Breaking news and analysis on day 916 of the Gaza genocide | The Electronic Intifada

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Hello and welcome back to the electronic intifada live stream for Thursday, April 9th. Thank you for tuning in. I'm Nora Barrows Freiedman with my colleagues Ali Abonima, John Elmer, Asa Win Stanley, and Tamara Nasar. It's day 916 of Israel's genocide in Gaza.

Coming up, we'll discuss some of the latest political developments of the US-Israeli war on Iran after the White House initially conceded to Iran's 10-point agenda as a basis for negotiations and then backtracked within hours. While Israel massacred hundreds in Lebanon, we speak with filmmaker Ahmed Husam, founder of the media project Propaganda and Co., who recently traveled across Iran during the war. Later on in the program, John will cover week six of the US-Israeli war against Iran and the retaliation by the axis of resistance across the region leading up to the ceasefire. He'll also break down Hezbollah's combat footage from the defense of South Lebanon.

But first, let's take a look at the news. Here's a brief summary of some of the latest developments this week in Palestine and Lebanon.

As Israel carried out massive strikes on Lebanon Wednesday, killing nearly 300 people in a massive bombing spree in Beirut and the South, Israeli drones continued to target and attack Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Just hours ago, a third grader, Retage Abdul Rahul Frihan, was shot and killed by Israeli gunfire inside her classroom in northern Gaza. According to the Palestinian Education Ministry and local news sources, Retage was sitting at her desk at Abu Oeda bin Aljarak School when she was shot in front of her classmates, causing severe psychological trauma among the students. The ministry described the killing as a brutal and horrific crime.

On Wednesday, Israel killed journalist Muhammad Washa while he was driving in his car west of Gaza City, setting the entire vehicle ablaze. Washa was a reporter with Al Jazeera. Journalist and electronic intifada contributor Muhammad Assad filmed the wreckage of Washa's vehicle right after the Israeli attack as Palestinian police and bystanders pulled the burning car away from a nearby structure. Reporter Nahed Hijaj filmed the scenes outside of Alshifa hospital as bystanders who were injured in the strike that killed Muhammad Washa were rushed to the emergency department. The Gaza government media office said that with Washa's assassination, 262 journalists have now been killed by Israel since October 2023.

Two other Palestinians were killed in a separate drone strike in eastern Gaza City on Wednesday. According to the WAFA news agency, on April 6th, Israel-backed armed gangs instigated a massacre by the Israeli military on a school sheltering displaced families in the Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza. According to local sources, the gangs raided the school and instigated clashes. Israeli warplanes then bombed the area, killing at least 10 Palestinians and wounding dozens more. The Anadolu news agency said that another person was killed and several others were wounded in a separate attack on the same day in the town of Al-Qarara east of Khan Younis. Witnesses told Anadolu that Israeli forces opened fire on Palestinian vehicles in an area outside the so-called yellow line. Reporter Mahmood Aliwa captured video of a father in agony after his son was killed in an Israeli attack in the Sheikh Radwan neighborhood of Gaza City. Also on Monday, a child was also injured in the strike.

A Palestinian man was killed and others were injured on Sunday, April 5th, in an Israeli air strike on a group of people in Gaza City. Another four Palestinians were killed when Israel bombed a home in the Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza. Also on Sunday, Israeli forces shot dead a young man with disabilities in Khan Younis.

The World Health Organization announced that it was suspending its facilitation of patient evacuations from the Rafah crossing to Egypt this week after one of its contracted employees was killed in an Israeli attack on their United Nations vehicle. Med Alan, the 54-year-old driver, was pronounced dead following the attack. According to the Arabs 48 news outlet, another WHO staff member was wounded. The Rafah crossing, which had been closed for nearly two years by Israel, then partially reopened, then closed again for weeks at the onset of the attacks on Iran, has been the only way for Palestinians in Gaza to seek medical treatment abroad or to be reunited with their family members back in Gaza.

Medical experts are warning of a renewed shortage of baby formula as Israel's draconian blockade remains in place. Ahmed Al Far, the director of the maternity and pediatric departments at Nasser Medical Complex, told the New Arab that infant formula, including those with specialized nutritional supplements, are running dangerously low. He said that, quote, "The problem isn't just quantity. The types available change constantly. One type lasts no more than two weeks before it runs out and is replaced by another, which negatively affects children's health. Many formula stocks are close to their expiration dates, further jeopardizing child health," he added. The cries of infants and the anxiety of parents underscore the urgency of the situation, the New Arab stated. Al Far warned that without immediate intervention, the shortage could escalate into a widespread health catastrophe, increasing malnutrition and disease among the most vulnerable members of society. Quote, "Children require a consistent and continuous supply of formula to avoid serious health risks. Any delay will exacerbate malnutrition and endanger lives. Immediate action is needed to secure infant formula before this crisis turns into an uncontrollable tragedy," Al Far said.

Turning to the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers killed a youth and attacked and kidnapped Palestinian children in a series of rampages this week as the Palestinian Foreign Ministry called for urgent international sanctions on Israeli settlers and the settlement colony project. The ministry said the burning of homes and vehicles constituted organized and repeated crimes directed by the occupation state aimed at imposing a coercive environment to drive Palestinians from their land through organized terror. The ministry called for urgent international action beyond condemnation and included clear and binding sanctions on the settlement system and the designation of occupier militias on international terrorism lists.

The Anadolu news agency reported on Wednesday night, Israeli settlers and soldiers attacked and killed a youth, Allah Khaled Zbe, during a violent rampage into the village of Tayasir, east of Tubas in the northern West Bank. The Arabs 48 news site reported that settlers attacked the village as Israeli army forces stormed the area and shot, killing him instantly and withholding his body. The Palestine Red Crescent Society said that soldiers detained the ambulance crew and confiscated cell phones and IDs near Tayasir for more than two hours. According to the Israeli army, a settler who participated in the attack was hit in the head by a stone thrown by Palestinian youths who were defending their village. The Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation said that the settler who killed the youth was a member of the army and that he was on leave but was present there, indicating the involvement of the Israeli army and its provision of protection for settler attacks launched against the residents.

Earlier in the day, armed settlers assaulted two Palestinian children, brothers aged 11 and 13, in Masafer Yatta, south of Al-Khalil, and attempted to steal their livestock. The local WAFA news agency reported that Israeli settlers kidnapped a 14-year-old boy in Qabalan and two youths in the nearby village of Einabus, south of Nablus. Also on Wednesday, the head of the Qabalan village council said that a group of settlers stormed an area near the village and took the 14-year-old child to the Itamar settlement colony in Abu Dis. Local witnesses said that settlers, including a guard from the Yitzhar settlement, kidnapped two youths and took them to an area where they assaulted, beat them, and stripped them of their clothes before releasing them.

On Monday, April 6th, Israeli settlers accompanied by the Israeli army attacked the town of Silwad and the village of Yabud east of Ramla. The mayor of Silwad, Rahed Hamed, told the WAFA news agency that the settlers assaulted a man, his pregnant wife, and their son. In Yabud, settlers stole 15 sheep while Israeli soldiers fired tear gas canisters at the Palestinians in the village. Also on April 6th, settlers assaulted and injured an elderly Palestinian man in the northeastern Jerusalem village of Al-Maseera. According to the Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian agency, settlers have carried out nearly 500 attacks during the month of March, including direct gunfire, arson, destruction of property, and attempts to establish settlement outposts. Those attacks have resulted in the deaths of at least nine Palestinians and extensive damage to homes, land, and crops.

A 68-year-old woman, Sabria Shamazneh, died after being brutally assaulted by Israeli soldiers when they raided her home in the village of Jaba near Qalqilya on Tuesday morning. Her husband, Wed, told reporters that the Israelis stormed the house and forced all the residents into a corner of the room while they searched the bedrooms. At one point, Middle East Eye reported, quote, "Sabria attempted to move and called out to her son, Hassan, fearing he had been arrested." The soldiers responded by shoving her violently with their rifles, knocking her to the ground and shouting at her to be quiet. Her head struck the wall, causing her to lose consciousness. Her husband panicked, shouting and pleading with the soldiers to help, but they refused. After the soldiers left, Sabria's husband and son rushed her to a nearby hospital. A heavy presence of Israeli military vehicles had prevented an ambulance from reaching the scene, Middle East Eye noted. At the hospital, Sabria was pronounced dead from the injuries she sustained during the raid, leaving her family in deep shock.

After 35 years of documenting and reporting Israel's crimes against children in Palestine, providing legal services to children in urgent need, and following years of systematic attacks by the Israeli government intended to undermine and criminalize their work, Defense for Children International Palestine announced that it was being forced to cease operations. This week, the children's rights group said that, quote, "For decades, DCIP has worked relentlessly to protect Palestinian children against all odds. Now, we look to others to take up the charge and fight for the future that Palestinian children deserve." One of the group's last reports raised the alarm over the continuing imprisonment of more than 350 children, 51% of whom are being held in administrative detention, being jailed without charge or trial. This figure, Defense for Children International Palestine says, is both the highest number and the highest proportion on record since DCIP began monitoring these numbers in 2008. Quote, "These numbers come at a time when Palestinian children consistently report appalling and debilitating conditions within Israeli detention facilities, including being withheld from adequate food and water, being subjected to beatings and verbal harassment, lacking access to medical care, and being subjected to torture, including the use of solitary confinement." Lawyers representing Palestinian detainees continue to face increasing barriers to legal representation, including the cancellation of scheduled visits, severe limitations on visiting hours, prolonged delays extending for months, and bans on bringing in even basic case materials. Lawyers are also forbidden from passing on simple messages from families, and children who wish to pass along messages to their families through a lawyer have been beaten.

DCIP's report says attacks on Palestinian human rights organizations by both the Israelis and the US government have escalated in recent years. My colleagues Ali Abonima and Maren Clare Murphy reported in 2021 on the Israeli government's targeting of six prominent groups, including Defense for Children International Palestine, following their cooperation with the International Criminal Court in its war crimes probe in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Quote, "Israel has long sought to defame and sabotage the work of Palestinian human rights groups seeking an end to Israeli impunity, while senior Israeli figures and lobby organizations baselessly accuse these groups of weaponizing the ICC against the US and Israel," my colleagues wrote.

Writer Tekki Shawa, the US policy fellow at the Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, noted that in February 2021, Defense for Children International Palestine reported that Israeli interrogators had raped a 15-year-old Palestinian boy while he was detained in Israel's Al-Maskubiya prison in East Jerusalem. DCIP shared the allegation with the US State Department and their officials, who reportedly raised it with Israeli authorities. However, rather than investigate the abuse, Israeli forces raided and ransacked DCIP's Ramla offices and later designated the organization, along with five other Palestinian human rights groups, as terrorist organizations. Last year, Shawa adds, "The Trump administration designated the Palestinian organizations under counterterrorism frameworks before advancing even further, sanctioning these leading human rights groups for engaging with the International Criminal Court." "These measures move beyond targeting individual actors to undermining the very infrastructure of international accountability," he said.

