00:00The world is changing.
00:02A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.
00:10Our objective is to defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime.
00:19A vicious group of very hard, terrible people.
00:24The Middle East has been plunged into war.
00:26It's a map of a curse.
00:28It's a map of an arc of terror that Iran has created.
00:33If not stopped, Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in a very short time.
00:38It could be a year.
00:39It could be within a few months.
00:42But something doesn't add up.
00:45On the 28th of February, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated military attack on Iran.
00:51The justification?
00:52Iran's nuclear program.
00:54Its expanding ballistic missile capability and Iran being an imminent threat, they said, to the world.
01:00War was necessary.
01:02Inevitable.
01:03Preemptive.
01:04And the consequences were immediate.
01:07But what if the reason behind this war isn't as simple?
01:10What if it was a reason hidden in plain sight?
01:16Within hours, airstrikes had targeted and killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, alongside
01:24other senior members of his council.
01:26Populated areas were struck, and the death toll was rising in the hundreds.
01:30Iran retaliated, hitting Israel and US bases in the region.
01:34Refineries, ports and gas fields hit.
01:37The Strait of Hormuz effectively shut down.
01:39As the region descended into turmoil, both Trump and Netanyahu doubled down on the necessity of the war.
01:45They were going to attack first.
01:46Iran, for 47 years, has been chanting death to America.
01:51So, how did we get here?
01:53In 1993, Shimon Peres, former Prime Minister of Israel, wrote a book outlining his vision for Israel's integration into the
02:00Middle East, where all states in the region could coexist and flourish.
02:04This book was called The New Middle East, a phrase that we would see again from Netanyahu himself.
02:10On 22 September 2023, Netanyahu stood before the United Nations and unveiled a map.
02:16A map with the states he considered or hoped to consider as allies, titled The New Middle East.
02:22His new version of the Middle East, a region framed again and again as posing an existential threat, shows a
02:28so-called corridor of peace with the Arab states.
02:31He warned then that Iran is a curse in the region.
02:34An arc of terror, he kept insisting that Iran is imposing.
02:38And the only way to secure a peaceful new Middle East?
02:41Iran must be stopped. That is our common challenge.
02:45Now, Iran had signed a landmark nuclear deal in 2015, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, placing strict
02:51limits on Iran's nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.
02:54But in 2018, Donald Trump withdrew from the deal, collapsing the framework that had restrained Iran's nuclear activity.
03:00Then, on the 27th of February, just one day before the war began, negotiations reportedly reached the most significant breakthrough
03:08yet.
03:08According to Amman's foreign minister, Iran had agreed to never stockpile enriched uranium, with existing material converted into reactor fuel
03:16under monitoring from the IAEA,
03:19a system that would make building a nuclear bomb effectively impossible.
03:23But then, the war began. Embassies burning, oil facilities struck, missiles exchanged, from the promise of a corridor of peace
03:31to a Middle East crisis deepening.
03:33Israel has a different plan. Their goal is not regime change. They want regime and state collapse. This is the
03:40project. Chaos.
03:42And with the chaos of the war spilling into the Arab states, David Hurst, Middle East Eye's editor-in-chief,
03:48argues that Israel is the only beneficiary if Arab states are weakened, allowing Israel to redraw its own map of
03:55the new Middle East.
03:56The purpose of Israel's war is to disable Iran as a regional power and turn it into a weak, pliant
04:03confederation of ethnic cantons.
04:05Israel is betting on the weakness of the Arab states to defend themselves and seeks to weaken them further.
04:12For it is only in the landscape of a weakened neighbourhood that Israel can redraw the map of the Middle
04:18East and institute a new Sykes-Picot.
04:22Israeli President Isaac Herzog himself says that the war isn't really about regime change.
04:27Can you clarify what this war is about? Is regime change the goal?
04:32Not necessarily. What is the goal is Middle East change.
04:36But what does the Israeli promise of a new Middle East actually entail?
04:40The war doesn't seem to have helped countries that have already expressed willingness for peace and diplomatic relations with Israel.
04:47Prime Minister of Israel, he talk about the great Israel sometimes.
04:51He shows some maps and this maps, it means there is more Arab countries have to be part of Israel,
04:57not part of the Abraham Accord.
04:59So there is a confusion here. We cannot have a peace in his condition.
05:03And journalist Jeremy Scahill outlines this.
05:06I think this moment in time represents the apex of the Israeli agenda to build a greater Israel and to
05:15wage wars of annihilation,
05:17not just against the Palestinian people, but against any forces that could rise to stand in the way of Israel
05:24being the dominant military force in the Middle East.
05:27The greater Israel vision, a vision that originates from the birth of modern Zionism,
05:32is the biblical belief that Israel's borders extend from the river Nile to the Euphrates.
05:37This includes the lands of Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, and Saudi Arabia.
05:43A vision that Netanyahu has previously described as his great mission, and one that is growing louder among Israeli leaders
05:50and supporters.
05:51Does Israel have the right to that land?
05:54It would be fine if they took it all.
05:56And the signs appear to already be in place.
05:59In southern Lebanon, the Israeli army told civilians to leave to the north of the Letani river,
06:03words reminiscent of fringe groups like Oretzafon, which during Israel's genocide in Gaza urged Lebanese residents to leave the Jew
06:12-owned land.
06:13Settler groups advertise new properties.
06:15After the elimination of the Hezbollah leadership, do you also dream of a big house, a view of snowy mountains,
06:22and a warm community in the land of our ancestors?
06:25The advert read.
06:27So, a defensive move, or a step closer to more land grab?
06:31Now, with senators arguing that there was no imminent threat to the United States by the Iranians,
06:35There was no imminent threat to the United States of America by the Iranians.
06:44Constantly shifting reasoning.
06:46But the objective of this mission is the destruction of their ballistic missile capabilities.
06:50That I thought that they were going to attack us.
06:52I thought they would, if we didn't do this, at the time we did it, I think they had in
06:57mind to attack us.
06:58The question becomes, if the threat was not imminent for the US, who exactly stood to gain from this war?
07:03The consequences of this war are already being felt in the Middle East, and across the world.
07:08And not much is being done to stop it.
07:10For the region, geopolitical tensions, economic instability, and the spectre of a wider war looms.
07:16While Israel attempts to redraw the map, with Greater Israel as the heart of a new Middle East.
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