Jillian, give us the view from London.

The normally very careful prime minister has expressed a high degree of frustration uh based on the economic pressure that this is causing uh frustration about the president.

Uh give us the view of Trump at the moment inside not only the halls of power in London but on the continent.

Well, I think extreme frustration would be the best way of explaining it because there's a recognition, as one senior British official said to me the other day, that the Iranians understand the Americans much better than the Americans understand the Iranians.

Um, and that's an imbalance, which is critical right now.

President Trump cannot understand how a nation can not fight just for money, that there's well beyond money.

That's a key point, and that's one of the biggest problems.

But there's also a sense that um in Europe as a whole, they're going through the five stages of grief about the rupturing of the transatlantic alliance.

Um I think they've gone beyond the shock and denial and even the bargaining into some inching towards some kind of acceptance about how they remake NATO.

And in the UK, they're trying to work out, you know, what all this means.

Are they going to get closer to the European Union, which is certainly what Kestama has indicated, or will they try and maintain some form of bridge with Trump or not?

One of the very interesting things that's got almost no attention to date is that behind the scenes the British have been playing quite an interesting role not just in Ukraine but also in the region straight to Hormuse because because the British have been so involved in Ukraine and the drone side they have been the ones linking up a lot of the Ukrainian drone experts with the Gulf um leaders who actually want some support on that and that's really a very significant way they've been helping behind the scenes but without the Americans by the way.

Another area is the British have very strong capabilities in mind sweeping.

They're arguably they're some of the best in the world if not better than America because guess what?

Britain's an island.

We care about this or I'm both American and British.

Um so again they are trying to create this coalition of the willing right now that will go ahead and help to try and break the deadlock in Hmuz even if NATO doesn't move.

But it's a very difficult juggling act and the signs are that president um prime minister stammer is facing a lot of criticism at home around this.

Right.

And uh President Trump has suggested that he will punish NATO members uh who haven't helped in the Gulf against Iran.

Give us the sense of the health of the relationship between the US and its various NATO partners.

It's it's a very strange moment because on the one hand um actually US and NATO allies are cooperating an enormous amount.

A lot of the strikes and the flights that are going into the Middle East are coming from European bases.

actually the plane that crashed, the American plane that crashed in Iran took off from a British base.

Um the the the intelligence, the logistics, everything is being done with the cooperation of Europe and nobody's cro crowing about it or shouting about it, but that's true.

And so on the level of logistics and and those kinds of contacts, everything is pretty unchanged.

But Trump has in his frustration at being unable to be the winner as as he likes to be and being reluctant to blame himself for his decision or the Russians who are helping the Iranians.

He's he's looking for scapegoats.

Um and he's landed on on Europeans.

And you know for Europeans, you know, no insult is for free.

I mean they've been insulted, they've been tariffed, they've been attacked.

And there does come a moment when people do start to say, you know, what, you know, what do we what what are we getting out of this relationship?

You know, we're still cooperating.

We're doing we're doing quite a lot.

And with with the exception of one or two countries that have Spain, for example, has has blocked um flights flights into the Middle East and they might very well lose some American bases because of that and and it might make the Spanish prime minister a lot more popular than he was.

I mean, so another thing that's happened is, you know, these are democracies and they have public opinion and people don't like Trump and they don't like the war and you're beginning to see political leaders saying, "Right, I can I can do well out of attacking the war and out of and out of attacking the American president."

Let's I I I want to get to Hungary before we finish, but but Kareem, one question about I guess it's a psychology question as much.

We're in a period where nothing seems surprising anymore and yet Trump's threat to annihilate Iranian civilization um was quite shocking over the past uh weekend.

U how was it interpreted in Iran?

Did they understand it as a bluff or did they take it they didn't obviously take it very seriously because they didn't seem very scared by it.

That was a huge gift to the Iranian regime because if you remember what got Trump into this conflict was when Iran was massacring its people last January, Trump promised on nine occasions that help was on the way.

And a lot of Iranians wanted to wanted him to make good on that promise.

And to go from help is on the way to we're gonna destroy Iranian civilization in three months was was just a propaganda gift to the regime which has been saying all along this is not a war against the Islamic Republic.

It's a war against Iran.

Nancy in the Pentagon quickly did did was there was there a reaction to that that level of bellacosity?

Yes.

I mean that when that came out there was a almost a rumor starting like what is he talking about?

But what would Kane the chairman do if he was asked to use nuclear weapons?

Like they just led to um a spiraling of uh scenarios of possibilities because that's not the kind of rhetoric that you hear from the American predicament.

They're used to hearing that from adversaries like ISIS, not from the American leadership.

Right.

Um just listen to me.

Listen with me for one minute to um Vice President Vance talking about talking in Hungary about uh the upcoming election there.

You should never have a foreign head of government or a foreign head of state threatening the foreign threatening the head of government of an allied nation.

It's preposterous.

I've also been told that the vice president of the United States coming and saying that Victor Orban is doing a good job and is a helpful statesman to the cause of peace, that's foreign influence.

But what's not foreign influence is when the European Union threatens billions of dollars withheld from Hungary because you guys protect your borders.

That's apparently not foreign influence.

Jillian, what do you make of that?

Um well, it's certainly a statement that's caused a lot of constonation across the European Union and the UK because there is a sense that America's increasingly interfering in elections.

Um and frankly, it's a pretty shocking statement because that is not what the European Union was doing.

It was linked to the corruption issues.

I mean, the Financial Times did a big investigation into that.

Um and that's why funding was potentially being withheld.

It was around corruption.

Um, and the interference or attempted interference in the election in Hungary has been so blatant that I suspect perversely it may have the opposite reaction.

And as we just heard from an European politicians are learning that it actually pays to be standing up to President Trump and that makes him more not less popular.

Right.

And you're an expert on among other things Hungarian politics.

Someone has to do it.

Um, I'll I'll give you the the last word on this that that statement.

Uh it was fairly remarkable in in many respects including the idea that uh the vice president is in Hungary nearly campaigning with with Victor Orb.

He went to a campaign rally who's literally almost standing there.

Um and then he's talking about the absurdity of foreign interference, how bad foreign interference is.

What did you make of that and how is that going to affect the upcoming election?

It was stunning hypocrisy actually.

Stunning.

um you know that he would start talking about the EU interfering which is baseless and untrue even while he's interfering.

Um and it's all in the cause of the leader in Europe who is the most pro-Russian um who has worked who has also worked closely with China who was helping out Iran in fact at an earlier stage.

Um you know this is a country that has worked against US security interests against European security interests for you know years and years now.

Um it's a it's a it's a leader who has um occupied the um you know the taken over the state in a in a in an illiberal way.

You know why is the United States supporting Hungary?

Right.

Um well we'll be talking about this next week I think.

Uh but we are going to have to to leave it there for now.