Who’s winning the Iran War... and how can you tell?
The Two Matts
The New World
4.2 • 577 Ratings
🗓️ 5 March 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The Matts unpick the events of the past week and are intrigued by the internal Labour Party politics that created a sense of chaos around the UK’s response to the war. They are also staggered - and not a little bit ashamed - of the UK’s humiliating lack of preparedness for events that were wholly foreseeable. Has this all just confirmed what many suspected - that these isles are wholly ill-equipped to defend themselves? And what role will China play as what was billed as a four- or five-day conflict now looks to be a much longer-term affair? Lots of moving parts this week - the dynamic is as fascinating as it is terrifying.
Produced by Matt Withers
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's humiliating. We've got one warship that is apparently up to this task, and it hasn't even got any bloody guns on it. |
| 0:11.7 | It seems to me in all of this that Stama's primary concern, and obviously it's a concern that has to be had by a Prime Minister, |
| 0:19.8 | but at some point his only concern was, was this consistent with international law? |
| 0:26.8 | We are clearly, quite clearly, incapable of defending ourselves right now. |
| 0:33.7 | The problem is the house is on fire, okay? As long as the house is on fire, we have to try and get the house down. |
| 0:43.7 | Hello and happy Thursday. Happy Thursday, everyone. |
| 0:47.4 | Hope you're all having a good week so far. Well, my God, it's all going off, isn't it? |
| 0:52.8 | It is, and I don't know about you, but I, I, I, an unusual emotion for me, but I do feel a bit of humility, really, in the face of it all, because the sheer scale of it is daunting, isn't it? And I sent you a message yesterday saying it's more like COVID than you crave. Yes. And I guess what I was driving at is that I've no said, |
| 1:12.3 | it reminds me of that sense I had in the early phase of the pandemic |
| 1:15.5 | and indeed throughout that I had no idea where it was heading. |
| 1:18.7 | And I don't. |
| 1:19.6 | I thought that was perfect, that analogy, |
| 1:22.1 | because obviously everyone's saying, |
| 1:24.5 | oh my God, you know, it's World War III breaking out. Yeah, exactly. And I guess there |
| 1:30.6 | must have been a time in 1913 and in 1936 and seven and eight that people sort of felt |
| 1:38.8 | how much is this conflagration going to spread. But then when you said it feels like COVID, |
| 1:45.8 | that's exactly, it's exactly right. |
| 1:48.3 | It feels like something menacing, threatening, |
| 1:51.8 | but completely alien and unknown. |
| 1:54.2 | Yes, I agree. |
| 1:55.7 | And every time I turn on the news channels or whatever, |
| 2:00.0 | there's something, literally just before we came on air, I saw their explosions heard |
... |
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