- 1 week ago
Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:11Iran is denying it's in talks with the United States after Donald Trump suggested the two
00:16sides were seeking an agreement to end the war. The announcement from the US president on Monday
00:21came after his weekend deadline for Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz was approaching.
00:25While Donald Trump buys himself more time, Israel continues to strike targets in Iran. The IDF
00:32announcing it struck some 50 targets including ballistic missile storage and launch sites and
00:38the country's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is warning there's more to come. Charlie James reports.
00:46Once again, Donald Trump's ultimatums are shifting. After giving Tehran 48 hours to reopen the Strait
00:52of Hormuz or face strikes on the country's power plants, the US president extended his deadline
00:58for five days on Monday. He insists this is because big progress has been made in talks
01:04with Iran. To determine whether a broader agreement can be reached, we've had very good discussions,
01:09very, very good discussions. And it's only because of the great job that our military
01:14did is the reason they mean business. They want to settle and we're going to get it done,
01:18I hope. Trump claims Iran agreed that they will not have a nuclear weapon. And he surprisingly
01:25proposed joint US-Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz. But so far, there has been no confirmation
01:31of these talks from Washington or Tehran. Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan are reportedly acting as
01:38intermediaries passing messages between the two capitals. But in public, Iranian officials are
01:43denying any contact. Iran's parliament speaker responded online Monday, accusing Trump of lying
01:49and looking for an off-ramp. No negotiations have been held with the US and fake news is used to
01:55manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.
02:01Iran's Revolutionary Guard also says that it is unwilling to negotiate and strikes continue on both
02:08sides of the conflict. Iran fired missiles at Israel, Kuwait, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia Tuesday.
02:14And Israel says it will continue attacks in Iran and Lebanon. Meanwhile, US allies, including Turkey
02:20and the European Union, are pushing hard for a diplomatic solution.
02:26We can now bring in Scott Lucas, professor of US and international politics at the Clinton Institute
02:31at the University of College Dublin. Thank you so much for joining us on the program today.
02:36What did you make of the timing of Donald Trump's announcement yesterday? Is the US president
02:41looking for an off-ramp here? Is he trying to calm the markets or is he just buying time?
02:48The timing is the easy part, which is that on Sunday, Donald Trump threatened to obliterate Iran's
02:57infrastructure, including its electricity, if the Straits of Hormuz remained under Iranian control.
03:03But the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, far from backing down, said, well, you do that,
03:07we'll destroy infrastructure across the Middle East. Oil prices went up, stock markets went down,
03:13Trump got rattled. Therefore, he makes this statement. What's more important and more difficult
03:20is to establish the facts behind the statement, because almost everything Trump said was not true
03:24or an exaggeration. And I'll just give you a quick lead in. We've known for days that the Trump
03:30administration has reached out to the Iranian Foreign Minister Abbasarachi through the envoy,
03:36Steve Whitcoff, with text messages. Now, there have been no details released on that. What has changed
03:41in the last few days is that people in the Trump camp have now decided that the Iran parliamentary
03:46speaker, Mohamed Bakr Haliboff, could be a leader they would want to deal with. They're framing it as
03:51being similar to the Venezuelan model, where the Vice President, Delce Rodriguez, was promoted
03:56after they kidnapped Nicolas Maduro. An Iranian official confirmed on Saturday that the White
04:02House had indeed reached out to speak to Haliboff, but you just posted Haliboff's response, at least
04:08publicly, which is you're just trying to get out of a quagmire that you created and to manipulate the
04:14financial and oil markets. So at this point, there's no confirmation that we are going to have
04:19these talks involving U.S. officials and Haliboff in Pakistan or anywhere else.
04:25I want to talk about those intermediaries that have surfaced, among them Turkey and Pakistan.
04:31Turkey has great relations with the U.S. and Pakistan as well has great relations with the U.S.,
04:37but relations between Ankara and Israel are fraught. Pakistan has no relationship with Israel.
04:45How can Donald Trump say he wants to end the war if Israel is not being consulted?
04:51The same way that he ended Israel's 12-day war in June of 2025, when the Iranians sent a signal
04:58through Qatar and a demonstration strike on the U.S. air base in Qatar that said, look,
05:05you can deal with us. Trump accepted it and told Benjamin Netanyahu to ceasefire,
05:10even as Israeli warplanes were in the air. Now what we have, yeah.