Meanwhile, just hours after the US appeared to concede to Iran's ceasefire conditions, which would include Israel stopping its attacks on Lebanon, Israel launched more than 100 air strikes on Beirut and the surrounding areas on Wednesday, killing nearly 300 people and wounding more than a thousand. Our contributor Rokaya Chamsidine filed this report for the electronic intifada on Wednesday evening.

Shamsidine: I'm reporting for the electronic intifada from Lebanon, where Israel has launched one of the most intense and geographically widespread waves of air strikes on Lebanon in recent memory, hitting Beirut, southern Lebanon, and the Beqaa Valley in a coordinated escalation that began before dawn. In Beirut, multiple strikes were reported across the southern outskirts of the capital, with explosions tearing through densely populated neighborhoods like Bourj el-Barajneh and Haret Hreik, among many others. Residential buildings were damaged or destroyed. Fires broke out, and civilians were forced to flee into the streets as the bombardment intensified. The scale of the strikes in and around the capital marks a significant escalation compared to recent days across southern Lebanon. The attacks have been described by local sources as nearly non-stop. Dozens of towns and villages like Khiyam, Adloun, and others have been hit in repeated waves, with air strikes targeting a wide range of locations. Entire residential blocks have been reduced to rubble in some areas, while roads and essential infrastructure have also been struck, complicating rescue efforts and access for emergency services. In the Beqaa Valley, Israeli warplanes expanded the scope of the campaign deeper into Lebanon, conducting massacres, including an air strike that targeted a funeral procession for a martyr killed during a previous Israeli attack. Casualty figures are still emerging, but early estimates point to a growing toll. Lebanon's Ministry of Health has confirmed multiple deaths, including at least eight people killed in a pre-dawn strike on a cafe in Sidon, with dozens more wounded. And across Beirut, the casualty toll is estimated to be in the hundreds. Officials caution that the number of casualties is expected to rise as rescue teams continue to search through debris in heavily affected areas. The scale, intensity, and the reach of these Israeli air strikes have raised serious concerns about further escalation, with attacks hitting urban centers as well as rural neighborhoods. The humanitarian situation is rapidly worsening as hospitals struggle to cope. As the situation continues to unfold, the full extent of the damage and loss caused by these Israeli attacks is still coming into view, with many areas yet to be fully assessed.

>> That was Rokaya Chamsidine reporting for the electronic intifada from Lebanon on Wednesday. Israel killed two journalists during Israel's Wednesday attacks on Lebanon. Khadija Dak of Sawt Al-Fajr Radio was killed in her home in Tyre. Dak had worked at the station for decades and had been on air for 37 years. Suzanne Khalil, a reporter for Al-Manar, was also killed in Israeli attacks on Wednesday.

We've published many features in the last week, but we wanted to highlight "Restoring Dignity to Gaza's Displaced" by Khaled al-Kashali, writing from Gaza. The Al-Hurriya 1 camp in Deir al-Balah, central Gaza, is located on a piece of sandy land with a few palm trees opposite the Al-Nahil gas station. Before the genocide, this camp was just a few empty lots. The residents named the camp Al-Hurriya, Arabic for freedom, when they were first displaced here in October 2023. And then about 200 meters away is Al-Hurriya 2. The 150 or so tents in this camp, unlike official tents provided by aid organizations, appear improvised. They are tied together with ropes and covered by numerous layers of plastic sheeting to cover tears caused by the weather. Most of the approximately 300 to 450 people who live in this camp are women. And just like most displaced Palestinians in Gaza, they face a litany of problems, not least the lack of adequate food, medicines, and blankets.

Khalaf Qasam Khalaf, 60, a retired public service worker whose home is near the camp, was one of the individuals who stepped in early on to try to find solutions for those who had evacuated to Deir al-Balah to escape Israeli violence. "When people evacuated to Deir al-Balah, a committee was organized," Khalaf said. "I took permission from the people who owned two empty lands near Al-Nahil Street and then reached the people and helped them set up their tents." Khalaf, who is a father of seven, helped form a camp committee with those newly displaced in order to organize the distribution of aid and other basic tasks. "We tried to provide as much help as we could to the displaced people, but mostly our work was in connecting them with aid organizations," Khalaf said. The committee would collect information from the families displaced in the camp, like their full names, ID numbers, and the number of family members, and they would coordinate with aid organizations to provide food and supplies. "Every time we distributed aid in the camp, the number of aid packages was not enough," Khalaf said. Yet without the assistance of the committee, the camp residents were experiencing such hardship that they would not have been able to advocate for themselves in obtaining aid.

As of March 2026, an estimated 700,000 Palestinians are displaced in Gaza, many of them living under conditions of precarity and dehumanization, according to the UN Human Rights Office. For those living in tent camps or other shelters such as schools throughout Gaza, informal camp committees have become a way to organize needs and coordinate with humanitarian organizations to receive aid. Such organization among camp residents is crucial as aid agencies are thinly stretched and operate throughout the strip with limited resources. At Al-Hurriya 1, the residents faced a difficult time when winter came and their camp flooded. Young people in the camp organized and built channels to drain the water. According to Khalaf, if a tent collapsed, they would help set it up again, and they would even help us in distributing food. He said they would carry sand from the beach back to the camp to help absorb all the water on the ground. Women in the camp also organized to look after children and to provide what education they could, given the widespread Israeli destruction of schools. Still, the problems in the camp are never-ending, and malnutrition is among the main concerns.

Those are excerpts from "Restoring Dignity to Gaza's Displaced" by Khaled al-Kashali, writing from Gaza on electronicintifada.net. And now, as we always do, we wanted to highlight people expressing joy, determination, and reclamation across Palestine and around the world. In Bethlehem, Christian Palestinians celebrated Palm Sunday on April 5th. This video was from the social media user PalCatholic.

And that's it for the news roundup. As always, go to electronicintifada.net for much more, especially to read our new features by our brave writers in Gaza. You're watching the electronic intifada live stream. I'm Nora Barrows Freiedman here with my colleague Ali Abonima.

Ali: Hi, Ali.

Nora: Hi, Ali. How are you?

Ali: I'm okay. It's been a week.

Nora: It really has. And just day 916 of unspeakable horrors and depravity that is just unfathomable.

Ali: And what is there to say? Um, there's always a lot to say, but...

Nora: There's a lot to say. A lot. We've got a lot to talk about in this, uh, show, so I suggest we move right ahead. We're going to talk about Iran.

Ali: Yeah, we're going to talk about...

Nora: What's going on with the ceasefire? Is there even a ceasefire? Of course, we're going to have John, and we're going to have, uh, yeah, lots to talk about. So...

Ali: Yep.

Nora: Yeah, let's, uh, let's do it.

Ali: Yeah, we have a great guest who hasn't been on the live stream yet, but we're very, very excited to have him.

Nora: Yeah, but I've been on his show, and I know that many, many of you really love his work, and so let's get to it. So, um, you're watching and listening to the electronic intifada live stream. I'm Ali Abonima here with my colleague Nora Barrows Freiedman.

For 40 days, the United States and Israel relentlessly bombed Iran, killing and injuring thousands of people, targeting residential neighborhoods and bragging about destroying civilian targets, including industry and infrastructure. The World Health Organization has verified attacks on at least 20 medical facilities, resulting in at least nine deaths. In some of the more recent attacks, US and/or Israeli warplanes attacked the Pasteur Institute, a renowned research facility, Delaram Sina Psychiatric Hospital, and the Tofigh Daru Pharmaceutical Factory. US President Donald Trump promised even worse, threatening earlier this week to destroy Iran's whole civilization. Trump's genocidal hatred and ignorance about Iran and its people reflects the decades-long effort to demonize the country by US leaders and media. Rarely are we permitted to hear directly from Iranians or to see the country through the eyes of international reporters who do not echo imperialist anti-Iran agendas. But one independent reporter who did travel to Iran recently is Ahmed Husam. He is a filmmaker and founder of the media project Propaganda and Co. Ahmed, we're so pleased to welcome you to the electronic intifada live stream.

Ahmed: Thank you, Ali, and thank you, Nora, for having me. It's a pleasure to be here.

Nora: It's good to have you.

Ahmed: So, um, Ahmed, you were just in Iran. You left just, uh, a few days ago, and you've already published a documentary that you've called "Iran at War" about your trip, or at least the first two episodes, and people can find them at the Propaganda and Co. YouTube channel. And I want to start with a short clip from the first episode.

[Clip plays]

Ahmed: This visit was to a civilian apartment building that was hit by a bomb in the middle of the night. This woman survived the attack. Her husband and two children, ages three and 13, however, did not.

[Clip continues with the woman speaking]

Ahmed: And you can see them. And the rubble was on my children. Then I told the aid worker, the ambulance, that until they, they take my sons out, I cannot leave this, uh, place. Then they told me that if we can keep them safe, but they were dead.

Nora: So, Ahmed, tell us where this happened and what can you tell us about what happened to this woman and her family, and what was it like coming face to face with the human reality of this war that so many of us only experienced from a distance?

Ahmed: So, this was in the northwestern city of Tabriz, in the northwestern region of Iran, which is in the Azeri region. Uh, for people who aren't aware, there are millions of Azeri people, or Azerbaijani people, living in Iran. This woman in this clip that you just played, she was actually speaking Azeri. She wasn't speaking Farsi. And I think that's an interesting and important fact to point out because her first language is Azeri. Sometimes these people in the region can speak Farsi as a second language. Some people can't even speak it at all. And the reason why I think that's important to mention is because the United States, in Western media, and their propaganda, they've tried to present Iran as a country that is loosely held together by an oppressive regime and that there are many ethnicities and minorities that are ready to rise up, uh, and overthrow the government. But of course, that isn't actually the case. Many of these people, including this woman, uh, are of different ethnicities and they speak different languages, and they see themselves as part of the fabric of Iran, and they're proud to be part of Iran. This woman, unfortunately, uh, her home was bombed, and till this day, we aren't really sure why. We spoke to her and some Red Crescent first responders that helped pull her and her family, or what was left of them, unfortunately, out of the rubble, and they could not provide any explanation. This was a lower middle-class, uh, by Iranian standards, uh, civilian neighborhood. There was no military target nearby. There was no base nearby. There was no air defense in the area. And so no one can really explain how this happened. But she was just an innocent woman, a mother of two, and her husband was the local barber in the area. And in the middle of the night, uh, you know, close to the early morning prayers, around 5 in the morning, a bomb was dropped on her home, and it just completely destroyed the home, as you can see in the footage. And she watched her dead children being pulled out of the rubble, and she was just so devastated by that. And for me, this was my first time in a war zone. But I have traveled on, like, charity trips interviewing people. And so I know what it's like to interview people who are opening up about their, the difficult situation that they're going through. And shortly after this, I had interviewed my colleagues Dimitri Lascaris and Tim Anderson, who are journalists who accompanied me on the trip. And I asked them, like, how do you feel about harvesting a woman's story like this? Because for me, obviously, like, I benefit just by being, like, I'm being interviewed today. I'm being platformed by you because I went to Iran. Um, but that woman is still back there in Iran, and she still, you know, she lost her children. And so being mindful of the fact that I guess my career benefits from from going on such a journey, harvesting her story, obviously it's difficult, but what I try to do is just do her story justice and try to amplify her experience and provide her a platform to kind of share her thoughts, which she did shortly afterwards. You know, I asked her, "What message do you have for the American people?" And I think it was really powerful and inspirational the way that she responded because I think any one of us, if we had lost our family members and then just within a couple of hours, you asked me what I think, and I would just, you know, demand revenge, and I would call for all kinds of, you know, unspeakable violence on on those who hurt me and oppressed me and took my family from my life, from this world. But she responded differently. She had the strength to to control her her anger and her outrage and say, "I don't have any problem with the American people." And, you know, her her problem is just with the administration that is waging this war against the people of Iran, against innocent people like her. And I thought that was a powerful, inspirational message, and it's something I wanted to share with people, especially as an American citizen. Um, outside of the CNN journalists who went to Iran, no one else from Western media has gone. And so I took it upon myself to to go and try and tell their stories. And yeah, it was a powerful and emotional experience.

