Peter Hitchens Says the United States Has Gone Mad on Radio 4’s Any Questions
Peter Hitchens, journalist, former foreign correspondent and author, was a member of BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions panel on Friday, March 20th 2026 (repeated on March 21st 2026). His contribution included a comment worth recording for comment.
Audience member question: Are our NATO allies cowards for not helping in the Strait of Hormuz?
PH: I think someone has to have shown himself to be brave to call anybody else a coward. I know very few people who are brave who would ever do that, and I think that sums up President Trump, a man who has spent a lot of his life avoiding taking part in any kind of combat and who disparages an awful lot of people a lot of the time but doesn’t himself seem to have any great achievements to his credit, at least that’s not the way it seems to me. So, the answer has to be no, not cowards.
The second thing is this: this war was started by Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu and they didn’t ask us before they started it. It isn’t a NATO war, NATO isn’t an alliance which is supposed to run after the United States and join in any war it starts, and there’s no reason why we should.
Thirdly, the Strait of Hormuz is a very, very difficult place in which to fight and anybody who was cautious about going there, would not be a coward, he would just be sensible.
So, that’s the fundamental answer to this. What he is saying is, as usual, bilge and [audience laughs and applauds] and not merely bilge, but dangerous bilge. This is a man who stood for election repeatedly saying he would not start new wars and has just started one of the most dangerous wars in my lifetime, one for which I can see no end, and who has no idea how to finish it, did not know when he started it what the consequences would be.
I think it is actually time for both the leaders and the publics of the remaining free law-governed and intelligent nations to start resisting this. We don’t want to be dragged down this tunnel into another unending war. We don’t want, in my case, to be associated with at all an attack which involves the bombing of populated cities in which, I promise you, however hard you try not to hit civilians, you will do so. And President Trump’s forces have hit a school in Iran and killed something like 150 children there, an event which seems to me still not to have really sunk in anything like enough.
What they’re also doing is they’re raining missiles on a country, Iran, which I have the great good fortune to have visited which contains a lot of perfectly decent, actually very pro-Western, people, many of whom I met when I was there who do not in any way deserve to be treated in this fashion. If you bomb populated cities, you kill innocent people.
And the one final thing which I shall say here, I hope there will be more chance later on, is again and again the Western nations have intervened with this kind of violent folly in the Middle East, and they’re then surprised to find huge numbers of people trudging from the lands they have ruined into Europe. They come from Asia, they come from the Middle East and they come from Africa because of the wars in Iraq, in Libya, in Afghanistan and in Syria which we have either caused and started or fuelled. And now we’re starting another one. Surely it is time for people to say this is enough. I think if the leaders of the West don’t turn round to Donald Trump and say “Don’t you dare call us cowards, don’t you in fact dare ask anything of us. You’ve done nothing good. You’re doing a great deal of harm. Stop it.”
After other contributions, presenter Alex Forsyth provided an update about the UK granting to US further permissions to use UK bases to launch strikes. The discussion turned to whether Prime Minister Starmer had been too slow to respond to US requests. Hitchens launched forth again:
Well, I think I can claim to be one of the people who has criticised Sir Keir Starmer more than anybody else. In fact, I think I spent most of 2024 warning the nation to have nothing to do with him. I am not his defender. But on this occasion, I wish he’d been slower rather than faster [audience laughs].
When a country is faced with being involved in a war which, as I say, has no end, which could destroy the economy of the world, which it is in great danger of doing, then it needs to think carefully before taking part in it. I don’t think that the diplomacy of the United States in Iran has been intelligent or thoughtful. I think that there was a path to peace which the United States agreed to in 2015 and which Donald Trump then ripped up in 2018 which might well have been a really, really serious step towards a peaceful future.
Iran agreed to terms which made it impossible for it to make a nuclear weapon; horrible sanctions which had ruined the lives of middle-class Iranians were removed. Those are the people, I have to tell you, the middle class in Iran, which has been wrecked by these sanctions and whose civil society has been destroyed by them; those are the people who will eventually remove the ayatollahs, if they have the chance. That was a very, very hopeful agreement. Donald Trump ripped it up in 2018 when he was last in the White House. Now he’s gone to war.
