Headlines
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 21, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/21/headlines
Israel Kills 87 Palestinians in Strike on Beit Lahia as Siege on Northern Gaza Intensifies
Oct 21, 2024
“The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying.” Those are the words of a top U.N. official as Israel escalates its attacks amid a devastating siege on northern Gaza. Health officials in Gaza say at least 87 Palestinians were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beit Lahia on Saturday. Survivors said the dead include many women and children.
Ahmed Al Hajeen: “We were asleep around 12 a.m. when it suddenly felt like an earthquake hit the area. Debris was falling on us. We rushed outside after hearing screams of women and children and found that our neighbors had been targeted by massive bombs. Tons of explosives had fallen on a residential neighborhood full of civilians and displaced families. All those who were martyred here are children, women and displaced people who fled from other areas due to heavy strikes, seeking shelter in what they believed to be a safer place.”
Al Jazeera reports another 33 Palestinians have been killed so far today, including 18 in the Jabaliya refugee camp. Israel is also targeting the last three hospitals in northern Gaza: the Indonesian, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals. Doctors Without Borders reports more than 350 patients are believed to be trapped inside the hospitals.
Meanwhile, Israel has blocked six medical NGOs from entering Gaza. The groups include Glia and the Palestinian American Medical Association. Israel also killed four water engineers who were traveling to make repairs to the water infrastructure near Khan Younis. According to Oxfam, the engineers were traveling in a clearly marked vehicle when they were attacked.
On Sunday, the Palestinian Authority denounced Israel’s escalating attacks, saying in a statement, “Genocide is unfolding in northern Gaza in its clearest form — in full view of the world — marked by siege, starvation, forced displacement, destruction of buildings, aerial bombardment, targeting of health centres, and mass killings.”
Farah al-Dalou Dies in Hospital Days After Her Brother Sha’ban al-Dalou Burned to Death
Oct 21, 2024
Earlier today, the Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed reported Farah al-Dalou had died in a hospital. She was the sister of 19-year-old Sha’ban al-Dalou, who burned to death last week in an Israeli strike on Al-Aqsa Hospital. Click here to see our interview with Abubaker Abed on Friday.
U.S. Envoy in Beirut as Israel Attacks Banks, More U.N. Peacekeeping Forces in Lebanon
Oct 21, 2024
Israel has also escalated its assault on Lebanon by attacking nearly a dozen bank branches of Al-Qard al-Hassan, a financial institution with ties to Hezbollah. Many of the banks were located in residential buildings and played a critical role in Lebanon’s financial sector.
On Sunday, the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon accused Israel of deliberately demolishing another U.N. observation tower in what UNIFIL described as a “flagrant violation of international law.”
U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein is now in Beirut for talks with Lebanese officials over a possible diplomatic deal to end Israel’s attacks. As part of any deal, Axios reports, Israel is insisting it maintain the right to fly its warplanes over Lebanon and that Israeli troops be allowed to keep conducting operations in southern Lebanon. Hochstein’s visit comes two days after a drone from Lebanon hit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vacation home in northern Israel. Netanyahu was not home at the time of the incident, which caused only superficial damage to his home.
In a separate attack, Palestinian fighters in Gaza on Sunday killed the commander of the Israeli military’s 401st Brigade, Colonel Ehsan Daqsa. He has been described as the highest-ranking Israeli army officer killed in Gaza over the past year.
U.S. Intel Leak Reveals Details of Israel’s Planned Attack on Iran
Oct 21, 2024
The Biden administration has launched a probe after highly classified U.S. intelligence documents were posted online showing that Israel is taking steps to launch a retaliatory attack against Iran. One document came from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the other from the National Security Agency. The documents reference recent drills involving air-launched ballistic missiles, as well as covert drone activity. On Friday, President Biden was asked if he knew how and when Israel would attack Iran. Biden responded by saying “yes and yes.” The leaked documents also confirm Israel has nuclear weapons — a fact that has long been known but has never been acknowledged by Israel.
