00:00Let's broaden our understanding of the situation, bringing Dr. H.J. Hellyer, Senior Fellow in Geopolitics at the Royal United Services Institute, joining us live from London.
00:09Thank you, as always, Dr. Hellyer, for being with us. Can we start with your take on the current situation? How do you read what's happening next?
00:18Thank you for having me on the programme. Always a great pleasure to be here with you.
00:22So, what's next? We have an out-and-out war underway at present, and we don't see much potential for a de-escalation.
00:36Now, I should say this was entirely avoidable. There were negotiations that were taking place between the United States and Iran.
00:45There was no reason for this to come to what it's come over the last few days.
00:49There was no pre-emptive attack that took place. This wasn't a pre-emptive attack.
00:55This attack from the Israelis could have been avoided, should have been avoided.
01:01And unfortunately, we put ourselves into a spiral here where Israel has declared certain aims that are very difficult to imagine achieving,
01:09unless one of those aims is actually regime change, and then persistent use of violence and contravention of international law, the UN Charter.
01:22This is really quite unprecedented, but unfortunately, a fairly, I should say, natural consequence of the culture of impunity that we've seen over the past couple of years in this region.
01:35I'm seeing headlines coming from Israel. Iran fires missile barrage at the north of Israel, and the Israeli Defense Force, Israel's military, targeting Tehran.
01:45As you say, a spiral here, a real escalation of what is happening.
01:50Is the fact that Israel has, in many ways, weakened what are called Iran's proxies around the region, basically emboldened Israel to act as it has?
01:59So, that's part of it. But I want to bring us back to this issue of impunity.
02:08Over the past 20 months, we've seen Israel attack mercilessly, frankly, Gaza.
02:15It's an occupied territory. Israel is the occupying power.
02:18And it's really pulverized and devastated Gaza.
02:21It attacked, invaded, and occupied new parts of Lebanon.
02:26And then, of course, with regards to Syria, where it already occupied territory since 1967,
02:32it invaded further, occupied more territory, and continues to strike Syria on various occasions.
02:40So, when you have a state that has done all of these things over the past 20 months but not face anything in terms of consequences from the international community for its contraventions of international law,
02:55all that does is send a very clear signal that if it chooses to do more than it can,
03:00and it can count on the most powerful actors in the international community simply not doing very much,
03:07or, worse than that, actually empowering and emboldening.
03:11So, yes, the weakening of Hezbollah, of the Houthis, all of that,
03:18and, of course, the downfall of Bashar al-Assad's regime in Syria,
03:21I think certainly weakened Iran's geopolitical strength in the region.
03:29But I think that it's more than that.
03:30You could have had actually all of that happen and avoid this current spiral.
03:36If it was clear to the Israelis that were they to embark on an action like this,
03:43there would be some sort of consequence from Washington, D.C., and we didn't see that.
03:47Indeed, Donald Trump has a sort of plausible deniability in terms of he's able to say,
03:52well, Israel's acted without our participation, without our knowledge.
03:58I was about to say that it seems that is not good enough because, in many ways,
04:01the U.S. has enabled Israel all along.
04:05Yeah, so let's have the most charitable reading of this, okay?
04:09The most charitable reading, which, by the way, I'm somewhat sympathetic to,
04:13is that the Israelis decided that they wanted to start striking Iran,
04:19that they told Washington that they were going to do so,
04:24and that they said that they would go it alone,
04:26and they simply wanted to make sure that they had some sort of green light from Washington.
04:34I don't think Washington gave them the green light as much as they simply didn't give them a red light.
04:39And that's one.
04:42Two, that's also not good enough because in order for Israel to conduct this sort of operation,
04:50it counts on the reality that there won't be consequences from Washington.
