The fear, the concern would always be that this whole crisis would push them further towards accelerating the drive towards getting a nuclear bomb because that they'll see that's the only thing capable of of ensuring deterrence and and perhaps the
regime's survival. One of the things we've learned over the years is that any kind of military intervention, it has unintended consequences and we just don't know what those are going to be. There are all sorts of doomsday scenarios as well-being speculated about, around the possibility of dirty bombs, asymmetric warfare, Iran, you know, activating terrorism cells. What? What's the calculation there? Hello, and welcome to the forecast.
Somewhere between total obliteration and significant damage. That's what the American administration is saying it has done to Iran after its weekend air strikes on its nuclear facilities. But it may be a bigger phrase than that in terms of the significance for the region and the wider world for this special forecast. This morning, I'm in Washington, DC. Our international editor, Lindsay Hilson, joins us from London, and our correspondent Sakunda Kamani joins us from Jerusalem.
Lindsay, the Iranian foreign minister is going to Russia Today, and there have been air strikes by Israel on Iran. I mean, where does it look like this is going today? Well, at the moment, what the Iranian foreign minister is doing is he's trying to get as much diplomatic support as possible. And the Russians have been a little bit equivocal, really, in their support for Iran. But today, Putin seemed to be more condemnatory of the Americans than he had been before.
But, you know, diplomatic support, What is that going to do for Iran at this point? The Israelis are just banging away. They have hit Evin Prison, which is where many political prisoners are being held, some of whom were apparently injured. They've hit the headquarters of the Revolutionary Guard. There are many targets which they're going for, which are very much not the nuclear facilities or even military facilities.
They are regime targets. And so it looks as if the Israelis are trying to weaken the Islamic Republic as much as possible, while the Americans are sort of pulling back a little bit. So President Trump and but what President Trump says, it's sort of varies because JD Vance's vice president was very clear, saying yesterday, we are not going for regime change. This is about the nuclear program. And then President Trump tweets today. Well, you know, maybe it is
going to be regime change. So, as ever, when you put President Trump into the mix, what seems clear suddenly becomes not so clear after all. What about the actual damage done to the nuclear sites? Because it's now seeming clear that Iran had had time to move some of its facilities. It might well have got the uranium and the centrifuges out. All all we've seen are pictures of essentially holes in the sand. So. So how confident can we can we be about what's actually been
done? I think it's very, very difficult. I mean, President Trump yesterday was very keen to say, you know, the Iranian nuclear programme has been obliterated. But even then, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was saying, well, you know, we'll have to wait for the battlefield assessment. And one of the problems is if you hit a facility which is deeply underground, well, the satellite pictures aren't going
to show you very much, are you? You need to be able to have a camera that goes deep into the earth and they don't have that. Now the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said that there's no question that there is serious damage to Fordo. That is the, the Jeep underground facility. But they don't have the ability at the moment to really make that assessment. And yes, there is a, there are reports that there are 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium.
That's uranium which has been enriched to 60%. You need 90% for a bomb, but it's, it's a short step from 60 to 90 apparently. And yes, we don't know where that is. Was it in the underground facility or did they move it some weeks or months earlier? As yet, we just don't know. Secunda, I mean, what's the reaction been like in Israel? Are they all Cocker hoop? Well, look, certainly the Israeli government had been wanting President Trump to carry out these strikes.
They know, as all analysts have been saying for the last couple of weeks, that it's only these huge 30,000 LB American Buster bust, bunker Buster bombs that we're able to take out or cause significant damage at least to the Fordo underground nuclear facility. So we'd had Israeli officials calling on the Trump administration to to get involved. And so yes, they are, I think absolutely happy. We've in fact seen President Prime Minister Netanyahu's popularity rise as a result of
this. The war with Iran is has a lot of popular support here in Israel. Many here are now at this stage divided about the war in Gaza. And majority, around 70% of the population would be willing to see an end to the conflict there in exchange for the return of
the hostages. But support for the war with Iran is, is much, much higher, but 70 to 80% of people and, and anytime certainly I've spoken to people, even those living at the sites that have been struck by Iranian ballistic missiles that have managed to penetrate the Israeli air defence systems. They say that we consider the possibility of a nuclear armed Iran as an existential threat. And so this is something that we believe needed to happen at the moment.
I think that's the, the kind of main feeling here, both politically and at a grassroots level. I mean, interestingly, even Netanyahu's political opponents, some of those on further to the left of him have been praising his, his actions and his decision going on board with his decision to, to, to attack the Iranians.
