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June 23, 2025
SHARRI MARKSON: Joining us now is Liberal Senator James Paterson. James, if Australia had a close relationship with the United States, we might have been brought into the loop like our British ally was.
JAMES PATERSON: Sharri, I don't know the reason why we weren't informed, as your reporting indicates, in advance about this operation. There are perfectly plausible and innocent reasons why that might have been the case. For example, operational security on a highly sensitive mission was very tightly held. But it is also possible that one of the reasons why we weren't told is because there is a lack of trust or a lack of rapport between the President and our Prime Minister, who has failed to establish a personal relationship with the President, now seven months on from when he was elected. And I think it is instructive to see the other world leader who was informed was Keir Starmer, who has done perhaps better than any other world leader in establishing that personal relationship with President Trump. So that may be the reason why the UK was informed and we were not. And if that is the case then that will be a very worrying development, but something that the Prime Minister should be aiming to remedy as soon as possible by going to Washington D.C., meeting with the President and establishing that personal relationship.
SHARRI MARKSON: I'm going to get back to Albanese in just a minute. But why do you support this action, James, and why do you think this is so important for American deterrence?
JAMES PATERSON: I support it in its own right for its own merits because I think it is a good thing that hopefully Iran's nuclear enrichment program has been set back many years, if not a decade. That will be good for its own reason. But I also support it because I think it is very important to reassert American deterrence and not just in the Middle East, but globally, including in the Indo-Pacific. There's been some pretty low-rent strategic analysis out there in recent months about so-called TACO Trump, "Trump Always Chickens Out", that this has punctured in a very welcome way. And it also pushes back on the more sophisticated analysis that's been running the line that Trump is an isolationist. This proves, in fact, that the President is not an isolationist, that he is comfortable with the judicious deployment of American military power, and he's willing to do so in the service of America's national interest. And I hope that every would-be dictator and aggressor around the world has taken note of this and now factors that into their own calculations about their own plans for expansion or aggression in their own region and has more doubt in their minds this week than they did last week about whether or not America will push back. Because it is a much better thing for all of us if dictators are worried that America under President Trump will do something about their ambitions.
SHARRI MARKSON: Mm, indeed, completely agree. James, we just heard some extremely strong comments from Scott Morrison about the delay and the weakness of Albanese's comments on this. Do you agree that the Australian official position has been unacceptable?
JAMES PATERSON: Sharri, I think it's a good thing that the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister eventually arrived at the correct position this morning to support the United States and welcome their action, but I am baffled as to why it took them 24 hours or longer to get to that position. This should have been an easy one. Our closest ally, our most important strategic partner took action to prevent a theocratic autocracy from obtaining a nuclear weapon which they have said they intend to use to one day wipe Israel off the map, and a regime which has been at war with the United States and its allies for 40 years, which chants death to America, and whose supreme religious leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, has said that those chants are not just a slogan, it's a policy. So, for there to be any ambiguity in the Prime Minister's or the Foreign Minister's position about this, I think, is inexplicable. But I am glad that, eventually, they've found their way to the right position.
SHARRI MARKSON: All right, James Paterson, you're more forgiving than I am. Thank you so much for coming on.
ENDS