W-what's going on?

on?Well, we've been under unconventional attack from Russia for some years, actually, Ben.

I mean, if we'd think about cyberattacks, assassinations, um, disinformation campaigns, attacks on our undersea cables, et cetera, that sort of hybrid warfare, uh, Russia has been, uh, prosecuting that sort of conflict against us and against other European partners now for some years.

I think what we're seeing now is just a heightened, a heightened sort of tension as the Ukraine, uh, conflict fails to get resolved after four and a half years.

It's clearly escalating further with these massive drone attacks just in the last twenty-four hours.

Putin is under huge pressure to do something about Ukraine because he's losing some forty thousand Russian troops every month in Ukraine, and Ukraine itself is under-- gonna be under huge pressure this winter with the-- all the attacks on the energy system, critical national infrastructure, food outlets, et cetera.

So this conflict, I don't see any early resolution of this conflict, and the risk is that as Putin gets more and more unpopular and doesn't make success in this war, he will strike out in different directions.

I mean, it's extraordinary really, isn't it? Do you agree that that's the sort of thing that we now need to contemplate?

How much of a risk is that?

Well, I find it helpful to distinguish between national security and personal security, because the public concerns really in any country, let's take the United Kingdom, isn't about nuclear war with Russia or cyber attacks on critical national infrastructure.

It's probably around local crime, it's around terrorism, it's around cyber scams, it's around misinformation perhaps.

And what is interesting to me is that those last three, the state cannot really guarantee the security of its citizens on them on its own.

And everyone of course says that the state's greatest duty is to keep its citizens safe, but the reality, which many governments are very reluctant to say publicly, is that the government is no longer in a position to do that.

If we take, for instance, lone wolf terrorism, which is perhaps the most worrying form of terrorism for most people, the government really can't prevent an individual picking up a knife and attacking people in the streets, or hiring a car and driving it into a crowd at the bus stop.

And we see that in things like the slogans.

I would have assumed that practically all countries of the world, bar the most mighty powers, would be on our side to say, "We want a world in which thou canst not attack thy neighbor with impunity." So why do we see so much hedging, so much indecisiveness on the part of the smaller countries in the world?

How big is this, the threat to this country from Iranian interests?

Well, Ian, I think you're a bit tough on your previous caller because he makes some, some very sound points about, [laughs] uh, Donald Trump and the US administration in this.

But you're absolutely right that Iran poses a significant threat to the United Kingdom.

Um, and indeed the Iranian foreign minister has said in the last twenty-four hours that the UK has, uh, joined the war and that the UK Prime Minister has put British lives, uh, in danger as a result.

And the threats from Iran come in, in three ways, really.

The first is a military threat now.

We know that they've launched, uh, missiles against Diego Garcia.

I think Jordan, uh, Cyprus were, were clearly thinking, "Well, where are the British here?" Um, has it damaged us in the lo- in our lo- in lo- our long-term national security interests?