00:00Joining us from Tel Aviv, columnist and retired diplomat Alan Pincus.
00:05Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.
00:09Thank you, Francois. Always good to be with you.
00:11Is Israel at war with Iran? We just heard the Israeli prime minister say it'll take as many days as necessary.
00:20Yeah, he said that 20 months ago about the war in Gaza.
00:23So take him at his word that this may take some time, not because he knows, but because he doesn't know.
00:30And the duration or the length of this conflict at this point depends on the scale and scope of Iran's retaliatory, inevitable retaliatory strike.
00:44I mean, it's going to come. Whether or not it's going to be destructive and devastating, I hope not.
00:49Or whether or not it's going to be less than that, I don't know.
00:53But whether or not this takes a few days or a few weeks is at this point is up to Iran.
01:01Up to Iran. And they are there is one of the main nuclear sites, which reportedly is yet to be hit.
01:09Yeah, I mean, look, it's going to take a few days, probably a few good weeks before we could do an intelligent damage assessment of Iran's nuclear facilities.
01:24We do know we, as you and I, not we, Israel.
01:29I don't know what Israel knows.
01:31We do know that the Iranians have dug deep in the mountains into uranium enrichment sites that make them almost impregnable to bombs,
01:46at least to the type of munitions that Israel has.
01:49Now, what exactly was hit and the extent of the damage will take time to assess.
01:57You know, the Rafael Grossi, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA,
02:07said that there are no radioactive signs being emitted from those sites, which means that they were not destroyed.
02:16On the other hand, Israel tends to, you know, there's a tendency in Israel to listen to all these anonymous military sources
02:26that say that the reactor in Natanz, which is the largest enrichment installation or facility, has been destroyed.
02:36I doubt that.
02:37But again, I don't know.
02:39But let's just put one thing in context, because I heard Mr. Netanyahu in that passage or that footage that you just showed.
02:48Iran has been accelerating its enrichment process because Mr. Netanyahu encouraged Trump to withdraw unilaterally from the 2000—in 2018,
03:00he encouraged him to withdraw unilaterally from the 2015 nuclear deal.
03:06Had he not done so, we wouldn't be in this situation.
03:10Now, he may be right that this needed to be done.
03:12I'm not getting into that.
03:14That's a different question and a different conversation altogether.
03:17But the fact that Iran has been progressing, has been advancing, has been enriching more uranium,
03:24is capable of building, Mr. Netanyahu said, nine bombs.
03:30I don't know, maybe four, maybe six, that doesn't matter, is because the U.S. withdrew with Israel's encouragement from the nuclear deal, not for any other reason.
03:42So you mentioned several of the key points there.
03:44That report by the International Atomic Energy Agency that came out this week,
03:48the fact that we're about to have—we were supposed to have, this coming Sunday, nuclear talks, direct talks between the United States and Iran in Muscat.
04:01When Prime Minister Netanyahu talks about this being a preemptive operation, is he justified in carrying it out?
04:10In his mind, yes.
04:15But that also reflects a messianic state of mind that he is when it comes to Iran.
04:25He thinks of Iran as Hitler and himself as a Winston Churchill.
04:30He thinks of Iran as an existential threat not only to Israel but to Western civilization.
04:36And he thinks of himself and bragged for years about being the protector of Israel,
04:43something that—an image that was shattered on October 7, 2023.
04:49Now, you know, there are two ways of looking at it.
04:53One is that he needed to do this in order to correct his place in history that was almost indelibly tarnished on October 7, 2023.
05:03And the second is that it is indeed preemptive that Iran and the U.S. were on the verge or on the brink of signing an agreement that, in his mind, was bad.
05:14That raises another question that I don't know if we have the time or if you intended to ask, Francois,
05:19and that is, did the U.S. know and when did it know about all this?
05:23And is it complicit or not?
05:25Because there are two competing there.
05:27I want to get to that point, Alan Pincus, but let me first pick up on the point you've just made,
05:32because it's a really important one, with Noga Tarnapovsky, our correspondent there.
05:38This idea that this somehow personally redresses the deep misgivings of the Israeli public
05:49when it came to the failings of October 7.
05:52Right now, Noga Tarnapovsky, we see that in Israel, the initial reactions that I've been seeing from the outside
06:00haven't been so much of whether or not this is a good thing.
06:04It's more just been, well, have I got enough, like you said, enough water and food stocked up at home.
