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- [00:00]
Paddy O'Connell
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
- [00:06]
Steve Rosenberg
I'm Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Russia editor in Our man in Moscow. I'll show you what it's like being a news correspondent in Russia. As the Russian authorities wage war on Ukraine and try to silence dissent.
- [00:18]
Laura Kuenssberg
The sound of war has reverberated around Ukraine for three years.
- [00:22]
Steve Rosenberg
Dramatic geopolitical upheaval alongside threats of intimidation and imprisonment. Our man in Moscow. Watch with a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC. Visit BBC.com docs to learn more.
- [00:38]
Paddy O'Connell
So for newscasters who like the story about what happens in the office, we recorded yesterday's newscast and then immediately started messaging each other.
- [00:47]
Chris Mason
We did, because there were then suggestions and rumor and hint and speculation and things that are tricky for journalists that often when there is a very important story that appears to have happened, you then have a period of what you might call howl round before you can actually say this is true. And the news in question, that we spent some hours not knowing whether or not it was true, was the death of the Ayatollah, the supreme leader of Iran, who had been in charge, ruling with an iron grip, a repressive regime for 36 years. And it wasn't actually until quite late in the day that Donald Trump was the one really to confirm to the world publicly that, yes, indeed, as a result of Israeli and American strikes, Ayatollah Khamenei was dead.
- [01:29]
Jeremy Bowen
Yes.
- [01:30]
Paddy O'Connell
At 9:40pm, he posted one of the most evil people in history is dead. This is not only just justice for the people of Iran, but for all great Americans and those people from many countries throughout the world that have been killed or mutilated by Hameni and his gang of bloodthirsty thugs.
- [01:46]
Chris Mason
It's a huge moment, and I know we probably overuse that phrase, but this really is a momentous time because it puts in future who will run Iran, not just hugely important, most of all, of course, for the people of Iran who have been repressed for decades. Just weeks ago, thousands of people killed by their own government for protesting in the streets. But also this is a country of 90 million people bang, slap bang in the middle of a neighborhood that is a very volatile and dangerous part of the world, with Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, all these countries bunched around the Middle east near Israel, where a part of the world that can, whatever happens there can send shock waves around everyone else. So the future of Iran matters here at home because of the oil price, also because of threats here to us from the Iranian government. So there's a huge amount to talk about on today's episode of Newscast. And we'll be joined by the BBC's international editor, Jeremy Bowen.
- [02:48]
Jeremy Bowen
Fat Boy Slim and me in the classroom doing our violin lessons.
- [02:51]
Reza Pahlavi's Chief of Staff
I was the tattletale in the class.
- [02:53]
Paddy O'Connell
Can I have an apology, please?
- [02:54]
Jeremy Bowen
I trust almost nobody that daddy has to sometimes use strong language.
- [02:58]
Chris Mason
Next time in mosque. I feel delulu with no salulu. Take me down to Downing Street.
- [03:03]
Paddy O'Connell
Let's go have a tour.
- [03:05]
Reza Pahlavi's Chief of Staff
Blimey.
- [03:06]
Chris Mason
Hello, it's Thor in the studio.
- [03:08]
Paddy O'Connell
Yes, you are in the studio.
- [03:09]
Jeremy Bowen
Thank you.
- [03:10]
Paddy O'Connell
And hello, it's Paddy in the studio opposite Laura.
- [03:12]
Chris Mason
And before too long, we'll be joined from home by Jeremy Bowen. But of course, he's a very, very busy man on such a huge day. So what do we know and what do we not know? So we know, we think, how this happened. An incredible coordinated attack, a wave of attacks by America and Israel across Iran, but with what appears to have been incredible intelligence about where Iran's leadership was. And we think that the leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, was actually killed in his office in his compound, along with other close members of his team, and we also think some of his own family.
- [03:48]
Paddy O'Connell
What we also know is that this is a weekend of history unfolding. This is the assassination of a foreign leader by the United States and Israel. This is the biggest moment since the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Ayatollahi was part of that revolution, took over himself just a sort of decade later or so, didn't he? And has been there, as you reminded us, in charge, charge of a ruthless regime for nearly 40 years, pledged to the destruction of Israel.
