So let's get to this. I had a chat with Dr Benzali yesterday. He's a senior lecturer in international relations at Monash School of Social Scientists, and I wanted to know what the update was from his perspective in the escalating Israel Iran conflict.
Well, further developments as ever in terms of reprisals from both sides, of course, but the wider diplomatic circumstances is developing a little bit as well, in that President Trump has put out something on his social media account telling the citizens of Tehran, the capital of Iran, effectively, to evacuate. So that means we should expect further Israeli tax and
obviously attacks on Tehran on this major population center. So it looks like the conflict is going to continue to escalate from here, at least for the next few days.
How involved were America getting now, so this is a little hard to tell.
I mean, I think the Trump administrations basic instinct on this is to appear to be at arms length, but they're clearly, very very closely in touch with the Israelis. They had advanced warning of the attack. Trump has not given public approval or sort of green the attack. As such, but also isn't criticizing the Israelis in so doing either. So they're clearly across the details of it, but they're
certainly not involved. There's no American military involvement at this stage anything like that, and I expect that to remain the case. The other thing that has developed it over the days gone on. At this G seven meeting, it was actually the French President Emmanuel Makrong has said to reporters that apparently the Trump administration is trying to brok us some kind of ceasefire between the two, but we don't really have any details on that or any sense of the likelihood of that coming off.
I read that the USS Nimitz was heading towards that region. Would that be used in a defensive role.
That's my assumption.
Yes, some other forces have also been moved towards the region, including some anti drone forces that were destined for Ukraine. They're really going to the region to shore up the defenses around US military bases and other military assets in the region, to ensure that in its response to Israel's attacks and its retaliations, Iran doesn't target US forces in the region.
And we've seen UK support. How much more will they get involved?
I think the British are in a very similar position. So they too have military bases in the region, so they're moving some forces there essentially for the same purpose, to effectively deter Iran from attacking anything other than Israeli targets.
At this stage, what's the purpose of evacuating all of these Iranian citizens?
Do you think?
It's not entirely clear. Israel III has issued warnings today, not dissimilar to how it's issued some of the warning warnings ahead of bombings of Palestinian areas in the Gaza strip. This is really about trying to appear to be in minimizing civilian casualties. From one are very large scale attacks, clearly what they're going to be in densely populated civilian areas.
So I think we should expect further fairly large scale attacks in the coming sort of hours or over the next twenty four hours or so.
And do you think Israel underestimated Iran's ability to respond?
Not so much.
I think the Israelis will have anticipated this. Basically, both sides have known that this was a relatively likely outcome for years. Really, the Israelis have talked about engaging a military strike against Iran's nuclear program for years. They've been talked out of it by the Americans on a number of occasions. It also fits with a wider pattern of activity. The Israelis did this against a nuclear reactor in Iraq
in nineteen eighty one. They did it to Syria in two thousand and seven, so Israel has sort of always favored the use of military forces and sabotage and targeted assassinations. They also assassinated a series of Iranian nuclear scientists about a decade ago, so this is no surprise to the Iranians, who have obviously therefore been preparing their response, and therefore the Israelis knew that the Iranians would be responding as well.
So in a sense, both sides of these attacks have been quite extensive and relatively devastating, but nothing I don't think will have greatly surprised either side, other than to say the initial attacks by Israel were probably a little more successful than the Iranians might have anticipated, particularly given Israel's ability to get its intelligence forces Mossad forces into
an on Iranian soil beforehand to conduct sabotage operations. Against some of Iran's anti aircraft capabilities to ensure that the Israeli airplanes could fly in unimpeded and hit those targets.
And this talk of the Iranian nuclear facilities being severely damaged, if not destroyed. But there's also talk and speculation of a dirty bomb. Do you think there's anything in that?
To be honest, I don't. And so the idea of a dirty bomb is this is a conventional explosive that spreads radioactive material, so it's not a nuclear explosion, but it's just an explosion that basically has a nuclear material packed around it. I don't see the prospects of that in the short term. I think that's fairly unlikely in terms of the damage to the Iranian nuclear facilities. Look, Iran hadn't yet developed the nuclear weapons, so this is
a preemptive strike to prevent Iran from doing so. Right, So it's not that nuclear weapons have been knocked out, But the question becomes how much damage of the Israeli's done to these sites? How far back has this put the program? So if Iran now like Iraq did after it was a taken by Israeli in eighty one, if it decides to really double down and really redouble its efforts and do the sort of the fast breakout to a nuclear weapons capability. The question is what's their capability to do that?
Now?
How damaged are these facilities and a number of them are very deep underground and they've been hardened under multiple layers of concrete because the Iranians have been anticipating this for some years. So we won't know the answer to this for some time, and there are conflicting reports. The Israelis are saying they've destroyed lots and they've caused all
sorts of damage to the underground facilities. There's been some statements from the International Atomic Energy Agency saying they've got no reports of that so far, and they're in touch with operators at the facilities.
So we just won't know for a while.
But that's going to be the kind of six million dollar question over the next couple of weeks, just how successful have those attacks been on the deep hardened underground facilities.
The US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that the US is taking up a defensive position as this conflict rages on.
Are they talking about a defensive position?
Do you think for Israel or a defensive position for their own bases in the area.
My sense is at the moment is the latter. They're just trying to defend their own interests here. At the same time that the US Secretary of State, Marco Rubio has been making these repeated statements saying we're not involved in these strikes, and I think President Trump has repeated that as well. So I don't think the US is going to want to be seen to be aiding Israel directly.
In that sense.
I don't think they're going to see American forces being involved. It's possible that they may become involved at some point in terms of shooting down incoming rockets and so forth, but I think for now they're focused more on defending their own military assets in the region.