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- [00:00]
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- [00:33]
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- [00:49]
Siavash Ardalan
Let's start a riot new seasons of
- [00:51]
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- [01:06]
Adam Fleming
hello. Today, one of the BBC's most seasoned experts on covering foreign news made the point that there's something very strange about the US Israel war against Iran. And it's the fact that we as the BBC cannot report from the main focal point on of the conflict, which is Iran itself. That's because we're not allowed in there. And also there's an Internet blackout which means lots of news isn't allowed out of there. So we thought we would try and address that kind of black hole today on Newscast by speaking to one of the friends of the podcast who works for the BBC Persian Service. And so he's absolutely steeped in the country, its history and is spending basically every working moment trying to piece together what is going on. And so that is what you'll hear in a big part of this episode
- [01:55]
Siavash Ardalan
of Newscast, Newscast, Newscast from the BBC. Fat Boy Slim and me in the classroom doing our violin lessons.
- [02:01]
Adam Fleming
I was the tattletail in the classroom.
- [02:03]
Siavash Ardalan
Can I have an apology please? I trust almost nobody that daddy has
- [02:06]
Adam Fleming
to sometimes use strong language.
- [02:08]
Jane
Next time in Moscow I feel Delulu with no Salulu.
- [02:12]
Siavash Ardalan
Take me down to Downing Street.
- [02:13]
Adam Fleming
Let's go have a tour.
- [02:15]
Guest or Commentator
Blimey.
- [02:16]
Adam Fleming
Hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio.
- [02:18]
Jane
And hello, it's Jane in the newscast studio.
- [02:20]
Adam Fleming
Please welcome back C Ash Ardalan, our colleague from BBC Persian. Hello.
- [02:24]
Siavash Ardalan
Hi there.
- [02:25]
Adam Fleming
Yeah, what's it been like in your newsroom then Sivash?
- [02:29]
Siavash Ardalan
It's been crazy as you can Imagine the volume of news and content that's coming through. All of it almost needs to be verified, unless there are official statements. And then you have an Internet blackout in Iran, which makes it very difficult to verify those videos that are coming out. But nevertheless, they're getting through. And our verification team are the busiest among also our reporters and presenters. But we're going on a. It's a rolling program, 24 hours almost.
- [02:56]
Adam Fleming
And how difficult is it to communicate with. With sources in Iran? I mean, because if the Internet's shut off, then I'm imagining it's really hard.
- [03:03]
Siavash Ardalan
It is hard. Some bits and there's some, you know, glimpse of connectivity every now and then. And we get these messages either through Starlink or through other means whenever there is some connectivity. And our colleagues, you know, we've got over 50, 60 colleagues who are working on this, and they all know people. They have contacts inside the country to get messages either directly or through secondhand people, someone who knows someone else from almost across the country, in different cities that have been affected by the conflict.
- [03:34]
Adam Fleming
And you talked about getting official statements from the Iranian government. I mean, how functional is the government? How many statements are they putting out? Is it like getting a press release from the British government or the State Department in America?
- [03:46]
Siavash Ardalan
Well, we don't get these statements directly to us. There are statements that are published and, you know, obviously we. We follow them. And no, the government seems to be functioning okay. The Foreign Ministry, you know, the. The spokesman of the Foreign Ministry has this presses every day. And then there's Revolutionary Guards, which they have their own communiques published on a daily basis. And then you have different government organizations that seem to be functioning okay under the circumstances, whether it's related, particularly the conflict or just related to the running of the country. The logistics, for example, you know, enough food is there, don't panic. Or today, you know, the schools will be, you know, via Internet, stuff like that. So, yeah, we. We follow these and it's still going on as normal. So the government is functioning Also.
- [04:33]
Adam Fleming
Jane, I was struck by overnight that the. The boss of centcom, the. The US Military operation or the. The sort of HQ for this bit of the world for the American military, did qu video giving quite a lot of details. And then you get Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of State for War, we used to call him the Defense Secretary. They give quite a lot of updates, don't they?
- [04:51]
Jane
Yeah, they do. And there's an awful lot going on, particularly because obviously there are US Bases in all these countries that are being hit. So effectively it's, it's Americans who are going to comment on it. And we've, we've had, you know, everything from a drone strike on the U. S. Consulate in Dubai to missiles fired at the big American base aloud in Qatar. And it's really been a very, very hectic busy time. So obvious centcom, which is the command, US Command for that part of the world has got to respond to these things constantly.
