Already and this this is the Daily This is the Daily OS. Oh, now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to the Daily OS. It's Wednesday, the twenty fifth of June. I'm Billy Fitzsimon's I'm Sam Kazlowski. For nearly two weeks now, Iran and Israel have been engaged in a war that has kept the world anxiously waiting to see what happens next. As we have covered this week already, the US effectively entered the war by bombing the three nuclear sites in Iran, which Iran responded to by launching
missile strikes on US military basis in Qatar. Yesterday on the podcast, we asked what you still wanted to know, and we were inundated with questions, So today we are answering them.
Billy, before we get into the podcast, I think it's important to kind of ground ourselves in when we're recording this. So we're recording this late on Tuesday. And the only reason I'm saying that is just because of how quickly the situation can change. In this story, give us a sense right now of where things are at as you and I are having this discussion.
Yeah, So just to catch everyone up some very brief contexts to start us off. So, Israel and Iran have been at war for about two weeks now, when Israel sent over the first missiles with the aim of destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities. Now, over the past weekend that we just had, the US effectively entered the war by bombing
three nuclear sites in Iran. Like I mentioned earlier, and a key bit of context here is that the US is Israel's closest ally and so then yesterday morning we woke to the news that Iran had retaliated against the US with strikes on an American military base in Qatar. And that was one of America's well, that was America's most important military base in the Middle East.
Yeah, America has about forty thousand US troops in the Middle East. Yeah, a large presence there. So there was an expectation that Iran would retaliate after the US strikes on the weekend, and sure enough this happened. Of course, because it's President Trump, we found out via our truth.
Social yes, his own social media platform. If you want any more context about what has happened over the past two weeks, I recommend going back and listening to some of our other podcasts, which we'll give you a bit more context about what has happened. But back to what did happen yesterday. So Iran retaliated like we said, and Trump called Iran's response week and then hours later Trump actually declared that there had been a ceasefire between Israel
and Iran. Now he said, like we said. Sam on his own social media platform, True Social he said, it has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a complete and total ceasefire. He added, this is a war that could have gone on for years and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn't and it never will. It was a bit of an odd way to find out that there had been this ceasefire, because it obviously wasn't from either of the two key parties,
being Iran or Israel. Now, it was quite confusing yesterday afternoon here in Sydney trying to figure out whether or not there definitely had been this ceasefire agreement. Eventually, after a few hours, both Iran and Israel confirmed there had
been this seasfire. But then literally within minutes or maybe just under an hour, we heard from the IDF that Iran had launched missiles, and then Israel confirmed that they had launched missiles in response to that, so the ceasefire had broken effectively.
Billy, I want to go to some audience questions now, and let's start with a really easy one. Essentially, are we heading towards World War three? And you and I have talked about this quite a bit over the past two weeks. There's a couple of ways to tackle this.
What's your answer, Well, I think this is the one that kind of in my friendship circles. Everyone is asking this question, and even on Google searches, on Google trends, you can see that over the past two weeks, searches for whether or not there will be World War three have completely spiked. What's hard about this is that there is no set definition of.
A world war, and that's so interesting.
I didn't know this, so I wanted the Daily Ods to do a post on this last week because I thought it was such an interesting question that so many of us were asking. But it was really hard to answer because there's no globally accepted definition of what is a world war, and so there's nothing to say that if X happens, then we're officially in a world war. Historians do generally accept that a world war is a
conflict that draws in multiple countries with direct involvement. But again, there's no wee exact number of how many countries need to get involved for it to officially be declared a world war.
I've read some commentary from historians when we were doing this sticking that it also can be determined by the number of continents involved. I mean, there's so many different ways to kind of chop this up, but at the end of the day, it does seem like it's a little bit I don't want to make this too crass, but it does seem like it's a bit of a kind of vibe. Yeah, and it's a bit of kind of when somebody says it, then that's what it is.
Yeah. One thing to note that tda's political journalist Harry was discussing last week when we were all talking about this in the office, is that after nine to eleven, the US of course invaded Afghanistan, and while that conflict escalated and brought in multiple countries, including Australia, it wasn't considered a world war. And I thought that was a really good point that that is a conflict where there were many countries involved and it wasn't considered a world war.
But it's this really interesting question of how do you define a world war?
And I think that you know, so, there might be points where some leaders do come out and say it is a world war. And if that's not almost endorsed by the international community and adopted as the view, then I'm sure you won't have consensus even then about whether
it's a world war or not. On the other hand, I do feel like if there's conflicts that almost unify, if there's alliances between say Russia, China and Iran, all of a sudden, it does feel like one battlefield, and that I could imagine the term world war being used. But I do want to say, just to settle everyone's anxiety, we're a long way from that. We are a long.
