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
00:00On set with me to discuss is our International Affairs Editor Ketavan Gorjastani.
00:04Good to see you, Ketavan.
00:05What do we know about the deployment at this stage, then?
00:08Well, there were two announcements in the statement from the Pentagon.
00:12First, the deployment of the USS Georgia, that guided missile submarine that you mentioned.
00:18And it has to be noted that it's pretty rare for the Pentagon, for the US,
00:23to actually publicly state submarine movements.
00:27So that in itself is pretty significant.
00:30There was also another announcement in that statement that Lloyd Austin had also ordered
00:36the Abraham Lincoln Strike Group to accelerate its redeployment to the Middle East.
00:43The Lincoln Strike Group had already been ordered to relocate from the Asia-Pacific
00:49region to the Middle East.
00:50But the Defense Secretary asked for them to do that even faster.
00:54So it gives an idea of the sense of urgency coming from the Pentagon.
01:00Now, it wasn't clear for either one of these groups how quickly they're going to get to
01:07the Middle East.
01:08But the message of urgency was definitely clear.
01:11And it was clear in the statement that said that the US was taking every possible step
01:16to defend Israel in light of escalating regional tension.
01:20This was all announced in a readout of a call between the US Defense Secretary Lloyd
01:26Austin and his Israeli counterpart, Yoav Galant.
01:30And it comes as there have been reports coming out of a new Israeli assessment about the
01:38imminence of a possible response by the Iranians.
01:42Something that was communicated, it seems, by Yoav Galant to Lloyd Austin.
01:47And Israel has been bracing for that Iranian retaliation for about two weeks now.
01:52How likely is it that Iran will respond?
01:55And if so, to what extent?
01:57Well, there's been a lot of back and forth when it comes to what that Iranian response
02:02could be.
02:02Up until this weekend, it seemed that the general idea was that maybe the Iranians,
02:07under possibly international pressure, had put aside this idea of a massive response,
02:14direct response by the Iranian.
02:16Instead, possibly counting on Hezbollah, for example, to do part of that retaliation.
02:23That may have changed according to these reports.
02:27And Israel is saying now that it believes that there will be a major response by Iran
02:34in the next few days, possibly even before a new round of talks between the mediators
02:40and Hamas and Israel.
02:42That said, there apparently hasn't been a decision made yet by the Iranians themselves,
02:47because there might be some disagreement within Iranian leadership as to what that response
02:53should exactly be.
02:55The difference between the president, Massoud Pazeshkian, who wants a calculated response,
03:02and partly the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps that wants a response that would be
03:08even bigger than what we saw back in April, the first time the Iranians actually sent
03:14that barrage of missile directly at Israel.
03:18They're also talking about possibly not just an attack coming from Iran, but a joint attack
03:23from Iran and Hezbollah together.
03:27You've seen airlines cancelling or delaying flights to Israel, from Israel, and in the
03:32region.
03:33That said, the Israeli army is also telling civilians that there are no changes to emergency
03:39guidelines for now, at least at this stage.
03:43But really, you see that they are bracing themselves for something big to possibly happen.
03:49The international community is still trying to do whatever they can to sort of stop that
03:55from actually happening, the brink.
03:59The UK, France, and Germany putting out a call to the Iranians to not do that and to
04:06not jeopardize peace and stability in the region.