This does not seem to me sensible, wise or thoughtful. If a British prime minister says, “Look, hang on, what is your justification for this?” especially now that we know his own intelligence advisors were telling him there was no justification for it, then we have perfectly good grounds for saying “No! We’re not taking part. Why should we join in?”
When Britain went mad in 1956 in Suez, when Anthony Eden went mad and attacked Egypt, which he did, the telephone in Downing St rang and Anthony Eden, the Prime Minister, wasn’t there and a civil servant picked up the phone. It was President Dwight D. Eisenhower shouting “Anthony, have you taken leave of your senses?” He actually addressed the British Prime Minister “Have you gone mad?” basically. When the Americans decided what we had done was stupid, they first of all threatened to wreck our economy with a run on the pound, and then the sent the US Navy into the Mediterranean to harass the Royal Navy and at one point the chief of the United States Navy discussed with the American Secretary of State opening fire on British ships.
That was the extent of their courageous support for us when we went mad, so I really don’t see why we should give them much support when they go mad.
[Audience applauds]
The whole broadcast is available here, if you wish to listen to the whole broadcast.
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An interesting comment from Peter, who I think is a very intelligent man and often correct in his analysis.
My disagreement with what he says is that the support of the Islamic Iranian government for the Islamic terrorist movements in the middle eastern area is what has created a very dangerous situation and despite the Israeli action to deal with Hamas and Hezbollah in particular the end result has not been sufficient to create a peaceful situation until the Islamic element in Iran is reduced to a position where it cannot govern. Perhaps that will follow in reasonably short order, but it’s far from certain.
Suez 1956 moment? Quite possibly, but that did resolve itself reasonably quickly.
Hitchens is mostly wrong. Suez analogy is frankly ridiculous.
You could argue that Gaza, Lebanon and now Iran are wars against the Iranian regime and its Jihad, which it is financing and supporting across the ME. Hizbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Jihad are just 3 groups out of 100 that promote the Muslim Jihad. There is a long way to go.
The Americans tend to focus on WMD or Nuclear weapons as their casus belli which just opens them up to criticism. I don’t believe Iran is close to having nukes.
But the 3 ops seem coordinated and long in planning. In that case Hitchens is wrong – it is not ‘mad’ it is a concerted effort with perhaps years of effort in preparation.
Buying himself some cheap popularity on the Beeb with a high status opinion.
He’s sometimes right sometimes wrong.
In this case i think he’s wrong.
He’s a pale shadow of his late brother.
“end result has not been sufficient to create a peaceful situation until the Islamic element in Iran is reduced to a position where it cannot govern”
That has never been achieved in the history of the middle east! Constant religious war can only ever be ended one way, total annihilation of one side or the other! And I’m with the jews👍👍
Iran may be different, it never was monotheistic so dealing with the Mullahs may be easier to achieve.
Peter Hitchens, as always, is spot on. There are too many people on this side (the sceptical) who are suffering from a nasty bout of TIGS.
Peter Hitchens is one of the few journalists in the UK who has a handle on reality.
Most are just stenographers for their governments and give a very one-sided view of world events which always mirrors globalist foreign policy.
Peter Hitchens understands what is really going on in Ukraine, and now Iran, and is worth listening to.
Spot about Ukraine. The “Empire of Censorship” has erased the history of Ukraine prior to Feb 24 2022, when the Russians had finally had enough of at least ten years of provocation. Our presstitutes are earning their monthly paypacket just as the old USSR presstitutes did. On Covid/Vaccines, Climatology, and Ukraine, they all sing the UK government’s song.
He did roll over and have a “jab” or two though…so he could travel…
Can’t quite believe it.
DS running a piece critical of both the Donald and Netanyahu re Iran.
Whatever next – maybe a dose of truth re Palestine and Greater Israel?
I think the purpose of the DS is to be sceptical. If someone’s going to do something they need good reasons to do it. In this case we can persuade ourselves that there are sound reasons, but I’m sceptical that those reasons stand up to sceptical scrutiny.
Mr Hitchens is a decent man who normally means well.