We'll have to wait and see. I think as, as you and Lindsay are pointing out about exactly how much damage has been caused to Iran's nuclear capabilities, because you know, the, the, the fear, the concern would always be that actually the what if the, if the regime retains any ability to, to carry out further enrichment, that this whole crisis would push them further towards accelerating the drive towards getting a nuclear bomb.
Because that they'll see that's the only thing capable of of ensuring deterrence and perhaps the regime's survival. And if there is perhaps deliberate ambiguity here in Washington about the aims of the American strikes, are the war aims becoming any clearer in Israel? Well, I've asked the the Israeli foreign minister whether regime
change was one of their aims. He and Prime Minister Netanyahu have both said that it is not that their aim is to destroy the nuclear capabilities than ballistic missile capabilities held by Iran. But it does seem a little bit more vague than that, just as you've had that confusion around
Trump's own stance. So there's been images that that I think Prime Minister Netanyahu's put out on, on, on Twitter to show the Iranian monarchs flag the, the royal flag of Iran. And, and so I think certainly the Israelis would like to see a regime change in Iran. But I and, you know, we've seen actions that are probably undertaken by them, for example, hacking of the Iranian state TV broadcaster with calls for people to come out to the
streets. We've had repeated calls by net Yahoo to the Iranian people to overthrow their regime. So they certainly would like to see it happen. Whether they're capable of doing it, I think is another question.
I mean, I can't think of another example in history, perhaps you and Lindsay can, of when regime change has been implemented by an outside power that does not have ground troops invading a country as it seems out of the question and without any kind of local allied opposition force ready to swoop in and and take on the the, the existing the existing government. Lindsay, what's going on in Iran?
Well, look, we're seeing through a glass darkly, but the voice messages that we're able to to get from there suggest that there is a lot of consternation on the part of people who are in the central part of Tehran. Evin Prison is right in the centre of Tehran. So, you know, people heard that go up and was scared and and then we've had messages.
There was somebody, a political prisoner who was in there who called his family and there was a recording of that who just described, you know, the terror of it. You think about it, you're a political prisoner. You've been put away for being against the government, against the Islamic Republic. And then suddenly the Israelis who are probably trying to destabilize, if not overthrow
the regime, are bombing you. I mean, in that sense people are totally confused and as couldn't assess there's no organized opposition. So Raza Paklavi, who is the the son of the last Shah, he's trying to sort of set himself up as some kind of opposition leader, but he's in, in Washington, you know, he's a Pallavi on the Potomac. Maybe you'll go and see him. I mean, there he is. And this whole operation by these, they've called it rising
lion. Well, the lion is his symbol, but he doesn't really have any following in, in Iran, almost none. And people are, you know, they're worried about water, they're worried about electricity. There's electricity blackouts in some of the city. The Internet is down. Most of the time we're only able to get messages sporadically because most of the time people can't communicate and so people are scared and. Are there still foreign
prisoners in Evin Prison? I mean, this is obviously where Nazanin Zaghari Ratcliffe was held, isn't it? Yeah, there are two, I know of 2 French prisoners who are in there. And interesting, I was in Geneva on Friday and the French foreign minister was talking about them and saying that one of the things they really want is their, their people back. Now they're both intervene.
And I'm sure there are others as well, because often countries don't publicise what's happened to the to their people in Iran because it's, it's deemed that quiet diplomacy will do better. So yes, there are definitely foreign prisoners. Now, in, in terms of what Iran might do next, I mean, it hasn't really done very much so far other than its diplomatic, you know, moves and saying it it it will, it will respond in the
manner to which it chooses. Now, the parliament has talked about closing the Straits of Hormuz. What what's the significance of that? Can it do it and how would it do it? Yeah. So Iran has a number of options. So the option which would cause a lot of economic damage is closing the Straits of Hormuz. Now, this is a narrow waterway through which a large proportion of the world's oil comes.
But that if they close that, which they could do while using sea mines or, you know, small boats or whatever, that also affects the oil, which is going to their allies, including China, so as well as obviously to, to Western countries. So that is quite a, that's quite a difficult thing to do. But they can do that. And the parliament has said that they will do that. The Iranian parliament doesn't dictate what happens, but it, it, it gives its advice.
Now then you've got U.S. forces, about 40,000 of them across the region in places like Bahrain and Qatar and the UAE and Iraq. They could attack those facilities because but of course, those facilities are well prepared for attack. They knew that might happen. And interestingly, after the Americans killed Suleimani, you know, the leader of the the IGC a few years back, the Iranians, they wanted to retaliate, but they didn't want to start World War 3.