- [05:21]
Adam Fleming
And also some of the other things that Pete Hagseth said in his statement, the regime is toast.
- [05:28]
Guest or Commentator
Only the United States of America could lead this, only us. But when you add the Israeli Defense Forces, a devastatingly capable force, the combination is sheer destruction for our radical Islamist Iranian adversaries. They are toast and they know it. Or at least soon enough they will know it.
- [05:51]
Adam Fleming
And Sivas, does it feel like there's a sort of propaganda war going on between the Iranians and the US that's playing out well on social media. I can see it on my social media feeds right now.
- [06:01]
Siavash Ardalan
Not just a propaganda war, but I think also psychological warfare through different media outlets, some that purport to be quoting uninformed sources within the US Government or within the Iranian government. They leak something to the media, but you never know whether it's true or whether it's part of a psychological operation trying to get the other side to react in different ways. So when we get these news coming through either Axios or CNN or those sorts of things quoting US Officials or vice versa, when it relates to Iran, we have to be very careful in trying to, trying to, you know, triple source it, double source it, finding out whether it's really true, whether it's a plan or whether it's just a quote, just throwing spaghetti at war.
- [06:43]
Jane
And you. We're hearing more and more, aren't we, from, from the American side, from War Secretary or Secretary at War Pete Hegseth, you know that there are more and larger waves coming. So this constant sort of, you know, you haven't seen it all yet. You haven't seen anything yet. That's the message that's coming from, from them all the time.
- [07:02]
Adam Fleming
And I've noticed a lot of the, quite a lot of the armchair observers on social media saying, oh, the fact that these B1, B2 and B52 bombers are now being deployed in the skies above Iran, that shows that Iran's air defenses pretty comprehensively destroyed because you only send those aircraft in when there's not much of a threat towards them.
- [07:21]
Siavash Ardalan
Yes, the skies of Iran are virtually. Well, I wouldn't say completely defenseless, because the Iran claims they've downed and they've shown evidence of a few Israeli drones that, whose job is to, you know, to scape the landscape and find those launchers and those missiles that are being fired towards Israel and then to destroy them. So they're down some of those. But virtually Iran's skies are defenseless because you have drones. We have seen pictures and videos of drones from Israel or the US Flying at very low altitude. I mean, in big cities, you can almost hear them. People are filming these drones as they pass by. And then, boom, we hear a sound so very much like, you know, in Afghanistan or Pakistan when they were dealing with the, with Al Qaeda and with isis, the drone war, and even flying jets, Israeli jets are flying at very low altitudes. You can almost film them. And some people can actually, those who are experts in Iran can tell what kind of fighters these are.
- [08:18]
Adam Fleming
And also, are you able to tell kind of what the, what the strategy is in terms of what bits of the Iranian machine the Americans and the Israelis are attacking? Because I'm just thinking again back to that Pete Hegseth news conference today. He was saying, we're going deeper and deeper into the country.
- [08:35]
Siavash Ardalan
They are initially attacking military infrastructure, the Navy, IRGC command centers, which there are many across the country, but also very crucial for the U.S. they're trying to find those missile cities, so to speak, those places where those ballistic missiles are dug in and where the launchers are used to fire those missiles. That's really the main objective here, because that's the only, the only, the only weapon that Iran has to strike back. So, yes, right now it's at that phase. But what the Israelis are doing, they're also hitting police stations, hitting besieged stations. These are places just in order to sow domestic unrest, to get people to come out. And the lack of any security or law enforcement presence.
- [09:24]
Adam Fleming
Jane, just remind us who the Basij are.
- [09:26]
Jane
They're a militia paramilitary who are linked to the, the irgc, the Revolutionary Guard, and very much operate with them. And as you said, they're operating in the cities. They were. We saw a lot of them during the January protests, often riding motorbikes, essentially roaming the streets. They're very feared. And if they can be somehow disabled or persuaded not to, you know, to go out there, that's another thing that will, that I think the Americans in the Israelis hope would encourage people perhaps to take to the streets or to rise up if this kind of threat was removed. And they've been, the Israelis overnight bombed A besieged base.