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“Collateral Damage”: Hundreds of Patients Trapped in North Gaza as Israel Intensifies Siege
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 21, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/21 ... transcript
Over 100 Palestinians have been killed in northern Gaza — where Israel is currently laying a major siege — by Israeli attacks since the start of the weekend. More than 350 patients are believed to be trapped inside the three remaining partially operational hospitals in northern Gaza: the Indonesian, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals. Dr. Ayaz Pathan, an emergency medicine physician who recently worked at the Indonesian and Nasser hospitals, describes the conditions he witnessed and responds to Israel’s latest attack on aid workers and four water engineers who were killed. “It was tragic to watch people be in pain, die in pain, die of infections which are completely preventable,” says Pathan.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: “The nightmare in Gaza is intensifying.” Those are the words of a top U.N. official as Israel escalates its war amidst a devastating siege and forced expulsion of Palestinians in northern Gaza. Health officials there say at least 87 people were killed in an Israeli airstrike on Beit Lahia on Saturday. Survivors said the dead include many women and children.
AHMED AL HAJEEN: [translated] We were asleep around 12 a.m. when it suddenly felt like an earthquake hit the area. Debris was falling on us. We rushed outside after hearing screams of women and children and found that our neighbors had been targeted by massive bombs. Tons of explosives had fallen on a residential neighborhood full of civilians and displaced families. All those who were martyred here are children, women and displaced people who fled from other areas due to heavy strikes, seeking shelter in what they believed to be a safer place.
AMY GOODMAN: Today, Al Jazeera reports at least 33 more Palestinians in Gaza were killed by Israeli attacks, including 18 in the Jabaliya refugee camp alone. Palestinians have shared footage on social media that appears to show people in Jabaliya being hit by a strike as they try to rescue an injured person in the street.
Israel is also targeting the last three functioning hospitals in northern Gaza: the Indonesian, Al-Awda and Kamal Adwan hospitals. Doctors Without Borders reports more than 350 patients are believed to be trapped inside the hospitals. This is an urgent video call for help made Sunday by Dr. Marwan Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza.
DR. MARWAN SULTAN: As-salamu alaykum. I’m Dr. Marwan Sultan, director of the Indonesian Hospital. Since middle of the night, the Indonesia Hospital exposed to attack by the Israeli forces, and they attack the second and third floor. Now we have 40 patients. Thirty of them, they are injured patients. There’s some of the patients, they are very serious, and they need oxygen, and they need critical care. So, the light, electricity is off since midnight. And the medical staff, they cannot make the generator on because of the — a lot of attack and a lot of danger. So, we are calling you to make the medical staff and the hospital safe. Please, our brother and sister, all the humanitarian societies, urgent call just to, please, help our medical staff and the injured people.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Marwan Sultan is the director of Indonesia Hospital in northern Gaza, speaking to us from there.
Meanwhile, Israel has blocked six medical NGOs from entering Gaza. The groups include Glia and the Palestinian American Medical Association. Israel also killed four water engineers who were traveling to make repairs to the water infrastructure near Khan Younis. According to Oxfam, the engineers were traveling in a clearly marked vehicle when they were attacked. The destruction of the water system in Gaza has led to many diseases.
On Sunday, the Palestinian Authority denounced Israel’s escalating attacks, saying in a statement, quote, “Genocide is unfolding in northern Gaza in its clearest form — in full view of the world — marked by siege, starvation, forced displacement, destruction of buildings, aerial bombardment, targeting of health centres, and mass killings,” unquote.
Earlier today, the Palestinian journalist Abubaker Abed reported Farah al-Dalou had died of severe burns at a hospital, just days after her 19-year-old brother Sha’ban al-Dalou burned to death last week in an Israeli strike on Al-Aqsa Hospital that led to a major fire that burned the displaced people encampment near the hospital.
For more, we’re joined by Dr. Ayaz Pathan, an emergency medicine doctor who returned from Gaza in August, spent time at the Indonesian and Nasser hospitals.
Doctor, welcome to Democracy Now! Thank you so much for joining us. We just heard Dr. Sultan describing what’s happening there at Indonesian Hospital. Can you tell us more, having spent time there and having direct contact with people continuing through to today?
DR. AYAZ PATHAN: Yeah. Thank you for having me, Amy.