- [04:16]
Chris Mason
What we also know is that there have been Iranians out in the streets celebrating. Almost as soon as suggestions of this news started to swirl around, people went out onto the streets celebrating, cheering, some women pictured taking with no headscarves. Of course, women have been beaten in Iran for refusing to cover their hair in recent years. There have, though, also been signs of other demonstrations of people who are supportive of the regime. Now, we're not allowed to report independently in Iran, but we should say it is impossible for us really to know what the relative scale of celebration is compared to the relative scale of mourning. However, I was thinking this morning as I was getting up very early of what Lise Doucet, who's been there recently, said to us is her feeling was being in Iran. This was a country that was now quite crying out for change, and it had moved much more in that direction of people wanting to see an end to the regime, in her view, than it had been previously in her years of reporting there.
- [05:16]
Paddy O'Connell
Yeah, it's a great point. So we on this podcast are not going to call the crowds. We're not going to say what's bigger, but we can say that the, the United States president has directly urged Iranians to take this moment. He says it's their greatest moment in years.
- [05:33]
Chris Mason
And that takes us to. What we don't know is we don't know what's next. We do not know whether there will be enough of a strength of feeling or enough courage or resources for people in Iran to do that, to rise up to or to throw the regime. We don't know how strong the remnants of the regime are. We know they've appointed somebody else now to, to, to take over, we think on an interim basis. And we don't know what the medium to long term consequences of this will be. You know, taking this Jenga P out of a very precariously built tower in the Middle east will have consequences. We've already seen that there's been a wave of retaliations from Iran in places that, you know, people listening might have been on holiday, like Dubai and Qatar, Doha, Kuwait, places where there have been attacks. There's also in Pakistan, some people have been killed in a protest when they tried to storm the American consulate. So this is unfolding very, very quickly.
- [06:30]
Paddy O'Connell
Let's head to Jeremy Bowen, our international editor, who's at home. Hello, Jeremy.
- [06:35]
Jeremy Bowen
Hi. Morning.
- [06:36]
Paddy O'Connell
Well, a historic weekend. The biggest moment since the 1979 revolution.
- [06:40]
Jeremy Bowen
Yeah, I think we're looking at that certainly in the scale of things. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was only the second supreme leader of the country since the revolution after the revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. And, yeah, it's a big deal. And the question is, which way does it unfold? Because on one hand you've got one extreme, if you like, you've got the sort of the Trump formulation, which is the airstrikes are going to do so much damage to the regime that once they stop, then the Iranian people are going to just be able to take control. And you have the other pole of the argument, which is that this regime was deliberately formulated and made and structured to be resilient, that it's that the supreme leader, despite being the guy who has, you know, who's the, the symbol and the top man with a great deal of power, is underpinned by a very dense and complex web of political institutions on one hand, and on the other, the Clerical ones. And also of course, the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which is an, an armed, it's like a shadow army. It exists in parallel with the regular army. It has hundreds of thousands of men under arms and its explicit job is to protect the regime from threats at home and abroad. So this is not a one man show.
- [08:18]
Chris Mason
And Jeremy, is it possible at all to assess how damaged the regime has been in the last 36 hours? You know, how much is left of it, or will it just spring back into life?
- [08:30]
Jeremy Bowen
The Supreme Leader is dead. He's been killed along with some very important people in the Iranian firmament. So yeah, I mean that is severe damage. They're under attack by the biggest military power in the world and the biggest military power in the region who are determined to make this into a war of regime change. Because while they said at the outset that it was, they used the word preemptive, preemptive suggests, actually means that there was some kind of immediate threat, either a military operation or there was a. There's been some talk about, you know, their nuclear plans, which of course they deny having in terms of trying to get a weapon. But there's no evidence that there was any immediate threat. This is quite clearly, and we can see this now because one of the first things they did was go after the leadership. This is about regime change. So they have decided that this is a moment of weakness in the regime which they will exploit.