- [10:05]
Siavash Ardalan
The strategy here is really gambling on the possibility that people might go out in the street and overthrow the regime. That that's the ultimate aim, as they say, pave the way for freedom. That's, that's the term that was used by President Trump. They're not only hitting these law enforcement stations and Basij, but along Iran's borders, tenuous borders with Kurdistan, Iraq's Kurdistan. They're also bombing those border posts as well, which stops against Kurdish insurgents coming into the country. And we've heard reports that the US and Israel are arming some Kurdish insurgents to go inside the country. And today there have been heavy bombardments of those border areas too, with the hope that they can use the US and Israel can use any insurgency, can use any ground forces that they can to carry out this armed struggle against the government, stretch Iran's military forces because the ground forces are, you know, are still not used in Iran at all. It's just really their, their command posts are being hit, but the, the people, the boots on the ground haven't been hurt as yet. So that's the strategy along with other maybe contradictory strategies and tactics that are being pushed in parallel to this and
- [11:18]
Adam Fleming
see if I should just expand a bit on this, this subplot about the Kurdish community that's emerged in the last 24 hours and sort of, we need to draw a bit of a map here, don't we, and do a bit of history to just explain why, why they would feel that they have a
- [11:31]
Siavash Ardalan
role here, the Kurdish population, as that, you know, they are spread across Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria. Some Kurdish groups, they have ambitions of creating their own separate country. Some just want self determination within a federal state and that' they've been fighting for in all these countries against the central government. So whenever one central government gets weak, they are obviously activated either by foreign elements outside or, you know, their own neighbors, their central governments of their own neighbors. Very complicated politics. But basically now that Iran, the central government of Iran seems to be weakened, what the plan by the US and the Israelis are, is to use not just the Kurds, but all these different minorities, religious or, or ethnic minorities inside the country who have aspirations for self determination or cessation to use them, perhaps arm them against the central government. And now that's what they're being used for. Not just the Kurds, but also you have, particularly the Baluchi minority on the eastern flanks of Iran, which they have carried out attacks against the central government law enforcement forces in Sistan, Baluchistan, and
- [12:46]
Jane
there's Turkic population as well, what, 15 to 25%. And I think the Persian population walked 50 to 60%. There's some 12 ethnic groups at least. So it's a real patchwork, isn't it? And presumably the Israelis and Americans think there is room to sort of divide and rule there.
- [13:04]
Siavash Ardalan
Breeding ground for another Syrianization of Iran. But the big question hanging over the thoughts of many Iranians as well as other people is whether the policy here by the US And Israel is regime change, but keeping Iran's territorial integrity intact through a regime that can do this, or whether they just want to see the country disintegrate in order to eliminate that threat. That's a very key point. And it seems like they're doing both things at the same time. They're keeping all the options open. And with these confusing and contradictory statements, sometimes it seems like they're doing one against the other because some opposition groups like the Kurds, they want to fight the government. On the other hand, you have some very right wing nationalist opposition who have disdain for the Kurds and they want to keep the country's territorial integrity intact, even if it means allying with the government of Iran to suppress those Kurds.
- [14:01]
Adam Fleming
But Jane, not to treat you like an encyclopedia, but the Kurds. Well, no, if you're happy to be the Kurds, sort of. If we harken back to what happened with the US and Iraq in the 1990s, the role of the Kurds there and how they felt about what happened afterwards is a very instructive episode for military. When we think about the history of military intervention in this whole region.
- [14:23]
Jane
Yeah, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, obviously chaos, sectarian conflict and the empowering of the Kurds in the north. And then effectively there was an abandonment and they felt very, you know, obviously they, they were caught in the middle. And I think that Iraq holds lessons. I also think that the 2011 Arab Spring, the NATO intervention in Libya, where that fragmented the country and it led to rival governments being set up and militias being set up and you know, again, descent into chaos is still going on today. So within, in, in Iraq there were, you know, effectively the Americans said mission over within weeks and in Libya they said mission over within months. But here we are all these years on and, and you know, those countries are still, there's still the fallout from these interventions and these attempts to empower ethnic and sectarian groups within those countries has very, very much backfired.
- [15:22]
Adam Fleming
And Sivas, just back to what you were saying about the Kurds. Do we know that the, that it's the US And Israeli intention that they rise up or that they're being armed or is it just, actually that's just a natural thing that would happen when there's a bit of chaos in the country. I'm just trying to get at the sort of the intentionality here.