You know, Dr. Sultan does an amazing job at this hospital. As a matter of fact, he was very clear about the fact that after the hospital was besieged — and from that besiegement, we could see all sorts of damage. I have spent weeks in that hospital. I have seen, essentially, every inch of that hospital, including the damaged floors from what happened late in 2023, the burned medical equipment, the drone fire attacks that we’ve seen. And one thing that he said is that he would invite the Israelis into that hospital anytime, anyplace, to see what is going on, because there was no operations other than medical operations that were going on in that facility.
AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk about the conditions and the number of women and children in this hospital, what the siege over the last weeks of northern Gaza means, and particularly in these three hospitals? You’ve spent time in one.
DR. AYAZ PATHAN: Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, what I found during my time there — and this is identical to the stories that you will hear from every healthcare worker that is both there or has traveled there — is that the types of patients you see essentially represent the population. And so, when we talk about the strip, we talk about a population which is about 50% children that are high school age or younger. And so, everyone’s experience is that you find a lot of children, you find a lot of women. And absolutely, are there men there? Completely. But in that age group that you would consider potentially enemy combatants, I would say that represented about 25%, maybe 30%, of the total injured population that I would see. And even that percentage I’m giving you is assuming that 100% of those males in that category are enemy combatants. So, I think we’re seeing a lot of collateral damage, far more than is acceptable by any stretch of the imagination.
AMY GOODMAN: And the effects, Dr. Pathan, of the whole area not being able to get humanitarian aid?
DR. AYAZ PATHAN: Yeah. So, even when I was there, it was quite a challenge. Food insecurity was a huge issue. I was able to go to Kamal Adwan Hospital, which you had mentioned, and see their malnutrition clinic. I, myself, who had privileged rights to food, lost about 13 pounds in about two weeks there. And now you can only imagine what people over months and months have had to deal with over there. And that’s only the food issue.
Now, talk about medications, there were times that I knew the exact medication I needed to use, whether it was pain medication or an antibiotic, and unable to find that or use that and realizing that in any other situation or country in the world — and quite honestly, even in the south, we had a little bit more access to some of these medications — it was tragic to watch people be in pain, die in pain, die of infections which are completely preventable. And all in all, you’re talking about Gaza, which has had about three dozen functional hospitals prior to all of this, that number has been taken down to essentially a third. And even the hospitals that we talk about, such as Indonesia Hospital, where I was in, half of that capacity was shut down due to damage from prior besiegement.
AMY GOODMAN: Dr. Pathan, we just have reports that Israel has killed four water engineers who were traveling to make repairs to the water infrastructure near Khan Younis. According to Oxfam, they were traveling in a clearly marked vehicle when they were attacked. If you can talk — I mean, the horror of them being killed is horrifying enough, but the fact that they were trying to fix the water infrastructure, what that means, how devastated the infrastructure is, leading to disease, including polio?
DR. AYAZ PATHAN: Yeah. So, absolutely. I think water and the safety of the water is something that UNICEF has looked at, and I think on the order of 98% of the water that is available is not considered good for human consumption. So, now you take an injured population, a sick population — even in the cases that are medical, for example, say, pneumonia or something along those lines — the ability to be able to take care of these patients without something as simple as water, to be able to clean wounds, to be able to hydrate people, is a huge issue.
I think the other point that you made is about just traveling. And so, this is something we’ve seen time and time again, including my own experience, including experiences from other healthcare workers that have been there, and then other NGOs, World Central Kitchen. We’ve seen the United Nations World Food Programme being targeted despite being in vehicles that had been given permission to travel and are clearly marked.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Dr. Ayaz Pathan, I want to thank you for being with us from North Carolina, emergency medicine doctor who returned from Gaza in August, spending time at the Indonesian Hospital in northern Gaza and Nasser Hospital.
When we come back, Israel has also escalated its attacks on Lebanon, including hitting bank branches all over the country. Stay with us.
