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00:00Catherine Norris-Trent reporting live there from Tel Aviv.
00:04We're going to stay in Tel Aviv and cross over, speak with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak.
00:13Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.
00:18Thank you for having me.
00:20Before I ask you about the day's news, you were, when you first became Prime Minister in 1999,
00:26did you have a plan like the one that was unleashed on Friday, ready to go?
00:36Oh, at that stage 25 years ago, the nuclear program of Iran was so embryonic.
00:44They worked on how to make the natural ore of uranium, which contains just 0.7% of the isotope 235,
00:53which is needed for bomb, and how to make it 3.5, kind of what they call yellow cake.
01:00It was a too primitive and too legal operation that we did not consider.
01:07But later on, some seven years ago, I was Minister of Defense,
01:10and then under Netanyahu in 2010, 2011, and 2012,
01:16we considered very seriously to make such an attack.
01:19At the time, we believed that we can delay the Iranian nuclear program,
01:23but two and a half to three years, it was enough to encourage us to do it.
01:29But we failed to convince even our inner cabinet that it is a compelling imperative.
01:35Neither myself, Netanyahu, and Minister Lieberman,
01:39we could not convince even the inner cabinet, so we have to give it up at that time.
01:44Now it became much more clear because they are de facto what's called threshold nuclear power.
01:51Iran means that they have enough material, almost in a weapon grade,
01:59and they cannot be easily blocked from having their first crude device to explode somewhere in the desert
02:07or to build the first nuclear weapons.
02:09So the aim of this operation, is it to take out Iran's nuclear program,
02:16and if so, will that be successful, or is it regime change?
02:21It is a formal, but probably the genuine intention is to remove and destroy
02:28the Iranian nuclear military program once and for all.
02:33The problem is that because Iran is so close to a nuclear weapon, it's not easy to do it.
02:41To the best of my judgment, Israel cannot delay the capacity to detonate the first crude device
02:47by more than several weeks, and probably even America cannot delay them by more than a few months.
02:53So that makes the only viable approach or path towards putting an end to any pretension of Iran to turn military nuclear,
03:06it ends up that it's only if you topple the regime.
03:09So no one talks about it explicitly, but that might be the idea beyond the attempt to bring America in,
03:17because to topple the regime probably it's an objective that fits better for a joint operation of Israel and America rather than Israel alone.
03:28And do you see that feasibly happening?
03:30We heard the U.S. president earlier saying he's still open to the idea of talks.
03:35He claims that the Iranians even suggested they were ready to come to the White House.
03:40We saw a plane, by the way, land in Oman in the last hours, an Iranian presidential plane.
03:45The statements of President Trump are not easy to follow.
03:52They are not always very consistent, but that's kind of negotiating tactics.
03:58I personally believe that it's feasible.
04:00Technically, it's feasible.
04:01If American president would have decided that the time had come to topple down this regime,
04:07he probably could achieve it.
04:08But it's my impression that President Trump doesn't want to end up there.
04:14He probably might consider a one-time shot to show support for Israel to attack this installation in Fordu,
04:22which needed heavy American munitions that Israel does not have in order to penetrate it.
04:29Probably he will consider a one-time shot to probably to weaken Iran even more.
04:36I don't believe that he will go into a full-scale war.
04:39So, well, remember, I believe, that America did not win any war in the last 75 years.
04:44They didn't win Korea.
04:46They didn't win Vietnam.
04:47They didn't win Iraq.
04:48They didn't win Afghanistan.
04:50So, to think that they are going to defeat Iran is not a kind of trivial kind of thought.
04:59Iran is almost 100 million people and spread over an area which is about half of Europe.
05:06It's a big country with a long tradition, strong Iranian identity.
05:13They are not going to evaporate very easily.
05:16So, hang on a sec.
05:17You've just told us that, first off, that you can delay by just a couple of months if you
05:24take out as much as you can of the military installations, if that, Iran's nuclear program,
05:30that attempting regime change, it backfires.
05:35So, are you suggesting that this is not a good idea?
05:41No, no.