- [09:29]
Paddy O'Connell
And
- [09:32]
Jeremy Bowen
what's the wider extent of the regime? And we can't tell what's going on internally. But what I would say is, as I said before, that there's a system there. It's not like Khamenei was the leader of an armed group, an armed movement even like Hezbollah in Lebanon or like Hamas in Gaza. It's not even that. It was a one man show run by a family like Assad, Syria, Gaddafis, Libya. This is a system in a very big country, three times almost the size of Iraq, more than 90 million people and there are people there and we don't know the exact numbers of course, who actually believe in this stuff, who believe in the regime, believe in the Islamic system and who believe that the west is out to get them.
- [10:20]
Paddy O'Connell
Can I ask you just to summarize the celebration, the people who are cheering. So if we look, start with Israel and go to the United States, they would consider this a foreign policy success on a massive scale. The Iran has pledged the destruction of Israel and they've taken out the Supreme Leader. Donald Trump weeks ago seized the president of Venezuela, put him in handcuffs. Now he's carried out the assassination of the leader of Iran. So who's celebrating this as an achievement of a historic scale, Jeremy?
- [10:53]
Jeremy Bowen
Well, clearly the people who are against the regime are delighted the leader of the regime is dead. I mean, they must be. There were thousands of people, tens of thousands of people demonstrating against him in January and demonstrating against the system. And they were. I mean, that series of demonstrations was crushed by the use of force. So my instinct is that a regime which, as well as these complex political institutions I was talking about, has loyal followers who are prepared to go out on the streets in numbers and kill thousands, possibly tens of thousands of their fellow citizens just for showing dissent. I mean, that is a. A very ruthless regime, a regime based on survival and a regime which is going to do everything it can to keep on going in terms of, you know, who's winning. I think it's way too early to say that. Yes, of course, the. When it comes to a military fight, the Americans and the Israelis are way stronger than Iran. But Iran is firing off in all directions. It is trying to cause so a lot of chaos and retribution in the area as well. And, and for those who think, oh, yeah, it's all over, I mean, do you remember George W. Bush landing on an aircraft carrier, not the invasion of Iraq, and with a massive banner saying Mission Accomplished?
- [12:15]
Paddy O'Connell
I do.
- [12:16]
Jeremy Bowen
Do you remember the. All those people who thought that Egypt after the removal of Mubarak in 2011, would turn into something, and I'm not exaggerating now, some of the reports were saying it would virtually become Sweden after that. Well, I mean, what happened in Egypt, I think, is quite salutary insofar as the revolutionaries who actually did the demonstrations which forced the military to tell Mubarak to go, and the military was one of its people, the military did that to preserve its own power. When it came to an election, the people who had opposed and risen up were so disorganized that they couldn't even agree. They couldn't even get a candidate to the final stage of the election. In the end, the election came down to the military candidate versus the Muslim brother candidate. The Muslim Brotherhood guy won. He was then removed by the military in a coup. And now the leader of Egypt is way more repressive, President Sisi, than President Mubarak ever was. So I would be super cautious about making predictions about, you know, the way this is going to go now.
- [13:26]
Chris Mason
So there's a whole kaleidoscope of possible consequences, possible dangerous, unintended consequences. But let's Just stick, then with the notion of what Iranian people might or might not be willing to do in the coming days. You know, President Trump has urged them to rise up, saying, this is your best chance to take your country back. It's very unclear, you know, who that might be, but we spoke this morning to the chief of staff to of a man called Reza Pahlavi, who's the son of the shah who was deposed in the 70s. Now, there are some people in Iran who chant his name at protests and demonstrations. There is some building up of support around him, but it's not at all clear that he would, in any way, shape or form be a candidate that that could do it, has the means to do it, the resources to do it, or the support to do it. And what I put to his chief of staff, that there are some people, course, who would look at and think, well, the answer to this is not a return to someone from the old monarchy.