Ali: Uh, that that story in particular, um, you know, is just, I mean, and that's been the story that Palestinians in Gaza have been repeating over and over again for the last two and a half years of this genocide. It's what Palestinians in Palestine and and people in Lebanon have been saying for decades and decades and decades. It's it's this Israeli, you know, US-Israeli, you know, modus operandi of of just devastation, destruction, killing, massacring families, um, and and the targets are are children. Um, let's, let's look at another clip, uh, that you made, and then, and then I'll ask you a question about that one as well.

[Clip plays]

Ahmed: Despite being up against both Israel and the United States, which is the world's greatest superpower in human history, millions of Iranians take to the streets every night to express their defiance. They don't want a ceasefire. They don't want to back down. They want revenge. They want justice. They want dignity. They want honor. They want to make history. And they may have potentially already done it.

Nora: Um, talk about the atmosphere in Iran, both in terms of ordinary daily life and at at some of these rallies you attended, what, what the, you know, what people were saying, how, how it, how it felt to be there, and what do you mean when you say that the Iranian people have already made history?

Ahmed: So, firstly, there are two things that are true here. One is that the US and Israel have committed unspeakable atrocities and have dropped over, at this point, 20,000 bombs. At the same time, however, life in Iran is completely normal. And that's because of the fact that this is a highly developed society, despite the fact that they've been under sanctions for 40-plus years. And it's a massive, massive country. If you took the map of Iran and and superimposed it on Western Europe, you would find that it's just as big, if not bigger. So you would need millions of bombs, you know, to completely destroy all of the infrastructure. So it's difficult to produce the Gaza-ification, if you will, of Iran because of its the sheer size of it. The cities are gigantic. It's a country of over 90 million people. And so for me, while I was in Iran, it was difficult to see any destruction. You have to go looking for it. Like that woman's house in Tabriz, you would only see that if you went driving through the neighborhood looking for it. And so most of Iran is still intact, despite the fact that there have been tens of thousands of bombs dropped on them, their civilians, and their infrastructure. And so I don't want to make it sound like they aren't taking significant damage. They are. And the intention is to destroy their society and break them apart. But at the same time, this is a country that, uh, is is still operating as if there's nothing going on. When I was there, I felt like if these people wanted, they really could fight for years because there's no disruption to their transportation. There's no Trump disruption to their food, to their medicine, to their energy. Even when Trump threatened to destroy their power plants, you know, it later came out that Iran has one of the most decentralized power grids in the entire world. Like, you would have to bomb every single power station in the country to knock out the country's power. And so, uh, life is continuing as normal, and there's a lot of morale. People are very dedicated to the revolution. Uh, one of the people we interviewed was also in the, uh, about an hour outside of Tabriz. So, this is still in the Azeri region of northwestern Iran, and he was an Azeri man, and his son was killed in an attack on the post office. And when we spoke to him, the first thing he said was, "I pay my respects to the leader of the Islamic Revolution. And my greatest honor is that, and my greatest pride is that my son was just martyred." So the Iranian people, I'm, I'm sure you know this, maybe your audience doesn't, but, uh, the concept of martyrdom is is huge in Islam. Whether you're Sunni or Shia, we see it in Gaza. The resistance fighters and the families of innocent civilians who have been killed, they all pride themselves on being martyrs. Um, and in Shia Islam, I think it's taken a bit further than that. And in Iran, they pride themselves on this concept of martyrdom. And you see it plastered all over the city and all over the country. In every city, there are massive banners and posters and portraits of previously martyred people, whether they're civilians killed in an attack, or they are, uh, engineers committed to the missile program, or generals who were killed and assassinated. It doesn't matter if it took place during the Iran-Iraq war many decades ago, or last summer during the 12-day war, or even the little girls who were just killed in Minab at the start of the war. You see their images everywhere, both new and old. You see it in the mosques as well. So this is a society that understands that they have a very special kind of government born out of the revolution against US imperialism and in opposition to Zionism, and they pride themselves for that. Um, forgive me, if you could remind me. Oh, yeah, you asked me about why I I describe them as making history. So, just tell me, what country on earth has withstood a direct US assault for 30-plus days? I can't think of any in recent memory. And I don't mean to compare Iran to to other countries. Obviously, there's a lot of different factors, like military capabilities. Obviously, geography plays an important role. I bet if, if Venezuela had some kind of pressure point or choke point like the Strait of Hormuz, you know, potentially maybe they, it would have been different with Maduro. Who knows? Um, so Iran is blessed by the geography and the conditions that they have. But at the same time, though, I think we have to give credit to the people who've dedicated themselves to, you know, protecting the revolution and building up their capabilities. I went to the aerospace museum last summer with Max Blumenthal and Dimitri Lascaris and many other journalists from the West, and I saw firsthand the engineering on display. I saw their many different versions of their ballistic missiles. I saw they preserve the history and they pride themselves on the history. They give you a whole story of how the missile program was born, how it was advanced, who the key players were, and how they dedicated their lives. And, and you see their drone technology. And so it, it was all just very impressive. And I think all of that history over the last 40 years is why Iran was able to not only withstand a US direct assault for over 30 days, which was incredibly intense and is still technically ongoing. This is just a brief lull with the temp, the recent, you know, ceasefire, um, which isn't really a ceasefire, but maybe we can talk about that later. Um, but they just, they did not just withstand this pressure, but they actually had the US almost call uncle. I mean, the Strait of Hormuz applied a lot of pressure on the global economy, and you could just tell by Trump's rhetoric that he was going kind of insane every day. He was contradicting himself and saying the most outrageous things and and making all these threats and then being called out on his bluff by people that are unfazed. And I saw this with my own two eyes, you know, speaking to people. I was in Isfahan, and we were in this famous square called Naqsh-e Jahan, and while we were in the square, they bombed just outside of it. And I was scared because it was the first time I heard a bomb and saw the smoke rising while I was outside. Usually, it was happening like while I was in the hotel, right? But I actually saw this, and I became scared. I'm not going to lie. You know, I was nervous. But I looked around, and everyone was cool, calm, and collected. And I started interviewing little kids, and, you know, when I saw their bravery and how calm and cool they were, then I became calm. And so I, I think they're a special people with a special history that have done something historic. And I think Donald Trump was not expecting that.

Nora: And just talk about those nightly rallies. We who have not been to Iran have seen them on social media. You were there. You were in Tabriz, you were in Tehran, you were in Isfahan, you went to Bandar Abbas, I believe. Like, did you see these in every city you went to?

Ahmed: Yeah. Every city you go to, they have these rallies, and they have them in multiple spots all over the city. Instead of one large, massive central rally that can be difficult to get to, uh, block traffic, etc., etc., they made it as convenient as possible, and they set up different nodes all around the city. And these are centers that have a stage. They have lighting. They have a speaker system. They're playing footage of, like, missile attacks on the on the projectors. They're playing music, giving speeches, listening to poetry. They're giving out snacks, tea, dessert. They have families of the martyrs there, and people come pay their respects to them. People donate to them. People listen to them speak. They interview them. And there are people who attend this rally on foot. They bring their families. They bring their children. There are people who just simply drive by and honk their horns. And it's impressive because they have been doing this every single night. And of course, as you would imagine, after a couple of nights, it gets kind of old and redundant. And so, you know, the numbers dwindle, but then, you know, you have major flare-ups and moments, and then people come out again. But for the most part, consistently, people are coming out every single night to protect the nation, to protect the revolution, to have morale and encourage one another. And I mean, it's just like it, it, it's so much fun. You know, you see these, these viral social media videos where you have young women who are making these cool, flashy, like Reels and TikToks, and it's just impressive, you know, like it's something that brings a lot of pride, I think. Right. And, and you feel that all around the region. There are a lot of Muslims. We all know, obviously, unfortunately, there's this plague of sectarianism where there's like anti-Shia rhetoric on both sides. But many Sunnis, I think, came around and wanted to show support for Iran because I think it was one of the few instances throughout this genocidal experience over the last couple of years that brought our people, on a regional-wide, civilizational-wide level, pride because finally, someone is standing up, and they're doing a pretty good job. And Iran, these people in there get to actually wave the flag as a proud Iranian doing that. And so it was a lot of fun to see, and it was incredible to witness, and it's just, I think, a testament to the Iranian people and the way they've organized themselves and the way they've banded together in this situation.

Ali: It's, it's, uh, it, it had to be something to to be there and witness that. And, um, as you mentioned, you mentioned the Strait of Hormuz, and, um, that is, of course, the crucial waterway through which a fifth of the world's energy supply has to pass. Um, and it passes entirely through, uh, Iranian and Omani territorial waters, and Iran exercises control over it. For decades, Iran allowed free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, but after it was attacked, it began asserting its sovereignty there and its power there. You actually got to visit the strait. You posted a couple of clips on Twitter X, and this one, the first one, I'll watch two. The first one you posted with the caption, "The only American in the Strait of Hormuz." So, let's take a look at you.

[Clip plays]

Ahmed: The only American in the Strait of Hormuz. You can go. You can't go. You can go. You can't go. Pay up, buddy. Pay up. What's that? Oh, the money didn't go through. You got to wait. The journalists Dimitri Lascaris, Tim Anderson, and myself had the unique opportunity to sail through the Strait of Hormuz off the coast of Bandar Abbas in Iran in order to witness what can only be described as a historical inversion of the economic world order, as oil tanker after oil tanker after oil tanker is forced to pay transit fees in the Chinese yuan currency to the Iranian government in order to obtain permission to pass through the Strait of Hormuz and on towards their destination.