So they warned the Americans that they were going to attack facilities, particularly in Iraq. So the Americans knew to get their people out. So in a sense, it was almost symbolic. They could do something like that or they could go for it and they could, you know, they have cells in different places. They may be weaker in the region than they were because their proxies like Hezbollah and so on are much weakened by Israel over
the last last year. But, you know, they may well have terrorist cells in different countries which could attack Israeli or American targets. I mean, there have been Iranian journalists here working for opposition channels who have been attacked. And Scotland Jihad has said that the Iranian government is is behind that. So, you know, you could see all sorts of little attacks like that. Little in the sense of not being complete outright war, but
attacks nonetheless. So come to how much damage is actually being done in Israel now. I mean, you know, we, we keep hearing about how depleted the Iranian ballistic missile battery is, but they're still sending things over and they're getting through. They are. They are at times. So Iran was said to have had around 2002 1/2 thousand ballistic missiles prior to the start of this conflict.
The latest figures we have from the Israeli army are around it that around 500 of them had been fired. So that would suggest that there's, there's a substantial number still there, even if you account for a number which the Israeli army are likely to have managed to destroy with their strikes. The military here also says, however, they've destroyed around half of all Israel, Iran's ballistic missile launches.
And we have certainly seen a very significant drop off in the, in the scale of the attacks that Iran has been launching. So, you know, in the in the initial few days of the war, we were seeing dozens and dozens of missiles being launched up to, you know, 100 Times Now, you know, around 3:00 in the morning this morning, we had a single ballistic that was intercepted. I think around 10 were fired later in the later in the day. Yesterday was one of them in the morning.
So kind of the first initial perhaps reaction to those American strikes in Iran, we saw a barrage of around 20 to 30 ballistic missiles. So there's definitely been a drop off. The Iranians I think might suggest that they're perhaps conserving some of their stop for a longer war. But given the scale of Israel's attacks on on Iran, and I think it's quite possible that they they have now a very significantly reduced capability to to strike as well. Of course, you know, you've been
here, both of you. So, you know, the, the Israeli air defense system is very sophisticated, very powerful. It is not 100%. And so we see on occasion some missiles managing to get through the death toll here, around 24 people, I believe is the, is the still the current figure. I mean, that's, that's significant by Israeli
standards. And of course every death anywhere in the world of a civilian is a, is a, is a tragedy, but it's much, much lower than the number of people who were killed in Iran. I think the latest figures I saw from human rights groups working there were suggesting around in excess of 600 people at least, at least around or approximately around half of them civilians being killed.
So, you know, the, the damage that's been done to Israel has not, has not at at this stage reached a proportion that's making ordinary people or politicians rethink their decisions. There was reporting to the the beginning of the war saying that Israeli intelligence officials had when devising plans for an attack on Iran, which of course had been, you know, being prepared for, for for many years. They've looked at potentially casualties being and fatalities being in the thousands.
And we certainly not at a stage like that. And whilst everyone here I think is expecting that there will be some Iranian military retaliation that could take the form of, you know, a ramping up of the of the missile barrages. At the moment people here I think are feeling fairly
confident. I mean, I was very struck by your report last night actually, where where you had a a man who'd lost his home, but he seemed incredibly sanguine and quite confident that it was the final stage of the war. Yeah, I think most Israelis, I mean, I was speaking to some in a in a shelter earlier this morning near where we were when when sirens went off and was chatting to them about how they were feeling. And of course people, many
people do feel afraid. But a lot of them also said that they believe they hope that there's now a kind of off ramp possibility and that once Iran has conducted some kind of strike, which they hope will be largely safe face saving rather than escalatory, then there could be the possibility of, of, of negotiations. I mean, the Trump administration has certainly held out that possibility.
And you know, you guys have been talking about the, the stockpile of around 400kg of enriched uranium that is probably still exist somewhere in Iran. So I would have thought it would very much be in the US and Israel's interest to try and strike some kind of deal with the Iranians to ensure that that is not enriched to the 90% weapons grade quality that that it could be were there to be a complete breakdown in, in, in any kind of communications with the Iranians.
And and they take their and they take their nuclear program completely underground. Lindsay, I mean, there are all sorts of doomsday scenarios as well-being speculated about around the possibility of dirty bombs, asymmetric warfare, Iran, you know, activating terrorism cells that there was there was a report here in America from NBC who was saying that the Iranians are already warned Trump indirectly that they had sleeper cells in the United States. What?
