Already and this is the Daily This is the Daily. Oh, this is the Dahlias.
Oh, now it makes sense.
Good morning, and welcome to the Daily Os. It's Monday, the twenty second of April.
I'm Sam, i'm zara.
Over the last few weeks, we've seen Israel and Iran directly attack each other for the first time in history. We again with breaking news in the Middle East, where Israel has reportedly began retaliatory strikes against Iran. We begin this morning with that Israeli attack on Iran, a move that is threatening to further escalate tensions between the regional foes.
Just days after Iran launched an unprecedented attack on Israel. Tonight our retaliation with fears growing of all out war in the Middle East.
On today's podcast, we're going to look at why direct conflicts between these two Middle Eastern nations is so significant, the context of tension between these two countries, and why the global community is calling for immediate de escalation. Before we tackle that deep dive, Zara. What is making headlines this morning?
Thousands of people have attended a candlelight vigil for the six victims of the Bondai Junction Westfield stabbing, which of course happened last Saturday. Mental health workers were in attendance at the gathering at Bondai Beach and attendees were asked to bring candles instead of flowers. Six people remain in
hospital and all are in a stable condition. Before the vigil, New South Wales Premier Chris Mins said he hoped the event offered survivors some strength from the fact that there's many people that are standing with them during this time.
Over the weekend, Britney Higgins published a statement following last week's verdict in the defamation case brought by Bruce Lherman. In a statement, Higgins thanked Justice Lee for his quote trauma informed approach and said she quote hoped he had set a new precedent for how courts considered the testimonies of victim survivors sexual assault. Last week, Justice Lee found that, on the balance of probabilities, Leherman had sexually assaulted Higgins. Lehman has always maintained his innocence.
Apple says it has been ordered by China's government to remove certain meta platforms from the app store in the country. According to Reuter's, WhatsApp and threads are being removed. However, Meta's other platforms, Facebook, Instagram and Messenger, it will still be available in China. Apple said this request came from the Cyberspace Administration of China over concerns for national security.
And some good news for you today to start off your week. Although Australia missed out on this year's solar clips, the Devil Comet will be visible in the coming week. The Devil Comet comes around every seventy one years and expected the comet will be the most visible on Thursday at around six thirty pm Australian Eastern Standard Time. And while it will be visible to the naked eye, it's best view through a telescope. And it's called the Devil Comet because of a slight green color and what looks
like two horns when it's traveling across space. So in today's deep dive, we're going to try and explain the geopolitical tensions between Israel and Iran that have been dominating the headlines for a few weeks and give you a bit of context to some of the headlines you might
have seen around. But before we jump into that explainer, we did want to acknowledge that there's still an ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, when nearly thirty five thousand Palestinian people have been killed and over one hundred Israeli hostages remain.
I do think that that's a really important note to start on. Sam and experts did warn that the events unfolding both in Israel and in Gaza would have ripple effects across the region, and that's now exactly what we're seeing. Those tensions between Israel and Iran have existed for decades, but not a new thing by any stretch of the imagination, but it's certainly come to a head, especially over the last month. Why are we talking about Iran and Israel today.
Well, why don't we start at the end. We'll figure out exactly what's just happened and then go back and try out how we got there. So on Friday, Israel launched a missile attack on Iran in retaliation to a previous attack. The IDF launched air strikes near the cities of Isfahan and Tabriz, which are in the center of
the country. Now, the reason why this was such huge international news was the fact that it's the first time that these two nations have traded strikes directly to each other, and we're going to come back to exactly what that means. We don't one hundred percent know what Israel hit on Friday, whether the strike was against military infrastructure, nuclear infrastructure, or
something totally different like electricity grids. Now, according to some satellite imagery released by a private organization called Umbra Space, they've been verified by the BBC, there seems to be damaged to in Iranian air base. Important aspects of this particular story from Friday is that Isfahan is known as the center of Iran's nuclear program. Now, Iranian officials have said that their ed offense systems fended off the attack
and it was a failed attempt by Israel. As for Israel, they never comment on foreign operations so have done their standard kind of say nothing approach to Friday's activities.
I think that for many people what you just said might have been gibberish. Fair enough, you don't have the context to understand why direct conflict between Israel and Iran matters so much for not just those two countries, but for the region and for the rest of the world. Can you just provide a bit of background to these tensions.
Some of the thickest books I've ever seen have been on the tensions between Iran and Israel. I'm not going to do it justice by explaining it in thirty seconds, but the top line of it is that Israel and Iran have had a hostile relationship for many decades. And we can go back to the nineteen seventy nine revolution in Iran, which installed a conservative Muslim dictatorship, and since that point, Iran has questioned the legitimacy of a Jewish
state and called for its destruction. Now, since Hamas launched an attack on Israel on the seventh of October, to which Israel responded by declaring war, tensions with other forces, including proxies of Iran like Hesbola, have also increased.
You said the word proxy there, What do you mean by that?
So when we talk about a proxy, we're talking about a group that is acting on behalf of another. So in this case, Hesbola is funded, armed and trained by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran, and there are many groups around the world in a similar situation. Now, the idea of having proxy forces is not unique to Iran.