Ali: And, and in that clip, we also got to see, uh, Dimitri Lascaris and Tim Anderson, who I know many of our viewers and listeners know well. Dimitri is himself an extraordinary journalist and activist and from Canada, and Tim Anderson from Australia, who are with you on this trip. Let's take a look at, uh, this second clip, which is a bit of your, your meeting with the governor of Hormozgan province, and then we'll get you to talk about that. This is a pretty heavy clip.

[Clip plays]

Governor: For the extreme, God forbid, scenario where they use a nuclear weapon, our planning was comprehensive preparation for this war.

Ahmed: If they want to, if they want to black-flag themselves once again in the world, let's start.

Governor: This is the end of war.

Ahmed: Hopefully, it doesn't reach that point.

Governor: We hope so. Uh, there might be some surprises for them.

Nora: So, that was you raising the, uh, horrific specter of Israel or the United States using nuclear weapons, and the governor responding, "There might be some surprises for them."

Ahmed: Yeah, that exchange kind of happened by accident. Uh, we had conducted an interview before that, and it was, you know, pretty standard and basic. He was talking about, uh, his role as the civilian governor and the will and the pride of the Iranian people and how they'll stand up to this. And so it was pretty cookie-cutter in terms of an interview. Afterwards, uh, you know, we sat down for ice cream, actually, and they just happened to be recording, and I asked him, you know, I asked him this question, and I wasn't expecting that response. But that video obviously went viral online because he's a civilian governor. I don't know, like, what kind of information that he has access to, but, you know, he answered pretty confidently. And he described before that, I think, which is also just as important as saying, "We might have surprises for them." You know, he said that we planned a comprehensive response. And so for many decades, they planned for every single scenario. And obviously, with the nuclear programs being at the center of the sanctions and the negotiations and the propaganda for like 15 years now, maybe even longer, since the early 2000s, obviously included in this is the use of a nuclear weapon. And so many people have criticized Iran for not building a nuclear weapon and detonating it to establish deterrence, because how can you use, how can you have something to deter if nobody knows that you have it? But we know obviously Israel has this kind of ambiguous, vague, like, we all know they have it, but they never admitted that they have it for different reasons. But one of them, I think, is like a strategic ambiguity. What this governor kind of suggested is that they've accounted for that, and that with his response, that I don't know if you noticed, but the journalist, you know, the camera angle was on the side of his face, but he did a double-take. He couldn't believe that the governor had said that, and he looked at me with such, you know, wide eyes, and he translated, "There might be some surprises." And I think the implication of that is pretty clear, that either Iran can respond to a nuclear strike by rapidly constructing a nuclear weapon and responding with that, or they already have a nuclear weapon, or they have something of equal or greater value. And so basically saying, "We are prepared. We are not afraid," and they would be surprised, as they have already been by our capabilities. And so I was very privileged and and lucky to to ask that question by accident, eating ice cream on the beach with the governor of the Hormuz region, and got that response.

Nora: Oh, go ahead, Ali.

Ali: No, go ahead, Nora.

Nora: I was just going to ask about, um, also your, your visit to Tehran, the capital. Um, it was not your first visit there. You've been there before. Um, let's watch a, a short clip of of your, your travels around Tehran.

[Clip plays]

Ahmed: First stop in Tehran was Arka Square in Old Tehran, where the famous Grand Bazaar and Golestan Palace is located. This is normally a thriving and energetic environment, but it was a ghost town. Upon our arrival, the first thing we noticed was the massive destruction done to the judicial building. Whatever hit this building tore through at least four different floors and put the building completely out of service. But the damage unfortunately wasn't just done to this building. The shrapnel and shock waves significantly damaged the Taki Marmar marble throne room at Golestan Palace, nearly 500 feet away. Golestan Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and the Taki Marmar is an epic marble throne built in 1805 by Fath-Ali Shah of the Qajar dynasty.

Nora: I mean, that's, you know, that's that's their other targets also, um, is is destroying antiquity, is is trying to erase culture and history and tradition, whether it's in Gaza, whether it's Jerusalem, whether it's South Lebanon, or whether it's Iran. Um, what was, what was it like, uh, being in the capital, um, you know, amidst these just horrific bombings and and deliberate destructions, you know, destruction of of holy sites, of of, you know, sites of of deep-rooted culture in Iran?

Ahmed: So, when I went to Iran a year ago, like two or three weeks before the 12-day war, the, the thing that I and and many others noticed, and it's impossible not to observe when you go to Tehran, is how bad the traffic is. It's one of the most populated cities, I think, if not the most populated city in the entire Middle East. There are so many people living there, and it's become such a problem that the government has flirted with the idea of moving the capital and trying to incentivize people to leave because the traffic is terrible. It's like, it's worse than LA. You know, a 10-minute drive is easily an hour and a

Half, and it's, um, there's so much pollution because of that, from the cars. Uh, but I arrived on the first day of Eid. It was also the first day of Norooz, which is like a rare celestial, like, alignment of, of the calendar. Uh, and so that, and then the third thing, obviously, was the war. So I described it in the video as a double whammy. It's actually a triple whammy.

And so you have people leaving the city because of the war for safety. You have people leaving the city for Norooz. And then people staying indoors because of the Eid holidays. So when I got there, the streets were empty. And we were, we were the only car on the road for several miles. And that was eerie because this is, like, compared to last time, the most populated, busiest place I'd ever been. And now it's completely empty, and it's a ghost town.

And actually, I went to this area where the judicial building was bombed and the palace area. And that is also a very vibrant area, very busy. There's a ton of traffic, walking traffic. Uh, and there was just nobody there. Now it's changed, obviously, because the Eid holiday and Norooz holiday has come to an end. Uh, but it was still, uh, unusual to see, and it, it was eerie. Um, you saw the destruction done to the judicial building. There are many buildings like that in Tehran that, unfortunately, have been destroyed.

And as you said, you know, it wasn't the only cultural heritage site damaged in the process. Like, when I put out my next video about Isfahan, you'll see like all over Iran, cultural sites are either directly hit or there's a major attack next to it, adjacent to it. And all, like, they try to describe these places as like military targets, but these are civilian government buildings, and they are oftentimes adjacent to these historical sites because it's just that's how much of Iran's, uh, history, like their architecture is constructed. Like, for example, in Isfahan with the famous Naqsh-e Jahan Square. This was built by, uh, previous dynasties that deliberately merged mosques and bazaars and government buildings. So, a fusion, it was a fusion of culture and religion and governance into a central location. And that's why in, you have the judicial building next to the Grand Bazaar and the palace. That's why in Isfahan, it's the same. In Shiraz, it's the same. And in all these places, the United States and Israel bombed it. And it's a big "FU" to the Iranian people. And it's saying, like, this is not just an attack on the military or the IRGC. It's an attack on Iranian people, on Persian history and civilization. They want society to crumble from within. And they're trying to rapidly produce that.

I also went to a sports complex. I mean, this was a gigantic sports complex where people could wrestle, learn judo, jiu-jitsu, play volleyball, play, play basketball. Uh, they could play, uh, soccer or football, however you want to call it. And it was a place for thousands of kids, both boys and girls from the city to go play and stay busy every single day. And they annihilated it. Like, they didn't attack near it or hit it one time. They gave it three Tomahawk missiles and completely obliterated it. It's, it's gone. And it's not coming back anytime soon. And we interviewed a kid, you know, right, right outside the gate, and now he has nothing to do, him and his little brother. And there are thousands of other children like that.

And in my first episode, I covered the destruction of a waste management facility. So it begs the question, why? Why are you hitting cultural sites, the judicial building, soccer fields, uh, parks, waste management facilities? It's because they want to annihilate the society the way they did to Gaza. They, they want to just force the people out onto the streets against their own government because of so much frustration and tension, and the fact that there's just simply nothing better to do. And when you think about kids, like, what do kids do without school or sports or something to guide their energy? They often resort to vandalism or drugs or, or something like that. And so it's really, it's sick when you zoom out and understand that all of this is just because Israel believes in their own supremacy and they want to have dominance over other people in the region. And if they don't get it, this is the kind of damage that they'll do.

>> Just in the couple of minutes we have left with you, Ahmed, just give us some some thoughts about, you know, this wasn't your first visit. You had been last year, but thinking about that first visit and this visit during the war. What surprised you most about, uh, traveling to Iran? And, you know, what do you hope people will take away from the work you're doing and the the explainer videos you're making after this trip? What, what's the one thing you'd want global audiences, Americans in particular, to know?

>> I want American, uh, people to empathize with the Iranian people. I want them to understand that they're normal people living in a beautiful country with a lot of history that would be a wonderful place for them to visit as tourists, to visit in peace. I got to go to the Strait of Hormuz not because I'm special or because I've killed Iranian people. It's because I went there in peace. Uh, they can do the same. If they really want access to the Iranian economy or Iranian history, uh, or geography, they don't need to fly in on bombers or fighter jets or, or, or sneak in in the dead of night or, or bribe, uh, people suffering under sanctions to carry out attacks against infrastructure. They can just come in peace, and they could do that all over the region. And so my hope is that the American people will empathize and just see the humanity in the Iranian people. And I think a lot of them do. Um, I'm not fooled by the polls. I think the majority of the American people are sick and tired of more war in the Middle East. They want to finally see American tax dollars, you know, go to serve the interests of the American people, revitalize the nation and the crumbling infrastructure, provide people more affordable health care, higher education, better transportation. These are all things that Iran provides for their people. Iran is a country under sanctions, and they've managed to not only, everyone talks about their missiles, they talk about their drones. Marco Rubio said, "Oh, life in Iran would be better if they just stopped spending on their military." Well, first of all, life in Iran is already good. And I don't want to speak on behalf of the Iranian people because obviously they have frustrations. They have reasons to criticize the government. They have, um, it's not easy living under sanctions, but if you know, I did a video from my experience last summer where I, I talked, I interviewed a woman last summer in Iran, and I asked her like, "What do you want?" And she said, "At the end of the month, I would just like to be able to save money." And I thought about how that's like pretty much the exact same thing that the American people would like. Like, there's a reason why campaigns like Zoron Mani or Bernie Sanders are so popular is because people are struggling to survive. Things are not affordable, not just in Iran under sanctions, but also in the United States, the wealthiest place, not just in the world, but in the history of the world. And so it's the same problem. But at least in Iran, you can go to college for free. You can go to the hospital for free. You can take the subway in any major city. You can take the train across the entire country. These are things I can't do in Florida. So, in, in many ways, if you compare the metrics, people in Iran actually have a very good life. And so I hope Americans understand that and that we can have it for ourselves in America as well if the government would just prioritize the interests of the people.

