The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Andrew Coyne: the Iran-U.S. ceasefire unravels and Alberta pulls ahead while Ontario and Quebec fall behind

Episode Date: July 10, 2026

What should we make of this week's NATO summit in Ankara? If it doesn't end with the U.S. withdrawing from NATO, should it be considered a success?Meanwhile, the U.S. and Iran resumed strikes just weeks after signing a memorandum of understanding. Andrew argues that Trump was warned about the risks of cutting a deal with Iran. The ceasefire is unraveling because there was never a real agreement—it merely bought a few weeks of respite. Iran now holds the upper hand, and there is no easy way out of this dilemma.In the second half of the show, Rudyard and Andrew turn to Canadian politics, specifically Alberta's announcement of a new pipeline and Meta's investment in a major data centre in the province. Why is Alberta capitalizing on this moment while Central Canada is falling behind? As Ontario and Quebec face a manufacturing exodus to the United States, what extraordinary measures are needed to make Canada a more attractive destination for investment? And does Ottawa have a serious plan to address the challenges facing the country's manufacturing sector? Become a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Anytime the Iran feels like it, they can just basically put the gears to Trump. And he's got really nothing he can do in response. He's shot his bolt. They threw everything they could at Iran. And it didn't succeed. Welcome to this monk dialogue with Andrew Coyne, a regular guest here at the monk debates. And coming to us regularly now on Fridays for the summer. Andrew, great to be in conversation with you.

And to be with you. A lot to talk about on the first half of the show, though. Let's dip into international news. It was a busy week with the president at the center of a lot of it. A NATO summit was some controversial and tempestuous remarks by POTUS to end off the event in Ankara, Turkey. And then this resumption of tit-for-tat strikes between Iran and the United States, seemingly the MOU. in danger, the ceasefire flopping. Let's break it all down. So first, Andrew, on the NATO summit, how would you gauge it? Should we come away with a glass half full and that the president

didn't walk away from NATO? Well, yeah, our estimation of what constitutes half full is getting smaller and smaller. So if a NATO meeting, a NATO meeting, ends in, it doesn't end in complete disaster with the United States pulling out of NATO, then that's said to be a success. That is how tenuous things are. So there's a rhythm to these things. The first part of the meetings, you see this now with every gathering that Trump goes to, the first part of the gathering, people are very hopeful.

They're sort of business-as-usual types of meetings. They look like these international gatherings usually do. and then Trump arrives and everything goes to hell. So Trump, you know, going into this, the other leaders tenuously believe they cobbled together something that would look like, if not progress, at least keeping things going in the sense of we'll spend more on our defense, on the collective defense, if the United States will stay engaged and promise not to violate Article 5 or abandon Ukraine, et cetera. Well, okay, they had that sort of basically cobbled together. Then Trump arrives and starts saying he'd like to cut off all trade with Spain. He still wants Greenland, where we came perilously close to a shooting war. You know, he might pull all of U.S. troops out of Europe.

And so everything was thrown into disarray. Now, at the very end, they're able to issue this communique that says, we stand four square. ironclad commitment for Article 5 and we view Russia as a threat and we will never abandon Ukraine. Okay, that's great to have a piece of paper saying that. I don't think anybody at this point could have any great confidence that the United States of America under Donald Trump would live up to its Article 5 obligations. In fact, I would think it's more likely than not that they would not, which is hugely destabilizing at a time when people are seriously. wargaming, what happens if Russia goes into Latvia, Lithuania, etc.

So, yeah, half full, half empty, I don't know. They were able to keep up appearances. Yeah. But I don't think that it masks or should mask the underlying reality that NATO is, if not a dead letter, it is close to it. Yeah. Earlier this week, I caught up with Janus Gross Stein, another regular contributor to the debate. She was in Ankara for the NATO summit. She said there was a strange dichotomy between the president's

kind of remarks when the cameras are off versus what he says when they're on. And he clearly delights Andrew, does he not, from the attention, the spectacle that he can command by saying at times outrageous things. So how do we explain that? How much of this stuff is substantive, worth our attention? I mean, it's one of the dilemmas, I think, that you and I have talked about now over a number of months. What is serious here and what is not? But he's to be to give him his due. He says a lot of the same crazy things in private.

