned into a situation of continuing escalation.

Yes. You start with taking out their leadership. Yes. Then you do strategic bombing, which has gone in for like four weeks of it now, taking out stuff all over Iran. You have a economic crisis. A big one. A big one caused by your own misunderstanding of the situation, really.

you now have a threat of knocking out their power stations. Yeah. And the counter threat implicit that they could try to knock out to desalination plants. Yeah. There's not much left for the next step. No. No. So I agree.

I really agree. I think this week, this crisis is going to escalate and it's going to break in one way or another because they can't keep going up. There's no room left here. And they're clearly in escalatory mode, right? That threat signaled an intention to escalate without a lot of room and good options to do it, frankly. And the Iranians are not packing down, not an inch. not an inch. There's no signal from them that they're ready now to start to make a concession

that they wouldn't have made before all this start. Even though the Omani's are trying, the Qataris are trying, the Turks are trying, they're all the usual players. So where do they go if they have to ask? He is really the question. He, you know, even on Monday as we talk, There are big blackouts in the city of Tehran. And that is a really, really fragile infrastructure. It was fragile before this war started, so you can imagine now. It wouldn't take much to knock out that power infrastructure, and he can say, did it.

There would have to be in his mind or Dan Kane's mind some advantage. between a nuclear threat, some advantage. They would have to think that the Iranians would crack under it. Just think about this. This war started allegedly one of the reasons, because they've given us so many that it's incoherent. One of the reasons was to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Iran, they said Iran was a week or two weeks away, right? I think if Donald Trump were to threaten to use a nuclear weapon,

that would be a signal to 10 countries who are borderline proliferators. Okay, the deal is you're only safe if you have a nuclear weapon of your own. That's a huge cause even in making the threat. And that's Saudi Arabia. I mean, you know, that's Turkey. There were middle-income countries that could easily proliferate. That would change this war from just an incredible miscalculation, an incredible mismanagement, but fundamentally a regional war to a war where we can foresee consequences five years from now.

And instead of having nine nuclear states, we'd have 50. I don't think he'll do it. You know, I remember, as you remember, that the beginning of the Ukraine war, Putin kind of issued a sort of, I'm not ruling out nuclear. And Trump must look back at that and go, that scared the hell out of everybody.

It didn't change the course of the war, but it scared the hell out of everybody. Listen, if Peter, it was much worse than that. In October, the war started in February 2022. In October, it was a counteroffensive by the Ukrainians. It was the only successful counteroffensive they'd had in the war. And there was a conversation that was picked up among senior Russian generals about using a nuclear weapon. And that's when the CIA estimated that it was a 50% likelihood that Putin would use a tactic.

nuclear weapon. And they went beyond talking. They actually pulled some of that. Because the warheads are separated from the missiles when they're in storage. They pulled them out of storage. So there was something visible that the satellites could see when they went over. They indicated how serious he was without using a tactical nuclear weapon. Well, who said to him, you can't do that.

India, China, at the request of Joe Biden. And what it's one of the most, it tells us a lot about the limits of threatening with tactical nuclear weapons. The Biden administration after a fierce internal debate and that debate is still going on today made what is probably the most interesting statement

about nuclear weapons in this decade. They said, even if you were to use a nuclear weapon, we would not. We would respond with conventional force, but it would be all up conventional force. We would attack everything inside Russia with conventional force. Who is, you know, we're into the fourth week now of this war, and we still really don't have any firm knowledge of who's running the Iranian side.

You know, you mentioned earlier, in some ways, kind of the conventional wisdom that the former Ayatollah left a plan. Yes, that's what we know. And in a detailed plan, okay, on week one you do this, week two, you do that, and et cetera, et cetera. Is that what we believe, still believe, or we just have no idea what's happening on the other side? We have some like it, but very little. So the speaker, Galabas. So I think that the most general comment we can make,

the hardline elements in the Revolutionary Guards, have consolidated power. There's almost no Iranian expert who doesn't believe that. You know, Mastab Khadani, the Supreme Leader, is probably a figurehead. he's probably injured. We haven't seen him. We have no information, no evidence from anybody that he's alive and then he's functioning as the Supreme Leader. Let me put it that way.