The other thing I would add is that for me, I kind of get mocked online quite a bit because I'm always being idealistic and naive, trying to bring Sunnis and Shias together. But I went as a Sunni to Iran to demonstrate solidarity with Shia people. And I took money with me specifically to give charity, and I, I gave charity to Shia widows. I gave charity to Shia orphans because to me, I don't care that they're Shia. Like, they're human beings, and I consider them to be Muslims as well. And I think none of this would be happening in the Middle East if we didn't have these barriers trying to keep us divided, which is exactly how they conquer us. And that's exactly how they humiliate us and oppress us, slaughter our children, and commit all these crimes. So I want to preach a very, I want to be idealistic. I want to be naive. I want my people to see the humanity in one another and overcome these obstacles and the propaganda that really is like CIA and Mossad driven and constructed and propagated. They want us to dislike each other, distrust each other, and hate each other. And so I also am hoping that my audience understands that, and I want to call other people to this as well. I think we have to be idealistic enough to believe in the possibility of unity and not allow these religious or cultural or ethnic differences to continue to be used and exploited and manipulated by these Western imperial powers that we know what they want. They want to kill our children and take the region's resources. So that's, uh, what I hope that my audience and American people in general take away from my trip and my experiences.

>> Well, that's a very, very controversial message, Ahmed. We should all get along and live in peace and respect each other.

>> I came up with it all by myself, Ali. I'm the person.

>> Very well. It's, you know, and, and I, I actually think most people are with you, Ahmed. I really do. And I think a lot of this sectarianism, I view it through, uh, a purely political lens. I think it has been directly, uh, and deliberately incited and provoked and, uh, by some of the organizations you mentioned with, of course, complicit collaborators within the region or within our communities around the world. But most people are there already with you, and, and we have to keep working for that. Ahmed, we're so grateful to you for joining us today and for the work you've done. And I'll just remind people they can, uh, the Propaganda and Co. YouTube channel, they can find the first two episodes of Iran at War, your series of, uh, fantastic explainer videos, and what you do. People can see just from this discussion how well you do it. You, in addition to taking us to these different places you visited, you provide so much explanation of history and context in just a really clear way. So that's at youtube.com, uh, the Propaganda and Co. channel. If you also search Propaganda and Co, it'll come up. And you're also very active on Twitter X. Is there anywhere else people can find your work?

>> No, that, that just about does it. So thank you both for having me. Love the work that you do, and obviously I encourage my audience as well to always check out Electronic Intifada and so much of my work is, is only made possible by the work that you guys do, and not just now, but, you know, I was an activist in college, and all we did was constantly cite the Electronic Intifada. And so thank you all for the work that you do, and, you know, what I do is impossible without your contributions. So thank you.

>> Thank you, Ahmed. We're really all doing this together. Thank you.

>> We are. Thanks, Ahmed. Amazing.

>> Yeah, that was great. That was great.

>> That video of him in the Strait of Hormuz was fantastic.

>> Yeah, I wonder how much toll money he collected. We didn't ask him. Uh, but, but, uh, yeah, when I saw that Ahmed, along with Dimitri Lascaris and Tim Anderson were in Iran, um, I was so excited because I knew that they would do such a good job. Um, and Dimitri Lascaris as well has been putting out, uh, videos, so check his out too. And, um, yeah, so just amazing work.

>> Yeah. Yeah. Incredible. All right. Well, circling around, uh, to the military side of things, let's bring John on. Um,

>> I think we're gonna

>> Oh, that's right.

>> Yeah, that's right.

>> Everyone's excited for John, but we're gonna, we're gonna do a bit, a few more updates before we go to John. Yeah. Okay. So, circling around to the political analysis.

>> Exactly. Don't go anywhere. Um, Ali, you've been, of course, monitoring the the political developments over the last, I mean, just boy, have I been monitoring

>> 18 hours, but

>> I have not slept.

>> My god.

>> None of us have. And

>> you know, I, I'm still here in Jordan. And

>> yeah,

>> I have to say that

>> for people here, you know, Jordan has not been directly affected the same way as Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, of course, Iran. Uh, so it's, uh, but this, the sense of dread and the feeling of foreboding if this were to escalate even more is very real. People are very worried about, uh, what could happen across the region, particularly in the light of the threat that Donald Trump, uh, made, that a whole civilization will die tonight. And of course, Iran, uh, vowing that if, uh, its basic infrastructure was attacked, if, uh, its oil, electricity, and so on was attacked, it would respond in kind. And this could set the region back for, uh, years, and of course, plunge the entire world into an economic crisis that would first and foremost hit the most vulnerable people everywhere.

>> Yeah. Yeah.

>> So I, uh, so that's that's the context. And so I just wanted to kind of talk us through the, what has actually happened with the ceasefire and where it may be and where it may be going. So that's where I, I want to go.

>> All right. Great. So thank you, Ali. Take it away.

>> All right. Thank you. So, uh, you're watching, uh, The Electronic Intifada live stream. I'm Ali Abunimah. And as I was just telling my colleague, Nora Barry Friedman, of course, everyone is aware that in recent days, Donald Trump made a threat, that a whole civilization, that he would destroy the whole civilization, uh, in Iran, a, a genocidal threat. Um, and that came after several such threats which Trump deferred. And I think the reason he kept seeking an extension of his his self-imposed deadline was because he understood that the United States is caught in, in what's being called an escalation trap. He, he could destroy Iran, kill more people, and but Iran can still respond in kind and and destroy, uh, vital American-linked infrastructure across the region, as the US, as Iran has already severely damaged, if not destroyed, most American bases. So the escalation cycle would not be broken. And so I've been arguing in recent weeks that Trump would try to find a way out if he could, if he could do it without having to admit failure and defeat. And I, I think, or at least I thought, that's what we were seeing, uh, Tuesday evening in the US, early morning Wednesday here in the region, with what looked like a choreographed effort involving Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. Uh, and this started to unfold shortly before Trump's latest deadline to wreak even more death and destruction on Iran was set to, uh, expire. So it started with this tweet from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, pleading with Donald Trump, publicly pleading with Donald Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks, and asking Iran, uh, reciprocally, to open the Strait of Hormuz for a corresponding two-week, uh, goodwill gesture, as the Pakistani prime minister called it, in order to allow room for diplomacy. Trump responded, uh, a short time later with this statement, which was, I think rightly seen as a, oh, I'm, uh, let's see where we are. Sorry. We'll go to Donald Trump first. Uh, so Trump responded with a statement, um, which I think was rightly seen as a massive American climb-down, because he agreed to the two-week proposal. And significantly, or the two-week ceasefire. And significantly, he said, "We received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate." That was a massive shift because he'd gone from demanding Iran's complete and total surrender to, if not accepting Iran's, uh, position, accepting Iran's agenda, that the agenda set by Iran would be the basis of negotiation. And then we, uh, had, uh, a reciprocal response from, uh, Mr. Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister of Iran, who said that, um, Iran would, at the request of Pakistan, accept the ceasefire. And he said, "In response to the brotherly request of Prime Minister Sharif in his tweet, and considering the request by the US for negotiations based on its 15-point proposal, as well as announcement by the president of the United States about acceptance of the general framework for Iran's 10-point proposal as a basis for negotiations, I hereby declare on behalf of Iran's Supreme National Security Council that if attacks on Iran are halted, our powerful armed forces will cease their defensive operations, and that for two weeks, safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz would be possible, as long as it was coordinated with Iran." And so it looked like Trump had found, uh, an off-ramp, a way out. And that this involved the significant concession of agreeing to negotiate based on Iran's 10-point agenda, which is as follows. And here are the points that were published, uh, by Iranian officials and in Iranian media: No new aggression against Iran. Continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz. Acceptance of Iran's right to enrich uranium. Removal of all primary sanctions. Removal of all secondary sanctions. Termination of all UN Security Council resolutions. Termination of all Board of Governors resolutions, that refers to the International Atomic Energy Agency. Payment of compensation to Iran. Withdrawal of US combat forces from the region. Cessation of war on all fronts, including against the heroic Islamic resistance of Lebanon. So you can see why Iran, and I think people around the world, rightly, uh, interpreted this as a significant Iranian victory, that the United States had agreed that this agenda would be the basis of negotiation. Not that the United States had accepted all these points, but that it had at least accepted that that would be the starting point. And, uh, as those 10 points say, this was to include a ceasefire in Lebanon and elsewhere. And this was confirmed in a second tweet from Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, which he posted a short time later, which says, "With the greatest humility, I am pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with their allies, along with their allies, so Iran's allies, which might include resistance groups across the region, and the US allies, which includes, of course, Israel. So I'm pleased to announce that the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States of America, along with the allies, have agreed to an effective ceasefire everywhere, including Lebanon and elsewhere, effective immediately." And Prime Minister Sharif invited delegations from the US and Iran to come to Islamabad on, uh, Friday, April 10th, to begin discussions to resolve all disputes. So this looked like a major breakthrough, but then it began to unravel. Uh, yesterday, we saw, and we saw in the news report, the report from Sidon about the horrific Israeli massacres on an unprecedented scale in Beirut, perhaps since the 1982 war. Indiscriminate massacres of civilians, hundreds of people killed, people still missing. No warnings whatsoever. And so this was obviously a blatant breach of the ceasefire. But then, uh, the United States, uh, tried to backtrack and to claim that Lebanon had never been included in the ceasefire. And so let's watch a clip now of JD Vance, the American vice president, uh, uh, speaking, uh, on that issue.

>> A lot of bad faith, uh, negotiation and a lot of bad faith, you know, propaganda going on. I think this comes from a legitimate misunderstanding. I think the Iranians thought that the ceasefire included Lebanon, and it just didn't. We never made that promise. We never indicated that was going to be the case. What we said is that the ceasefire would be focused on Iran, and the ceasefire would be focused on America's allies, both Israel and the Gulf Arab states.

>> That's just a blatant lie. Of course, he's talking about bad faith actors in the media. It wasn't bad faith actors. It was America's own, America's own ally, the prime minister of Pakistan, Shahbaz Sharif, who confirmed that Lebanon was included in the ceasefire. And we see in this New York Times article, uh, confirming that the White House knew about Pakistan's ceasefire post on X, Twitter, before it was sent, and that, um, that basically this choreographed exchange of public messages was completely coordinated with the White House. So it's simply implausible that the United States did not know and agree that Lebanon would be included. But of course, what happened was that, uh, Israel did not want the ceasefire. Israel carried out the massacre, and up until now, the United States has been unwilling or unable to impose its will on, uh, Israel. I would say unwilling because the United States is certainly able. And then the next part unraveled, which is the 10 points. This historic breakthrough of the United States recognizing Iran's legitimate concerns and agreeing to talk about them. Well, here is Karine Jean-Pierre at the White House press briefing. This was on Wednesday, April 8th.

>> Already. So, let me be clear and correct the record. The Iranians originally put forward a 10-point plan that was fundamentally unserious, unacceptable, and completely discarded. It was literally thrown in the garbage by President Trump and his negotiating team. Many outlets in this room have falsely reported on that plan as being acceptable to the United States, and that is false. With the president's deadline fast approaching, and the United States military completely decimating Iran with each passing hour, the regime acknowledged reality to the negotiating team. They put forward a more reasonable and entirely different and condensed plan to the president and his team. President Trump and the team determined the new modified plan was a workable basis on which to negotiate and to align, align it with our own 15-point proposal. The president's red lines, namely the end of Iranian enrichment in Iran, have not changed. And the idea that President Trump would ever accept an Iranian wish list as a deal is completely absurd.