05:15But he's not trying to rein in Israel, because we know that one of Iran's strategies here during
05:22this conflict has been to retaliate on GCC states, and they have been doing this since this conflict
05:30broke out, right, since the get-go. But he hasn't tried to rein in Israel all this time,
05:36so why would he try and do it now? Well, because the question here is,
05:41is what are the aims? Now the Israelis are going for regime change. They don't want anyone connected
05:47with the existing regime to remain in power or even to remain alive. The Americans are looking
05:53for regime surrender. That is, look, give up your nuclear program, give up your ballistic missile
05:58program, but the regime can stay in power. That's the idea of the Venezuela model. And because of the
06:04differences in those two approaches, you've got a gap right now. The Israelis are going to continue
06:08to pound away at Iran, and by the way, expand the occupation of Lebanon, which they're doing today.
06:14And meanwhile, the Americans are thinking, all right, can we get the type of Iranian regime that
06:19we want? Now, I don't think this solves anything. I think we'll be in a state of limbo, but it
06:24means
06:24that we do not have a single war on Iran now. We have an Israeli war on Iran, and we
06:29have an American
06:29war on Iran. The Iranians have made it abundantly clear that they are not going to turn into some
06:35vassal state to please the U.S. president. So where does this leave things? Are we back to square one,
06:41essentially? Because even if there is a parliament speaker, I mean, the theocratic structure of Iran
06:47is still in place. Yeah, I have no idea where the Trump camps think this is going to be a
06:56breakthrough.
06:57I think it comes from the same misconception they had on February 28th, when the Supreme Leader
07:03and dozens of officials were killed, and they thought, well, the regime will now collapse.
07:07Well, it quite obviously hasn't collapsed. The military haven't split from the politicians.
07:12The politicians are not splitting from each other, even after the killing of Ali Larajani,
07:17another senior figure last week. So I think here, this is sort of wishful thinking by the Trump folks,
07:23that they can get the regime to capitulate, and they keep throwing out these lines to the media.
07:28Because even if the regime doesn't capitulate, it buys Trump time. It buys Trump time in that the
07:33oil markets don't spike, the stock markets don't sink, and he isn't completely adrift with domestic
07:40opinion back in the States, which a majority of whom are against this war in the first place.
07:45You mentioned that Iran did threaten to retaliate if its power plants were struck. It also said that
07:51it would mine the entire Gulf, place sea mines on the entire Gulf, if anything happens to its
07:58islands off its coast. I'm talking about Karg Island. And there are reports that the U.S. President
08:03Donald Trump is mulling the idea of some sort of U.S. takeover of Karg Island to pressure the
08:09Iranians to loosen their grip over the Strait of Hormuz. But given that Iran is not sitting idly
08:17by, Iran is retaliating, will the U.S. President risk digging himself into a deeper hole if he goes
08:22and does something like that? Again, I need to emphasize the Trump administration are just
08:28throwing everything out there. So at the same time that they said, all right, we're moving amphibious
08:33assault ships with Marines in. Perhaps they could hit Karg Island. Perhaps they could hit the
08:37coastline. You have the Territory Secretary, Scott Besant, saying, oh, it's okay if Iranian ships go
08:43through the Strait or Chinese ships or Indian ships. And then the administration lifting sanctions
08:49on 140 million barrels of Iranian oil, thus giving the regime $14 billion. So the Trump administration is
08:58looking for an off-ramp. And on the one hand, they think the off-ramp could be, well, we'll strike
09:02them
09:02harder, for example, taking Karg Island. And then they think maybe our off-ramp is to accept an Iranian
09:09control of the Strait. This is not a coherent approach. They just are looking for something
09:14to stick at this point. But I think we get back to the point, which is it isn't going to
09:19be a regime
09:19surrender. They're going to need the regime to talk to them at some point. We'll see how this story
09:26plays out. It's very interesting indeed. Scott Lucas, thank you for joining us on the program today.
09:33Now, Iran continued to fire missiles into Israel this Tuesday. Several passed through Israeli missile
09:39defenses, with damage reported in the north as well as in Tel Aviv. According to first responders,
09:44six people were treated for injuries at multiple sites in the city, but no deaths were reported.
09:51Now, as Scott mentioned, Israel's defense minister says the IDF will control the remaining bridges and
09:57the security zone up to the Latani River in Lebanon. The statement comes after the far-right Israeli
10:02finance minister said the Latani River should be Israel's new border with Lebanon.
10:10The current military campaign in Lebanon must end with a fundamental change in the situation.
10:16Beyond the defeat of the terrorist organization Hezbollah, the Latani River must be our new border
10:22with the state of Lebanon, just like the yellow line in Gaza and like the barrier at Mount Hermon
10:28in Syria.