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Report from Beirut: Israel Bombs Banks, Attacks UNIFIL in Expanding War of Aggression
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 21, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/21 ... transcript
We get an update on Israel’s latest attacks on Lebanese banks, which it accused of holding money for Hezbollah, and the Israeli military’s attacks on UNIFIL forces in contravention of both Lebanese sovereignty and the rules of war. “There is nothing that shows they really want to impose a ceasefire,” says Jamil Mouawad, a political science professor at the American University of Beirut, of Israel’s flouting of international norms and the United States’ complicity in its human rights violations.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
We turn now to Israel’s escalating attacks on Lebanon. The Israeli military says it’s hit buildings housing nearly a dozen bank branches of Al-Qard al-Hassan, a financial institution with ties to Hezbollah. Many of the banks were located in residential buildings and held the savings for many Lebanese residents.
On Sunday, UNIFIL, the U.N. peacekeeping forces in Lebanon, accused Israel of deliberately demolishing another U.N. observation tower in what UNIFIL described as a “flagrant violation of international law.”
U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein arrived in Beirut today, and in his first remarks, he said Lebanon and Israel just committing to U.N. Resolution 1701 is not enough.
AMOS HOCHSTEIN: President Biden said our goal is a comprehensive agreement that implements U.N. Security Council Resolution 1701 and ensures this conflict is the last for many generations. 1701 was successful at ending the war in 2006, but we must be honest that no one did anything to implement it. The lack of implementation over those years contributed to the conflict that we are in today.
AMY GOODMAN: This comes as Hezbollah continues to fire missiles at Israel in response. On Saturday, a drone hit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s seaside home in the northern Israeli town of Caesarea. Netanyahu and his family were not there.
We’ll talk more about Iran, but we begin in Beirut, where we’re joined by Jamil Mouawad, assistant professor of politics and policy at the American University of Beirut.
Thank you for joining us from Beirut. If you can first talk about how besieged, how under siege you feel and people in Beirut feel, in Lebanon, and then talk about Israel targeting the bank branches that they say support Hezbollah?
JAMIL MOUAWAD: Yeah. Thanks for having me.
Actually, the situation in Lebanon is incredibly difficult. We currently live in a limbo. Life has come to a halt, basically, with people concerned about when do they go about their normal life, when students will go back to schools, to universities, people will go back to their jobs, but also to their normal life. So, there is a lot of anxiety going on.
And this is due primarily to the fact that, apparently, there are no serious diplomatic efforts to end the war as soon as possible. Today, as you just mentioned, the U.S. envoy was in Beirut. This morning, we read that Netanyahu and the Israeli government have submitted a proposal for a potential ceasefire. Israel is adopting a maximalist position in this direction. They want to — they are demanding the right to engage in active enforcement in the south of Lebanon. That is, intervening whenever they deem necessary. And also they are requiring freedom in operating in the Lebanese airspace. And this is a clear violation of not only the 1701, but this is a clear violation of the Lebanese sovereignty. So, either this proposal is a proposal to basically end the negotiations before they even start, or this is a proposal for Lebanon to surrender.
I just remind you and everyone that the battle in the south is still ongoing. Hezbollah is still able to fight back and resist. The Israelis are not able yet to invade Lebanon, as they probably would like to. Hezbollah is still able to fire its rockets and drones to Israel. We’ve seen, a week ago, a drone has hit the Golani military base in Israel. Two days ago, we saw that a drone, another drone, hit directly the home of — the sea home of Benjamin Netanyahu. And if this tells us anything, it tells us that Hezbollah is still able to operate in the south. And the battleground will definitely shape the negotiations, as well.
Yesterday, as you mentioned, Israel attacked directly and bombed financial institutions related directly to Hezbollah. Of course, we all know that Israel has identified any institution, civilian or not, directly affiliated with Hezbollah as a threat, and they are bombing it. Of course, this is only a way to demolish buildings in Lebanon and to further terrorize the Lebanese civilians.
AMY GOODMAN: And if you can talk about who uses this bank? Do you agree that it’s used to — it’s used for banking by Hezbollah? But also, who else? And where are these banking branches located around Lebanon?
JAMIL MOUAWAD: Yeah, I mean, these branches are located almost everywhere in Lebanon, in Beirut mostly. These are banks that offer microcredits for the Lebanese. Of course, the majority of the constituency of Hezbollah benefit from these credits. Some people claim — and this is true — that there is no oversight over these financial institutions by the central Lebanese bank, but this is also, unfortunately, to remind everyone that private and commercial banks have escaped this accountability for years, and we have a collapsed banking sector now in Lebanon.