>> Well, what's completely absurd are those statements. They're utter lies. And, uh, of course, the, the White House has never produced, and nor has anyone else produced, this so-called other 10-point plan, which she claims exists, and it is not the, uh, 10-point plan that everybody knows about. And the, the best proof of that is that every single Iranian senior official, uh, says that the 10-point plan is the one that we just talked about, the one that Iran put forward. So we have, uh, a Twitter statement yesterday from Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran's parliamentary speaker, a very senior figure, on Wednesday, accusing the US of violating at least three of the clauses of the 10-point proposal, which he termed the agreed framework, and that's the proposal I already went through. And the, the violations include Israel's attacks on Lebanon, Trump's refusal to accept Iran's right to enrich uranium, and continued violations of Iran's airspace. Ghalibaf wrote, "Now, the very workable basis on which to negotiate has been openly and clearly violated even before the negotiations begin." And, uh, we then again have Abbas Araghchi, the Iranian foreign minister, saying the following. He wrote, "The Iran-US ceasefire terms are clear and explicit. The US must choose ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both. The world sees the massacres in Lebanon. The ball is in the US court, and the world is watching whether it will act on its commitment." So, no Iranian official is acknowledging the existence of this alternative 10-point plan. Now, it, it looked very much like the whole thing might unravel, but, uh, when I woke up on, uh, what day is it today? Thursday, April 9th. Uh, this morning, uh, I had expected that overnight, uh, Iran would launch attacks on Israel, uh, in response to the massacres in Lebanon. But in fact, Iran had not done so, nor had it resumed attacks on US bases. Um, and in a sense, it can afford to hold off since it retains control over the Strait of Hormuz and, in fact, shut it down again, drastically reducing, uh, traffic. We can see here a tweet from Iran's state broadcaster saying the following: "With Israel's actions in attacking Lebanon and violating the ceasefire, which led to further restrictions in the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices rose again." So Iran is exerting pressure, if not military. As of now, uh, Iran is being ambiguous about whether it will even send a delegation to Islamabad, and, uh, conditioning it on whether the United States imposes a cease, imposes a ceasefire in Lebanon, tells Israel to stop. And in fact, it looks like, uh, late Wednesday night, Iran was on the verge of launching renewed attacks on Israel in response to those massacres in Lebanon, but held off at the last minute at Pakistan's request. Let's listen to Iran's deputy foreign minister, Kianoush Rostami, speaking to the British TV channel ITV.

>> Last night was a very, uh, critical night because, uh, we had no option just to respond to these new atrocities. Then there were few back and forths and few messages through Pakistanis, and we hope that, you know, American could control, uh, its ally and, uh, and, and this time honor their words, actually, and being committed.

>> So, I think what, you know, where are we now? I think what Iran is signaling is that it would prefer not to go back to war, but it is absolutely ready to do so, including in defense of Lebanon. And it's also showing that it can and will use the Strait of Hormuz to exercise leverage over the whole global economy. And remember that the worst economic effects of what has happened over the past 40 days have not been felt yet because there have still been ships on the sea carrying oil and gas, and they take weeks to get to their destinations. But once there are no more ships leaving, uh, that means that, you know, with very soon, already in the last week or so, there were already jet fuel shortages in parts of the world, diesel shortages, rationing around the world, and that's only going to get worse, particularly over the next two weeks as the Strait remains closed. Now, it is clear that the United States understands what is needed, but it's not clear if it's willing to do what it takes. Uh, just a couple of hours ago, we had this, uh, news via an NBC News saying that, uh, President Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to scale back strikes in Lebanon. NBC reports, "Trump asked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a phone call yesterday to scale back Israel strikes in Lebanon to help ensure the success of the Iran negotiations." A senior administration official said, "While the Trump administration is, and Israel have both said Lebanon is not covered by the ceasefire, Israel agreed to be a helpful partner," the official said. So, scale back is not going to cut it. Slightly smaller massacres are probably not going to, uh, satisfy Iran's leaders, and they're certainly not going to satisfy Iran's people, many of whom are extremely angry that there is any talk of negotiation at all. And it seems that Iranian leaders are walking a tightrope, and they seem to understand this. Uh, we also saw more statements today from senior Iranian leaders. This from President Rouhani. He says, "Renewed aggression by the Zionist regime against Lebanon blatantly violates the initial ceasefire." So he is again saying the ceasefire includes Lebanon. "Such actions signal deception and non-compliance, rendering negotiations meaningless. Our hands remain on the trigger. Iran will never forsake its Lebanese brothers and sisters." And we also have another tweet from Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the, uh, parliament speaker. He makes three short points. One, Lebanon and the entire resistance axis, as Iran's allies, form an inseparable part of the ceasefire. Point one, 10-point proposal. So again, referencing the 10-point proposal. Two, he says, "PM Shehbaz Sharif of Pakistan publicly and clearly stressed the Lebanon issue. There is no room for denial and backtracking." And three, "Ceasefire violations carry explicit costs and strong responses. Extinguish the fire immediately." So there has been a lot of commentary going around. Uh, and what I think is that Iran remains committed to this position. Iran can afford from a position of relative strength to test the American commitment. It loses nothing by doing so. It still controls the Strait of Hormuz. Uh, if Iran can achieve strategic goals, uh, while avoiding further destruction and bloodshed, why wouldn't it do so? But Iran is clearly capable of going back to war if it has to, and it's very clear that the Iranian populace is ready to do so, if necessary. So, uh, the question now is really whether the United States will decide to stop the massacres in Lebanon and tell its Israeli proxy to stop, or whether the whole thing is going to unravel and the war is going to resume. That's where we are. And, uh, it may be that Iran has not gained enough strength to impose its will. But if the war resumes, I, I stand by my earlier analysis that Iran's position is only going to strengthen over time. So that, that may be what happens.

>> Thanks, Ali. Uh, let's bring John on because I want to ask you both this question. We can have like, Hi, John. Um, Palestine, uh, wasn't explicitly mentioned in the 10-point ceasefire, but it is kind of implied because Iran talks about the entire axis of resistance, of which the Palestinian resistance is part. Um, where does Gaza and the West Bank, um, fit into this? Um, what, you know, I mean, Israel has just, it keeps killing people every day in Gaza. Of course, the settlers are on rampages across the West Bank. Um, what does this mean for Palestinians if this ceasefire goes ahead according to Iran's, um, basis of negotiations?

>> Well, presumably they're going to negotiate on Gaza as well. I, I'm not sure. There was a couple of documents. I'm pretty sure they listed Palestine in the list, did they not?

>> Um, they did in one at least one of them. Um, and that was the, um, I mean, I think those things would come out in ceasefire negotiations about what that means. Um,

>> Mhm.

>> But yeah, we're just in the early stages of it. So, I'm not sure.

>> Um, I mean, especially on this show, we're all

>> desperately hoping that it does, and that, uh, this is a historic opportunity.

>> Yeah.

>> For Iran, and they appear to be very well aware of that and have been executing this entire operation with that in mind. Um, so it would be a, a big shock, um, if it was not included.

>> Right. Right.

>> You know, a lot of people said after this, this ceasefire announcement yesterday, a lot of people were saying, "Well, what about Gaza? What about Palestine? They're not explicitly included." And I think there's a couple of ways to look at that. One is that, in theory, there is a ceasefire in Gaza already. We know, of course, that the reality is different, but that's sort of a formal reason why it's, it's not explicitly mentioned. The other thing is that, you know, when the axis of resistance gets stronger and gains strength, it, every part of it gains relative strength. So, uh, you know, that, that's the part of it that I think is the strategic picture. I also, I guess I want, I have a question for John, because it's something I'm seeing a lot of people commenting on. They're saying, "Oh, the ceasefire is a ruse. The US, uh, uh, just accepted it because they want to rearm. They want to get their, uh, troops in place for ground invasion." Can the US fundamentally change the military picture with a two-week pause? What's your assessment of that?

>> No. To have enough troops in the region to invade on a ground invasion? No.

>> They still don't have that logistical reality. So,

>> Can they replenish their air defenses?

>> They could do that.

>> They could do that. Yeah. They could, they could travel to Diego Garcia and reload ships in about that, about that amount of time, but like that amount of time, no, shorter for sure.

>> Um, yeah, the question is how many there are to go and fill up with, and those are the questions. And, and if the US can handle another, uh, round, uh, along with Israel, which are the same in this war, for sure. Um, yeah, I, I don't see any benefit that the US gets from, uh, from the pause. I sign, I do for the Iranians, obviously, um, to pull, uh, things together, uh, on the ground, and people are in, you know, people have been targeted at schools and hospitals and all that kind of stuff, to be able to, um, yeah, put, put the pieces back together. Um, makes sense to me how the Americans benefit from extending the stay of their troops for two more weeks, for, um, you know, we haven't seen a major mobilization that would suggest they need time to get, you know, what you'd really be talking about, you know, a hundred thousand troops is what you're talking about, and at this point right now, the Marine Expeditionary Unit and the 82nd Airborne are a fraction of that, a small fraction of that.

>> I, I still maintain that that Trump wants out of this war, but he doesn't want, he, but he doesn't want to give anything up. He wants to have his cake and eat it. He wants to be done with the war and say, "I won." And that's not an option he has. And so he may go back into it. He may, uh, jump back into the trap because he's unwilling to pay the price now. But he's, he will only pay a higher price later. I still think that time is on Iran's side because the, it's, it's in control. Iran is calling the shots.

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. And they're in control of the Strait of Hormuz. So no matter what happens in this war, they have control over the most important valve, um, of the conflict. And it's an asset. It's a capability that is now in their hands for probably forever. Um, I doubt they'll give it up after this, and maybe thought it was a bad idea to not be doing this all along.

>> Right?

>> Yeah. We will see what happens with, I mean, there's so many, um, possibilities, uh, that could unfold just in the next couple of hours, let alone days and weeks. Um, I mean, is there, and, and John, we'll, we'll go to you in a minute, but is there a possibility, do you see either of you, of, um, you know, Trump kind of like, all right, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to step back, the US is going to pull back, Israel, you can, you can handle it on your own, and and leaving Israel, you know, as, of course, a, a proxy and a part of US imperial power to, to fight, uh, Iran, Yemen, Iraq, Lebanon, and Palestine on its own?

>> No.

>> No. Tell us why.

>> Um, because the entire missile defense array of Israel is dependent on US participation in this. The fighter jets, the refuelers, um, that capability is not something that Israel has in numbers enough to carry out the type of war that we have seen. Even the fact that the American refuelers weren't in the air yesterday was part of the reason that the Israelis put more, uh, air power on Lebanon than they had at any point in the war. So, um, I don't see America going, or the US going it alone. And the way that Iran is speaking, I don't see that being something that they're going to, um, accept.

