00:00Well, Samuel Romani is a tutor of politics and international relations at the University of Oxford.
00:06Samuel, great to see you here.
00:08So, this is not the first time that Israel has attacked the critical infrastructure of Iran.
00:13It's happened in April and October back in 2024.
00:17So, what does it say about Iran's capability of protecting its critical infrastructure?
00:22Well, I mean, I think it shows that Iran's critical infrastructure capabilities are really not able to be protected by conventional air defenses.
00:31The Iranians initially thought that they had strong enough domestic air defenses in late 2024 that they didn't even need the Russian S-400s immediately.
00:39And now, they'll be trying to procure whatever they can get.
00:43Obviously, the Fort Al facility and the Natanz facility are heavily fortified, and many of Iran's facilities are under the ground.
00:49But from a pure air defense perspective, this is a major failure on Iran's part.
00:54So, what does Israel hope to achieve this time?
00:56Is this about containment or shaping regional dynamics ahead of a broader war?
01:03Well, the Israelis are claiming maximalist ambitions here, very similar to what they framed in Gaza, right, where they want to completely destroy Hamas, right, and eradicate it.
01:12So, here they're talking about eradicating Iran's nuclear potential.
01:15But I don't think that that's necessarily feasible because of the number of strikes that it would take.
01:20Already, we're hearing reports of explosions outside Fort Al, which is a major max step.
01:24But Natanz and Fort Al were only two of the key nuclear enrichment facilities.
01:29And how do you think regional actors like Hezbollah and the Houthis would react to this attack?
01:34And we have just heard that not long ago that missiles were fired from Yemen to Israel.
01:40Well, the Houthis have been trying to bolster their standing within the axis of resistance since October 7th because Hamas and Hezbollah got severely weakened by Israel.
01:49The Israelis and the Americans did strike a lot of the Houthis.
01:52But the Houthis have been much more resilient in terms of protecting their core leadership as well as their long-range drone and missile threats.
01:59So, arguably, the Houthis have become the strongest and most potent part of the axis of resistance.
02:05Hezbollah was probably having that title before October 7th.
02:08So, the Houthis want to capitalize on that leadership role by striking.
02:11But I don't think that any of the others will really follow suit.
02:14It was pretty clear from Muqtada al-Sadr and also from what I've been seeing from Iraqi Shiite groups that are closer to Iran that we hate what Israel has done,
02:23but we won't retaliate against Israel because this isn't a fight that we can win.
02:27And that's something that I think that will cause Hezbollah in Lebanon to have restraint maybe beyond just cross-border clashes that we've seen going on for many years.
02:35And what's the role of the United States?
02:38Trump urged Iran to make a deal before it is too late.
02:42Well, the United States obviously would have tacitly approved of this attack from the Israelis.
02:49And I think that this is a change in perspective from Trump because Trump dismissed Mike Walz and Morgan Ortega,
02:55the National Security Advisor and Witkoff's deputy, allegedly because they were too hawkish on Iran.
03:00They were too willing to go to war with Iran.
03:02And now I think Trump is using his classic strategy of escalating to de-escalate, using military force this time through a surrogate like Israel instead of threats,
03:11in the hopes that Iran comes to the table and abandons its uranium enrichment ambitions.
03:17However, I think that that underestimates the degree to which this has fomented anti-Westernism at home,
03:23and some of the same voices that inside Iran who opposed the JCPOA last time in 2015 are also going to impose re-engagement with the West.
03:31So I think that the prospects of a new diplomatic breakthrough on the Iran file are very slim,
03:36as long as Israel and Iran continue having these military clashes.
03:40Well, thank you very much for your insights.
03:42And that is Samuel Roubani from University of Oxford.