And sometimes it takes a while for the crazy things he said in private to come out. So we're just reading in the Wall Street Journal now about utterly crazy unhinged things he said in private to world leaders, you know, 10 months ago. Who knows what he said in. this meeting in private. So the party line is, oh, yeah, we had behind the scenes, we had constructive meetings. I'm more struck when the stuff comes out, again, to get him his due, he's fairly consistently crazy. When he phoned up the president of India, supposedly to have a discussion about tariffs and the tariff war between the two countries, the only item in his

mind was, I want you to put me up for the Nobel Peace Prize. I want you to credit me, for an alleged peace agreement between you and Pakistan. So I don't hold to this idea that behind the scenes, he's this normal deal-making president. There's just too much evidence to the contrary that he says that much the same unhinged things in private that he does in public or different unhinged things. A few slips, obviously, by the president in his remarks.

One, I think that caught people's... attention was his new name for Iran, which was the Islamic Republic of Japan. It's a big, complicated world of a lot's changing, and I had no idea that Japan had become an Islamic Republic. But it goes, I think, Andrew, to another thing that you and I have talked about, which is, you know, the president is 80 years of age. He's led an active life, to put it. realistically, you know, people at a certain age and stage have cognitive challenges that

they're tired, let's face, they're tired more easily, but maybe the problems go beyond that. And I'm just wondering again, if we're seeing in this tit for tat with Iran, if you try to figure this out, why we're suddenly back at a shooting war, because maybe the president was angered by Israeli intelligence suggesting maybe that there were new Iranian assassination plots against him. Help me here, Andrew. I'm trying to understand why an MOU that was definitely in this president and administration's self-interest going into the midterms has so quickly fallen apart after weeks of praise of the Iranian regime, praise of its so-called new leaders, praise that these were great guys.

who you could do a deal with. And now we're back shooting each other. Why? Well, first of all, I wish the only thing we had to worry about was that Trump was getting old. If all the issue was that he was losing a step, that would be one thing. But, you know, he's a deeply damaged person in a hundred different ways that have nothing to do with his age. The ages maybe made them worse. He's got a bunch of younger men around him who are also.

deeply damaged individuals in other ways, who certainly can't claim that age or dementia is at issue. So I think the situation far predates that. And yeah, you can also see evidence of that kind of cognitive decline. But you have a worldview in Trump's case that centers around his own psyche, which is things happen because I say they do. You know, we get into a war with Iran. It'll all work out because I've got a hunch about. this. And I'm always right. And we'll bomb them for three days and the regime will collapse and

everything will work out. So that was the level of analysis, quite frankly, that went into this. He was warned about things that were obvious to anybody who has great school familiarity with the region of how Iran would react of what a complicated governance structure it had. in Iran that it wasn't so fragile as they'd imagined. And so if you're asking why, you know, why are they now, why is the ceasefire crumbling? The ceasefire has crumbled because it was never really a deal. Iran, most of it was put off to later.

Iran is in such a strong position now. It's been strangely liberated by the effect of being attacked. We talked about this before, that it would never have dared to seize the strait of Pramese before. because it didn't want to be attacked. But once you're attacked, what's the downside in doing it? So now it has that control, and it is going to basically play with Trump now. And so that's what's going on.

It is anytime Iran feels like it, they can just basically put the gears to Trump, and he's got really nothing he can do in response. He's shot his bolt. They threw everything they could at Iran. and it didn't it didn't succeed so so you're you're you're seeing the the crumbling of a deal that never really was it was a it was a thing on paper that Trump could wave about and get himself a few weeks relief but the basic dilemma that he got himself into is still there and there's no easy way out of that Andrew I guess one of the things I you know looking at a few of the obvious tea leaves here is that

Is it not Iran's maximum period of leverage this phase running up to the midterms? In fact, maybe starting now with the summer driving season in the United States, where gas prices are the kind of sine qua non of the popularity or not of an incumbent president in his administration. So how would you see this playing out? If Iran does indeed have the high stick from now through to November, Is this at its core, Andrew? Should we understand it as a contest over the Straits of Hermos that Iran fundamentally wants a new reality, a reality where its control is de facto recognized in the future it can monetize that control through fees or tolls or whatever euphemism they and the international community come up with? And how important is that or not do you think to this administration?

Because on a positive note, it does seem like this week, the Americans and the administration are increasingly adamant that this must be an internationally open waterway, free of Iranian dominance and control. So do you sense maybe a shift here, that an understanding that there might be stakes greater than the midterms that need to be litigated with Iran between now and November? Well, but put those two together. It's easy to say it must be open, but what are you going to do about it? And in particular, what are you going to do about it in the run up to an election? So I agree with you that this is a particular point of leverage for Iran. But unless, even after the election, unless and until the United States and other countries are prepared to do the very heavy lifting of keeping the straight open because remember iran doesn't have to fully control it it just has to have enough it's so enough doubt that ships won't go in there uh so you know or that even if ships are going

their insurance companies won't give them insurance so i i take your point that prior to the election is probably a point of of maximum leave i'm not sure it diminishes that much but the fundamental reality that was broken was the launch of the war that that changed everything. That has now, in a backflip kind of way, escalated Iran's role in the region. Even as, I mean, it was losing ground for a long time before this. You know, it had a lot of people killed. Its proxies were being decimated by Israel. Iran was really on the back foot before this. And remember, of course, also with huge internal revolts inside the country, which had put down with unspeakable brutality.