There have been proxy wars all throughout history, including during the Cold War when the US and the Soviet Union were both fighting a battle through proxies, and one of the ones that might come to mind straightaway is Vietnam for example.
Okay, so these tensions have existed for a long time, but all of that came to a head earlier this month in Syria. What happened this is now the beginning of the latest chapter.
That's kind of how we got to Friday. Now. In April, first, Iran accused Israel of striking its embassy complex in Damascus, which is the capital of Syria. Now, like Hesbala in Lebanon, Syria's current regime relies on support from Iranian forces. The country is embroiled in this long running civil war between
Syrian President Bashar al Asad his forces and rebel opponents. Now, Iran said seven people, including three senior commanders, were killed in that strike, and one of the officers killed was a senior Iranian commander. His name was Mohammad Rida Zahadi. He was the leader of Iranian forces spread across Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Now the Iranian Foreign Ministry condemned the attack.
They described it as brutal aggression and blamed Israel. In a statement, the Iranian Foreign Minister said Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Nana, who quote had lost his mental balance, and the foreign minister called for a serious response against Israel.
And so they said there would be a serious response. And then eventually Iran did respond, and that was very, very significant because that marked the first time that Iran had ever directly attacked Israel in its history.
What happened, Yeah, so Iran had its embassy complex hit in Syria. They said we're going to respond, and respond they did, and so the weekend before last Iran fired three hundred drones towards Israel. Now, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps confirmed it had launched quote dozens of drones and missiles, and the air strikes involved a mix of unmann droned, ballistic and cruise missiles. Now, according to the US and Israel, these were launched from locations scattered across Iran, Iraq, Syria,
and Yemen. And this is when the proxy power of Iran kind of comes into play here, the fact that they come from all of those different nations. Now, these missiles took hours to land, but most of them were stopped by air defenses. The Israeli Defense Forces said about ninety nine percent of the air missiles and drones were intercepted.
They said they struck down the majority of the missiles with support from the US, the UK, and France, and that should give you a bit of a flavor of how quickly this could escalate to be a more global conflict. The IDF did acknowledge that only a few ballistic missiles crossed into Israeli territory. Authorities said there was minor damage to an air force base in southern Israel and one child was injured.
And from there it was a bit of a waiting game. We knew Israel was likely to retaliate against Iran, given that it was the first time that they had been directly attacked by the country, but we didn't know what form that would take, and it was kind of like there were lots of different reports about when it would happen, how it would happen. It did happen on Friday, our time, as we have already explained about.
That's how we charted it at the top.
Yeah, so how has the international community reacted to what's happened here?
Well? US President Joe Biden had before all of this. On Friday, instructed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Nanna, who to quote take the win.
What does that mean?
Well, basically, Biden's perspective was that Israel had come out of that Iranian missile attack on Israeli territory largely unscathed with the help of US forces, and that what the world needed right now was everyone to.
Calm down, so a de escalation.
I know this is trivializing a very serious topic, but almost what Biden was saying there was quit while you're ahead. But in direct response to the strike by Israel on Iran on Friday, a US official told Axios, which is a news outlet in the US, quote we were not surprised, and that the US was continuing to urge Israel to quote be careful in its response. We also got a statement from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which is the UN's nuclear watchdog. It said it is quote monitoring the
situation very closely and urged extreme restraint from everybody. It added that nuclear facilities should never be at target in military conflicts.
And then what about Australia, what did we say?
Well, in a similar vein to the US, EU and many Middle Eastern nations. Australia is calling on both sides to exercise restraint. We heard from the Acting Foreign Minister, Katie Gallagher yesterday. She asked both parties to quote step back and said Australia quote remains extremely concerned about the potential for miscalculation and further escalation of conflict in the region. I think miscalculation is a really troubling word to be
using in this sort of setting at the moment. Australia also updated its travel advice for those in Israel and Iran on Friday via their Smart Traveler service. There is currently a do not travel instruction for Iran and a reconsider your need to travel for Israel as quote, regional tensions are high and the security situation could deteriorate quickly with little or known notice.
And so on that note. What does happen from here, Well, I think the.
Big thing we've learned from the last of two weeks is that both sides now have shown us they have the capability to send missiles to each other's territories.
But equally, both sides have the ability to protect themselves from those.
Missiles definitely, and that kind of answers a lot of hypothetical questions the international community has had for a number of decades now in terms of what happens directly next. There is no clear indication from Iran that it plans
to strike back to Israel imminently. In a statement to Reuter's, Iran's Foreign ministry did not directly attribute the attack to Israel by name, and Reuter's commented that by not directly calling out Israel as the perpetrator of that missile strike, it kind of removes the need for Iran to retaliate. An Iranian official said quote, the foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed. We have not received any external attack, and the discussion leans more towards infiltration than attack.
And by putting that statement out there, what they're doing is they are allowing the temperature to come down a little bit in this crisis. I'm not showing the international community that they're going to respond right away. However, as we've said throughout this podcast, this is an incredibly unpredictable situation.
Thanks for joining us on today's episode of The Daily Oz. We'll be back again tomorrow morning, but until then, have a great day.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Caalcuttin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily oz acknowledges that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.