Donald Trump tells UK to 'go get your own oil' | Iran war

Some lines from Truth Social on Donald Trump saying that countries should buy oil from the United States, urging countries to go to the Hormuz and take it, according to Donald Trump on Truth Social, and that countries should go and take the oil themselves and learn how to fight themselves. Let me just open up as Truth Social because I can assure you that it will be more verbose than the few lines that we're getting from the Reuters news agency. So just bear with me whilst I open up Truth Social, it's just verifying, but let's bring you the full transcript of what he had to say. So Donald Trump in the last two minutes saying this, all those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you. Number one, buy from the US, we have plenty, and number two, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait and just take it. You have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the US won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us, Iran has been essentially decimated, the hard part is done, go get your own oil. So the breaking news in the past two minutes, Donald Trump posting on Truth Social the following, all those countries that can't get jet fuel because of the Strait of Hormuz, like the United Kingdom, which refuse to get involved in the decapitation of Iran, I have a suggestion for you. Number one, buy from the US, we have plenty, and number two, build up some delayed courage, go to the Strait and just take it. You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us, Iran has been essentially decimated, the hard part is done, go get your own oil. President Donald J Trump, that is in the last few moments, so explicit criticism there of the United Kingdom, explicit criticism for the UK not being involved in those initial strikes against Iran, a criticism for the fact that European countries have not been supportive of reopening and defending the Strait of Hormuz, it is a vital archery for supplies of oil, gas, crude products that make their way from not just Iran but numerous Gulf states. So let's get more analysis on this with our military analyst Sean Bell. Sean, this is quite the moment, I think it's fair to say, explicitly telling the UK, either buy from us, which kind of tallies with the fairly kind of US-centric economy that the President's trying to build, and number two, if you don't want to do that, go to Hormuz and sort it out yourself. Yeah, and it's somewhat missing the point, some of that, isn't it? Because this isn't just about availability of oil, you know, America provides more than enough oil than it uses, but its price has still gone up, it's about global prices for oil and therefore whilst there's still friction in the world, the global price will stay up. I think what's most interesting is we've seen a gradual simmering of President Trump, frustrating that he's the only country that's gone into this war, frustration that NATO allies weren't involved, it's not a NATO war, NATO is a defensive alliance, a frustration that countries like the UK haven't got directly involved and yet it's not been clear what the legal justification for the war is and quite rightly I think in most people's view the British Prime Minister has been somewhat circumspect to get back getting dragged into it, but now you're seeing that despite the military dominance of America, Iran is still fighting, it's still able to launch counterattacks and the Straits of Hormuz is now a real thorn in the side of Trump and as we were talking about earlier, many of my military colleagues are saying that the most elegant way for America to extract itself is to celebrate that it's actually achieved its strategic objectives, it's left a few fires blazing, metaphorically, Straits of Hormuz is one of them and actually gone, right Europe, you're more reliant on the Straits of Hormuz than I am, deal with it, I'll disappear, I'm the only president who could actually deal with this threat. The president there taking real issue with the fact that there wasn't the courage as he says to have got involved earlier and that the UK needs to start learning to fight for yourself, the UK won't be there to help you anymore. With the greatest respect to those involved in the British armed forces, would it not have been fairly tokenistic if the UK would have got involved because the US military is just so much bigger by magnitudes that actually whatever the UK did send wouldn't really have shifted the dial all that much, certainly not beyond what the US could have done and could still do by itself unilaterally. You're absolutely right but I think this is less about what militarily could be done and more the symbolism that rather than it being President Trump's war, it suddenly becomes an alliance. Give justification to it. Yeah and therefore also means that actually the alliance is sort of stepping in and having to deal with the fallout from this by making it purely America's war. You know there's long been a belief that Trump sort of went in there a bit like he went into Venezuela, plucked out Maduro, operation over, success and it looks likely he believed if you go in, decapitate the leadership of Tehran, there'd be an uprising, he'd be able to celebrate that I'm the only American president that had the chutzpah to do this. The harsh reality of course is that's not the way it's played out. He's got his hands firmly in the mangle trying to find a way of extracting himself and we always felt that he was going to start threatening all sorts of other people. I wouldn't be at all surprised still though that he will extract himself in some way, he'll celebrate success, we're the only nation that could have done this, Europe try and deal with