So who's in charge? It is the hardest line elements of the Revolutionary Guards. If you think about this, the world has gone through all of this to replace a regime that had some insurance from the father with a regime that has no insurance. Who, you know, who Ari Lariani, as long as he was

alive, was outside that circle just a little bit, but he was the one of Klamini appointed to run the war until there was a leadership transition. He was assassinated. So you have Ghalybath, who's the Speaker of the Assembly. He's

one of three people in this transitional council. he is a hardliner. The new commander of the Revolutionary Guard ain't known hardliner. The only break in that story is the president of Iran Peseschian. It was reached out several times

in an effort, first of all, to say the Gulf states, we're not targeting you, we're only targeting U.S. bases. So that's the only voice right now in Iranian leadership. that is not core hardline revolutionary guards. I would honestly say, Peter,

regime change has happened in Iraq. We just haven't called it out. There has been a regime change, and the hardline elements in the country have consolidated power for now. So that really worked well then, didn't it? Yeah, did then, yeah. Okay, we're going to take our break

and we'll come back with the the second big question right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to the Monday episode of the bridge. That, of course, is Dr. Janice Stein. Our changing world, we started calling it a year ago, and man, we sure are in a changing world. Dr. Stein, of course, with the Monk School, the University of Toronto.

You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks, are on your favorite podcast platform. Okay. I think people can probably guess what the next question is. And it's this. How far are we from calling this World War III? Very far. Very far. Right. I get asked that question all the time. In the supermarket. Let me put it in. Right? All the time. So how do I describe this war? It has escalated to a region-wide war. This now encompasses the whole of the Middle East. We haven't had one like that.

It's really difficult. I can't think of one like this, really, that has escalated horizontally like this to the whole of the Middle East. And when you have a region-wide war in the Middle East, you, and we just said, you put the global economy at risk. And this is a really serious supply shock to the global economy. And I can't, you know, we can't make that point strongly enough here. You remember the consequences of the Arab oil embargo in the 70s.

We had statulation that lasted for a decade. And we're already dealing with countries that's spent in COVID. so economies are more fragile. The economic consequences of this are global. But that's not World War III. World War III would make that the big powers fight each other. And it would be the United States, China, Russia, that are involved in any kind of direct or indirect conflict.

I think there is no chance that this war escalates to World War III. Well, that's, and you say that with such confidence. Yeah. I don't believe the Russians are going on will. And so let's just take it apart from it. How would this happen? It would require Russia or China to fulfill commitments that they probably made for Iran. Russia has stood by here for four weeks.

it is made a token statement it is a huge winner from this war it is a gift on a silver platter of Vladimir Putin

are we talking about Ukraine right now and what's happening on the front lines the whole world is preoccupied by this war because of the

economic consequences Russia the Russian economy was really at risk before all this started. Billions of dollars of increased revenue from higher wealth.

It couldn't have happened at a better time for Russia. It has no interest in stopping this, none. And if it just sits back, there's no more gains to be had. So it's inconceivable to me they would take on the United States in any serious way. The Chinese? Why would they do it, frankly? Yes, they are a huge consumer of Iranian oil.

Unlike Donald Trump, they did think about what would happen if the Strakes and Formoos were closed. They've stockpile energy. Their oil reserves are at an all-time high. And as you know, Peter, they're the world's largest investor in renewables. They've got wind. They've got solar power. They're the world leader. in electric vehicles, works for them.

There is no incentive for either of the two powers that could turn this into a world war to do anything but reap the benefits of Donald Trump's miscalculate. What about the powers on the other side, you know, the UK, France, Germany? Boy, the enthusiasm, you know, if you talk to them. It's clearly you are in Ottawa, you may have seen or spoken to two of our people, you know there's dread in everybody's voices, right? There is absolute dread. They're saying tokenings, you know, our foreign minister, and either that, I'm sure you saw her statement over the weekend. It was that we must open the streets of Toronto.