What's the calculation there? Well, there's there's a number of calculations out there. So you've got the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, who's 86. So what does he want? Well, he wants the regime to survive and to survive after his death, which will presumably come at some point in the next few years. And he has. But he built up this system of having the proxies across the region and so on and having this strength through the nuclear program, much of which has been destroyed.
And so, you know, arguably his life's work has it has come to very little in the end. So there is one argument which says that, you know, he will just go down fighting, that he wants to be seen as as a fighter and a master. He doesn't care what comes after, but he's got a son who might inherit the role. There's all sorts of calculations which we don't really know about. There's manoeuvring within the regime.
We understand from, you know, rumours in the way that these things are that different people saying that they are, you know, they now want to to take over because they are weakened. And and then of course, there is the possibility that the regime might actually collapse. Now, if it collapsed, what would replace it? Well, probably chaos because I think Sekunda was saying this is earlier. You know, you, it's, you cannot see a way in which the Islamic
Republic collapses. And what you get in its, in its place is some kind of marvellous democratic system. You know, you might get a coup or you might get complete disorder. So a lot of it depends on, on what the people in charge are afraid of and what the, you know, what kind of fractures there are within the Islamic Republic between the army and the, and the, and the Revolutionary Guards. And a lot of this we just don't
know. And, and at the beginning we mentioned this meeting with Russia. I mean, Russia could in theory completely change the game, couldn't they? Because they could supply Iran with more weapons. It doesn't look like that's going to happen. President Putin has quite a good relationship with Netanyahu and with the Israelis, and he absolutely, and he also has another war to fight to
remember. He's been getting the drones from Iran. Although the Iranian drones which are used to to fight in Ukraine, they now produce them inside Russia. So, yes, he could do that, but nothing indicates that he wants to do that. Nothing indicates that he feels that the Iranian cause is worth a lot of expenditure of diplomatic and financial capital at all. I think what he would like would
be some kind of negotiation. That was what he's been indicating today in his meeting with the with the Iranian foreign minister. And is it conceivable that Iran could enter negotiations without hitting back or first or, or or do they have to do that to save face effectively? I think that they would be more likely to hit back in some way first because not just about saving face, it's also about negotiating from what appears to be a position of strength.
And yet it is quite clear and everybody knows that the Iranians will not be negotiating from a position of strength. They'll be negotiating from a position of weakness because this war has weakened them thoroughly. So I think that they will be reaching out at, you know, the meeting with the Russians today. There's it's they're trying to build up this kind of greater diplomatic strength, which would compensate for their military weakness.
But the problem is what would they be negotiating for? Because President Trump has said 0 enrichment and the Israelis are saying an end to their ballistic missile program. Now, that leaves them extremely weakened in the region and as a as a, as a government, as a regime, because what sovereignty would the country have if it cannot have any effective military force, not just a nuclear program, but a military force that's the basic on basis on which most countries operate,
that they can defend themselves. Iran, at the moment, it seems, can't defend itself. So they're an extremely difficult situation when it comes to diplomacy as well. Just finally, Secunda from from Israel. I mean, when I was in Israel a couple of weeks ago, there were more voices of criticism of Netanyahu. And politically, the voices of Netanyahu against Netanyahu have been very, very consistent. People are still very angry with him, regardless of what's been going on in Gaza.
Has has he helped himself and shored up his position politically by extending the war in Iran? Yes, I think he has. I mean, I was looking at some reports suggesting that Netanyahu is currently more popular than he's been at any stage since October the 7th when, you know, his popularity took a massive, massive dip.
You know, it's interesting. Some of those figures politically, for example, who have been very critical of Netanyahu and have been associated with the the protest movement against him, Yaya Galan, for example, who's a a leading left wing politician. I saw him at the the the of an Iranian missile attack and I asked him what his thoughts were. And he said he said no, we aren't supportive of the war with Iran.
Because I believe that there was no choice about this, that he's remained a critic of Netanyahu. But certainly, I think that's representative of the vast majority of people who are opposed to Netanyahu, that they might not like him, they might not necessarily trust him, but they they support this war and they believe that the intelligence that led to it was correct because it was furnished by not just Netanyahu, but by the Israeli army and security services who they do have more
faith in. Interestingly, I was just speaking to earlier today actually with a father of one of the the Israeli hostages who's still in Gaza, someone who's been also very critical of Netanyahu.
