Hello and welcome to another episode of the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency.

I would like to remind you all that we have just launched our print edition, and I'd like to encourage you all to subscribe. You can do that

by going to www. spectator.us forward slash subscribe and there you can take advantage of our various

offers. I'm joined by Paul Wood of the Spectator USA and we're going to be asking, is Iran standing down?

Paul Donald Trump has just given a press conference in which he assured the world that Iran

is standing down and that America will never let Iran have a nuclear weapon and that much as Secretary Mike Pompeo said earlier

this week that whereas Obama sort of appeased Iran, he is confronting it and containing it.

Do you think there's any truth in what Donald Trump is saying?

Well, it's a nice line, isn't it?

America and Iran over the past few days

remind me of two belligerent drunks in a bar, squaring up to each other, telling their mates,

hold me back, hold me back, and their girlfriend saying, he's not worth it, don't do it. They're drunk,

not on alcohol, but on their rhetoric. Trump tweeting in capital letters that Iran could expect retaliation, the likes of which

no country had ever seen, Iran flying the red flags of vengeance. And I think both sides,

having a little bit of a wobble, it was quite interesting that on the day that in the early

hours of the day that Iran released these missiles. Their foreign minister was also telling

the few Western journalists in Tehran that really Iran didn't want war and it was up to President

Trump if there was going to be at war, but certainly it wouldn't be started by Iran. And President

Trump and his officials seemed to go strangely silent after the initial wave of missiles as if they had

looked upon their works and wondered exactly what they'd done. So you can never say peace in our

time in the Middle East, but I think things will calm down for the moment. But only for the

moment, because if the Americans are serious about stopping the Iranians getting a bomb, at some

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