00:00Where is the conflict likely to go next? Let's talk to the defense analyst Alex Alfira's shares.
00:06Alex, we should perhaps begin by taking stock.
00:09President Trump's saying a whole civilization will die tonight if Iran doesn't make a deal to end this conflict.
00:16What do you think that means?
00:18I think what it demonstrates is that the President of the United States is running out of options.
00:23I think he's boxed himself in.
00:25He's made a number of strategic errors during the course of this conflict.
00:28And most notably the several ultimatums that he's issued.
00:32He's not come good on any one of those ultimata.
00:35And that goes to show that actually these threats might not be credible at all.
00:39And by dint of that, his credibility is also dwindling.
00:42So these threats, it's hard to tell whether he will actually go through with this
00:46because there's been a lot of talk about him wanting to find a political off-ramp.
00:51It's just a final attempt, I think, for him to find a way out, really.
00:55Iran has responded, of course, Iran's Revolutionary Guards threatening to expand attacks beyond the region
01:03if the United States continues to target civilian infrastructure.
01:08What military capability does Iran still have, do we think?
01:13So prior to the war beginning, there were something like 3,000 intermediate-range ballistic missiles
01:19and short-range ballistic missiles that Iran had in its arsenal.
01:23I think that number has gone down quite significantly.
01:26So the ballistic missile threat is kind of no longer as acute as it was in the beginning of the
01:32war.
01:32What Iran does have and can leverage very effectively are its drone capabilities.
01:37It has thousands, maybe tens of thousands of these drones, and those drones are very hard to intercept,
01:42especially if they're deployed in a swarm formation.
01:45So we're going to see Iran probably ramp up its drone attacks in places like the Gulf on critical national
01:52infrastructure,
01:52which would have incredibly devastating implications going forward.
01:56And beyond the Gulf?
01:58The drones don't have long-range capabilities, but what Iran does have is a network of subversive and asymmetric capabilities
02:06that operate all across the world, including in Europe and in North America.
02:10So it could seek to activate some of those asymmetric capabilities.
02:13These are cells, essentially.
02:15But, of course, some of these ballistic missiles, whilst their ballistic missile capabilities have been very heavily degraded,
02:21we saw one get launched at Diego Garcia, which is in the Indian Ocean, which is some 4,000 kilometers
02:27away.
02:27Now, that range is the range that it would take to hit targets in Europe, for example.
02:32Now, of course, whether Iran could credibly actually strike targets in Europe is anybody's guess,
02:38but it certainly signaled the ability to do so, and that should be considered as a genuine risk and a
02:43genuine threat.
02:44Let's just pick up on something our correspondent in Iran was talking about.
02:49I wonder to what extent do the attacks on civilian infrastructure amount to war crimes?
02:55Well, the Geneva Convention is very clear on this, so is the Rome Statute.
03:00This tantamount to collective punishment, essentially.
03:03The rules of engagement in war are quite clear.
03:06You have to attack counter-force targets, so these are military installations or even command and control and political targets.
03:13Those are all within the rules of engagement.
03:15But, of course, this administration of the United States doesn't really care about rules,
03:19doesn't really care about international law, and so I think for them it's really immaterial.
03:24They're trying to exert maximum punishment on the Iranian regime,
03:29and in doing so they're willing, actually, to also exert maximum punishment on the Iranian people.
03:34and then the pion and a abolish
03:35We'll do that, so through the battle,
Comments