DAWE: Mr Vice President, thank you for coming in.
CLARKE: Great to be here, Bryan. Terrific studio. Very fair country, Australia.
DAWE: You’ve just come from negotiations with Iran.
CLARKE: Correct.
DAWE: How did they go?
CLARKE: Tremendously. Tremendously well.
DAWE: Iran has rejected every proposal put to them.
CLARKE: That’s one way of looking at it.
DAWE: What’s another way?
CLARKE: They’re still talking.
DAWE: They’re not, actually. Tehran said, and I’m quoting here, “there is nothing left to discuss with people who bomb you during negotiations.”
CLARKE: Right, and look, that’s a starting position.
DAWE: It sounds more like an ending position.
CLARKE: Bryan, in diplomacy, endings are just beginnings with better lighting.
DAWE: (pause) Who told you that?
CLARKE: I did. Just now. I’m quite good at this.
DAWE: Let’s go back to basics. What was the American objective going into these talks?
CLARKE: To bring Iran to the table.
DAWE: Iran was already at a table. You bombed them while they were sitting at it.
CLARKE: A different table.
DAWE: A better table?
CLARKE: Our table.
DAWE: And they didn’t come to your table.
CLARKE: Not as such, no.
DAWE: So the objective was not achieved.
CLARKE: The objective evolved.
DAWE: Into what?
CLARKE: Getting them to acknowledge that a table exists.
DAWE: And did they?
CLARKE: They sent someone to stand outside the building where the table was.
DAWE: That’s not acknowledgment. That’s geography.
CLARKE: In diplomacy, Bryan, geography is half the battle.
DAWE: Mr Vice President, the Strait of Hormuz has been closed for six weeks. Oil is at a hundred and twenty dollars a barrel. Iran has struck US bases across six countries and rendered many of the thirteen American facilities in the region effectively uninhabitable, at a cost of some eight hundred million dollars in damage in the first two weeks alone. What has the United States actually achieved?
CLARKE: We have significantly degraded Iran’s capacity to feel comfortable.
DAWE: That’s it?
CLARKE: That’s enormous, Bryan. Comfort is a strategic asset.
DAWE: You went to war over a strategic asset.
CLARKE: We went to war to deny them one.
DAWE: And in the process, you denied it to the entire world economy.
CLARKE: Collateral discomfort. Regrettable.
DAWE: Now, the original war aim, as stated by President Trump on day one, was regime change in seventy-two hours.
CLARKE: The President said he expected a rapid resolution.
DAWE: He said, and I have the transcript, “three days, max, probably two, maybe one, we’ll see, could be hours.”
CLARKE: He’s an optimist.
DAWE: It’s been forty-two days.
CLARKE: He’s a resilient optimist.
DAWE: The Ayatollah he was supposed to topple is dead, but Iran has a new Supreme Leader, the Strait is still closed, thirteen US service members have been killed, several hundred wounded, two C-130s were left burning on a dirt strip outside Isfahan, and the President declared it the greatest military operation in American history.
CLARKE: In terms of ambition, yes.
DAWE: What about in terms of outcome?
CLARKE: We’re defining outcome more broadly now.
DAWE: How broadly?
CLARKE: (thinks) Ongoing.
DAWE: Let’s talk about your specific role. You flew to Oman. Then to Geneva. Then reportedly to a location you declined to name.
CLARKE: Correct.
DAWE: What happened in Oman?
CLARKE: Productive preliminary exchanges.
DAWE: Meaning?
CLARKE: They gave us tea. We thanked them. We left.
DAWE: Geneva?
CLARKE: More tea. Different cups. The Swiss make an excellent cup.
DAWE: And the undisclosed location?
CLARKE: (long pause) Coffee, actually.
DAWE: Mr Vice President, are you describing a negotiation or a tour of international beverage culture?
CLARKE: In diplomacy, Bryan, shared refreshment is the precondition for shared understanding.
DAWE: And what do you understand about Iran’s position now that you didn’t understand before?
CLARKE: They’re very serious people.
DAWE: Anyone could have told you that.
CLARKE: Not everyone went to find out in person.
DAWE: Pete Hegseth said this week that the military option remains fully on the table.
CLARKE: It does.
DAWE: You said the diplomatic option remains fully on the table.
CLARKE: Also correct.
DAWE: These are contradictory positions.
CLARKE: We have a very large table.
DAWE: (stares)
CLARKE: Look, Bryan, the President has made clear that all options are available to him at all times and the sequencing of those options is a matter of presidential discretion informed by the best intelligence and the counsel of his senior advisors of whom I am one.
DAWE: What does that mean?
CLARKE: Nobody knows what’s happening next. Including me. But I’m the one they send to say it nicely.
DAWE: Finally. When does this end?
CLARKE: When Iran accepts our terms.
DAWE: Which are?
CLARKE: They stop everything they’re doing.
DAWE: And in return?
CLARKE: We stop doing what we’re doing to them.
DAWE: That sounds like the definition of a ceasefire, which Iran has proposed repeatedly and the United States has rejected.
CLARKE: (long pause)
It sounds better when we say it.
DAWE: Mr Vice President, thank you for your time.
CLARKE: Tremendous country, Australia. Very fair studio.
Clarke exits. Dawe looks at his notes. He looks at the camera.
DAWE: He flew forty thousand kilometres for the tea.
Blackout.
Footnote: This is a tribute to the satiric genius of Clarke and Dawe. For readers unfamiliar with the format: the late John Clarke played a rotating cast of politicians and public figures with serene, imperturbable self-confidence; Bryan Dawe played the interviewer attempting, with mounting futility, to extract a straight answer. The format is deceptively simple. The questions do the work. The answers do the damage.
Urban Wronski Writes 
In fact Vance was recently in Budapest, following Abbott’s visit the previous week, to campaign/interfere on behalf of Trump and Putin in Orbán’s re-election campaign.
Not only did Vance make an Orwellian claim that it was the EU that interferes in Hungary, PM ‘mini Putin’ Orbán’s approval ratings fell a few points after Vance’s visit…..
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