- [15:40]
Siavash Ardalan
Well, as BBC, we can confirm that they have been armed, but this is what's been quoted from US Sources, US Official US Sources by other American media outlets that they already have been armed and the next few days they will be carrying out attacks against Iran. But it's something that's completely to be expected because all these different groups, they have suffered years of discrimination and you know, they've had issues inside the country. So obviously they're not happy with the status quo, want to have a say over their own destiny. And that's something that's a decades long story and that's obviously playing into this right now as well.
- [16:18]
Jane
But it causes problems within the region because Ash explained the Kurds are spread across four different countries. So any attempt to embolden and strengthen them in one country creates a problem in those other countries because of self determination, which is what the Kurds are obviously striving for. So it's not, not also going to create a problem within Iran. It can obviously spill over into all those other countries which have Kurdish populations and certainly make, make people in, certainly make Turkey very concerned and Syria very concerned.
- [16:48]
Siavash Ardalan
And Turkey could very well intervene as well as it did in some cases in Iraq and Syria. And if it felt that the Kurdish insurgents are gaining the upper hand in Iran or are somehow controlling territory, than it might militarily intervene and maybe bomb those places. Because according to SO media again, US Media outlets, one of the plans apparently that the CIA presented to Donald Trump was let's use these Kurds not just to fight the regime in Iran, but to create a buffer zone on which the Israelis can operate and send their ground troops.
- [17:23]
Adam Fleming
Although with all that in mind, Pete Hegseth did say in his press conference on Wednesday that none of our objectives are premised on the support or the arming of any particular force. And then he said, what other entities may be doing we're aware of, but our objectives aren't centered on that. Jane. There's also moments when you realize that this just ripples out across the whole world, way beyond the Middle East. And that happened today off the coast of Sri Lanka.
- [17:47]
Jane
Yep. In international waters. You're talking about the torpedoing by the US Forces of an Iranian navy ship and as far as we know, there are 140 people missing. And this happened in international waters. It wasn't actually just off Iran itself. And I think apart from the fact that it's quite extraordinary, I think this is the first time that the US has fired a torpedo at an enemy ship Since World War II is a really big moment. And those of us who've seen the footage, it's extraordinary because obviously being a torpedo, you don't see anything because it's going underwater and the camera is focusing on the ship and suddenly it goes up in the most terrible, terrible explosion. And I mean, I think that video itself will create waves. And so, yeah, we've seen that happen today in international waters. Now, what is the message that's going to be sent? There's already ships hunkering down, not daring to go through the Straits of Hormuz because of the dangers. What message does that send for commerce, for shipping, for insurance? If that is happening in international waters, that could really have a knock on.
- [18:53]
Adam Fleming
And the Americans clearly wanted to send some kind of message because, as you said, they released the footage from the periscope camera of their submerged submarine that fired the torpedo. It's there for everyone to watch, as if it's a hate to say that cliche of a clip from a video game, but it's that it's that vivid and that real. Right. A few other things to catch up on. Jane, what's the latest on the school in Minab in southern Iran that was hit at the start of the week?
- [19:16]
Jane
Well, yeah, we were talking about that last night. It. Pictures coming out of Minab of absolute huge crowds of people gathering for the funerals of these schoolgirls, the parents are carrying of these small coffins. Very distressing pictures. And, you know, the. We still don't know where did that missile come from? Was it an American missile? Was it an Israeli missile? Could it have been a misfire from. From Iran itself? We still don't know that. The Americans have said that they're looking into it. I think that Israel has said that they don't recognize that whether that means that they were not using missiles in that space. But they haven't really come in with any detail, and I presume we haven't heard anything from the Iranian authorities as if that if that could have been
- [19:59]
Siavash Ardalan
a misfired missile, if it was, they wouldn't admit it anyway.
- [20:02]
Jane
But the only thing or anything credible in terms of pictures or evidence or
- [20:07]
Siavash Ardalan
anything like that, we have nothing like that whatsoever. What we saw was a statement from the Israeli officials which acknowledged that this happened. But they said, obviously we're not targeting schools, we're looking into it. And then they said that one of the hospitals and one of the schools suffered minor damage.
- [20:23]
Adam Fleming
And have you seen any other examples of, of an impact on, on civilians of this? And again, it comes back to the fact that it's really hard to see what's actually happening in Iran.
