Gregg Carlstrom: Middle East correspondent on the escalating conflict between Israel and Iran

Israel says it will strike 'every site and every target' of Iran as the conflict escalates.

The two countries continue to exchange air attacks after Iran launched waves of missiles in retaliation for Israeli strikes on Friday.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Iran plans to threaten everyone.

Middle East correspondent Gregg Carlstrom says this initial strike appeared to be a warning.

"The question is, now, what will Iran do in response? There have been some threats from the Iranian Government throughout the day that they might escalate their own strikes."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks EDBA.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
To the Middle East first app. Conflict is escalating between
Israel and Iran after Israel targeted nuclear in military sites
in Iran with the latest Middle East. Correspondent for The Economist,
Greg Calstrom joins me. Now, good morning, Greg, Good morning
to you. The air strikes have continued for a second day.
Can you give us an update of what has taken place.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
There's been a very wide ranging campaign of Israeli air
strikes across Iran on Saturday. Earlier in the day, many
of them seemed to be concentrated around Tehran, the capital.
The Israeli Army said it was striking at air defenses
in Tehran and said subsequently that it had destroyed several

(00:56):
dozen air defenses around the capitol. But as they turned
into night, the strikes broadened out. There were some reports
of at least one Israeli strike on Iranian gas infrastructure
near the Persian Gulf an Onshore refinery facility near the
South Pars gas Field, which is the main gas field

(01:17):
that Iran has in the Gulf, and that would represent
I think a major escalation in Israel's targeting, which until
that point had been focused mostly on military and nuclear sites.
If it starts hitting at critical infrastructure, particularly energy infrastructure
in Iran, that will be seen as a big escalation

(01:38):
in the conflict.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
So what does that tell us about Israel's objective with
these attacks?

Speaker 3 (01:44):
This escalation I think I think this initial strike was
a warning more than anything else. I think it was
a demonstration that Israel does have the ability to hit
at this sort of infrastructure, but it doesn't necessarily yet
signal a major campaign of targeting that infrastructure. But the
question is now what Iran will do in response. There

(02:07):
have been some threats from the Iranian government throughout the
day that they might escalate their own strikes in Israel
and try to hit ports or other bits of critical
infrastructure in Israel. So I think both sides of this
conflict right now trying to figure out just how far
and how much they want to escalate the fighting, and.

Speaker 2 (02:28):
What is the chance, I mean, what is it going
to take to de escalate these attacks.

Speaker 3 (02:32):
I think it would take a big push from the
United States to de escalate the attacks. For the Israeli government.
There there's the stated goal here for Israel, which is
to do significant damage to Iran's nuclear program, and that's
going to take I suspect weeks of their strikes to do.

(02:53):
And then there's what seems to be the undeclared goal
for Prime Minister Natanyau for other Israeli officials, which is
to destabilize, if not bring down altogether, the regime in Tehran. Again,
that requires a sustained campaign, so the Israelis are looking
at this as something that is going to be prolonged.
I don't think the Iranians are going to capitulate either

(03:16):
and then surrender immediately. So it would take a push
from the United States to try to negotiate some sort
of ceasefire, some sort of nuclear agreement with the Iranians.
But I don't think Iran is really in the mood
to talk under fire at least right now, so I think, unfortunately,
this is likely to continue.

Speaker 2 (03:38):
The Israelis seem to have very good intelligence with their
first wave of attacks, greg they knew who they wanted
to hit, and where they wanted to hit and where
they were. Are you surprised by that?

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Not really, And I think particularly not after what we've
seen over the past twenty months since October seventh, the
sort of similarly remarkable way, for example, that Israel penetrated
Hezbollah in Lebanon and that had intelligence. It's about its leadership.
Iran has been, for Israel really the central focus of

(04:13):
its intelligence gathering apparatus for decades now. It's seen as
by far Israel's most serious state threat has been where
the Mossadi, Israeli foreign intelligence service has invested the bulk
of its resources. And so I think what we're seeing
is the result of a years long, if not decades

(04:34):
long campaign to gather intelligence in a country Iran, where
I think it's not surprising that there are obviously a
lot of leaks within the upper echelons. This is a
regime that is very unpopular amongst its own population. It
is plagued with all sorts of economic problems, crises of
political legitimacy. So I think not surprising that a government

(04:57):
like that has a lot of people within the system
who are obviously willing to work against the system.

