Audio excerpt – Benjamin Netanyahu:

“Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival.”

Audio excerpt [Bomb hitting Iran]

RUBY:

On Friday, Israel launched what it says was a pre-emptive strike on Iran – meant to address an immediate and inevitable threat on Iran’s part to construct a nuclear bomb.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“Israel's military says 200 fighter jets completed strikes on more than hundred targets. Including nuclear facilities in different areas of Iran. Israel's military claims Iran is advancing a secret programme to build nuclear weapons, and says Tehran has the capacity to make a nuclear bomb within days.”

Audio excerpt – Benjamin Netanyahu:

“I want to assure the civilised world, we will not let the world's most dangerous regime get the world most dangerous weapons.”

RUBY:

The strikes killed key military figures in Iran, as well as several nuclear scientists.

Promising payback would be severe, Iran launched attacks of its own.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“Well, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued this statement. He said, the Zionist regime opened its filthy and bloody hand to commit a crime in our beloved country and revealed its evil nature by striking residential centres more than in the past.”

Audio excerpt [Iran launches missiles]

RUBY:

All this comes as talks were scheduled between Iran and the US over the future of Iran’s nuclear program … which have now been cancelled.

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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media. I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am.

Today, Middle East correspondent for The Economist Gregg Carlstrom, on why Israel chose this moment to strike, how it’s angling for regime change in Iran and what it will take to de-escilate the conflict.

It’s Tuesday, June 17.

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RUBY:

So, Gregg, let's begin with the strikes the Israeli government launched last week on Iran. It was calling them preemptive, saying that there was an immediate, inevitable threat from Iran to construct a nuclear bomb. So is that true?

GREGG:

We don't know, is the short answer. The Israeli government has not provided any evidence to substantiate that claim. That's not to say there isn't evidence, but they haven't provided any and what they're claiming contradicts what just about every foreign intelligence agency had estimated in recent months the American director of national intelligence said just as recently as March in congressional testimony that America didn't think Iran was actively trying to build a nuclear weapon. The assessment was that even though Iran was close to being able to enrich weapons grade uranium, it didn't yet have the capabilities to fashion that into a working nuclear bomb that would have probably taken a year to a year and a half. So, again, what the Israelis are saying, very, very different. Uh... From what everyone else in the intelligence community has said.

RUBY:

Okay, and so in terms of the, I guess, achievability of being able to wipe out Iran's nuclear capability, what do we know about whether or not Israel has the capacity to do that?

GREGG:

Well, it certainly has the capacity to set back Iran's nuclear programme. If you look at some of the targets that it has struck so far, it seems to have destroyed the above ground enrichment facility at Natanz, which was one of the facilities that Iran used to enrich uranium to 60% purity, which is a short hop away from weapons grade. It also seems to have destroyed, for example, another facility near Isfahan. That converts uranium gas into uranium metal, which is a large component in a nuclear warhead, that seems to have been destroyed. These things will take many months, if not a year or two for Iran to rebuild, and it doesn't have replacements for those facilities. So it has set back what we know of Iran's nuclear programme. But then There are a bunch of questions, for example, the stockpile of highly enriched uranium that Iran has. Where is that? Has it dispersed some of that to facilities that we don't know about, that the IAEA, the UN's nuclear agency, doesn't know? It's possible that there is a clandestine piece to Iran's nuclear programme that Israel won't be able to destroy, that Iran could then use to try and rush towards producing a bomb now.

RUBY:

So why do you think Israel chose this moment to strike – and also chose to assassinate the specific Iranian leaders that it did?

GREGG:

I think there's two goals there. The one is a short term tactical goal, which is to make it harder for Iran. To organise a response, a retaliation. And we saw that on Friday. It took the better part of a day for Iran to put together a ballistic missile attack on Israel, in part because the commander of the missile force had been killed, and so there was no one to authorise that response. That's one thing. And then I think the second motivation, and this is becoming increasingly clear if you listen to Benjamin Netanyahu or other Israeli officials, The second motivation is, I think... They would like to destabilise, if not change the regime in Iran, and I think the calculation is that wiping out the military and security leadership of the country is going to make the regime unstable, and you know, for Israeli policymakers, the hope is that it will bring down that regime.

Audio excerpt – Benjamin Netanyahu:

“Tonight, I wish to speak to you, the proud people of Iran.

As I said yesterday and many times before, Israel's fight is not with you. It's not with the brave people of Iran whom we respect and admire. Our fight is with our common enemy, a murderous regime that both oppresses you and impoverishes you, brave people of Iran, your light. Will defeat the darkness. I am with you. The people of Israel are with you.”

RUBY:

Yeah, as you say, Israel is being quite explicit about its intentions there. And Iran, you know, it's a huge place. It's a country of 90 million people. So what could happen in the next few weeks and months?

GREGG:

Uh, that is a very good question for which I don't have a, a definitive answer. I mean, I think in the, you know, the very short term right now, um, there's going to be a bit of a rally around the flag effect in Iran. People dislike the regime. It is deeply unpopular, particularly amongst the young people in Iran, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they want a foreign country to come in and bomb the regime and change it by force. Two different things. So I don't think, you know, in the sort of immediate term, we're going to see unrest in the streets. But I think the slightly longer term question is, you know what does this do to the the stability, the legitimacy of the regime, it has spent Decades telling its people that you know it is preparing for. Exactly this sort of moment. It is defending the homeland and it's invested heavily in a missile programme and a nuclear programme and building up proxies in the region. It's neglected. It's domestic responsibilities of focusing on the economy and building infrastructure and things like that in order to build up what it said was a defence against foreign. Then when that foreign threat arrives, the regime turned out to be absolutely shot through with intelligence leaks and security failures. So what does that do to the legitimacy of the regime? What does that mean politically in Iran going forward? We're not sure yet, but I think there are going to be some ripple effects.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break - will Iran pursue its nuclear program after this?