Opposing the Straits of Toronto is violation of the international law. it is imperative that we open the streets of Toronto stop it wasn't a sense about what Canada would do to do any of that the silence was deafening frankly you know Keir-starmer has put assets in the Gulf but in an effort to defend

bases and assets that are already there it was an attack on Cyprus that motivated him And he said explicitly yesterday, our goal is to end this war and protect our assets without getting involved in the fighting. Well, who's, you know, the most reliable ally of the United States in the last 25 years? It's the United Kingdom in Iraq, in Afghanistan, the Aussis who will always show up nowhere to be found here. The French, I could go on. And the Germans, I mean, the Germans were, you know, they're, this is not our war. Yeah.

Line from the government. Yeah. And the Germans are in the process of the most significant rearmament that Germany has undergone since the 1930s. But it's just starting, Peter. They don't have assets yet that they can deploy. And then our friends, the last group, the Nordics, where our prime minister was yesterday over the last several days, they are focused on one thing right now, the Nordics, Greenland, and the Arctic. And they were not going to, there was a, you know, because sometimes in the middle of a four weeks like this, you have to look for the one hominy line in the whole story. and it was the Prime Minister of Denmark revealing that when Denmark put really a token number of troops on the ground in Greenland,

they were armed with assault rifle. Three, a moment ago, a few minutes ago, three times you called it the Strait of Tehran. Was that just a slip of the tongue? or is there is it called that occasionally as well? No, it's a straight of former. The straits Tehran are over on the red sea.

Oh, there actually is a straight of Tehran. Yes. And the reason it's probably more than a slip of the time is what we're seeing happen right now in the Gulf is the Saudis and the Emirates have built pipelines across their country. and they are exporting through the Red Sea. That's why.

And your audience, that's the next level of escalation for not only to block the straits or moves, but to block the Red Sea access. And they have the missile capability to do that. There's no question. So that's how the energy crisis gets worse this week. if there's a tip for tet escalations. It's crazy, isn't it? Every time there's a conflict,

certainly one of some substance in the Middle East, it comes down to oil. Yes, it does. As much as we try to find other reasons for it, it comes down to oil. Yeah, and LNG. Right. Yeah, yeah, because LNG is growing in importance, right?

and what's amazing. It's only, now only, quote, 20% of the world's oil that moves through the straits or most. So that means 80% is moving. But that has taken 11 million barrels of oil a day out of global infrastructure. And LNG, Peter, you know, it's used to make computer chips. The global economy is the supply chains are so integrated.

That's the difference between 73 and 2026. In 73 was really an energy crisis. What we're seeing now is a global supply problem because so many of these products are converted in supply chains for much more advanced stuff that we all made and live on. Well, that's a key. That's a key. Yeah, because when you look at just the list of the countries that are dependent on oil that comes through the Strait of Ormoos.

It sounds about that. Yeah, it sounds okay. I'm looking at the list now. And it goes in this order. Japan, South Korea, India, China, Pakistan, Taiwan, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Philippines, Indonesia, Vietnam, Italy, Spain, U.S. Yes. Yeah. That's the order. Asia. Look at the first 10 you read? Yeah. Asia, right? And all U.S. presidents have been worried about oil for the last 20 years,

not because it affects the American economy. It really does, relatively speak, but because they care about their Asian allies. That's not keeping Donald Trump up tonight, I can tell you. He's not worried about the Japanese economy and what this will do. And you saw that stone face Japanese prime minister sitting over a lot, right? Well, and no wonder. My God, what a... Wasn't it?