Strangely though, in this occasion, he omits to say that the monarchical system spanning 2500 years back to Cyrus the Great, offering stability and tradition to the Persians, has been replaced by a coercive, oppressive brutal theocracy led by people who are determined to spread their tyrannical rule and their death cult to the rest of the world.
The 1979 revolution had a fairly long build up where the Shah’s attempts to modernise Iran and to prevent the Islamic influence of the Mullahs growing were not successful because of a combination of excessive repression within Iran and poor support from friendly administrations abroad (various factions used a fear of US support to push their agendas). For various reasons the Iranians thought they would be better off with the Mullahs than with the Shah, they have certainly learned their lesson now but a return of a Persian monarch might not be possible without very careful construction of a constitution that didn’t favour any of the factions within the country.
The US then?
One can agree with that and at the same time think Trump and the Americans are making a grave, wreckless mistake.
Time will tell.
Personally, I don’t think Trump is playing 4D chess or anything of the sort. He is a master of chaos and a high stakes gambler.
Like every modern political leader, he plays the hand but if it goes badly, it’s not mich skin off his nose. Everyone else pays most of the price.
Ah, the Americans. Where can one start and never finish.
V-E Day and the mythical “Special Relationship” coined by Churchill and abused by F D Roosevelt, who hated Britain and wanted to establish the US of A as the dominant post-war global power.
His equally useless successors created the ideal environment for the current mess to grow. Nasser and Suez in 1956, followed by impotent Carter standing by, watching the fall of a pro-British Shah in 1979.
Since then, and ignoring Israel’s red flags, they let Lernaean Hydra grow more rattlesnakes metastasising to Europe and America itself.
And now, when a Hercules is needed, the world expects a president in rapid cognitive decline to slain the beast (thanks for helping me get it off my chest).
The Iranian constitution, formulated by Ayatollah Khomeni in 1979, called for the preparation and facilitation of the Mahdi, the twelfth and final prophet of Islam. His rule, so the Islamic fanatics believe, will usher in everlasting peace and justice but requires an Armageddon to bring it about. There is (or was) a clock in Tehran that publicly counted down to the destruction of Israel, the time that presumably sees the advent of the Mahdi. If the Islamics continue, this is a bolted on future. The Israelis know it as does Trump. The current Iranian regime MUST be removed. There is never a good time to start something like this and I hope it is over soon. But it had to be done. Peter Hitchens is normally sound, but in this I think he is wrong. Perhaps Trump could have prepared better with a puppet regime ready to take over, or some better coordination with Israel, but the strategy, if not the tactics, is good.
Spot fu@king on! Trump is a hero, a real leader!
How are the mid terms looking? Most Americans are against this intervention. If he loses both houses then MAGA may be over, he will be impeached, the Mullahs still in place and the world economy possibly in meltdown. And as always intervention in the mid east always leads up to more migrants washing up in Europe. What a fc@ ing hero!
We’ll see😉
(Note: the site collapses paragraphs on long posts; to restore the proper formatting, click “read more” at the bottom) Thank God for Peter Hitchens. Despite his commendable domestic policies (immigration, DEI, woke nonsense) Trump is a clueless bully, charging around the world taking whatever he wants – first abducting Venezuela’s President (now in a US jail). then threatening and bullying a NATO country (Denmark) for a piece of Greenland, next threatening Cuba, who has been no trouble to anyone, and now it’s “REGIME CHANGE!” time again, this time in Iran. Well he’s failed at that, so now he paces around the White House in anger (it is reported) lashing out at his unconsulted “allies” as “cowards”. The mighty United Sates Navy has had plenty of time to go in to the Straits, but its commanders have refused to become sitting ducks. So Trump pretends that the much weaker European & British navies can do what the US navy can’t? GMAB. This is Netanyahu’s war. This is Netanyahu using Trump, knowing he has the massive Zionist lobby in Washington behind him. Alastair Crooke, retired British diplomat with 40 years service in the Middle East, gives the true perspective on this war. Unlike… Read more »
You would think that the Israelis don’t really want to coexist peacefully with the Iranians, and their other neighbours, like Lebanon.