[MIDROLL]

RUBY:

Gregg, these attacks came as talks were scheduled to take place between the U S and Iran, could you tell me what they were supposed to be discussing?

GREGG:

So a decade ago in 2015, the U.S. And other world powers signed a deal with Iran, the JCPOA, which put limits on Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for easing some of the economic sanctions on Iran. Trump abandoned that deal in 2018. He called it the worst deal ever negotiated. He promised to negotiate a better one. He failed to do that in his first term. Joe Biden failed to negotiate a new deal when he was president and so Trump has been trying again to revive that agreement. There were five rounds of talks between the United States and Iran between April and the start of the war a few days ago. But the talks had really been hung up on a sort of fundamental question of whether this agreement would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium or not. The Iranians insist, and they're not wrong, that enrichment is a right. Under the nonproliferation treaty and they see it as a point of national pride and they want to keep enriching uranium domestically. The Trump administration had said it wasn't willing to accept that and if Iran wanted to have nuclear reactors or research reactors it would have to import enriched uranium from abroad. They couldn't get past that very fundamental disagreement in what kind of deal they were trying to negotiate.

RUBY:

So, I mean, Trump is still saying that a deal will happen.

Audio excerpt – Donald Trump:

“Well, I hope there's going to be a deal. I think it's time for a deal, and we'll see what happens. But sometimes they have to fight it out, but we're going to see what happened. I think there's a good chance there'll be a deal.”

RUBY:

But I mean what kind of deal could be reached at this stage? Do you think that talks will resume?

GREGG:

I think in the very near term, I think that's wishful thinking. I think the Israeli government convinced Trump that military strikes on Iran would make Iran more amenable to negotiating a deal and to making concessions. I think right now that is just the fundamental misreading of the Iranian regime. It doesn't want to negotiate under fire. It does not want to be seen as capitulating to its enemies in Israel and in the West. So I think no surprise that the most recent round of talks scheduled for Sunday was cancelled, that the Iranians refused to show up. The question going forward is At some point, does the damage in Iran get bad enough that they feel compelled to negotiate? The regime doesn't want to concede on its nuclear programme, but it also wants to survive the war and stay in power. And so is there a point at which they decide the only way to survive is to make big concessions in a new nuclear deal? We're not at that point yet. I'm sceptical that Israel by itself can... Push the war to that point, but I think that's going to be the key question going forward.

RUBY:

Just to talk a little more about the US position. I mean, to what extent did or does Israel have the implicit backing of Trump as it takes this action in Iran?

GREGG:

I think there's no doubt that it has American backing. I think there's No doubt that Donald Trump not only knew about Israel's plans ahead of time, but approved them.

Audio excerpt – Reporter:

“Just hours before the initial Israeli strikes, the president publicly warned Israel not to do this, saying an attack could derail ongoing U.S.-Iran nuclear talks. But now President Trump is calling those Israeli strikes excellent, saying he gave Iran the chance to make a deal and they, quote, got hit about as hard as you're going to get hit, adding There's more to come, a lot more.”

GREGG:

And even though America thus far, hasn't taken an offensive role that hasn't joined Israel and carrying out airstrikes, it's supporting Israel in myriad other ways. You have American air defence systems in Israel right now, helping to shoot down some of these Iranian ballistic missiles. America is sharing intelligence with Israel. It is obviously resupplying the Israeli army. America is Israel's main supplier of military equipment. So it is playing a huge supporting role. The question in the next few days is whether Israel can convince it to join the war in an offensive capacity as well. Is real. Would like American help to strike at Fordow, that deeply buried enrichment facility. It has asked America to join airstrikes on Fordow. Trump so far has not agreed, but the Israeli government is trying to make the case that this war will only be successful with American military help. It's really pushing Trump to get involved.

RUBY:

For years, Gregg Israel and the allies, they've warned about the axis of Iran and Hezbollah and the Assad regime in Syria. But over the course of the last year, we've seen now all three of these either wiped out or massively degraded. So just how much at this point has the Middle East been reshaped?

GREGG:

If this had happened two years ago, Israel striking Iran, Hezbollah would have been the first line of defence. That is why Iran spent so many years arming it, funding it, training it, was so that it could, in a moment like this, unleash thousands of rockets and missiles on Israel. It hasn't done a thing because it has been so badly weakened and because now... It's in a much weaker position domestically. Not just its military capabilities have been damaged, but it's a weaker position politically in Lebanon. And I think it's nervous about taking the risk of dragging Lebanon back into a war. So again, Iran feels like it can't rely on these proxies. It still has Houthis in Yemen who can fire the occasional drone or ballistic missile at Israel. It's still has militias in Iraq, although so far they haven't on getting involved, but Iran finds itself having to defend itself in a way that it never expected to.

RUBY:

Well, Gregg, thank you so much for your time.

RUBY:

Also in the news today…

Australian officials are working on plans to help Australians leave Iran and Israel – but foreign Minister Penny Wong warns it may take time, due to airspace being closed.

Senator Wong says about 350 people in Iran and 300 in Israel have already registered for assistance – and the government is working on a plan for assisted departures when it is safe to do so.

And

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will open formal talks for Australia to join a new EU security-and-defence partnership.

The Prime Minister will use this week’s G7 summit to hold talks with EU commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, to explore areas of greater cooperation including foreign interference, counter-terrorism and defence capabilities.

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