it. I think the fallout though from this for NATO, the fallout for our national security in the future, is some of the damage being done by President Trump irretrievable? Is this actually him expressing his honest view that actually I'm going to look after America first, you know his national security strategy, China looks after the east, I don't really care what happens in Europe, you deal with it yourself because frankly I'm going to look after my own interests and increasing the language looks more and more likely that is his focus. And that was laid very starkly bare in that national security strategy document. It'll be interesting to see how the UK government responds to this, how Sikistama who'd been kind of talked about as a bit of a Trump whisperer manages to maintain that relationship or rebuild that relationship. Also you know that there are suggestions that there's supposed to be a royal visit to the United States at some point later this spring. It'll be interesting to see what kind of developments are related to that as well but you know there is an awful lot of diplomacy interweaved amongst the military and also the economy aspects of this story. I wonder what your view is of the grasp that civilian leaders have on prosecuting acts of war and conflict and strikes such as this. How do you balance between what a president or a prime minister wants and what militarily can be achieved and the understanding between the two sides? Yeah I mean it's a fascinating question because our politicians tend to come and go whereas the military served long careers. You know General Kane would have spent the best part of 40 years in the military. You have years where you study military history, you look at the mistakes that were made of old, you learn from other people's mistakes and you develop strategies and plans. Ultimately all of military action is simply a means to an end and your political objectives are absolutely crucial. And I remember when I was serving the military we would hold our political leadership to account to say you're going to send the young men and women of your country to war. There will be some of them that don't return. You've got to be able to look their parents in the eye and know they did it for the right reasons and also you'd plan for the day after. The military will set the conditions but you now need to know what's the plan for the first day of the post-conflict time. And history shows that our political masters don't always get that right. On this particular occasion the very fact that Trump is shooting from the hip all the time. We haven't got time now but certainly one of my military colleagues when he started saying NATO's never been there for us and people were frivolously you know a long way from the front line in Afghanistan. I served three tours, two years of my life in Afghanistan. I was backwards and forwards in airplanes packed full of young men largely that were lost a limb or two. The huge price we paid. We had double, double the rate of casualties in that conflict per thousand folks involved. And for a president to dismiss all of that I think it's um it's very troubling. And going back to your initial first point is what's President, for instance, what's Prime Minister Starmer going to do? I think he's very wisely tried to play the long game here. You know President Trump will come and go. It's possible the midterms will stifle President Trump's ambitions. In three years time he'll not be there. Do you completely destroy the relationship of America and Europe? America's relationship with or do you just try and keep keep a distance, be moderate, be diplomatic, let this flurry blow over because it's evident that President Trump is embattled somewhat at the moment and just try and play it long rather than reacting to every knee-jerk that we see through his truth social announcements. You ready for another one? Uh-oh. The country of France wouldn't let planes headed to Israel loaded up with military supplies fly over French territory. France has been very unhelpful with respect to the butcher of Iran who has been successfully eliminated. The USA will remember President Donald J Trump. And I think I'm right in saying that Spain had also denied access to American military flights through its airspace. So it's not just France, it's other European nations, the UK as well, reticent to be as involved as the President would like and he is angry. Yeah but I think what we might be seeing is President Trump laying the foundations of his exit strategy that actually there's a lovely quote from Churchill I'm always mindful of that he said history will be kind to me because I intend to write it and it feels like President Trump is writing this chapter of history. He's writing already, he's laying the foundations of how he was the only president prepared to do this despite a lack of help from international allies that he was prepared to put his military in, take the risk, deal with a long-term problem that was Iran and actually therefore based on that narrative Europe you're going to have to pick up the pieces and by throwing spears all over the place you know Europe is concerned about the Middle East. I was trying to Tara just offset our Iran expert and she said one of the things that America's sort of trying to withdraw itself from this but some of the tech dollars that actually emanate from Middle East countries if the Middle East now needs to rebuild some of the damage that's been done on friendly then that money won't be flowing into tech industries and Tara was very clear the long-term implications of this could be profound for President Trump but if he writes his own narrative which he appears to be doing sometimes it's difficult to put a counter to that.