AMY GOODMAN: Um —
JAMIL MOUAWAD: So, this is not — these —
AMY GOODMAN: Well, let me ask you another question, and it has to do right now with UNIFIL and what’s happening with the U.N. forces in southern Lebanon, and also how that relates to the U.N. Resolution 1701. But they say another watchtower has been blown up by Israel. Israel wants them out. The significance of this, Professor Mouawad?
JAMIL MOUAWAD: Yeah, it’s very shocking, actually, that Israel wants the blue helmets, the UNIFIL group, to withdraw from Lebanon, because they want to basically invade Lebanon. And UNIFIL has been very defiant so far, and they said, “We’re not withdrawing from the south.” They even went far and said that there is no way that only one member of the United Nations would dictate on us what to do. UNIFIL is in the south based on a U.N. resolution.
And this shows how aggressive and immune — it shows how Netanyahu benefits from impunity. We saw him directly attacking the UNIFIL. We saw him, as well, directly attacking the U.N. Secretary-General Guterres and declaring him as a persona non grata in Israel. We saw him also attacking and directly shaming President Macron when President Macron mentioned the possibility of imposing an arms embargo on the Israelis in order not to go on with their genocide in Gaza. The day after, he shamed him and told him, “Shame on you for even thinking about this.” So, this shows how aggressive and dramatic Netanyahu is and is willing to do everything in order for him to move on and implement his expansionist project.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamil, you have the U.S. envoy Amos Hochstein now in Beirut. You have Blinken headed to Israel. It’s not clear where he’ll be on his tour. It is his 11th trip in the last year to the area. And you have the Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz warning, “We will keep striking the Iranian proxy until it collapses.” Also, if you can talk about what Israel is demanding for a ceasefire? Axios reports Israel demands its Air Force has freedom of operation in Lebanese airspace, also demands — Israel demands that the IDF be allowed to engage in active enforcement to attack Hezbollah. This will be part of the ceasefire that they say they would accept.
JAMIL MOUAWAD: Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, in fact, this is a maximalist position by the Israelis. They don’t want — clearly, they don’t want a ceasefire. Clearly, they don’t want to respect the U.N. Resolution 1701. I remind everyone that U.N. Resolution 1701 is very clear. As per this resolution, the Lebanese Army should be deployed in the south, but it also should be equipped in order for it to be able to defend Lebanon from potential aggressions. The Lebanese government also demands the demarcation of the borders with Israel. ’Til now, Israel does not recognize any borders with Lebanon, except for the Blue Line, which is a withdrawal line and not the borders. So, this shows that Israel is not serious about a potential ceasefire.
But not only that, this poses questions as to what the United States of America wants. Are they impartial when it comes to these negotiations? I remind everyone that Amos Hochstein was serving at the Israeli army. So, is he impartial? Is he not? This is a question. This is a serious question. But so far, as we saw in Gaza on many occasions, the Americans are complicit in this genocide, and they’re complicit in the war against Lebanon. And there is nothing that shows that they really want to impose a ceasefire on Lebanon. Not only that, they probably would like to — and this is what Amos Hochstein said — to protect the interests of the Israelis by him referring to the fact that the Lebanese government or the UNIFIL did not even enforce 1701 in the past, and he did not refer at all to the many violations of the Israelis when it comes to the 1701, specifically when it comes to the airspace violation of Lebanon during these 20 years.
AMY GOODMAN: Jamil Mouawad is assistant professor of politics and policy at Department of Political Studies and Public Administration at the American University of Beirut, speaking to us from Beirut.
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Will Netanyahu Incite a War with Iran? Leaked U.S. Docs Detail Israel’s Attack Plans
by Amy Goodman
DemocracyNow
October 21, 2024
https://www.democracynow.org/2024/10/21 ... transcript
The Biden administration has launched a probe after highly classified U.S. intelligence documents were posted online showing that Israel is taking steps to launch a retaliatory attack against Iran. Meanwhile, a drone hit Benjamin Netanyahu’s seaside home Saturday in what the Israeli prime minister has called an assassination attempt by “Iran’s proxy Hezbollah.” As tensions between Iran and Israel heat up, we go to Tehran to speak with Hassan Ahmadian, a professor at the University of Tehran, who says Netanyahu and Israel have continually instigated violence in the region while “trying to tell the world that it’s Iran that is the problem.”