- [20:33]
Siavash Ardalan
The latest death toll we have, there's a slight discrepancy between the death toll that Iran's Red Crescent puts out and one that human rights organizations outside the country publish through their own verification systems. But the human rights group Harana, which we usually refer to to get exact estimates, Today in the fifth day of the war, 1097 civilians have been kill. Yes, we do get images of these people and there have videos have been coming out of dead bodies under the rubble and funerals held for them and so on.
- [21:10]
Adam Fleming
But interesting that the Iranian government doesn't want to publicize that.
- [21:15]
Siavash Ardalan
It actually does want to publicize that because obviously which country doesn't want to showcase all the civilian population who have been affected by this to show that, look, the enemy is targeting civilian people as well. So it's political propaganda for the regime as well, but also humanitarian disaster for Iranians who have just suffered another trauma just a few two months ago after that massive crackdown by the regime which saw thousands of people dead. So there's a good comparison here between being a victim of theocracy, of authoritarianism and repression and being victims of a
- [21:55]
Adam Fleming
war and then Siavash in terms of the, the succession in the, in the government in Iran. So it was meant to be Ayatollah Khamenei's funeral today. And that was meant to be a multi day thing, but it's been postponed. Do we know why?
- [22:12]
Siavash Ardalan
Yes. One Iranian official who was in charge of organizing this funeral said logistically because there were so many people from other parts of the country who wanted to attend this funeral and we needed to give them time to be able to travel under these war wartime conditions to come to Tehran and attend the funeral. That's why they had to postpone it. But obviously there's security reasons as well. A lot of people fear that, you know, Israel might attack the funeral and just bomb those people. I find it unlikely, but that could happen as well. And that bears heavily on people's minds.
- [22:44]
Jane
This is going to be so huge. So I mean, I remember pictures of Khomeini's funeral. I mean almost, they lost, they almost lost control with the coffin and the sheer numbers, it was the most emotional thing. And can you imagine this with an assassination? It's going to be extraordinary.
- [23:02]
Adam Fleming
And also, there was a reminder that there were millions of Iranians who were followers of Khamenei because Iranian society was split between people who were very, very supportive of him and people who hated his rule.
- [23:13]
Siavash Ardalan
Yes, there's a lot of now underestimation of the magnitude of the social base of government supporters. There are, you know, estimated to between 15 to 20% of Iran's population. That's at least 10 to 12 million people. And we saw them coming out in the streets over the past two, three days across Iran under bombardments. They were holding, you know, vigil ceremonies, and they've basically come out to mourn the death of the Supreme Leader. So it just goes to show, despite all those protests, nationwide protests that you saw against the government, it still enjoys a very powerful social base. And that, again, is another breeding ground for chaos and internal war should the government lose control between that social base and obviously, a majority of the people who are seeking revenge, who are angry and who blame this minority of people for all the country's ills.
- [24:14]
Adam Fleming
And is there any clues about picking a successor for him?
- [24:19]
Siavash Ardalan
Khamenei's son has been tipped to be the successor, but we don't know. It all depends on the way Iran's political system has been built and the process that it has to go through. There is this body called assembly of Experts. It's comprised of 87 clerics, all men, most of them old. It's like very much like the pope, selection of the Pope. They sit around in a room and they cast their votes for who they want to succeed. The Supreme Leader, it seems like there's a lot of people are favoring his son, but there are also other groups or other factions within the assembly of Experts who have other candidates in mind. So depending on the talks, the negotiations, the jostling for power between all these lobby groups within this assembly of Experts, who they will cast their vote for?
- [25:14]
Jane
Well, we heard that the Israelis bombed homosexual and the assembly of Experts building the other day. But is that likely to have affected the process? I think the Iranians said, well, they weren't there at the time. It wasn't sitting. It was empty. But do we know if that impacted at all this process?
