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00:00In the run-up to this attack, we heard lots of reports about conversations between the US
00:04and Israel about the kind of attack that this would be. How much influence did the US have here?
00:10I think that, as Iris was just saying, this would not have gone ahead without the US being
00:16told or consulted beforehand, for the simple reason that the US does have the upper hand when
00:23it comes to trying to force Israel to do this or that. This hasn't worked very well over the last
00:29few months, as we've seen, with Israel repeatedly ignoring the US's calls for a ceasefire in the
00:37Gaza Strip for not sending troops into southern Lebanon to try to reach some kind of an agreement
00:43with Hezbollah. That agreement basically being, if there were a ceasefire in the Gaza Strip,
00:48then Hezbollah would stop its missile attacks into northern Israel. That hasn't worked either.
00:53So I think there's a lot of great frustration in the US amongst President Biden and the US
00:59Secretary of State Antony Blinken over the fact that all their efforts so far don't appear to
01:03have come to anything. I've just seen Antony Blinken in the Middle East again this week.
01:07There have been reports that Hamas is willing to agree to a ceasefire. There was a lot of hope
01:14after the death of Yair Sinwar just over a week ago that this would lead to the freeing of the
01:18hostages. The message coming out of Israel appears to be, well, we're on a winning streak, why wouldn't
01:23we stop doing what we're doing at a time when we could actually crush Hamas completely and also
01:30put Hezbollah out of action? So there's no point in now signing a ceasefire deal where we are
01:35on a winning streak. It doesn't appear to have quite gone that way as far as these
01:39retaliatory measures are concerned against Iran. And I think that obviously there has been
01:47some listening going on amongst the Israeli leadership. Yes, President Biden said don't
01:52strike the nuclear facilities. Well, unless we have the news from our correspondent in Tehran
01:59is confirmed that there has been a strike against some nuclear facility there. Was it intentional
02:04or not? We don't know. But it appears it was mostly military facilities that were targeted
02:08and there were no targeted strikes against oil fields. That was what the US said they wanted.
02:15It looks like for the time being that that is what Israel has done. Remember that we're right
02:21in the middle of a presidential election in the United States coming up in less than two weeks
02:25time. And I think there's very great concern that the US doesn't want to get involved in another
02:32regional war right ahead of the presidential election. And it doesn't want an attack against
02:37oil fields that would push oil prices up and therefore fuel costs up just before a presidential
02:43election. Maybe Israel had been listening to that. But if you listen to what Donald Trump has been
02:47saying, he was saying go ahead and bomb those nuclear facilities. That's the main target of what
02:53the US wants destroyed and what Israel should be attacking. So it'd be very interesting to see what
02:58happens now and also after the election as to who wins the election and what the next decision will
03:04be from the Israelis and from the Iranians. Yeah, it'll be really interesting to see what sort of
03:09impact the vote has. We've had some reaction from several countries. We've had Saudi Arabia
03:15calling for restraint. Is that going to happen? Where do we go from here? It's pretty unlikely
03:21that Israel is going to take any notice of calls for restraint. They haven't taken any notice
03:25of those calls up until now. It's interesting because the bottom line here is that no one
03:32really wants a regional war. No one really wants this to spiral out of control is
03:38neither in the interests of Israel nor in the interests of Iran. But both sides are up against
03:44a wall because they have to retaliate against each other. Remember, we've had
03:49three key events taking place in the last few months. The 31st of July was the assassination
03:54of Ismail Haniyeh, the head of Hamas. The 27th of September was the assassination of Hassan Nasrallah,
04:00the leader of Hezbollah. They were both proxies of Iran. So Iran retaliated on the 1st of October
04:07with those 180 missiles it fired into Israel. So Israel has had to retaliate against Iran. When
04:12Iran sent those missiles in, they were mostly shot down by the Iron Dome protection system over
04:18Israel. And Israel wasn't really attacked or damaged just very slightly. Iran said, that's it,
04:26we've done what we're going to do. We have retaliated for us. It is over. So now Israel
04:31has retaliated against Iran. Where does that leave the situation now? Will Iran again retaliate
04:36against Israel? Maybe they will, but it's not in their interest to try to push this even further.
04:41They're in a weakened position through Hezbollah being weakened, through Hamas being weakened,
04:45through these attacks that they've had. It would not be a good idea for them to retaliate
04:50and to provoke Israel even further. And Israel, if it provokes Iran, could face even wider conflict.
04:57And it's under the pressure of the United States because the US doesn't want to get
04:59involved in this either, as I was saying, especially right before a presidential election.