06:10Too early to say how Israeli public feels, whether this attack was justified?
06:15I think it is too early to say, but I think this is one of those very rare cases
06:25in which security needs, whatever their original source is,
06:31but genuine security needs and genuine political protection needs
06:36have kind of joined together in a junction.
06:39I spoke just two days ago in the Knesset with a veteran Israeli legislator
06:45Ahmed Tibi, and he told me at that time, obviously before we knew this would happen,
06:52that in his view, Netanyahu was certain that the one thing that could win him this election,
06:59a next election, despite his very deep unpopularity, is an attack.
07:05He said that he didn't think Netanyahu would undertake it without an okay from the U.S.,
07:10but he was very sure about that, and today we're reading Ben Kaspit, a journalist
07:15and the biographer of Benjamin Netanyahu, saying that behind closed doors today,
07:20Netanyahu is in a sort of euphoria, that he sees an end to all the wars,
07:27all Arab nations joining the Abraham Accords,
07:29something connected to Alon's version of this almost messianic view of himself versus Iran.
07:37Of course, this operation today is not ending today,
07:42and we don't know exactly how it's still going to advance,
07:45but for now it does appear that genuine security needs have come together
07:50with very important political needs of the prime minister.
07:54Important political needs.
07:56Alan Pincus, when we woke up here in Europe after these attacks,
08:02we were reading the comments from the State Department saying,
08:05we're not a part of this, and now we're seeing tweets from Donald Trump
08:10saying it's a great thing that these attacks have happened.
08:13to conceal the fact that he was effectively humiliated by Mr. Netanyahu's defiance.
08:27I mean, a day ago, 24 hours ago, here was the president of the United States
08:32saying in his own voice,
08:35I urge Israel not to attack while negotiations are being held,
08:39and as you pointed out to earlier, Francois,
08:43and the next round of negotiations is scheduled for Sunday,
08:47this Sunday, two days from now.
08:49And then all of a sudden, Israel attacks,
08:53and quickly the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio,
08:56disassociates and distances himself from it and says,
08:58well, we're not complicit in this.
09:01This is not us.
09:02This is a unilateral Israeli action.
09:04Then the U.S. says, well, we were notified.
09:06We were prized, but we were not consulted.
09:09And now, you bring, you just showed Mr. Trump's post in his social network,
09:20I'm sorry, in his social network, calling this excellent.
09:25Now, there is a possibility that in Trump's mind,
09:30this would actually, I think he's going to be proven wrong,
09:33but give him the benefit of the doubt.
09:36He thinks that this approach by him,
09:39that this had to be done in order to push the Iranians
09:44to be more forthcoming and conciliatory in their negotiations,
09:48is actually a good thing,
09:50that now Iran will come back to the negotiating table.
09:54He either doesn't understand how the Iranians think,
09:57or is just expressing some unfounded, wishful thinking,
10:01because I just don't see that happening maybe in the next two months,
10:06but certainly not in the next few days.
10:07And Alan Pincus, on that euphoria that Noga Tarnapovsky was describing
10:11on the part of the Israeli prime minister,
10:14if it was 2018 at a time when relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran
10:20were at a low,
10:22for certain there would have been some quiet celebrations in Riyadh.
10:26Is that still the case today, though?
10:28No. Look, I don't think that the Saudis are losing sleep
10:35or being, you know, or feeling bad about what happened.
10:40But I do think they have every reason to be anxious,
10:43because if this deteriorates, if this escalates,
10:45they could be in the crossfire.
10:48The Hormuz Straits may be shut.
10:52The Iranians, in some scenarios, which seem unlikely now,
10:55but who knows how this is going to develop.
10:59In some scenario, the Iranians may attack oil refineries
11:03and oil terminals in Saudi Arabia.
11:06You wouldn't think this is possible.
11:07You would think that the Iranians would be rational
11:10and would not provoke neither the U.S. nor the Saudis,
11:15nor for that matter the Emiratis and the Qataris.
11:17But you don't know if the Iranians perceive this to be
11:22a moment in which the regime is being existentially threatened,
11:27meaning that Israel may not call it that way,
11:31the U.S. may not call it that way,
11:32but both are intent on bringing about regime change in Iran,
11:38then all bets are off in terms of making rational decisions.
11:41So I think the Saudis would be happy that this happened
11:46or sort of, you know, subduedly happy if this happened
