00:00Let's bring in Noga Tarapolsky. Noga, of course, is our correspondent in Jerusalem.
00:05Noga, good evening to you. Can we start with the situation regarding Iran's attacks on Israel and Israel's policy?
00:11The words of Benjamin Netanyahu we heard, and Yair Lapid there saying Israel is tired of containing these kind of
00:17problems.
00:17What is your sense of where we go from here?
00:22I think, Mark, that we are really at a juncture, really at the end of the third day of this
00:29new war that could go in many different directions, any of them very consequential.
00:36There are noises being heard just in the last hour or two that Qatar and the United Arab Emirates may
00:46be running out of their anti-missile missiles that have been extremely successful in protecting their countries from Iranian attack.
00:55And that they might be looking for some way to persuade Donald Trump to give him an off ramp, some
01:04way to persuade him to cut this campaign short.
01:07That said, all of what we heard today from Trump himself, from his secretary of defense or war, Pete Hegseth,
01:18and certainly from the Israeli leadership, all of it points to a very long campaign.
01:23And regarding what the head of the Israeli opposition, Yair Lapid said, I think it's a complex situation in Israel.
01:33It is true that Israelis are tired of containing threats, but it is also true that Israelis don't have much
01:41confidence in their current leadership, and they're just plain tired.
01:45So with 12 funerals today, Israelis are feeling a pretty heavy hit on the civilian population.
01:54Life here has been completely interrupted.
01:57And with Israeli leadership's insistence that the aim of this campaign is regime change, and yet no real plan for
02:08regime change being presented, there are some questions beginning to be raised by Israelis, perhaps not Mr. Lapid, but others,
02:16about how exactly this is going to proceed.
02:19Indeed. Indeed. I think people are raising that same question over in the United States as well, because of Donald
02:25Trump's pronouncements, which have been along the lines of, I think the exact quote was wiping, kicking the crack out
02:31of them.
02:32I think that was the actual turn of phrase that he used, which basically is saying one thing, but it's
02:37not saying there's any kind of plan afterwards.
02:39And this is a very disturbing thing in terms of what happens next, because they could just create a power
02:44vacuum, and then who knows where that goes.
02:46I'm wondering about, from your perspective, how things will develop there, because clearly we've seen as well, as the damage
02:53of missiles getting through the Iron Dome defences of Israel and hitting targets in Israel, we've seen the reaction from
03:00the politicians.
03:00At the same time, Israel launching an operation against Hezbollah in Lebanon, again, sort of that taking out a senior
03:08member of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad organization.
03:11What is the aim and objective there?
03:14The situation in Lebanon is actually fascinating, and in some way could be really fateful.
03:23Israel did launch a significant campaign today in Lebanon, specifically in the Dakhir in south of Beirut, aimed at Hezbollah
03:33targets, and this has caused more than 20,000 Lebanese to flee their homes, to the best of my knowledge.
03:40That said, the Lebanese government really has lashed out against Hezbollah in a way that simply has no precedent.
03:49The Lebanese prime minister said that any Hezbollah military actions are illegal and prohibited, and we've even heard late this
03:59afternoon from one of the tribal leaders in southern Lebanon that for decades have either supported Hezbollah or kept quiet
04:09about this sort of Hezbollah state within a state in the south of Lebanon.
04:15This time put out a statement clearly declaring their allegiance to the Lebanese state and their opposition to Hezbollah's efforts,
04:26as they perceive it, to drag Lebanon into another war.
04:30So this actually may be, despite the violence we saw today, this may be a rare success story.
04:39In other words, Hezbollah's attack on Israel was significant but did not cause significant damage.
04:46It may indicate that Hezbollah's power really has been significantly degraded.
04:52And if Lebanon manages to take charge here, we may be seeing a sea change in at least this one
05:00country that has been very strongly backed by the United States and by France in its efforts to reconstitute the
05:09institutions of the state.
05:11Noga, as always, thank you very much indeed for the clarity you bring to what is continually a complex situation.
05:17Noga Tanopaski, our correspondent there in Jerusalem.
05:20Thank you very much indeed, Noga.
05:21Thank you very much.
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