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: The Biden administration has launched a probe after highly classified U.S. intelligence documents were posted online showing Israel is taking steps to launch a retaliatory attack on Iran. One document came from the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the other from the NSA, the National Security Agency. The documents reference recent Israeli drills involving air-launched ballistic missiles, as well as covert drone activity. On Friday, President Biden was asked if he knew how and when Israel would attack Iran. Biden responded by saying “yes and yes,” unquote.
Iran has issued a complaint with the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog over Israeli threats to strike Iran's atomic energy sites in retaliation for a series of Iranian missiles that were fired into Israel earlier this month. Iran’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement today saying, quote, “Threats to attack nuclear sites are against U.N. resolutions … and are condemned,” unquote.
This comes as a drone hit Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s seaside home Saturday in the northern Israeli town of Caesarea. Netanyahu and his family were not home at the time of the incident, which caused superficial damage to his home. He shared this video on social media after the attack.
AIDE: Prime Minister, how is it going?
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: Well, two days ago, we took out Yahya Sinwar, the terrorist mastermind whose goons beheaded our men, raped our women, burned babies alive. We took him out. And we’re continuing our battle with Iran’s other terrorist proxies. We’re going to win this war.
AIDE: So, will something deter you?
PRIME MINISTER BENJAMIN NETANYAHU: No.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking to his aide. The prime minister also wrote on social media, quote, “The attempt by Iran’s proxy Hezbollah to assassinate me and my wife today was a grave mistake. … I say to Iran and its proxies in its axis of evil: Anyone who tries to harm Israel’s citizens will pay a heavy price,” Netanyahu said.
For more, we go to Tehran, to Iran, where we’re joined by Hassan Ahmadian, assistant professor of West Asian and North African studies at the University of Tehran.
Professor, we welcome you to Democracy Now! If you can start off by responding to what Netanyahu said, blaming agents of Iran for the attack, though Iran disavowed responsibility for the attack on his seaside home? We may have lost professor Ahmadian. I think he’s coming back right now. Why don’t we break, and we’ll see if we can get back in touch with professor Ahmadian, who is in Tehran, Iran. I think we have him. Professor Ahmadian, thank you for joining us. Can you respond to what Netanyahu said, that agents of Iran were responsible for the attack on his seaside home? If you can respond?
HASSAN AHMADIAN: Yes. Well, I think Bibi Netanyahu has been trying to portray everything that’s happening in Gaza, in Lebanon, around the region as part of Iran’s act, whereas we all know it’s a fact now that Iran didn’t know about the 7th of October attack. And then, its allies fighting Israel for their various national reasons, they are supported by Iran, but it doesn’t mean that they act on behalf of Iran.
But obviously, Bibi is eying another game. He wants to see a confrontation bigger than his surrounding. He wants the U.S., Iran to be dragged into a conflict, I think. That’s why he’s pointing always to Iran. In the beginning of his campaign on Gaza, he was focused on Gaza. And then, when he wanted to widen the war, he started to point at Iran, and he started hitting Iranian targets. First came the Iranian Consulate. Then Iran retaliated. Then came the assassination in Tehran of Ismail Haniyeh in the inauguration day of a new president in Iran.
Then Iran waited for a diplomatic settlement that Amos Hochstein and the Americans channeled to Iran that they are after, and they were using this assassination for a ceasefire there. The Iranians waited for two months, only to be surprised by Netanyahu moving to Lebanon, assassinating and — the pager attack, the walkie-talkie attack, then the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah. All of this came after Iran waited for a diplomatic settlement in Gaza. And then Iran decided that “That’s enough. We need to retaliate; otherwise, our deterrence will be at stake.”