Having failed in their pledge to eliminate Hamas completely, they appear to be on another unwinnable mission, and I am forced to ask how much Netanyahu’s legal position in Israel and his desire to stay in power is influencing his approach to international affairs.
There’s no sane reason why Israel should coexist with an Iranian regime, or the terrorist groups the regime funds and arms, that have all stated that their aim is to wipe Israel off the map and in the case of Hamas and Hezbollah keep attacking Israel.
The Mizrahi Jews co existed with the Arabs for two thousand years. It is the creation of the State of Israel that set the Levant alight. The Mizrahi Jew did not crave for a Jewish state, quite the reverse they warned against the project. It was the European/American Zionist movement with politically powerful and wealthy backers that pushed for its creation. Some scholars argue that there exists little evidence to prove that the Khazarian Jew (Russia/Eastern Eiropean) can anymore trace their lineage to the tribes of Israel than an Hottentot tribesman.
A very thought-provoking video, particularly for anyone (like me) who thinks, or thought, that it was unquestionably true that Iran was intent on producing and using nuclear weaponry – this being the one argument that seemed like a pro-war slam-dunk to me.
I found Sachs very believable over Ukraine/Russian, and to me he still has an air of unhysterical objectivity. He might be as questionable as everyone else, of course – and I’m not sure researching him will get me far; but he has me changing my mind, at least for now, about US involvement in the Middle East. Thanks for posting the link to that video; I’m not quite convinced, but I’m certainly very worried that he’s 100% correct.
SPOT ON !
“when Netanyahu visited Trump at Mar el Lago in late December, he told Trump:
1) We are not concerned about the nuclear issue. There is no current threat.
2) The priority must be Iran’s missile capability, which showed in the 12 day war that it can penetrate Israel’s “Iron Dome” and cause havoc.
3) If America does not start war with Iran, we will start it unilaterally, and the missile response from Iran will force you to support us, as the pressure from the long-standing Israel lobby will crush you if you don’t.”
Fair enough, I suppose… but, I’d be interested to know how many of our leaders, particularly in the West, do pass the bar he’s set for Trump?
Starmer? Macron? Any of the various others? I doubt it… as usual, the politicians send ‘the poor bloody infantry’ to their deaths as they posture and pontificate and say angry things about matters they know little about.
As someone already pointed out: The Suez-analogy is ridiculous. The Suez canal was British property that the ruler of Egypt had seized. And this triggered the invasion. The US president then halted it with financial blackmail based on the enormous war debt Great Britain had accumulated because of its two huge wars against Germany earlier in the 20th century. This highlighted that British sovereignity was henceforth conditional on tacit approval by the US government. Or so the official theory went: Churchill is on record for stating that he wouldn’t have halted the military operation until it had achieved its objectives.
What Suez did signal was the end of Empire. It showed who was boss, i.e. the US. Britains was no more and, for the Americans, we are little more than Airstrip 1. This may not be directly analogous but if the Americans are chased from the Middle East, it could be seen as an end of Empire moment.
I know the official fairy tale. The end of the empire really came in 1949 with Attlee’s decision to accept the Indian insurrection because this meant he could stop paying the Indian army. Churchill made it hang on for somewhat longer by keeping together what was still there by force but then came MacMillan with his “This is the wind of it’s way to f***ing expensive!” idea and that was the end of it. The British ruling classed had already become stinking rich. No need to worry about running a sensible administration in Africa, just give some local gangsters machine-guns and plenty of “foreign aid” so that the resource extraction show can continue at a much lower cost. The other half of the story is: During the first world war, Britain and France had ammassed enormous debts in the USA by buying insanely large amounts of (often sub-par) artillery shells there using money borrowed from US banks in their year-long and futile attempts to kill all German soldiers by shelling. The USA could supply all of this because American workers were free to work in factories as the USA didn’t take part in the war for most of the time… Read more »
This a good summary…
https://nominister.wordpress.com/2026/03/23/the-arguments-for-the-usa-waging-war-on-iran/
Similar arguments were made for regime changes in Libya, Syria, Iraq 1and 2 and Afghanisatan – how did that work out.