>> Yeah. Yep. All right. Well, on that note, um, let's, uh, let's turn to military analysis of the last week. Uh, it has been quite a week. John, uh, take it away.

>> All right. So, you are watching and listening to The Electronic Intifada. I am John Elmer. This is the Resistance Report for day 916 of Israel's genocide in Gaza, day 41 of the US-Israeli war against Iran, and day 38 of Hezbollah's battle versus the Israeli military in South Lebanon, uh, against Israeli annexation. Let's take a look at the first map here. We're going to show the Persian Gulf, because obviously, um, from the one end up at the top there, was significant portion of the past week was dedicated to, uh, understanding the mountains, uh, up in the north, uh, west there, corner there of Iran, after the shootdown of an American pilot. And then on the right-hand side of the screen, you're seeing the Strait of Hormuz. We already saw this morning, um, that, uh, the IRGC has given maps out to the sailors, um, showing where the route that they must go, uh, over that closest island that you see on the far right, just off the tip of the largest island. You can see the space in between those two islands on the far right at the top. Uh, that is where the so-called, uh, toll booth is working. Uh, ships are going through there. Started a little bit, I believe, but, um, a lot of reports saying that the numbers are a lot higher than we're seeing right now. Um, and Iran sent out a message, um, the IRGC Navy sent out a message yesterday saying that, uh, vessels had to communicate with them in order to cross the Strait. But the general wartime, uh, situation in the Strait has a possibility of changing if this ceasefire holds, um, in which case the toll booth can be used, uh, presumably by, uh, all states, because if there's not an aggression on Iran or Lebanon, hopefully on Gaza, um, that that ships will be able to pass. And we heard, um, I don't know how much it's worth talking about Trump, but we, we, we heard him saying that he might get in on the on the toll booth. So he's all over the map. Um, so it's difficult to, uh, predict from them. But in, in, in the from the Iranian point of view, they stated the statement that we have heard on this program many times from the resistance in Gaza, and we'll hear it again later on in the show from Abu Oda. Um, but they said that you cannot take through negotiations what you failed to take through war. So these negotiations are not going to be something where Iran gives up its main, uh, points of, uh, its main points in order to just have a ceasefire. That does not, uh, seem to be in any of Iran's communications. They started their message about the 10-point plan by, uh, obviously talking about a deep distrust of the people that they're negotiating with, considering the assassinations, um, the perfidious assassinations that, uh, uh, preceded negotiations in the past two times in the past, um, and three if you want to include Gaza. Um, so that is significant. CNN reported that there's 426 tankers in the Strait and 53 LNG, liquid natural gas, uh, tankers in the Strait that are going to be moving. Um, we can take that, look at the next slide for that. Um, and you can see the way that the flow through, uh, through the Strait of Hormuz is very tall, is very small because it's a shallow waterway. It's a rocky, shallow waterway. Uh, so vessels have to pass through a smaller channel than the one that it looks like, uh, on this map. There's some talk that, um, the Hormuz toll booth, uh, would generate $64 billion in revenue for the Iranians. It would restore Iranian currency because they're taking payment in Iranian currency, as well, um, and that they will assert sovereignty over the Strait, henceforth. Um, we take a look at the next map, or, or take a look at the first air defense operations, because obviously this week was defined by Iranian air defense operations. Surface-to-air ambushes. This is the downing of an MQ9 Reaper drone that we're seeing on camera here. On the next one, number four, we can see, um, a miss. So, this is part of the breaking down these videos. It, the implication of this video was that this has been a fighter jet that's been hit, but you can see that it's not the case. Those are, um, uh, evasive maneuvers that it's performing right now. And you can see it dumping flares, um, in order to throw off the heat seeker of the missile. So, that's what we're watching. And you can see the Iranians are trying to get lock on it. There goes the flares. Um, and you can see that these videos are published, and a lot of people interpret, interpret these as hits. But we got to break down these videos for what we see. But the point of this video is that they've been all over, uh, the air defense, integrated air defense of the Iranians has been all over American and Israeli planes. The Israelis admit it, that the surface-to-air missile ambushes are, um, effective, very effective. The Israelis said they wanted to learn from that, that there was a lot to learn from that. And the US has been mostly telling lies, and we'll get, uh, into that, uh, shortly. Um, let's go to the next one, cuz this is what we saw, um, on Friday. Uh, a, a, an F-15 Strike Eagle that was, uh, shot down. We can see the parts of it there, the tail fin. Uh, it's a Strike Eagle from the 494th Fighter Squadron, which is part of the 48th Fighter Wing Unit based out of, uh, RAF Lakenheath in the UK. The next slide will show you more pictures that we saw on the ground. Um, the Americans were silent on this. In fact, the White House, um, the Pentagon, and CENTCOM were silent on this. The, um, the CENTCOM statement, uh, was one of their fact-check statements, where they claim that something that was claimed happened, didn't happen. Often it did happen, and in this case, through the entire weekend of this, uh, plane being shot down, uh, which was major news, obviously, in the United States, they still had up the tweet saying that it was false. So lies, um, um, and, and really essential omissions, have been, uh, the defining moment since the F-15 was shot down. The US said it was a shoulder-fired, well, Trump said it was a shoulder-fired, uh, lucky shot, but it was not. And this is relevant shortly in trying to explain the particular locations of the pilot and the weapons officer and the plane itself. They would later say that the F-15 was between 30,000 and 50,000 feet, which is far too high for the 10,000-foot ceiling of effective ceiling for most, uh, man-portable air defense systems. Iran said that they were hit with a new advanced air defense system. But the altitude of the F-15, uh, when it was hit, is what explains the difference between the distance between the pilot, um, who we have, we have no information on the pilot. The pilot was first. The Americans say he was rescued, um, in a daylight operation, seven hours after he went down. We have lots of witness footage from on the ground showing the search, but nothing that shows, um, the Americans touching down, but they said that they had him, and that the search was now, uh, for the weapons, uh, service officer. He is in the back part of the plane. And if we look at this next slide, um, you can see the ejection and how the, the way that the ejection works after the pilots have been hit. They pop the canopy off, they catapult at 20 Gs. They're literally rocket-boosted out of their seats. Those arrows don't, uh, really do justice. If you watch the videos of, uh, ejections, it's like a rocket launch. It's a rocket-assisted, uh, launch out of the chair, uh, at, uh, about 400 miles per hour. And so depending on the height of the plane and how it was damaged, the plane sailed on for, uh, seven to 10 minutes. The pilot was ejected at a different spot, at a different fraction of a second, as the plane is still traveling at 400 miles per hour. And that explains why one pilot was apparently on one side of the, um, uh, Zagros Mountains, and the, uh, weapons officer was on the other side. If we take a look at this next, uh, slide, you can see where the crash site occurred, and where the wreckage of the, uh, American planes, uh, that were blown up during the, uh, said rescue operation. And you'll see, uh, in this next map, the reason why, uh, there was some speculation that this was, um, a raid on the Isfahan nuclear facility, based on the, uh, distance from, uh, Isfahan. So that shows you the Persian Gulf. We're looking at the Persian Gulf, and up on the north, uh, western tip, uh, of the Persian Gulf is where, uh, the pilot was said to go down. But again, the pilot was, we only know about the pilot being rescued based on American statements. We never saw planes touch down, uh, for that part of the, um,

From for to get the pilots back to rescue the pilots. Um, and we can look at the next map, uh, as well. Um, okay. This is, this is the planes that were shot down during. So, the first, uh, rescue attempt was in the day. It was in the daylight. Um, and the US lost, um, uh, an A-10 Growler that we're looking at here. Um, the, uh, the Warthog, as it's known, it is a, uh, close air support, uh, plane. It was shot down and its pilot, um, apparently bailed out in Kuwait. The plane crash-landed in Kuwait during the attempt to, um, to, to rescue the first pilot. Um, we can go to the next one now and see, um, this is the profile of the helicopters that were shot down. These are two, um, combat search and rescue versions of Blackhawk helicopters. Two of these were shot down during that first day in the daylight. Um, so the Americans lost a significant, um, we can add it to the tally of significant costly losses, uh, to the Americans. Again, really sketchy reporting on this. Um, we know they were shot down by Iranian ground fire. Um, but again, no reports on the, the state of the four-man crew. Um, two of them, so eight crew members that apparently got shot out of the sky and we haven't heard, uh, anything about their conditions or whether they were injured. Um, these two planes are, um, search and rescue versions of Blackhawk helicopters, um, and they're part of the, would be part of the rescue, uh, package. And the next one we see is the, um, HC-130J. And these are similar to the, um, these are similar to the C-130s, except these are for, uh, austere runways to land, um, in areas to insert special forces. And we saw these planes be used in Afghanistan to insert special forces for raids, which is also part of the reason that, um, there's some discussion about whether this was actually, um, a fake-out and a raid on the nuclear, uh, to try to, the Iranians are calling it the uranium heist. Um, but the evidence that we have so far, um, isn't enough to take us down that road. Um, we still have a lot to learn about this, but two of these planes that are very, uh, specific and there are not many of them in the US, um, arsenal were, uh, shot down or were blown up on the runway, um, in the capture, in the, um, rescue of the pilots. Um, so these two, uh, hundred million plus dollar planes, um, were lost as well. And we can look at the next slides. Inside these planes are these, um, these MH-6, um, MH-6 or AH-6 if it has, um, uh, offensive capabilities on these helicopters. But these are special forces helicopters, um, that are used to carry, in this case, it was SEAL Team 6 that was doing this operation along with the, um, the par-rescuers. Um, and so again, this looks like a special forces mission. Um, if you don't have the pilot involved, um, a special forces mission may look like, um, the insertion that we saw. Um, I'm still skeptical of that. I don't think the US had any intention of going on land in Iran. And I think that the amount of things that went wrong in this, um, um, purported rescue operation, um, show the signs of how difficult, um, any kind of an operation, um, that would have to traverse over a second mountain to reach Ifahan, um, and then gather the materials which are unknown, um, in an unknown location and take those back. Um, and in terms of setting up a forward base, it wouldn't be where you would set up a forward base. It was just, um, uh, apparently a crop duster runway, essentially. Um, but the C-130s, um, the HC-130 can land in that short space. So in that moment of time, um, when they were trying to leave the site that they had landed, as the sun was coming up, the first day operations was daylight, they got lit up, they lost all their planes. Um, so they did it the next day. The second day they did it overnight, and as sun, as the sun was coming up on the third day, um, their plane, they realized that their plane was stuck. The C-1, HC-130s were stuck, um, and they were forced to destroy them, uh, with airstrikes and to, um, uh, then a Delta Force unit came in and extracted, um, the crews that were on those, um, vehicles and removed them out. So to add, uh, so we lost. So they lost two, um, HC-130s. They lost four Little Birds, the MH-6s or AH-6s. They lost an A-10 Thunderbolt. Um, they lost a number of MQ-9 Reaper drones, at least two on the first day and one on the second day, um, that were shot down by Iran. Um, and they also shot down the two, uh, Blackhawk, uh, rescue versions of the Blackhawk helicopters. You can add that to the 10 KC-135s that had been lost, uh, two in a, in an, um, aerial accident where six of the pilot, of the crew were killed, and then the others on the runways at the air bases in, uh, Saudi and in Jordan. They've lost dozens of Reaper drones. Um, the Israelis have lost dozens of drones as well, several dozen. Um, we know about the F-15s that were shot down in Kuwait by friendly fire. They lost two, um, AWACS, um, the E-3 Sentries, the battlefield, um, uh, radar, essentially, over the battlefield, which is a significant loss. So we reported on the show last week. Um, we watched F-35s get clipped. We watched an F-18 get clipped. We watched an F-15 get clipped. So all of these, uh, assets, um, are clearly showing that Iran has air defense systems and, um, the shot, the shoot-down of the F-15, um, on Friday was right after Trump said that they had, that the Iranians had zero air defenses, and then they come up with enough air defenses to, um, to effectively down the full set of, uh, of, um, combat search and rescue aircraft in this, uh, situation.