05:42For Israel, it was almost a compelling imperative to enter to such a war because, according to
05:50the cabinet, they have an intelligence report which showed to them that Iran is rushing toward
05:57weaponization, what's called it, building a weapon.
06:00And that's the last opportunity to try to block it, even if the results are uncertain, it
06:07might be justified in Israeli point of view.
06:10And, in fact, the impact of the operation the last five days is extremely impressive.
06:18The farsighted planning, very high-quality planning and resolute execution, everything that was
06:27missing from the picture in October 7th of 2023.
06:32And it resumed the self-confidence of the public in its defense forces and its leadership.
06:38It resumed the deterrence of Israel in the region.
06:43It strengthened our positioning within the area.
06:46And the Iranians are suffering major blows in many aspects.
06:50So, from Israeli, it's not a narrow, so to speak, but in a way, a existential point of view, it's justifiable.
06:58But, having said that, there are four scenarios where it can develop right now.
07:03Let me count them.
07:04Number one is America joins hands with Israel and put an objective on toppling down the regime.
07:09I already mentioned, it's not highly probable, except for a one-time attack on some installation.
07:19Number two is that a weakened, slightly humiliated and more vulnerable, Iran, will end up agreeing to a negotiation
07:27with much softer positions that might lead, probably, to an agreement which is, in certain aspects, better than the JCPOA,
07:38which Trump left in 2018, which, yeah, when he left it, he basically enabled Iran to close the gap.
07:48At that time, in 2018, where he was encouraged by our government to do it,
07:54Iranians were about 18 months afar from turning into what I call threshold nuclear power.
08:02But within those last seven years, they closed the gap.
08:05They are now probably 18 days, probably minus 18 days.
08:09They are already there.
08:10But that's the second option, more probable and, in a way, better for the world.
08:16Number three, the possibility of having a long attrition war between Israel and Iran.
08:23America might help us with munitions and some help in defense and so on, but will not be intervening.
08:29That's bad for Israel.
08:31It's bad for the Iranians, I believe, as well.
08:33It's not a good prospect, having a long, undecided war of attrition.
08:38And the worst one is the possibility that the whole project will not delay the Iranians reaching a nuclear capability,
08:48but might accelerate it, because Iran might argue that Israel, which is perceived by the world to be a nuclear power,
08:55backed by America, which is clearly a nuclear superpower,
09:00the Iranians will argue they attacked us and left us with no choice but to reach nuclear power for ourselves.
09:08And because, as I mentioned, they have the fissile material,
09:12and as Grossi, the head of the IAEA in Vienna, said just a few days ago,
09:18the next generation of installations are already being built 800 meters underneath the ground,
09:24beyond the reach of any kind of weapon.
09:26And probably said that already the most sensitive elements of the Iranian nuclear program are probably already hidden in such sites.
09:39So, it's still a possibility.
09:43I hope it will not materialize, but there is certain risk that the whole story will accelerate Iran's rush toward nuclear weapons.
09:53Yeah, and there's another scenario, which we haven't mentioned, which is, and as you say,
09:57Iran feeling humiliated from this surprise attack from last Friday,
10:03that perhaps a degraded Iran reaches for chemical or biological weapons, hits back any way it can.
10:12Yeah, probably.
10:15I don't think that the rush toward a nuclear weapon means that they will use it.
10:21I think that the same way that North Korea never sold seriously about dropping a bomb on South Korea and Japan or Americans in Guam,
10:28it's basically in order to protect the survivability and power of the Kim dynasty.
10:36They understand that if they attack with a nuclear weapon, any neighbor or the Americans,
10:44they will be brought back to the Stone Age.
10:47So, they are not that stupid.
10:50The same applies to the Iranians.
10:51They are highly sophisticated people.
10:53I don't think that they will ever dare to think of dropping a bomb on Israel.
10:56It's more for protection.
10:57Mr. Prime Minister, I just want to play you a short clip of France's president coming back just before he left the G7 summit in Western Canada.
11:09And on this whole issue of regime change, here's what Emmanuel Macron had to say.
11:16We don't want Iran to acquire nuclear weapons or ballistic capabilities.
11:20But I think the biggest mistake we can make today is to use military means to bring about regime change in Iran,
11:25because that would mean chaos.