- [25:28]
Siavash Ardalan
I don't know whether they were attending this. I don't think they were attending because Iran said that that's not the main building, that's just a side building. And they wouldn't be attending that. The place where they would attend is the old Parliament building in Tehran, which the Israelis bombed three days ago. So they might be attending through the Internet. I mean, through long distance. I don't know. Will physically be somewhere where the Israelis, you know, can. Can find them. But, yeah, we don't know how that would play out, because when Khomeini, when this current late Supreme Leader was, was selected, we had some dramatic footage of how that, that meeting took place, where the votes were cast. And when Khamenei, you know, rose up and he says, no, I don't want to be Supreme Leader. And they said, no, you have to be the. Our supreme leader. And then he went up there and. And in the matter of one eye blink, he assumed absolute power. And that was very powerful footage. So we don't know whether we can see something like that again in this process or whether it would be completely behind closed doors via the Internet. Nothing is certain yet. But that funeral has to take place before its successor is chosen.
- [26:35]
Adam Fleming
And also, there's no sign that the Americans. So the people who have initiated this conflict have got a person in mind that they would like to take over.
- [26:43]
Jane
Or is it quite the opposite? I mean, what President Trump has said in recent days is there isn't anybody, you know, yes, we had people in mind. There's been talks and leaks in the American press that the CIA and some elements of the Iranian regime, there had been some connection through a third party that people in Iran in somehow in the ruling establishment had reached out to the Americans. That was a few days ago. And President Trump said yesterday, you know, effectively, we're not sure who to talk to anymore. There isn't anyone. We've effectively killed them all. So I'm not sure how that would work exactly at this point.
- [27:22]
Siavash Ardalan
Well, the Iranians have denied that they've reached out to the U.S. they said, in fact, it was the U.S. that reached out to us, but we're rejecting a ceasefire. We don't want a ceasefire anymore. We want this war to go on. And.
- [27:34]
Adam Fleming
Oh. So when Trump on Tuesday was saying, they said they wanted to talk, I told them it was, it was too, too late for that.
- [27:41]
Siavash Ardalan
Yeah, the Iranians denied that. Iran is denied that. But Trump has been saying very contradictory statements about the succession successor issue. First he said, we know, we have in mind three or four people, but I'm not going to tell you. And then he said, well, we know who wants. We have one person in mind. And then he said, well, we had a few people in mind. And then they all got killed. I think he's just, I mean, and
- [28:08]
Jane
then he said, we prefer, when it was again mentioned, what about Pahlavi, the, the son of the former shah? He said, we prefer to have somebody from the inside. And that's gone back down the agenda. But every day it seems to be a different remark.
- [28:22]
Siavash Ardalan
That's why everyone is worried. Exactly what the US's end game is here. What is it exactly falling? What are the objectives of this war? At one point we hear, if it's regime change, then why do they want to speak with within the regime itself? If it's bringing someone from the outside or someone completely outside the regime, then why is Trump saying that we want someone to be inside the country? And if it's about just changing the behavior of the Iranian regime and just to contain it, then what is this? All this talk about finding a new leader or designating someone as he's.
- [28:54]
Jane
All that President Trump said emphatically is that the Venezuela scenario would be the perfect scenario. But that is completely impossible to relate to. What's happened in Iran, which was effectively to decapitate one single leader and carry on with an altered regime the regime that already existed. This is just impossible to imagine in any way in Iran.
- [29:16]
Siavash Ardalan
I think they underestimated the resilience of Iran's political structure. I mean, which country could you think of in that region or even here in the UK or the US, where you kill almost 50 deep of its top political leaders and military leaders and it can still function under conditions of war. So as much as Iran was a theocracy with Supreme Leader at the helm, it's very much a horizontally structured. So it's very difficult to destroy the regime just through a one day massive decapitation. And I think they're underestimated.
- [29:49]
Jane
But it was known, wasn't it?
- [29:51]
Adam Fleming
Well, you were saying this a few days ago.
- [29:52]
Jane
Anything about Iran knows that, that the revolution is not an individual or a figure, it's a whole system. And a system that's wide and deep
- [30:01]
Adam Fleming
and resilient and a system that had responded to the American and Israeli attacks last year to prepare for this happening.
- [30:08]
Jane
Exactly. And from what we know about what the security establishment within the United States in particular was saying to Trump and the options they were putting forward, there were warnings that you will not overcome this system easily. There is no surefire way of success for this. So this advice was there, but obviously, well, we can only assume that it wasn't given enough credence or they thought there was A way around it, particularly with Israel coming from the same direction.
