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00:00 Let's discuss the latest now and joining us is director in the Middle East and North Africa program at the think tank the European Council on
00:06 Foreign Relations, that's Julian Barnes-Dacey and our own international affairs commentator Doug Herbert is with me here in the studio as well
00:13 Julian I'd like to start with you. It's early days
00:16 It does appear though that there may not be now an immediate response
00:21 Anyway to this attack from Israel partly after those warnings
00:25 Presumably from Joe Biden that the US would not take part all that international pressure as well to try to decrease tensions
00:31 Absolutely, yes, I think kind of the immediate sense that seems to be that there won't be a response in the coming hours or days
00:40 I think there was some discussion in the Israeli war cabinet about a response as the attacks were actually happening
00:46 But that were there was pushback within the cabinet given the kind of multiple fronts where Israel is now engaged
00:52 And as you say there is a lot of international pressure on Israel right now not to retaliate as
00:57 President Biden put it to take the wind or effectively these failed
01:01 Iranian strikes and to not get drawn into a wider cycle of escalation that would really risk a more dangerous
01:07 Development because Iran would see direct strikes on the country in a far more
01:12 Existential way than it did for instance see Israeli strikes on its embassy in Syria
01:16 We're just hearing actually from Iran this coming out of Tehran
01:20 Urging Western nations to appreciate its restraints as the Iranians are putting it towards Israel
01:27 I mean that does prove what we've been talking about here on the program over the last hour or so in fact that Iran did deliberately
01:33 Not target main cities and and to a certain extent tried to well to a large extent try to avoid any mass casualties at least
01:42 I
01:43 Mean, I think the bottom line here is that Iran is desperate not to get sucked into a direct war with the with it with
01:49 Israel in the US
01:50 Since October 7th, they've made notable
01:53 Efforts in that direction even if their proxies have continued to attack Israel on this attack
01:59 It was very well telegraphed in advance. They communicated what they were going to do
02:03 To multiple stakeholders it seems the attacks didn't succeed in any way
02:08 and I think that's in large part because of the fact that they were
02:10 Quite open and transparent and what they were about to do plus, of course, they didn't have the capacity the capability to get past
02:17 Israeli defense systems and they probably knew that that would be the case from the outset
02:20 So the Iranians are working hard in a sense to project the sense that actually they are
02:25 Responding that they're not weak that they can maintain their deterrence
02:28 Capabilities, but at the same time they're treading carefully to not get sucked into a conflict which would hit them hard and which is a would
02:36 See it would distract attention away from the Gaza conflict, which they think is weakening Israel in and of itself