Obviously, to my understanding, Netanyahu is inching closer to, you know, a confrontation with Iran. The Iranians have said time and time again that they would retaliate. They have been retaliating. Now he’s talking about retaliating against Iran’s retaliation, which is basically escalation ladder he’s on, and he’s trying to tell the world that it’s Iran that is the provocateur, whereas in Iran, everyone feels the way that Bibi Netanyahu is trying to frame Iran internationally, and, as such, they are focusing on telling the world that we will not go for a war, we will not go for a confrontation, but if it’s enforced upon us, we will have to retaliate; otherwise, our deterrence will not work, and then it will be an open season in Tehran maybe.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Professor, can you comment on these leaked U.S. documents, intelligence documents, describing satellite images of Israeli military preparations for a potential strike in Iran? You also have the Foreign Ministry coming out today in Tehran, speaking out and saying it would be illegal to attack nuclear plants in Iran, according to the United Nations. If you can comment on all of this? The intelligence documents, not clear how they were leaked, coming from, among other places, the NSA, the National Security Agency, the intelligence agency in the United States that’s many times larger than the CIA.
HASSAN AHMADIAN: You know, we still don’t know the intricacies of these leaks. But, obviously, if they are intentional or not intentional, the leaking, it makes a different — I mean, the messaging or the message of them being linked will be different. But in any case, I think the Iranians are saying that these leaks show that the Israelis are trying to attack places of strategic importance that are legally — you know, should not to be attacked, but Israel is obviously trying or inching closer to attack them. It’s within the Iranian, you know, international or diplomatic reach, which the foreign minister and the president have been on the past few weeks telling the world that we don’t want escalation, but, obviously, the Israelis are coming to force it upon us, and we will have to retaliate.
The legality of the issue is obvious. I mean, it’s illegal, as per international law, to attack the atomic energy agency structure. It’s very obvious that it’s not legal to attack such places. But, I mean, the Israeli policy in assassinating scientists, killing a guest in an inauguration day in Iran, all the policies that have been pulled off previously were illegal, as well. So, the Iranians know that this is not going to affect the situation, but they are telling the world, “These are the evidence. We are not after this escalation, but you should look at Israel and what it’s doing to provoke Iran and its allies to retaliate.”
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Ahmadian, can you talk very briefly about Iran-Saudi relations and how that plays into this? Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was in Riyadh earlier this month. And the fact that the 180 ballistic missiles that were shot into Israel killed one person, a Palestinian in Jericho, but these were 180 ballistic missiles — is Iran actually coordinating this, sharing information with the United States?
HASSAN AHMADIAN: I’m not sure that is the case, especially the second attack that Iran — rather, retaliation that Iran did in October 1st. The first one was coordinated. Iran told the world and the United States, and indirectly Israel, as well, that we are not — we will attack in this timing. It was basically a political messaging that we can reach you, we can hit you, but we don’t want escalation, so don’t push us. The second attack, October 1st, was of a military nature. The Iranians showed their muscles, telling the Israelis, “You are playing with fire. We can do this.” Today, the message was that we can fire 7,000 missiles a day to deter Israel. But, basically, the narrative is that we don’t want escalation, but we are capable of fighting.
When it comes to Saudi Arabia and the GCC in general, the Iranians are trying hard to keep them away from, you know, basically assisting Israel and also keep the warming of the relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia ongoing. The Iranians and the Saudis both have been pushing for a ceasefire in Gaza. The Saudis embarked on a diplomatic campaign with the Europeans, with the Americans for months now to stop the conflict in Gaza. The Iranians are trying to push, saying that we don’t want — that the Israelis are widening the war and this that will be catastrophe to the — I mean, it was a political messaging campaign and also pushing back against Israeli provocation, as the Iranians see them. Both have been, basically, met in the aim of stopping the Gaza war. And I think the relationship has been advancing unexpectedly. Basically, the war in Gaza have brought Iran and Saudi Arabia, at least publicly and in the narrative, much closer than where we were — when they were before the October 7th. And both, as I said, they are aiming for the same target — that is, the stop of the onslaught on Gaza and elsewhere in the region.
AMY GOODMAN: Hassan Ahmadian, I want to thank you for being with us, assistant professor of West Asian and North African studies at the University of Tehran, speaking to us from Tehran, Iran, previously associate with the Project on Shi’ism and Global Affairs at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center for International Affairs.