He too, you know, didn't think that, that, that he thought that the war in Iran was, was, was justified, but he was upset and, and, and angry that the, the cases of the, the hostages, their plight has been very much overshadowed and clearly doesn't, doesn't seem much of A priority for the government and for Netanyahu at this stage. And it's kind of fallen a bit away from public discourse as well.
And, and of course, you know, the civilians living in, in Gaza, for ordinary people there, the situation remains absolutely, absolutely awful. I mean, the, the death toll, the daily death toll, frankly in, in, in Gaza completely out shadows anything that we're seeing anywhere else in this troubled region. It's not getting the kind of focus and headlines that it, it once was. But it's it the situation on the ground there is much, much, much worse than than than anywhere else and.
And Lindsay, I mean, internationally, I mean, obviously again, Netanyahu was facing a lot of criticism from Britain and France and Canada over Gaza. The, the British statement on the Iranian bombing over the weekend was, well, I mean, it, it was just a sort of a statement of fact. It wasn't really expressing any opinion one way or another. Has, has, has Trump managed to pull, you know, to silence Britain and pull them back in
behind? Look, I think that there's been a massive outbreak of hypocrisy because the Europeans and also the Gulf Arab countries and so on, I will say that they were against this. And I think that a lot of people within those, within those governments are breathing a sigh of relief, thinking, oh, jolly good, they've set back the Iranian nuclear program or destroyed the nuclear program. But then there will be other voices within those countries say, but what is the cost of this?
And the cost is international law. Do you remember you went back to Iraq in 2003? Do you remember there were weeks of going through the UN and talking about the legality and UN Security Council resolutions and also trying to get some kind of international consensus? All of that is gone by the board. We're now in a world where Vladimir Putin can invade Ukraine and he just does it, where the Israelis can attack Iran and then the Americans can attack Iran as well.
And, you know, international law, the, you know, the system where you had some kind of rules where things went through the Security Council, all of that is gone now When you have the Europeans who are choosing, you know, not to say very much or just to say a little because actually they're kind of a little bit in favour. I'm also just a little bit worried about it. What does that mean? It's about the future as well. So what about when China invades Taiwan? What happens then?
What is there? Why shouldn't they, given that the Russians have done what they wanted to do, the Israelis and the Americans have done what they wanted to do? And these statements, these sort of, you know, milk toast statements from from the Europeans, it just makes them look, she's anonymous and weak. Yes, I mean, Mark Rutter, the NATO chief, has apparently just said that the US strikes on Iran were not in violation of international law.
I've no idea on what basis he's saying that there was no UN resolution, there was no imminent threat. You know, how could it possibly be in line with international law? I don't know, but you can find a lawyer to tell you anything, can't you? Which was the kind of argument which we, you know, which we had before the before the Iraq war. And and just finally on Trump then, I mean, you know, obviously he's impossible to predict, but do you think he's likely to do anything more
militarily? Look, you know, I can predict anything apart from the future, and I certainly can't predict what Donald Trump is going to do. I mean, he said, you know, he said himself last week, doesn't he? Nobody knows what I'm going to do. I'd like to make up my mind a second before I do it. So if he can't even predict what he's going to do himself, how could I? But obviously, the Americans have a choice at this point, which is to pull right back, leave it to the Israelis to do
whatever we can. The Islamic Republic possibly, you know, 'cause it's collapse and push for negotiations, which is what he has indicated that he wants to do. But if the Iranians do hit back, and if, for example, they kill Americans somewhere, then there are going to be voices around Donald Trump to say, well, you know, we need to bomb something else. We need to go in again, we need to do more. And that's what his sort of isolationist MAGA wing, the people like Steve Bannon and so
on, are worried about. They're worried about the Americans getting pulled into a wider war. He has said he doesn't want to do that. But one of the things we've learned over the years is that any kind of military intervention, it has unintended consequences, and we just don't know what those are going to be. Indeed. And I mean, it's worth mentioning that it it appears that Trump had lunch with Steve Bannon on the day that he ordered the strikes.
And the American reaction here has been quite, quite remarkable really. And it's it's quite illustrative, I think, of how how weak Congress is at the moment and that there are a lot of Democrats who were saying this was unconstitutional. The American president doesn't have the power to carry out this kind of military action without congressional approval. And some Republicans are saying the same thing, A very small, small number.
But the president and the administration have absolutely no doubt that they were within their rights to do this. They're showing no sign of taking this to Congress in the near future. And so they will just carry on. We'll leave it there. Secunda. Lindsay, thank you very much indeed. That's the forecast. Until next time, bye bye.