Way, yes, and yet the answer to it today is we're not in World War three and we are not close to it at the moment.
I'm keen to ask you another question, but just quickly, let's hear from our sponsor. Well, let's talk a little bit more about us, and by us, I mean here in Australia, we had a lot of questions from people asking about the local impact and how we and how we would be affected by the growing conflicts in the Middle East. What's your take on that.
Yeah, I think the first thing to say is that Australia's Prime Minister, Anthony Alberanezi has been at pains to emphasize in all of the press conferences that he has done over the past few weeks that Australia is not a central player in this conflict at all like the US is for example. You know, we're not a key ally of Israel or Iran, so in terms of our domestic and national security, there's very minimal impact, if at all, there in saying that Australia is a key ally of
the US. And so the Australian government has said that it supports what the US did in bombing the nuclear sites in Iran, but that's kind of been the extent of our involvement in this. One thing it could impact though for Australians is travel well, actually it already has impacted the travel for many Australians both leaving Australia and also many who are trying to come back home to Australia. And this is impacting people, even if they're not trying to go to the Middle East, which I imagine now
is very few people for travel. There's not really one answer here, I think, just as a general statement, the world's airspace has definitely been impacted, and basically at the drop of a hat, there have been airspaces, especially over the Middle East, that have been completely closed and that has impacted certain routes. For example, Dubai, which is one of the busiest airports in the world and is a stopover for many flights leaving Australia, that has of course
been impacted. But I'm sure for anyone who has booked flights that are coming up in the coming weeks, it's something to check in with the airline that you're flying with.
As we all know all too well, even if there's no direct cancelations that affect you, there's always a backlog of traffic and there's always systems that are a little bit more under stress, be it at airport security or this. So it will definitely impact anyone traveling internationally, I'd say for the next couple of weeks at least.
Yeah, and I would check Smart Traveler for wherever you are heading, they have a lot of detailed information about any security risks about destinations all over the world.
Another way it could impact Australians though, is not those traveling but those who remain here, and it could impact us at the petrol tank or at the supermarket.
Yeah, so Iran is a major oil producer and with this conflict there is of course the chance that their oil production facilities could be damaged, or even if they haven't been damaged, the aspect of the transport getting from Iran to other places around the world will inevitably be impacted. And so there is the expectation that this is going to likely mean that there will be lower global supply of oil and that will of course impact petrol prices.
So there's the expectation that petrol prices will likely go up, imagine by quite a lot in the coming weeks.
Well, there's kind of two ways to think about that. You're totally right that it's about whether the supply of oil has been damaged by an if the strikes and some of the logistical challenges of getting oil out of a country that's in the middle of kind of a state of war. The other aspect, though, is that it could actually be used by Iran as a global response, so they could actually say we're not sending as much oil out into the.
World as in they could gatekeep it.
Exactly, And because it's such a major distributor of oil, that could be quite a powerful way to affect the economies of those that you're wishing to target. In either of those cases, You're right, it could be quite quick. And it's not even necessarily going to rise in price because there's not as much oil right here on that day. It's more about the price in anxiety and people perhaps panicking and going to fill up tanks of petrol because they think it might get it more expensive later.
So there's instantly more demand.
Exactly, and that's where kind of panic can take over economic markets. And you see that vision, it's almost like COVID, right, it's supermarkets. You see vision of empty shelves all.
Over the place. So likely we're not there yet.
We're not there yet. I feel like there's a lot of well.
We shouldn't use the word yet, because we don't know if we'll get that again. There could be the ceasefire and this could be over.
I'd be pretty comfortable saying that we'll see some impact on petrol prices, but I don't think it's going to be you know, dramatic at this stage. Yeah, Okay, so Billy. One of the other aspects of this story that's coming up a lot in the way that global leaders are talking about potential Iranian responses is this idea of terror attacks being used by Iran, state sponsored terror attacks being used by Iran as a response against those who attacks them,
being the US and its allies, including Australia. So the questions that we got were kind of, what are the chances of a terrorist attack in western countries and have those chances gone up in the past couple of days.
Just quickly on that. I think one thing that's also perhaps important to note is that there could be the state sponsored terrorism attacks, but then also we have seen that the tension amongst communities is particularly high at the moment, not just from the past two weeks, but over the past two years, and so you could also have sole actors who emerge from that and conduct terrorist attacks that aren't necessarily on behalf of Iran.
And we've heard that from Australia's security leadership that the temperature is higher exactly at a social level here in Australia and at an international level.
