00:00Benjamin Netanyahu said I won, I've ensured Israel's safety is protected, the Iranian nuclear weapons program is destroyed, the existential threat to Israel has been removed, Khamenei says look I have won, I did not bow to anyone, the regime still stands in that sense.
00:18Donald Trump, give me the Nobel Prize already, you know, I ended a conflict, so everyone's won. Yeah, once again, I mean, after all, you know, he's been ending conflicts since, yeah, left, right and center, six months, right, conflict after conflict.
00:33Netanyahu has got what he wanted, he started off by fighting a war of attrition and, you know, that is a very, very bold decision to take when a politician decides to fight a war of attrition, you know, quick wins in a war of attrition, it goes on for months and years, you possibly won't even see a victory.
00:52I am not at Trump's beck and call, I am the Prime Minister of Israel, I am the longest Prime Minister of Israel, 17 years, I do that please.
01:00So that could also be the case and with Khamenei also trying to make a point that look, we still have a lot more missiles, there's more from, you know, where that came from, so that both sides are, you know, scoring political points.
01:15Another conflict, another ceasefire, both of them involving the US.
01:24After what the US President Donald Trump has come to calling it, the 12-day war, Israel and Iran have finally stopped bombing each other, agreeing to a ceasefire brokered by the US.
01:34But the question is, what was the outcome of this 12-day war?
01:40It began obviously with Israel launching strikes on Iran, Iran countered and in the US around on the day 10th, entered the picture by bombing Iran's nuclear sites.
01:50What has this achieved and who's come out to be the winner?
01:53For that, we have Sandeep Unnathan.
01:55Hey Sandeep, how are you?
01:56Good Dave, good to be back.
01:58Another conflict.
01:59Another conflict, yeah.
02:00Sandeep, if I were to look at the two ceasefires that are the closest to us, one, the most recent, India and Pakistan and the other, India and China, though I don't think you can call that a ceasefire per se, because no physical fighting happened apart from the Galwan clash, but it was still something close to that.
02:16And what I've noticed in both those agreements between those two countries is that the agreements gave both the countries something to sell their people.
02:25Something which would make them tell people that, hey, we've won this conflict, we've won this round of war or whatever you want to call it.
02:34And that gives me an understanding that any ceasefire when it's negotiated, at the end of the day, you have to give something for everyone to, for them to be able to say, hey, we've come out as the off-rack.
02:44Yeah, the off-rack, yeah.
02:45So, do you think that's happened in this case and can we really and practically say that, you know, ultimately all the three parties involved, Netanyahu, Trump and Iran and Khamenei have come out to be able to.
02:54Oh, absolutely, Dave, you know, but with a few subtle differences.
02:59Now, this was no ordinary conflict, right?
03:03Conflict of the kind that we've seen in the past, where you have one country being physically invaded by another country and a regime change taking place.
03:13One of the last such occurrences was in 2003, where you had Saddam Hussein dethroned by the U.S.-led coalition.
03:20Now, that was a substantial U.S.-led force of more than 160,000 soldiers who went there, physically defeated Saddam's armies and then installed a government of their choice.
03:31But here, it's a very different kind of a conflict.
03:34It's not a conventional war.
03:35It would be like a special military operation to use what Putin has been describing the Russia-Ukraine war.
03:42Though that is a full-on land conflict.
03:45Here, there's no land element to that conflict.
03:47So, it's very, it's an kind of an amorphous conflict.
03:51How do you define, you know, victory and loss in a conflict where both the parties are over 1,000 kilometers apart, right?
04:00So, you have the Israeli Air Force launching jets at Iran.
04:04They've got full airspace.
04:06They control all the airspace over Iran.
04:08They're attacking targets in Iran.
04:09You have Iran that's launching hundreds of ballistic missiles, hypersonic missiles at Israel over 1,000 kilometers away.
04:15So, who would win in a conflict like this when there are no physical armies in contact or capturing territory?
04:21You know, which is your traditional parameters of understanding conflict.
04:25But the larger point is that, like you mentioned, every side has an off-ramp and everyone's pronounced victory.
04:32Benjamin Netanyahu, he said, I won.
04:35I've ensured, you know, Israel's, you know, its safety is protected.
04:40The Iranian nuclear weapons program is destroyed.
04:42The existential threat to Israel has been removed.
04:46Khamenei says, look, I have won.
04:48I did not bow to anyone.
04:49You know, the regime still stands in that sense.
04:51Donald Trump, give me the Nobel Prize already.
04:56You know, I ended a conflict.
04:59So, everyone's won.
05:00Yeah, once again.
05:01I mean, after all, you know, he's been ending conflicts.
05:03Left, right and center.
05:04Yeah, left, right and center.
05:05Six months, right?
05:06Conflict after conflict.
05:07No one's listening to Trump.
05:08But that's a different story.
05:10But the thing is here, you have to see when you look at the state of both countries,
05:16when they entered the conflict, that is 7th of October, 2023, vis-a-vis today, June, 2025.
05:2420 months later, where does Israel stand?
05:27Where does Iran stand?
05:29Now, if you look at it, Iran on the 6th of October was a regional superpower.
05:35It had a ring of proxies around Israel, surrounded Israel, very strong army, ballistic missile force, all of that.