11:30All right, we don't speak French, so we translate it for you.
11:33Ehud Barak, Emmanuel Macron reminding us that regime change from the outside,
11:40it's not just the Americans, it's anybody.
11:42It doesn't work.
11:43You know, you can find along the way in history, different examples which point to different directions.
11:55We cannot predict it.
11:56The question is whether EU can afford sitting idle and trying,
12:03when it's clear that they are trying to become military nuclear to get, to handle, to bet on the possibility that somehow they disappear,
12:14evaporate at certain points, probably will happen, but you cannot build on it.
12:17Without doing anything, it's too dangerous on its own.
12:21I can tell you that some changes of regime, the one that was imposed upon Nazi Germany,
12:30the one that was imposed upon Japan, worked very well.
12:34Some other examples are there.
12:36Even some of them in Iran, the CIA and the MH6 replaced Musadak in the 50s,
12:44you are probably too young to remember it, by the shah, Parulavi.
12:49And for some 30 years or 40 years, he was in power,
12:54and it was a much better Iran than we have right now.
12:58So I cannot predict it.
13:01Time will tell.
13:03Now we are already in war.
13:04It's not an abstract question.
13:07When you are at war, we have to make sure we win it or end it in a proper way.
13:13What is certain is that this has changed, certainly, the conversation.
13:17This was supposed to be the week where the French president was hoping to talk about a two-state solution
13:25at a UN conference in New York.
13:27Instead, the latest massacre of civilians in Gaza has gone largely unnoticed.
13:33You gave an interview to Israel's Channel 13 a couple of days ago where you were calling out the fact that
13:42the hostages in Gaza, the Israeli hostages, have been forgotten.
13:46Does Gaza just get forgotten now?
13:48No, I hope not.
13:54I think that that's an opportunity here.
13:56We are now celebrating the success of the first week, so to speak.
14:01You cannot exactly predict what will be the situation in a month or three months from now.
14:08So that's a real opportunity to put an end to the war in Gaza, to relieve all the hostages, bring them home.
14:18And one big war against Iran is enough for the Israelis.
14:22Something that I mentioned is that it raised certain suspicion about the quality of judgment of our government,
14:28because Netanyahu, probably a week ago, said in his own voice that the operation was planned already to be executed in April.
14:38And for some reason, it did not detail, it was postponed to June.
14:43So to speak, the Israeli government, in its full senses, sat down in the end of March or beginning of April,
14:51planning an operation, a full-scale war against Iran during the month of April,
14:58and didn't think of the need to, first of all, to put end to the old war in Gaza
15:05and relieve some five divisions of our forces and to bring home the hostages
15:11before, the hostages become more complex.
15:13That shows that there was a certain element of irresponsibility in the attitude toward the hostages.
15:21And it reminds the majority of the public that Netanyahu was caught at least two or three times
15:28along the last 20 months, where he practically torpedoed opportunities to bring back the hostages,
15:36not because he doesn't want to feed them home, I'm sure.
15:39He genuinely wants to feed them back home.
15:42But when it clashes with the survivability of his government or the peace of his coalition,
15:48he yields to the temptation to not to risk his survivability in power,
15:53even at the price of abandoning the hostages.
15:57That's extremely painful and will need kind of a day of accountability.
16:03So when the Israeli prime minister thinks back all the way to March, as you say, about this
16:09operation in Iran, how much of that is a personal calculus to ensure his re-election?
16:15I do not buy it.
16:19You know, I know from experience you cannot differentiate the gestalt of a political leader, make it the
16:27political leader, the statesman, the one who looks at history, the private individual with his inner weaknesses
16:37or private interests.
16:39I cannot fully penetrate the soul or the subconscious of Netanyahu.
16:44But I assume that here, this case, it's something serious and genuine.
16:50It's not any kind of...
16:52It was not born out of this idea how to survive his government.
16:59I hope and believe that that's the case.
17:03Of course, I cannot prove it.
17:05Ehud Barak, former prime minister of Israel.
17:07So many thanks for speaking with us here on France 24.
17:12Thank you for having me.