- [30:33]
Siavash Ardalan
And even if Iranians weren't prepared, they had a year to prepare after 12 day war. So they have put all the contingency plans in place. And today one of them, one of the Iranian officials said that we have three and four layers of succession. So if you take out one, you know, we have other people who will take their place. And they've also, I think, instituted a decentral, more decentralized system of government where even if the central government in Tehran collapses, the mayors and the heads of the different Iranian states will have enough power in coordination with those local Revolutionary Guard units to still respond to military attacks and also to keep the peace inside the country.
- [31:12]
Jane
And I think that was key, wasn't it, that the Republican Guard were given the go ahead to decentralize and to take decisions for themselves after that 12 day war in the different areas, which has given them more, even more resilience. I mean, today I think that Israel bombed a big IRGC headquarters. But in a way the power has already devolved out to the units in the provinces. So it's too late for that. Possibly.
- [31:37]
Siavash Ardalan
I even think when they even talk about regime change, soon we'll be having discussion of exactly what regime change means, whether the regime has been changed or whether, you know, one part of the regime has fallen in one part of the country and the other part are still functioning. I think we'll get into that discussion of exactly what constitutes the definition of regime change.
- [31:58]
Adam Fleming
Well, this discussion has been absolutely fascinating and I had quite a good visibility of British politics today because I was standing in for Vicki Young on Politics live on BBC2 at lunchtime. And of course it was PMQS because it was Wednesday. And it was interesting to watch this play out in Prime Minister's Questions because Kemi Badenok was making it very political. She was criticizing Starmer for being too defensive and not muscular enough in projecting British force when they're British assets like the raf, the F base in Cyprus under threat from Iran. And she also turned it into a kind of medium and long term conversation about how slowly our defense spending is ramping up. And then Starmer hit back saying, hang on, there are British citizens in trouble abroad and a war happening in the Middle East. This isn't a time to play politics. So that got quite heated then. The government clearly wanted to push back against this idea that they'd been caught on the harp and why is it taking them so long to send a ship to the Eastern Mediterranean? And Starmer said actually a lot of assets had been pre deployed. So for example, that's what why you've got British F35s able to take out drones over Jordan, as we learned happened on Tuesday night. And then the third point is the evacuation of British nationals and expats from the region. So there's going to be a flight taking off from Oman on Wednesday night. Lots of airlines have put on extra flights apparently and so the Prime Minister is very grateful to them. And the other thing we learned was that that British ship HMS Dragon, the one with the huge big Dragon graphic on the front, is probably not going to leave for quite some time yet, maybe not till next week. So they can say they've pre positioned all the assets that they like, but the big kind of trophy asset that they've been trumpeting in the last couple of days is not going to be there for a good few days yet. Oh, also, one last thing. We didn't talk about Turkey. So it looks like NATO forces. So Turkey's allies intercepted a ballistic missile bound for Turkey. Yeah. So another country and we talked about earlier about another country drawn into the
- [33:57]
Jane
web and one that has been close to Iran in the past into the Iranian regime. So quite confusing. But of course Turkey is a emblematic of NATO's presence in the eastern Mediterranean. So, you know, it's occupying both those positions, as it were.
- [34:12]
Siavash Ardalan
I think the latest that I read is we're not sure whether that missile was bound for Turkey or they, they shot it down while, or maybe it just found it, you know, lost its way and went to Turkey. Whether Turkey was the intended target because it would be very unwise for Iran to want to drag Turkey in and they haven't and they never even threatened to do that with Turkey.
- [34:32]
Adam Fleming
Jane, thank you very much.
- [34:33]
Jane
Thank you for having me here.
- [34:34]
Adam Fleming
Cvash thanks to you as well.
- [34:36]
Siavash Ardalan
Good to be here.
- [34:37]
Adam Fleming
And that's all for this episode of Newscast where I've been the one asking the questions. But we would like you to pose your questions to members of the Newscast family about this massive story that they're all covering. So send them our way way. It's newscastbc.co.uk if you want to email us or you can WhatsApp us on 033-01-2390. I also put out a shout out on my Instagram stories and if you want to follow me on Instagram, it's Radom Fleming and you can post me questions there if that's the format you would prefer. And that's all for newscast today. We'll be back very soon. Bye.
- [35:13]
Siavash Ardalan
Bye.
- [35:14]
Adam Fleming
Newscast.
- [35:14]
Siavash Ardalan
Newscast from the BBC.
- [35:16]
Jane
Well, thank you.
- [35:16]
Newscast Outro Host
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