05:42Under a lot of sanctions, economic pressure and all that, but it still had a formidable military machine.
05:48And this access that it had created, all the way from the Mediterranean, the Arabian sea, which we've discussed in previous discussions.
05:56Now, Israel, on the other hand, was facing a lot of pressure on its borders.
06:03It had Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
06:06It had this wave of, you know, Iranian proxies around it.
06:10Hezbollah, you know, one of the, not one of the, the world's most powerful non-state actor right there.
06:17But today, 20 months later, look at the map, how it stands.
06:21Iran is lonely, isolated.
06:24It's been bombed, literally, to smithereens.
06:27Its nuclear facilities are a smoking ruin.
06:30You can argue about whether it's been set back by months or years or decades, a nuclear program, but that is definitely not, they're not getting a bomb anytime soon, right?
06:39Their non-state actors are completely in disarray.
06:42Hezbollah has been vanquished as a military threat.
06:45Assad, the house of Assad has collapsed.
06:47They've gone.
06:48He's gone.
06:49He's vanished.
06:49He's sitting in Moscow, right?
06:51So, the whole geopolitics has shifted in favor of Israel.
06:56Israel is in the driver's seat.
06:57So, on those parameters, I would give Netanyahu the maximum number of points.
07:04He's the winner, actually, in this conflict.
07:06If you look at it, you may say that, well, he's killed so many civilians.
07:09There's been collateral and he's been fighting.
07:11The Israeli economy has suffered and, you know, people aren't building anything in Israel.
07:16And there's been missile attacks, but at the end of the day, Netanyahu has got what he wanted.
07:22He started off by fighting a war of attrition.
07:25That is a very, very bold decision to take when a politician decides to fight a war of attrition.
07:32You know, quick wins in a war of attrition, it goes on for months and years.
07:36You possibly won't even see a victory.
07:39Like, you know, the kind that Putin started with Ukraine, the special military operation.
07:44It's entering its fifth year now.
07:46Very shortly, in a few months.
07:48So, these are enormous political gambles that only politicians can take.
07:54Netanyahu took that call.
07:55Prime Minister Modi took that call when he launched those attacks on Pakistan, nuclear on Pakistan.
08:01That's a red line that he crossed.
08:03So, I would give it fair and square to Netanyahu.
08:07Yeah.
08:08A couple of points more on this.
08:09And now I want to talk about the ceasefire itself and more about the logistical and practical aspect of implementing it.
08:16Because what we've seen, the last time we had something similar, India-Pakistan, session of hostility, it's not exactly ceasefire.
08:22You had Pakistan sort of, you know, launching drone attacks again the same every night, right?
08:27And even over here, once you had Trump being Trump announcing a ceasefire on Truth Social of all places, then you had Iran launching missiles towards Israel.
08:36Israel apparently launching jets to bomb Iran.
08:38And then Trump again posting on Truth Social that, hey, Israel, you better bring those jets back.
08:42Right.
08:43So, when a ceasefire is agreed to, decided, what's the practical aspect of implementing it?
08:48And why do you think you often have cases where it takes maybe a day or a few hours for it to actually come into place?
08:54It's so simple.
08:54It's just, you know, militaries advise the politicians.
08:59And in this case, both militaries seem to have advised their respective leaders that we still need to do this.
09:06We need to carry out these attires.
09:08We need to do, we need to make a point here.
09:10So, they were, you know, there were certain objectives that had to be met, military objectives that had to be met.
09:16And they did that.
09:17And after that, it was, you know, a ceasefire.
09:21Or it could well have been a political decision where Netanyahu said, well, Trump thinks he can get me to shut up.
09:27I'm not going to stop bombing.
09:29Let him say whatever he wants to, you know.
09:31So, that could also be a combination of both as well.
09:33Right.
09:34There could be a military objective, but also political signaling.
09:37I'm not at Trump's beck and call.
09:39I'm the Prime Minister of Israel.
09:41I'm the longest Prime Minister of Israel.
09:4217 years.
09:43I do what I please.
09:45So, that could also be the case.
09:46And with Khamenei, also trying to make a point that, look, we still have a lot more missiles.
09:53There's more from, you know, where that came from.
09:56So, that both sides are, you know, scoring political points.
09:59So, I think, you know, this is also the nature of warfare, how it's changed.
10:02And I think the most important thing here is, Dave, that Operation Sindhu taught us that you traditionally looked at warfare in five domains.
10:12Land, sea, air, cyber, space.
10:14Now, in this year, in two conflicts, Sindhu and Rising Lion, you've seen a sixth dimension, which is the narrative war.
10:22Yes.
10:23That's a very important thing in this era of social media.
10:27Everybody has a smartphone.
10:29You know, everyone's a journalist.
10:31Everyone's a consumer of news.
10:32Everyone is a participant in the news as well.
10:35People shape opinions online.
10:37So, all of that adds to this entire narrative cloud that, you know, is kind of expanding.
10:43And it's very important.
10:44So, decision-makers, politicians, military leaders, commanders will have to take this very seriously.
10:50I think we'll end it there.
10:52Very quick take on what's happened between Israel and Iran over the last 12 days.
10:57That I think, like Donald Trump is saying, the 12-day war.
