A Clare-based academic fears the timeline of the ongoing conflict in the Middle East will be determined by Donald Trump’s “own attention span”.
The US President says his military’s doing “a fantastic job”, and is warning of more intense strikes to come.
The US military says it has hit almost two thousand targets in Iran and “severely degraded” its air defences since launching strikes with Israel over the weekend, while Tehran continues to retaliate across the Gulf.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio has warned “the hardest is yet to come”, as some officials call for regime change in Tehran.
Iranian state TV is reporting the successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is close to being chosen, after the 86-year-old Supreme Leader, who held power for nearly 37 years, was killed in an airstrike on Saturday.
An 88-member panel called the Assembly of Experts is picking the new leader, with the Ayatollah’s 56-year-old son, Mojtaba ((pron: moosh-ta-ba)) Khamenei the front-runner.
Westbury-based Associate Professor of International Relations at UL, Dr Scott Fitzsimmons, believes the duration of the conflict could depend on how long President Trump maintains his attention on it, or whether he becomes distracted by another dispute.
Uncertainty over how long the conflict will last is already pushing up fuel and home heating oil prices, with the cost of a barrel of oil up by twenty dollars since the weekend.
An Ennis-based economist believes the economy could ride it out if the fighting continues for just a week or two.
But Assistant Professor of Social Policy at UCD, Micheál Collins, warns more prolonged instability would impact not just fuel costs, but electricity prices as well.
You can listen to the full interview below.