- [14:24]
Reza Pahlavi's Chief of Staff
There's no contradiction between monarchy and democracy. In fact, you're sitting in a constitutional monarchy or one of the most democratic countries in the world. So what the prince is offering is a process to democracy. It's a pathway to that future in which the Iranian people will be able to choose. Do they want a constitutional monarchy like in the UK or do they want a republic like in France? So the prince has been very clear. The Iranian people very well know his platform. That's why they support him in the millions. So whether they choose to vote for a monarchy or republic, that'll be their choice, their sovereign right. What he's fighting to do is to deliver to them once again, their sovereign right to make that choice, a choice that has been taken from them for 47 years. And true democracy means putting all the options on the table, not taking any options off of the table.
- [15:10]
Chris Mason
It just seems, Jeremy, that kind of choice is miles off.
- [15:14]
Jeremy Bowen
Oh, it's stratospheric distances away. I mean, how does this process work? One thing. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the removal of Saddam Hussein had catastrophic consequences. And I used the word advisably. Catastrophe. Hundreds of thousands of people were killed in the years that followed. There was a disastrous civil war. The jihadist movements that culminated in isis, Islamic State were incubated in that period. And they are still a massive issue now, all those years later, the Middle east is still trying to absorb the consequences of all of that. So Trump is not saying he's going to send troops in here. He seems to think that the unarmed, the largely unarmed Iranian people will somehow be Able, by sheer weight of numbers to overthrow the regime. Well, maybe they will, maybe they will be able to do that, but I kind of doubt it, because the record of all these things is that when it comes to a confrontation between a regime that wants to stay in place, which is heavily armed and very ruthless and largely unarmed demonstrators, there's only going to be one winner. So there has to be a process of what happens when the airstrikes end. And they will end, of course. And what happens then? I mean, neither Trump nor Netanyahu have actually shared their plans with us. That possibly could be, because on the Trump side, they haven't got a plan. And on the Israeli side, Netanyahu for many years has wanted to do this and he's always known he had to do it with the Americans. Previous American presidents wouldn't do it.
- [17:08]
Chris Mason
But Trump has in terms, though, just of the immediate effects of the Ayatollah having been killed, though, because the long term consequences are so, so unknowable. But the effect of the Ayatollah being removed, being assassinated in and of itself is so profound. When we had Rana Ranpur, who used to be a BBC Parsha journalist, who said, an Iranian journalist with us on the program, and Paddy, it was so moving. I said to her, you know, what did you think when you heard, and she woke her children up when she heard the news to say, the dictator is dead, we might now one day be able to go home. You know, in and of itself, as you were saying in the beginning, this event is something absolutely profound and momentous, isn't it?
- [17:49]
Jeremy Bowen
But seismic. There's absolutely no doubt about that. But the whole thing about seismic events is you don't quite know what the consequences are going to be. I mean, don't forget that people still talk in Iran about the coup in 1953 that removed the then leader, the then prime minister, which was at the coup orchestrated by MI6 and the CIA is still an issue in terms of relations and trust with the West. And you know, that's. Gosh, that's. That. That's more than 70 years ago now.
- [18:20]
Paddy O'Connell
I've visited the archive and looked at the papers for the planning of that coup to overthrow Mesaddak. Then the Shah came in, backed by the West. Then the Shah was ditched. And I went to protesters in London, rival rallies, who said, guess what? We don't want monarchs and we don't want mullahs. We want our country to be a normal, functioning country. So there were very vibrant voices on the streets of our capital yesterday. A reminder that Jeremy's using the word seismic, which is based on an earthquake. We can talk about aftershocks of unknown size in unknown places all around the Middle east and all over the world.
- [18:57]
Chris Mason
And in terms also of Iran's retaliation, I mean, there has been a very significant wave of retaliatory attacks, if I can get that word out. There's been strikes on Doha, in Qatar, strikes on Bahrain, but strikes on Kuwait. The Iranians say they've been targeting places where there are American bases, but there have been impacts on even hotels in Dubai. We know there's British tourists who've been caught up in some of these attacks and the casualties at this stage, we should say, because we haven't mentioned this yet, we think there are a few, couple of hundred Iranians or so. The Red Crescent has said around 200 Iranians have been killed. There has been one death so far reported, as we record at 11 o' clock on Sunday morning on the Israeli side. But there are visible consequences of Israel and America's strikes. We've seen on our TV screens from Iran's revenge right across the region of the Middle East. And that puts all sorts of people into harm's way, including, as the Defense Secretary, John Healey told us this morning, British troops stationed in that part of the world and British civilians.
