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Best of the Spectator

Coffee House Shots: can Boris walk the Iran tightrope?

Best of the Spectator

The Spectator

News Commentary, News, Daily News, Society & Culture

4.4785 Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2020

⏱️ 18 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

With James Forsyth and Fraser Nelson.

Presented by Katy Balls.

Coffee House Shots is a series of podcasts on British politics from the Spectator's political team and special guests. Brought to you daily, click here to find more episodes that are not released on Spectator Radio.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Just before you start listening to this podcast, a reminder that we have a special subscription offer.

0:04.8

You can get 12 issues of The Spectator for £12, as well as a £20,000 Amazon voucher.

0:10.3

Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher if you'd like to get this offer.

0:17.4

Hello and welcome to Coffee House Shots, the Spectators Daily and sometimes more than daily politics podcast.

0:23.6

I'm Katie Balls and I'm joined by Fraser Nelson and James Versafe.

0:26.7

So Parliament is not back quite yet.

0:28.9

We have that joy tomorrow on Tuesday.

0:31.4

But it's a busy day for the government thanks to the ongoing Iran crisis.

0:36.2

James, what the developments over the weekend, Boris Johnson, returned

0:39.4

from his holiday and put out a statement in which he said.

0:42.9

So there were two statements from Boris Johnson last night. One made on his own, which says

0:48.0

that, you know, the UK does not shed any tears for the death of the leader of the Iranian al-Quds force.

0:55.1

And then a joint statement from the UK, France and Germany kind of urging on everyone to kind of de-escalate the situation.

1:02.4

And I think the interesting and striking thing about the second statement is how on this Iran question

1:09.3

where the US and the European Union have been quite divided in opinion,

1:13.8

the UK, while being careful not to kind of formally break with the US, is still talking with more of a European accent.

1:23.3

I also think the other thing which is, which as always, Donald Trump is acting as a complicating factor here.

1:30.8

Some of Trump's threats, you know, for example, to hit Iranian cultural sites if there

1:35.3

is any Iranian retaliation, I think made the situation particularly difficult for Downing Street

1:39.2

because, you know, the normal Western rubric is quite rightly, but the quarrel is not

1:43.1

with the Iranian people, it's with the Iranian regime.

1:45.2

When you start talking about hitting cultural sites, that becomes a slightly more difficult

...

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