10:31We can now bring in our correspondent, Claire Pekalan, who's covering the story for us from Beirut. Claire,
10:37good afternoon. What have authorities been saying to Israel's escalated offensive in the south of the
10:43country?
10:47Well, since the very start of the war, there's been a fear here in Lebanon. It's really ramped up in
10:52the
10:52last few days with the Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, saying that Israel's targeting of key
10:58infrastructure, including bridges which link the north of Lebanon to the south, could be a prelude,
11:04feels like a prelude to a full-scale Israeli ground invasion into Lebanon. The Lebanese president
11:10has also said that targeting this infrastructure, vital infrastructure which Lebanese civilians use,
11:16is collective punishment for Lebanese civilians and a violation of international law and Lebanon's
11:22sovereignty. Humanitarian organizations have also been speaking out, saying that this is making it
11:27much harder for them to get supplies, get aid, get food, bottled water and medicines down to the
11:33south, because even though Israel has called the whole of the south of Lebanon a red zone and told
11:39residents that they need to leave, some have stayed. Many have left. There are over a million displaced
11:44Lebanese at the moment, but some have stayed in their communities, saying they want to stay and protect
11:49their homes, but also they don't really have anywhere else to go. So if they were to move up to
11:54the north of the
11:54country, they could find themselves living in the streets, living in tents, living in their cars, and they don't
11:59want that. All this is happening, of course, as Israel says that it is targeting vital infrastructure, yes, but vital
12:06also to
12:06Hezbollah. Israel wants to stop Hezbollah, prevent Hezbollah from funneling weapons and fighters down
12:12to the south. And Hezbollah is continuing to launch attacks into northern Israel, targeting areas in
12:18northern Israel with drones and with rockets, too. So this recent escalation that we've seen in the last few
12:23days is not showing any sign of slowing down for the moment.
12:27Claire, strikes also continue in Beirut's southern suburbs. What sort of damage are you seeing? And does it feel
12:35like Israel is any closer to dismantling Hezbollah, considering, you know, over in Gaza, they've
12:40gotten flattened the entire enclave, but Hamas is still in control?
12:46Well, the southern suburbs, the Hezbollah stronghold, are behind me. That's the area that you can see
12:52behind me there. And there were several Israeli strikes overnight there. I've not been looking around
12:57there this morning, but I was there the day before yesterday. You need Hezbollah permission in order to
13:02film in those southern suburbs. And we got that a couple of days ago. And what we saw was eye
13:08-opening
13:08in terms of the amount of destruction. The whole area hasn't been flattened by no means. But in the
13:13neighborhood that we were in, there were several buildings which had been flattened. And you can
13:17see mattresses and sofas and chairs, children's school books scattered across all over the place.
13:22There's a strong smell in the air. That neighborhood that we in has mostly been evacuated because Israel
13:29has also told residents in the southern suburbs, the Hezbollah stronghold, to evacuate. And from
13:34time to time, Israel will also issue extra evacuation warnings, saying that a particular
13:38neighborhood in the southern suburbs, people need to get out. But it doesn't always, Israel doesn't
13:43always order these extra evacuation warnings. And we did meet an elderly lady in the southern
13:49suburbs who was living on her own. She was still there. And she said, I don't have any way to
13:53evacuate. I don't know. I don't have anywhere to go. What am I going to do? So I'm staying
13:57here for now. What's interesting, though, is that there is quite a clear difference between
14:02the destruction you see in the southern suburbs with where I am in central Beirut. Now, we
14:06have had strikes. We saw strikes here in central Beirut last week. But the vibe, the vibe is
14:11different. The city is, well, there's a contrast between those southern suburbs and the centre of
14:16Beirut. And you can see that contrast as well in the city of Taya or Tia in the south of
14:21Lebanon, where a large part of the city is in the red zone. So the Israeli evacuation order
14:26zone. But some of the city, the old part of the city, is not. So residents there haven't
14:30evacuated. And life is almost going on as usual with shops and cafes open. So there really is
14:36a contrast. And I think it's worth underlining that for people. But there are strikes. And
14:41no one feels safe anywhere at the moment in Lebanon. But there are strikes where it's particularly
14:45areas which is particularly risky and areas which people feel slightly more safe in.
14:50Yeah, the Lebanese are so used to this sort of thing happening again and again. Thank
14:54you very much for that, Claire. Claire Pakenna, reporting there for us from Beirut.
Comments