As well, and it's actually because of that that the temperature amongst the communities is so high at the moment that in August of last year, Australia's national terrorism threat actually increased to probable. And so what that means is, according to Australian security officials, they say, it means that there is quote a greater than fifty percent chance of
an onshore attack or attack planning in the next twelve months. Again, in terms of why it is at this level, it does specifically mention what is happening in the Middle East. So it says the rise of individual grievance narratives and how they are expressed are impacting society's ability to find common ground. It goes on a little bit more, but then it says global events such as the conflict in the Middle East have resonated in Australia and will continue
to do so. So that's more talking about those isolated incidents. Prime Minister Anthony Alberanezi was asked this week if there is an increased threat of terrorism in Australia now after what we have seen over the past two weeks, and he said that ASIO, the National Security Agency here in Australia, is constantly monitoring, but he said there has been no change in any of the advice that has been issued.
And if you look at the way that that's being framed in the US, it's a little different, and I'd say that's because the US is a much more direct actor in this. So the US Department of Homeland SEC, for example, it's said in the statement that there is a heightened threat environment in the US and that the conflicts could contribute to US based individuals plotting additional attacks. But I think it's a little different in Australia. We haven't got that direct involvement and we haven't had the
same language being used by our leaders. Billy, I've got one more question, and it's a bit of a different type of question. It's more a question about, as our editor in chief, how you kind of run our newsroom here. And the question that we get a lot is about how we use our comments section and more specifically, why we turn it off on posts that are related to
what's been happening in the past two weeks. Talk us through the decisions being made behind the scenes and what goes into a decision like that.
Yeah, so, I guess we're talking about it now in light of the past two weeks, but we've been having conversations about this over the past two years, especially in light of what has been happening with the Israel jamaswa in Gaza, because of course, we receive so many different messages from our audience to know why exactly we do have to turn our comment section off, and the answer is because of hate speech. You know, whenever we have left the comments on, it has spiraled into hate speech,
into racist comments. Sometimes it is between audience members to other audience members. Sometimes it's from audience members to members of the TDA staff room. And we obviously have an obligation to protect employees at TDA. I mean, to be completely honest, we are a small team, and to moderate that kind of conversation when it has spiraled into thousands of comments of hate speech, we can't moderate that. It's impossible.
And just to add to that, there's this whole other aspect of this that's important that I spend a lot of time thinking about, and that's our legal obligations and our kind of obligations to the profession of journalism. So there's the MEAA code, which is the Media Ethics Alliance. They have a code about how responsible publishers should be moderating hate speech. The United Nations has a code for
media on how hate speech should be moderated. There's also always risk of defamation lawsuits, you know, causing damage to somebody, mental damage to somebody by allowing comments to be there.
And if we had a bigger team, and if we were a more well resourced newsroom and not you know, under twenty people all age thirty and below, who are giving this whole media thing a crack, then we would do stuff like have full time moderators and perhaps you would see more open comments sections, but ones that are
tightly moderated minute to minute. But it is interesting, as you said, that even the biggest media organizations in the world, those with almost unlimited resources, even those guys aren't keeping up with minute to minute moderation. And everybody is really feeling like in the best interests of their readers and their staff that limiting comments on social media when you can see evidence that it's descending into a bit of chaos, seems to be the responsible move there.
I was going to say, in the ABC, who has thousands of employees and does have full time moderators, they are still turning off their comments on pretty much all posts when it comes to the Middle East.
And I think it's a real shame because there are in all of those posts really interesting conversations that are happening between good natured people who are curious about the world around them and how this affects the changing nature of their worlds. I think there's a lot of good stuff in there, but as you've just said, we can't really expose ourselves or our people, or our listeners and readers to that sort of risk, and it's going to
be a challenging next couple of months. I think. I think this is not going to get any karma just yet, or certainly not going to get less complex. Yeah, and so I think we've got the responsibility to our listeners to keep them in the loop with how we're making these sorts of decisions and hopefully doing the best job at explaining what's going on as we possibly can.
One other thing that I just want to add is that I hope no one listened to that thought that it's because the Daily ODS doesn't believe that we should be criticized at times. You know, criticism of media outlets around the world is an important part of any democracy, and it's got nothing to do with that. It's when the comments cross the line of being personal, racist or being hate speech that we have to draw a line
and protect people. But it's not because we believe that TDA shouldn't be criticized.
No, it's one of the best bits of a modern democracy is free and fair press. We're always going to do our best to try and protect that. Definitely, Billy, thank you for a really difficult but a really interesting conversation. They're a fast moving one as well. I would encourage people to keep an eye on our Instagram throughout the day if they want to keep up to speed with
some of the developments that happen throughout the day. It's always good to come back to the podcast have a listen to kind of get a sense of the big picture. But if you wanted more of those up to speed updates will always be over there on social media. Up Billy, thank you so much, Thank you, and thank you for listening to the Daily Ods this morning. Going to be back with some headlines later this afternoon until then have a great day.
Bye.
My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud Arunda Bungelung Calcoton 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.