It’s important to remember what US Secretary of State Marco Rubio admitted: that the US hand was forced by Israel. The people of the West need to stop allowing Israel to use our Armed Forces as a Proxy Army to fight Israel’s wars of ancient revenge against “Amalek”, carrying out their own prophecies.
We also need to stop foreign countries like Ukraine with its Porn Star President from dragging us into their pointlessly destructive Meatgrinder Wars, whose only purpose is to Cull the Slavs.
Trump was elected on his promises to put Americans first, end US involvement in foreign wars, and start mass deportations of Third World Parasites. Instead, he has done the exact opposite, bowing down to Israel, focusing on foreign countries while letting Marxists & Muslim Invaders seize control of Minnesota, Michigan and New York City, deporting fewer illegal aliens than any other President, and just like Fake Italian Patriot Meloni, inviting even more mass “legal” invasions from the Indian Subcontinent.
That is not what the People of America or the People of Italy voted for, just as Starmer’s moves to overturn Brexit now a decade later is not what the People of Britain voted for.
Yes I understand Peter. I agree completely. But what are we to do with Iran who export death via actual armies who occupy whole countries like Lebanon. Who paid for & organised precivilizational atrocities such as committed by Hamas. The perpetrators rang their mothers afterwards who cried with joy. What are we to do?
Why give credancxe to a good writer and deep thinker just for thodsee reasons. President (remember he won an election) Trump has done us a service by eliminating the worst of the Iranian risks. With the IDF and within 3 weeks.
I am glad commentators like him were not allowed to express similar views in 1940.
Very poor form to undermine our troops who cannot question orders. I can’t quite believe a public figure like Hitchin could be so crass. Still, it’s not him in the front line except on Question Time.
It may be equally argued that he doesn’t want our troops to be put in harms way by corrupt, incompetent politicians who will not themselves or their family be put in harms way.
Does anyone pay attention to a word he says. The mail headlines appear to suggest he is a Putin apologist, but as his rantings are usually behind a paywall I’m not prepared to pay for them
The Iranian regime has been funding and exporting terrorism across the middle east and Europe, including the UK.
If it gained nuclear weapons it would wipe Israel off the map and threaten everyone in the region and the west who did not subscribe to its extreme version of Islam.
If you have a rabid dog, you don’t leave it free to rampage. You put it down.
Peter Hitchens is a sensible person said NOBODY ever.
Most governments in the West and Arabia have agreed that a despotic death cult like the Iranian regime cannot be allowed to have a nuclear bomb or missiles to deliver them.
The mullahs have been enriching uranium to 60%. Nuclear powered does not need this. The inspectors have reported the centrifuges. Some have been destroyed before but they keep rebuilding them. Missiles are already being fired at targets 2000 miles away.
But still we hear opinion that Iran is not about to produce a nuclear weapon which could dominate the Middle East and destroy enemies of this evil regime.
Well done Trump and if petrol coats a bit more for a while, it’s worth it.
Hear hear 👏
He’s no where near as intelligent and interesting as his late brother.
cheap publicity sucking up to the BBC at best.
Do you seriously think PH wants to “suck up to the BBC”? I imagine he despises them as they are against most of what he stands for. If nothing else I think he is his own man – his positions on things are not dictated by membership of any camp or political party or movement.
I could not agree more with everything Hitchens says as all of it is based on evidence, not really opinions. I praise the DS for publishing such a piece – never too late! – because as Sceptics we should question the main events that affect our lives (ex CO2, Covid and many more). Israel versus Iran is a Regional matter (like Ukraine v Russia). Israel wants to attack Iran please go ahead on their own. The USA have or should have nothing to do with it but were pulled into it by Israel (source: Rubio and the House speaker). Iran does not constitute any threat whatsoever to the US or to Europe (source: US intelligence agency) – as the MSM is now trying to convince us of. There is no objective for this war. Let’s put things in perspective: because of a tiny 9million people country which has undeniable complicated/complex problems with its neighbours the whole world is now suffering terrible consequences – the economy and the agriculture are the first to be affected. It’s simply ridiculous. This situation can never be normalised!