- [20:05]
John Healey
I know people at home will be worried that not just military targets were hit last yesterday, but also we've seen hotels in Dubai and Bahrain, we've seen Kuwait civilian airport. But in that Bahrain military base that was hit by missiles and drones Yesterday, we had 300 British personnel, some within several hundred yards of the strike in Cyprus, we had two ballistic missiles fired in the direction of Cyprus. Now, we are pretty sure they weren't targeted at Cyprus, but nevertheless, it demonstrates how our bases, our personnel, military and civilians at the moment are at risk with a regime that is increasingly indiscriminate, widespread and uncontrolled in the attacks it's mounting.
- [20:54]
Jeremy Bowen
The thing about, say, tourists being caught up in all of this is that in a sense, you can say that going to the Middle east for a holiday is not like going to Spain. The realities of the region are going to kick in at some point and it's, you know, it is a difficult and unstable place and they've been caught up in that, unfortunately. I'm very sorry for anybody who's been scared or had their holidays ruined by, by all of this. But more widely, in terms of bases and alliances and the fact that Britain's got some troops there and forces there yeah, that is the whole thing is that the Iranians now will try and go after the people who they see as their enemies. And I think very squarely, Britain will be. Will be part of that. And they would expect to be targets.
- [21:46]
Chris Mason
We shouldn't forget that. MI5 have said in the last couple of years, there have been more than 20 plots either thwarted or carried out against the UK in this country. Not things happening abroad, but in this country. And successive governments have seen Iran very much as an enemy in their sight states. But that takes us to the interesting question, Paddy, of what the UK's government's actual position is here. So we talked yesterday. Canada and Australia have explicitly backed this American and Israeli action. The UK has not done that, despite asking him several times this morning. John Healey would not do that. He would not say, yes, we back this, or indeed, no, we don't now, while saying carefully, yes, America and Israel are, of course important allies and yes, of course we deplore the Iranian regime and they must not be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. You can see the political straitjacket that the government is in here, and I sense they sort of want to try to hold a distance from what some people will see as audacious, others as reckless and dangerous action that's been taken by America and Israel. You know, this isn't Blair Mark II going into Iraq alongside, but yet America is an incredibly important ally for the uk, for all sorts of different reasons, not least the whole fandango around the Chagos Islands that's going on at the moment. It's a very delicate line here that the UK is trying to walk, and it's not straightforward. Their political rivals on both sides are both pointing a finger at them and telling them they're. They're wrong.
- [23:20]
Paddy O'Connell
Yeah, because there's not much nuance with this White House. No, you either with them or not. And so Keir Starmer, if he can't say this is brilliant, is not going to win points from Donald Trump. And Keir Starmer is not saying this is brilliant. So, Jeremy, the risks of escalation, I suppose, come from a lucky strike by Iran, because at the moment their missiles are being intercepted over Israel. But you think of the fleet, the American fleet, and you think of the missiles that Iran can rain down on the American vessels. And that's where, I wonder, with missiles in the air, we can't say how the escalation will go, can we?
- [24:01]
Jeremy Bowen
No, we can't. And I can say that an American carrier battle group is even more heavily protected than probably the average Israeli town. So I think they can defend themselves. But, yes, there is a school of thought that says that, that carriers are very vulnerable to drones. Whether or not the Iranians have got that kind of capacity is another matter. No, I mean, the thing is, we're in a whole new world now. I mean, that's the thing. And the Middle east is a really turbulent area. It's volatile, and it has a long record as well of exporting its problems abroad, sometimes in terms of violence. You're talking about MI5 and masking various plots by the Iranians. You know, the Iranian regime is absolutely casual and directed about the use of force and intimidation. They've done things as well to our own valiant colleagues at BBC Persian who have come under terrible pressure. The point is that this is a very turbulent region and it's been given a great big stir, a very, very big stir by what's going on. So I think it would be unwise to make predictions about the way that it will go, except to. Yeah, there's one option that Trump lays out, which is they give the regime a real pasting, they kill the leadership, and then the Iranian people somehow take over. But next to that, there's a whole range of other options which are way more difficult.
