00:00Good morning from the European Parliament.
00:02Now, this institution doesn't set the EU's foreign policy, of course,
00:05but traditionally it has taken a staunchly critical stance towards the Iranian regime.
00:11And to discuss more, I'm now joined by the chair of the parliament's Iran delegation, MEP, Hanna Neumann.
00:18Good morning. Let me start with this.
00:21Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been killed in this war, only to be replaced by his son.
00:27Is this war doing anything, in your view, to help the Iranian people?
00:32Good morning from Strasbourg.
00:34And Ayatollah Khamenei was responsible for the death and the brutal repression for so many Iranians.
00:40So his death has sparked some hopes, but him being replaced with his son
00:44just signals a sign of continuity and of more repression.
00:49So this clearly is not what Iranians had hoped for.
00:52OK. And yesterday we heard Commission Chief Ursula von der Leyen saying
00:56there's two schools of thought here with this war.
00:58One saying this is a war of choice by the U.S. and Israel,
01:01and the other saying, well, this is a war of necessity, this was needed.
01:05Where do you stand?
01:06Donald Trump promised that help is on the way to the protesters before he started this war.
01:12Right now we see him, and I mean, some of you saw the press conference yesterday.
01:16It is quite unclear what his goal are, what his strategies are to get there.
01:21And he's gambling with the life of 90 million Iranians and a whole region.
01:26And I frankly say I can't endorse a war where I don't know what the goal is nor what the
01:30strategy is.
01:30And Iranians clearly deserve better.
01:32You say you don't know what the goal is.
01:34If it is regime change, is it right in your view to seek change in the regime through force?
01:39It will be quite a difficult way to get to regime change.
01:44What is clear is that in the long run, regime change can only come from the inside.
01:49So when people from the Revolutionary Guards, from the army, defect,
01:52and when there's a broad coalition of people from inside and outside of Iran
01:56who represent the diversity of Iran, who really come up with a new vision for this country,
02:01this cannot come by bombs alone.
02:03And in this context, then, what can the EU do?
02:06We've seen quite a fragmented response.
02:08Spain and Slovenia outliers in the condemnation of the initial attack.
02:11What can it do to exert diplomatic leverage here and urge de-escalation?
02:15I think we have to indeed urge for de-escalation.
02:18The first thing is to work together with the Gulf countries.
02:21This is not our war, right?
02:22We have to deal with the consequences.
02:24And the same is true for the Gulf countries, even more, even worse.
02:28So I think we should work together with the Gulf countries to push for de-escalation,
02:32towards Trump and Israel, to clearly make them understand what they are gambling with
02:38and to tell us what their goals, what their strategies are,
02:40and then have a reasonable discussion, but also towards the Iranian regime
02:44because the regime is going to fall.
02:46The question is how many of its own people and how much of the region
02:49are they dragging into the abyss?
02:51And I think we should make this as short as possible.
02:53Okay, MEP Neumann, thank you so much.
02:55And, Maeve, there will be a three-hour special debate here in the parliament
02:58tomorrow morning on the escalation situation in the Middle East.
03:02Back to you.
03:02Back to you.
Comments