Ep. 182: Another wild 48 hours on Iran, plus the Australian lens
About this episode
Darren and Stephen discuss recent developments in U.S.-Iran relations and their implications for Australia and the region.
In the second episode of the week recorded just 48 hours after the last one (around 12pm on Wed 1 April), Darren is joined once again by Stephen Dziedzic of the ABC to talk through what, again, has been a wild few days. In two Truth Social posts barely twelve hours apart, President Trump threatened to destroy Iranian desalination plants — a move legal experts describe as a war crime — and then told allies to "go get your own oil" signalling the United States may end the war without reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Taken together, these posts suggest something seismic: the effective repudiation of the Carter Doctrine, which since 1980 has been the foundational premise of U.S. security strategy in the Gulf. But then Darren and Stephen turn to a long overdue conversation about what this means for Australia and the region. They cover: The alliance. Australia has maintained carefully calibrated support for the U.S. strikes, but if Trump walks away from Hormuz, the question for Canberra shifts from "will we join an American-led operation?" to "will we join a deal with Tehran that Washington might hate?" Trump is effectively telling allies to solve a problem he created — but may condemn…
Topics covered
- Iran
- Australia
- U.S. foreign policy
- Carter Doctrine
- Southeast Asia
Keywords
- Trump
- desalination plants
- war crime
- Strait of Hormuz
- alliance
More episodes of Australia in the World
- Ep. 183: Hormuz—the new nuclear
- Ep. 181: An even more dangerous phase looms in Iran
- Ep. 180: How will the Iran conflict end?
- Ep. 179: Iran — Two weeks in
- Ep. 178: The attack on Iran
- Ep. 177: Tariffs, power, and the US Supreme Court
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