Speaker 2 (05:03):
So greeg do they know how far along Iran the
Iran nuclear weapon program is, how close they are to
building a small nuclear arsenal.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Well, the claims from the Israeli government over the past
couple of days have been that Iran was further along
than anyone thought, that they have been working not just
to enrich uranium in recent months, but to work on
what's called the weaponization side of the program, of being
able to take that enriched uranium and fashion it into

(05:34):
a working nuclear bomb with triggers and timers and all
of the other components that you would need. They haven't
presented any evidence to support those claims, but even if
Iran wasn't that far along on that part of it,
they have made huge strides in enrichment over the past
few years. They were in a place before these strikes

(05:54):
where if they made a political decision to start enriching
uranium two weapons grade to ninety percent purity, they could
probably enrich a bomb's worth of uranium two weapons grade
matter of days. Now they would still have to again
fashion that into a warhead and then figure out how
to deliver that warhead, so it's not a working nuclear bomb,

(06:15):
but it would at least give them the capability to
make sort of a dirty bomb of a crude radiological
device within just a few days.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
The US had plans to talk with the Iranians on Sunday.
These have been canceled. Do you think the Israeli strikes
give Trump leverage to get around back to the negotiation
table or do you think it might make them more
sort of determined to continue with their weapon building plans
for now?

Speaker 3 (06:43):
I think it is the latter. I think the Iranians
no one was surprised that they canceled these talks on Sunday,
and then all of the messages that we've heard from
the regime over the past forty eight hours have been
very defiant. They're not going to negotiate, at least right
now under Israeli fire. That is just not how this

(07:04):
government operates. The Israelis have, i think, convinced Trump that
at some point this might give him leverage. I think
the question is what if that prediction turns out to
be wrong? What if the Iranians don't come back to
the table they're not willing to negotiate. Then I think
that puts Trump in a difficult situation. He asked to
decide how long does he want to support this Israeli campaign,

(07:27):
which cannot go on without American support, both defensive support
to protect against ballistic missiles and resupply to supply the
Israeli army with weapons. So if Trump is not able
in the next week or two to get the Iranians
back to negotiations, then he's going to have to decide
does he want this to be an open ended Israeli

(07:49):
campaign or at what point is he going to seek
to restrain the Israeli government.

Speaker 2 (07:54):
Iran has warned the US, the UK, France that their
military bases and ships will be targeted if they block
their retaliation. Kes Dama has said that he's moving jets
and other military assets to the Middle East. Are we
looking at potentially a wider global conflict kicking off here?

Speaker 3 (08:15):
We've heard a lot of those threats from Iran, but
at least for the moment, I'm skeptical that they are
going to follow through on those threats. I think the
fundamental priority for the Iranian regime right now is regime survival,
right It wants to get through this conflict and remain intact,
remain in power. If it attacks Western targets in the region,

(08:38):
it is going to draw Western countries directly into this war,
Countries that have significantly more military capabilities than Israel. Does
so that will only heighten the threat to the Iranian regime,
and so I think because of that, the self interested
thing to do here is to guess, threaten the West,
try to put pressure on the West, but not to

(08:59):
actually follow through. I think a more likely, still unlikely,
but more likely scenario is that they might start striking
at Arab states in the Gulf, countries like Saudi Arabia,
the United Arab Emirates, countries that are very close to
Donald Trump, that have good relations with the US, and
countries that are very nervous about getting dragged into this war.

(09:20):
We might see Iran or Iranian proxies in the region
strike at Saudi oil facilities, for example, as they did
back in twenty nineteen, and hope that the Saudis will
then turn around and push Donald Trump to try to
pressure the Israelis into a ceasefire again. I don't think
that is a likely scenario either, but I think it's
more likely than direct attacks on American or European targets.

Speaker 2 (09:45):
Greg Carlstrom, really appreciate your time and it's very late
where you are. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (09:50):
Thank you my pleasure for more from the Sunday session
with Francesca Rudkin. Listen live to news talks it'd be
from nine am Sunday, or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio