00:00Andrew Hillier from our International Affairs desk is with me once again. Andy, you were talking just a moment ago and you touched, didn't you, on Iran's diplomatic isolation. What's gone wrong, would you say, for Iran?
00:09Well, let's start, Stuart, by taking a look at Iran's degraded network of proxies. This is essentially Iran's forward defence that has spent decades building, if you like.
00:23And what's happened here is that Hezbollah has largely remained silent. The Houthis in Yemen, widely considered one of Iran's strongest assets, if you will, they have barely fired.
00:37And Iraqi militias have remained fairly silent, too, bearing in mind that Iraqi militias do often tend to look for guidance towards Tehran.
00:47But there's no evidence that they are going to retaliate against the US at this stage. Otherwise, what Tehran seems to have done on the diplomatic stage is overestimate its friendship with Russia and China.
01:02Now, in China, with regards to China and Iran's relations, well, in 2021, China and Iran signed a 25-year cooperation deal.
01:12But for Beijing, this was more of an economic deal, a limited economic deal.
01:16Now, Xi Jinping, a Chinese president, waited four days before expressing his views on the conflict.
01:23And if anything, this conflict has exposed Beijing's limited international clout.
01:29You know, China, this was Xi Jinping's reaction four days into the conflict, calling for de-escalation.
01:35But essentially, China tends to remain focused on its backyard.
01:38Now, with regards to Russia and Iran, Russia and Iran found themselves on the same side during the war, the civil war in Syria, when Moscow intervened to prop up the Assad regime in 2015.
01:51You know, Russia has bought weapons from Iran.
01:54It buys drones from Iran.
01:56Earlier this year, it signed a 20-year strategic cooperation, strategic partnership deal with Iran.
02:01But there was no mutual defense clause within that deal.
02:04And essentially, Stuart, what this all boils down to is that Russia is bogged down in Ukraine.
02:09It does not want to risk a confrontation with the US by coming to help Iran, especially given that Trump is resetting relations with the Kremlin.
02:17And as for China, you know, China has always avoided getting involved in Middle Eastern conflicts.
02:22And it tends to stay focused on its backyard.
02:26And in private, what some Iranian officials are reported as saying is that they feel betrayed by China and Russia.
02:31And finally, Andy, it's not the first time, is it, looking back into the history books, that Iran has found itself very much isolated on the world stage.
02:39Yeah. Iran found itself in a similar position in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war.
02:45And a key factor that consolidated the Islamic Republic was that opposition forces effectively dissolved themselves to confront a common enemy.
02:53And, you know, and this consolidated the foundational myth of the Islamic Republic.
02:57Now, fast forward to today, this time around, Stuart, what this conflict may offer is a slight reprieve for the Islamic Republic.
03:05We don't know yet, but that could be one consequence of this.
03:08They may be able to rally certain segments of the population behind the regime against a common enemy, in this case, Israel.
03:15But there have been, over the last few decades, cycles of repression.
03:19The economy has been devastated by sanctions and people are running out of patience.
03:26Another point to make here, Stuart, is that, you know, Iran has spent decades investing in its military and in its nuclear program.
03:33And a lot of Iranians have been asking the question, where have the air defenses been, for example?
03:39You know, its nuclear program has been degraded, too.
03:43Remember, the nuclear program and the right to enrich, if you will, has been the pride of the Islamic Republic, a symbol of its sovereignty and independence.
03:52And now what we know is that that, too, has been struck at.
03:56We still don't know the exact extent of the damage, but it has been hit.
04:01We still don't know the exact extent of the damage, but it has been hit.