And at one time, you know, Trump was talking about how the, you know, help is on the way. Well, that help is no longer on the way. They shot their bolt in the most hand-fisted way possible with, you know, just a pure aerial bombing campaign thinking that was going to solve everything. And once that's happened,

I don't know how you put the toothpaste back in the tube. So, yeah, you can talk about it. a declaration of that we're highly resolved that this shall not stand, but who cares? That's not going to actually open the straight. Yeah. Just as we wrap up this, the first complimentary half of today's Monk Dialogue with Andrew Coyne, to go back to Ukraine, the other vital international conflict that's going on that demands our attention, it seemed as if the president has warmed to Zelensky, because Zelensky,

is a winner right now. He's got an effective drone force that's threatening Moscow in St. Petersburg. There were new reports this week of Russia having to stop exports of diesel fuel due to the damage of it to its domestic refining capacity. Something maybe to be positive there about Andrew, that regardless of what Trump's calculations are in terms of leaders, favors or not, or countries that are recipients of his tolerance or not. Zelensky has increasingly carved out a zone of autonomy, a range of action that isn't as dependent on the Americans as it used to be. And maybe Trump and the Trump administration are slip streaming with the momentum that Zelensky is showing on the battlefield.

field and the comparative setbacks that Russia has had both at home and in the Dombas as the war grinds away with very small gains for Russian troops on the front lines. Well, and with in some cases significant losses of territory, certainly of manpower on just a grangentuous scale. I forget the last estimate, but it's something in excess of 1.2 million men lost, either killed or incapacitated. This is on World War I scale. It's a disaster for Russia of historic proportions.

And as you say, there are mounting troubles within Russia. Their economy is a disaster. They have papered over internal divisions that at some point will have to come to the fore. He can't afford to stop the war, even though the war is a disaster, because Russian leaders who lose wars don't tend to survive, particularly when the troops come home, so he can't let the troops come home. So, yes, on one level, this is an extraordinary, I don't want to say turn of events, but trend that Ukraine has been able to not just survive that initial onslaught,

whichever one predicted would last a few days, but has not just turned the tide in the war to a extent, but has revolutionized modern warfare. Just finally, as we wrap this up, on a lighter note, news reports are that Recep Erdogan, the president of Turkey, the strong man of Turkey, gave as a parting gift to heads of government, a brass nickel-plated revolver to commemorate the summit. Just to have a little fun with this. What do we make of Turkey in NATO? What do we make of Erdogan, who is anything but a Democrat?

I always thought that NATO had some rules about that, that there was a requirement that member states have adherence to a democratic system, to human rights, to the rule of law, whether codified and explicitly expressed or not in the charters of NATO, it nonetheless has been a longstanding convention. And yet Turkey seems very, very much on the outside of the mainstream of NATO. Unless you left out the codicil in Invisible Inc, unless they occupy extraordinarily strategic grants of a volatile region. Yeah, I mean, and Turkey's been playing a kind of a double game throughout this war,

where on occasion they are causing a lot of trouble for Russia in terms of naval straits, for example. And then occasion they're doing some deal with them. It's a very, I mean, it's not quite as weird as having Viktor Orban, you know, part of the club. But Turkey is certainly playing its own double role. And I guess people have just learned to kind of roll their eyes and roll with it. It's ultimately, I think they can count on it in an actual shooting war, but it's on a day-to-day basis, it's sort of a revved-up version of France. You know, France, oh, my God, dealing with the Gaul, but you just learn to deal with it.

Yeah, the Bosphorus is some pretty critical geopolitical geography in terms of immigration and other things that Europe cares about. Andrew, we're going to say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and viewers and join Monk donors and members on the other side. Thank you for sticking around for a quick bonus segment on the big week for Alberta. A lot going on in the province, a sense of momentum there. Is it part of a bigger Canadian story of resilience and resurgence or something specific to Daniel Smith and the political leverage that she has right now in our federation? We'll have that conversation with Andrew exclusive for monk donors and members. If you want to become a member or donor, do so right now.

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