I mean, how do you predict that, right? That's why I say you can't predict what this guy could say. If somebody, as Willie says, if somebody actually asks him at a news conference, and I don't know why they haven't yet, maybe they're afraid of what he might stumble into. But that nobody's asked him. Whether he rules out nuclear. You know, I think somebody will ask them. Because, by the way, you know,

journalists have his cell phone number. Yeah. And you call the White House at 11 o'clock at night because apparently, oh, very late at night, doesn't sleep much. And so you call at 11 o'clock in night. He answers the phone. So somebody, I mean, again,

no Canadian Prime Minister ever answered. At 11 at night, when you call, Peter, They just didn't, right? They had an appraised. Well, you know, he says he's the most accessible president ever. It's true. And that may be one thing he doesn't lie about. It's absolutely, that's absolutely accurate.

So some people ask him, I think, sooner or later. In a way, if you could never ask about him, Putin, my anxious, he'll say no. No, he's got an apporn. You know, many of our listeners, I'm at the end of our time here, but many of our listeners write to me and they say, when are you going to ask Janice again

if she still thinks he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize? Oh, look, that was then, right? That was, you know, when he stopped, this is the worst self-inflicted, crisis and war with a disdhist. point, Peter, it's hard for me to imagine any good outcome whatsoever. The outcome that I think is most likely right now, given everything, is a radicalized military regime in Iran that as soon as this is over, racist for the bomb, frankly. Because why wouldn't they, given the attack that

they've just experienced. Twice they were in negotiation, those negotiations, by the way, that's the other thing that's come out over the last week just for listeners. You know, the Amanis and the Qataris who were in Washington during these negotiations

gave very, very optimistic assessments of where those negotiations were at. What is apparent? They were inflated. They were not accurate. The negotiations were quite tough. Iranians made very

few concessions and the biggest issue was what happens and you and I have talked about this. What happens to those 400 pounds of enriched uranium at 60 to 60%?

Does that stay in Iran or does it leave? Iranians were adamant. They never made a concession. It was going to stay inside. I don't think that's going to change and they will get at it as soon as the fighting stops and they can make a dirty bomb within two weeks. Not a nuclear bomb, but a dirty one. If you don't think that's a terrible outcome in comparisons where we were before, where there was a fatwa, which is the Islamic

decree by Ali Khanini that the Iranians should not make a nuclear weapon. When he died, the fuck what died with him. Well, on that happy note, we'll call it a day for this week. I do think this is going to be the big week in this story. Yeah, it certainly seems to be shaping up that way. Yeah.

All right, Janice, thank you. We'll talk again in seven days. We will. Dr. Janice Stein, Muck School, University of Toronto, our guest, as she is always. on Mondays right here on the bridge. Just a reminder, as I told you at the beginning of the program,

that conversation with Dr. Stein was recorded just before Donald Trump announced that he was holding off for five days the attack on Iranian power stations in an attempt to try and make some kind of a deal with Iran. It's unclear from the Iranian side just what exactly has been discussed. us, if anything. And of course, Trump managed to make his announcement just before the market's open. What a shock. What a surprise.

So, of course, oil now has dropped and the markets are soaring. We'll see how long that lasts. And, you know, there's a pattern, right, in terms of timing of announcements by this way. It's amazing, really. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the conversation. Enjoy, maybe is the wrong word to use, but hopefully you were advanced in your knowledge and your thoughts and the discussion that you'll have with your friends

about the kind of things we talked about today on the bridge. Tomorrow it is Raj Russo as they appear for every second Tuesday, alternating with more butts. They're on tomorrow, and we'll see what we talk about. I'm sure we'll talk about the NDP. This is a big week for the NDP. Wednesday, I haven't decided yet what we'll do on Wednesday. Thursday is your turn, and you heard the issue for the week.

It's Ask Me Anything. So get your questions in on that, and make sure you abide by all the rules and conditions. They're all the top end of the show if you missed them then. All right. I'm Peter Mansbridge. so much for listening. Really looking forward to talking to you again tomorrow. We'll do that in well, roughly 24 hours. Bye for now.