- [25:34]
Paddy O'Connell
And there's been a lot of celebration of the killing in Israel. But we heard from the BBC's Anna Foster, who's there, that because of the warnings of missiles, the streets are very empty where she's been. And here's a little postcard she sent.
- [25:49]
Steve Rosenberg
I'm Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Russia editor in Our man in Moscow. I'll show you what it's like being a news correspondent in Russia. As the Russian authorities wage war on Ukraine and try to silence dissent, the
- [26:01]
Laura Kuenssberg
sound of war has reverberated around Ukraine for three years.
- [26:05]
Steve Rosenberg
Dramatic geopolitical upheaval alongside threats of intimidation and imprisonment. Our man in Moscow. Watch with a subscriber description to BBC.com and the BBC app. Visit BBC.com docs to learn more.
- [26:22]
Laura Kuenssberg
Hi, Laura. Morning, everyone. I just wanted to take a moment to show you what it's like here in Tel Aviv this morning at what should be the peak of the rush hour on the first day of the working week. You can see only the occasional car out. There are no people, there's no school, there's no work today. A lot of those things, things have been canceled, places that people would normally be going to this morning. And this is because of those waves of missile attacks that kept coming overnight and they're expecting more of them today. In fact, in the early hours of this morning, Iran said that as a result of the killing of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, they would launch the most devastating attack in their history on US bases and here in Israel. So as a result, this is what you see. Hardly anybody on the street. If you are out, you need to know where a shelter is. And I've already checked. I know that there's one about two streets away over there, and I know there's one in this direction as well. But this is what you will see now. People are, they're watching what's happening in Iran. People tell me that they're feeling safer as a result of that action, safer in the long term because they feel that the threat from Iran has been neutralized, that threat that has always existed towards Israel from Iran. But they are now concerned, concerned about what might happen next, about what this military action might bring here to Israel. And that is why you see the streets, the roads today are so very quiet. People are waiting to see what's going to happen next.
- [27:46]
Chris Mason
Eerie to see and hear those empty streets with people seeming to hold their breath, really.
- [27:51]
Paddy O'Connell
But I wondered, though, Jeremy, if you could just, in your final moments, just look at this from the Israeli government perspective. They had the, they had Hamas attack them on October 7th. 7th. Hamas was a proxy of Iran, as was Hezbollah. Have some of the major foreign policy objectives of Benjamin Netanyahu been achieved?
- [28:13]
Jeremy Bowen
I think the attacks on 7 October were way more complex than an order coming through from Tehran. They were, Hamas received lots of money and support, but they had many, many of their own reasons for doing those attacks. First of all, and I think as well, there's something similar applied to the Lebanese side of things. You know, there are multi causal reasons for it, for all of this happening. But no, this is a great time for Netanyahu and for the Israeli government in terms of their objectives, because in the last couple of years they've done massive damage to their most obdurate enemies, massive damage to all of them. And for people who have argued over the years, there's no military solution in the Middle east, actually their view is, yeah, there is a military solution that is being absolutely as strong and tough as you need to be. Make sure you've got a really strong ally, the United States, behind you, and then you can make your people safer. I mean, that is the argument that Netanyahu will use very strongly in his own set of elections, general elections, which are going to come up later in the year, no later than October. And so this will be, believe you me, this will be very much in his election literature when it's published and in his adverts.
- [29:29]
Chris Mason
And then if we think on the other side of those different alliances which Paddy, we've come back to this so many times. I always think of the former head of NATO told us when he was stepping down from NATO, Jens Stoltenberg, that there is this axis of authoritarian allies, Russia, North Korea, China and Iran, to use his phrases. And some of this is so it's such a sort of of connected chain, isn't it? Vladimir Putin's put out a statement in the last half an hour, I think, saying that this assassination was a dreadful thing condemning America's action here. Remember that Iran has been helping Russia attack Ukraine, supplying them with munitions. This is a chain. If we think this is just about the Middle east, this is a chain of alliances around the world all vying for influence, all prepared to act in ways which their rivals might find appalling or are audacious. And we live in such a connected world now, I mean, it seems completely obtuse to say it, but this is not just about the streets of Tehran. It's not just about what happens within Iran's borders, not just about what's happening in the Israeli government or in the White House or even in number 10 Downing Street. It's about all of them and all of us. And I think that's why it's so helpful, Jeremy, to have had you with us this morning to talk us through some of those unknowable consequences and what's at stake.
- [30:53]
Jeremy Bowen
If I just add one thing, which I don't think, certainly not the time I've been on that's been discussed and that is the tattered edifice of international law and what remains of the so called rules based order. In terms of going to war. There are certain legal ways of doing it. One of the things is self defense and they're sort of arguing that without, I'd say, evidence. The other thing is a UN resolution that certainly isn't one of those. But it's clear that neither Netanyahu nor Trump are bothered about that. It's interesting that in the discussion of it there has been almost nothing mentioned except by organizations like the International Committee of the Red Cross who have sent out reminders that things like the protection of civilians is paramount and all important. And the point is, though, what we're seeing now is two very potent military powers going to war against their enemy and deciding that this is just a really useful and opportune moment. And it's and they would be mugs if they didn't take the chance. And as for, you know, the right way, if you think that actually the better way to do things is to have some rules in the world, they're saying you're so mistaken about that.
- [32:06]
Paddy O'Connell
I mean, I'm really understanding what the use of power looks like in this Trump White House. This term Trump too, when you think it was only weeks ago special forces seized the president, president of Venezuela and put him, flew him in handcuffs to a New York court. Weeks later, the Ayatollah of Iran assassinated with a giant American fleet. This is the muscle of the American term that Trump too. And we aren't seeing the end of Trump too. We've got more Trump 2 to come and he's going to claim that this is the Iranian moment next, that he's laid the way. And this will be a historic weekend for American history as well because of what's happened. So the, the way Jeremy began his briefing to us today was to say how unpredictable are the aftershocks. And that just brings it all home. So, Jeremy, thank you very much, very much.
- [33:03]
Chris Mason
Thank you very much indeed for being with us on this Sunday's newscast. And we've benefited from the wisdom of our colleagues who cover foreign news very much this weekend. Lisa said yesterday and Jeremy Bowen and of course, our colleagues across the BBC will have everything you need to know or everything we can find out to the best of all of our abilities in these important days.
- [33:24]
Paddy O'Connell
So thank you very much for joining Sunday's newscast and goodbye.
- [33:27]
Chris Mason (podcast outro)
Goodbye, Newscast.
- [33:29]
Laura Kuenssberg
Newscast from the BBC.
- [33:30]
Chris Mason (podcast outro)
Thank you so much for making it to the end of Newscast. You clearly copyright Chris Mason Ooze Stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Don't forget, you can email us anytime. It's newscastbc.com and if you would like to join our Discord community to talk about everything newscast related, there is a link in the description of this podcast. And don't be scared. It's super easy to click on it and then get set up. Or you can WhatsApp us on 033-01-239480 and I promise you we read and listen to every single message. Thanks for listening to this podcast.
- [34:17]
Steve Rosenberg
I'm Steve Rosenberg, the BBC's Russia editor in Our man in Moscow. I'll show you what it's like being a news correspondent in Russia as the Russian authorities wage war on Ukraine and try to silence dissent.
- [34:29]
Laura Kuenssberg
The sound of war has reverberated around Ukraine for three years.
- [34:33]
Steve Rosenberg
Dramatic geopolitical upheaval alongside threats of intimidation and imprisonment. Our man in Moscow. Watch with a subscription to BBC.com and the BBC app. Visit BBC.com docs to learn more.