So, um, let's take a look at what they look like on the ground. Now, number 10 here. Um, you can see this video from, uh, on the ground. You can see the destruction there. You see the Little Birds. Um, the C-130s are completely destroyed. According to American media reports, 40 bombs were dropped from B-1 bombers on this site alone, and another 100 bombs were dropped in the area around it to cut off the roads around this area to not allow anyone in. Um, and that, uh, Reaper drones were patrolling the area, firing on anybody that came close. So, you could see a complete destruction, um, of these, uh, pretty significant jets. And if we look at 11, you can see the Little Birds in particular there on the right, uh, destroyed. The Little Birds, they come out of the back of the C-130s. Um, there you can see a better shot of it. They come out the back of the, they're loaded onto the C-130s in their underbay. They drop the underbay and they bring out the Little Birds and they literally put the propellers onto them and assemble them. And they can get them assembled in, um, as little as seven minutes from touchdown and they get those planes, uh, in the air. The story that the Americans tell is that, um, the plane was, the C-130s got stuck, which, um, on the makeshift landing and couldn't get out. Um, and so they had to destroy everything and get, uh, Delta Force, uh, rescue force to come in on unmarked planes, um, and extract everybody that was involved in that operation. Again, lot of information that we don't have yet. Um, we'll stay on top of that story and I think, um, that story is going to be in the news for quite some time. Um, it wrapped by the Americans saying that they had recovered both of the pilots, the both the pilot and the weapons service officer. There was a lot of talk all weekend about what it would mean for Iran to capture, um, those pilots. Um, and in the end, uh, uh, in the end, from what we know, um, the, the, the, the rescue operation was, according to the Americans, successful, uh, although full of, uh, catastrophic mistakes.

Now, let's look at the targeting that we always do, the mapping of the targets for Iran and the region. This is, uh, the map we've been using the whole time, but it's a good idea. It's a good one for showing you, uh, the key bases. Aloud air base in Kuwait and the naval support activity, uh, headquarters of the Fifth Fleet, the Navy that oversees the Central Command area, have been hammered throughout this war. Um, the air bases in Kuwait, you could see the number of them. Kuwait is a key hub, um, for the Americans since the Gulf War, but, uh, particularly through, um, the global war on terror, as they called it, um, in Iraq and Afghanistan. Uh, Bahrain targeted, Qatar targeted, the UAE has been hit a lot. Um, and we can see those bases, um, were continued to be targeted this week. Let's take a look at the missile strikes. I have made you, uh, another missile mix, um, in order to show you basically all of the launches over the past week. Um, there's been more than 100 waves of, um, ballistic missile and drone attacks. That's how the IRGC has organized, um, their, uh, um, attacks under waves. And the waves can be smaller or larger. Um, they can, they can go all day. Some waves have four and five parts to them. So it doesn't indicate the number of missiles fired, um, because that varies, um, throughout the, throughout this war, um, the numbers, but we're talking dozens, um, to several dozens. And we're talking about on Israel, um, air raid sirens in Israel, 10, 12, 15 times a day. Um, they got some different shots here of the missiles, um, in the, uh, in the sunset, I guess you could say. They, uh, added that, uh, artistic flare to see the missile more than just off of the, uh, ground. These were, this for one example, the 96th wave, um, the IRGC said that it was a response to the enemy attack on the B-1 Karaj Bridge, which was a brand new bridge, um, leading out of Tehran, um, obviously a civilian bridge. Um, and in response to that, um, the Iranians said that they targeted, um, the, they targeted civilian, uh, infrastructure in, uh, various countries. They said a severe attack on a refinery and supplying, supplying fuel for the child-killing fighter jets of the Israeli entity in Haifa. Um, an attack on American gas facilities, ExxonMobil, Chevron, located in the UAE. A missile attack on the petrochemical facilities producing fuel materials for the American armed drones and military products for the Israeli entity in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Um, we can see these videos, uh, have changed over the course of this battle. But, um, always very telling to see the difference in the missiles launched. We saw their, um, high-end missile, top, top-shelf missiles like the Sajil being fired. We saw one Hajkasam be fired, which hadn't been used previous in the war. And, um, again, it matches with Iran's statements that in the beginning of the war, they were firing their old stock, um, and in the later parts of the war, um, are getting into their more capable missiles that are much more difficult to intercept, and we've seen that both, um, in the Gulf countries but also in Israel itself. Um, just one more of the missile launches. This is, uh, the view from Shiraz. Um, Ahmed talked about how they have demonstrations on the streets. There's been 100 waves, um, of missile attacks. Um, there's been 60 waves of army attacks, and there's been 40 straight days on the streets, um, protesting and in solidarity, um, with Iran on the streets. And this was missiles fired over that demonstration in Shiraz. Um, so this is what the people of Iran, this is a civilian camera, um, from people in Iran showing, um, the missile launches as Ahmed reported earlier on the show. If you didn't catch that, um, you should go back and check it out because it's a great interview from on the ground in Iran. Um, let's take a look at the missiles arriving, uh, in Israel. We've got audio in for the next two slides, again.

So, you can see just a direct hit we're looking at from an upper floor of an apartment building. We watched the red streak, um, and then the camera gets blown off the balcony by the blast wave, um, of that first strike. Let's look at the second strike. Same thing, a strike through, uh, a civilian area that, uh, you would be told is, uh, targeting civilians, which Iran hasn't done throughout this war, um, at all. In fact, if we look at the next slide, you can see what the target was. Um, it was the total loss of a drone factory in, uh, Petah Tikva, um, that was hit by an Iranian ballistic missile. This is a factory of Aerosol, uh, Aviation. It builds pilot gear, bomb components, drones, um, all of which are for the Israeli, um, military. Um, and you can see that's a direct strike on it, an accurate hit, um, clearly the target. Um, and so if Iran wanted to put accurate hits on, um, apartment towers in Tel Aviv, they can certainly do that. Um, they have chosen to not do that at this point, um, in the war. Um, and that is why it's the same in the Gulf. The Gulf targets have been the same. And that's why across Israel and all through the Gulf, um, the numbers of dead are only in the 30s, and most of them are foreign workers. Um, I mean, foreign workers is a, a generous term to describe, uh, many of the conditions of the workers in the Gulf countries. Um, clearly being forced to work, um, when others are taking shelter. Um, but that explains it, and you can see here a direct hit. The factory is basically doesn't exist anymore. Um, a significant warhead, uh, struck that.

Now, let's look at some drone attacks here coming up. Number 18, I think we're on now. Uh, IRGC drone attacks carried out by the naval, uh, force here, um, targeting HIMARS batteries in Kuwait, a US Patriot system in Bahrain, attack missile sites in, uh, in Bahrain as well, a gathering of senior US military commanders in the UAE. Um, the Oracle building in the UAE. So specific targets related always to the targets that the Americans and Israelis hit. Um, these are retaliation, retaliatory strikes, and, uh, Iran maintains escalation dominance. When Israel or the US escalate, so does Iran. Um, we can look at the next one is, uh, the army, because the army is separate from the IRGC, but they're fighting their own battle. Number 19 is, um, Artesh, they call the army. You can see them launching their Arash 2 drones. These are specially built, long-range, um, uh, drones that have stealth capability, solid warhead, and are aimed, uh, are designed for long-range strikes on Israel. Um, and Jordan, because in this case, they targeted the Al Azarak air base in Jordan, which is Mafraq Al Salti, which is the key hub for, as they say, a strateg, important strategic and command center of the aggressor Israelis, um, in the West Asia region, and the Americans. That base is used by both of them. And as the war has gone on, we've seen more, um, uh, a little more detail. We see the, the launch crews, now more, um, you can, the, um, their expressions, their comments before launching. Of course, a lot of these drone and missile strikes are dedicated to, uh, to martyrs. Sometimes martyrs as recently as a few minutes before the attack, sometimes going, um, all the way back to, um, key resistance figures, um, all through the battle. Um, and we've seen that all throughout this war. Um, the, uh, attacks on the second part of these, uh, army attacks were on petrochemical plants after Israel hit, uh, petrochemical plants in Iran. Um, and they responded right away with these hits on petrochemical facilities in Kuwait and elsewhere in the Gulf. Um, Netanyahu bragged after hitting the petrochemical sites that, um, he said that the targeted sites were a money machine that brought in revenue for the, um, Iranian government. At some point, somewhere else, uh, they said that it was $18 billion, which is, um, uh, a fraction of the amount of money the Americans have given the Israelis, um, in their, um, uh, for their allowance. Um, so those are the, uh, army drone strikes. Um, we can look at number 20 here because we got satellite footage, um, of a THAAD, another THAAD battery destroyed at Prince Sultan air base in, um, in Saudi Arabia. And of course, in the statement to the New York Times, Planet Labs, who was the primary, um, satellite that, uh, satellite provider that people used, um, and the reason why we haven't seen battle damage assessment since the first week of the war when we saw them losing literally billions of dollars in radars. Um, Planet Lab said to the US government request was made for safety and operational security reasons. It would be voluntarily. We will be voluntarily withholding imagery over the area indefinitely until the conflict ends and switch to a managed distribution of imagery deemed to not pose a safety risk. So, not clear what the safety risk is of showing battle damage. Um, they don't obviously need the satellites to target these because they're, uh, battle damage assessments. So, they already hit it. So, I don't know what, uh, what argument could be made for safety. This is clearly naked propaganda and and censorship, um, following the, uh, Israeli, the way the Israelis, um, keep the, the satellite providers at a distance and why we never get good satellite images of Gaza. Of people wondered why is it that we get this nice clear, uh, satellite image where we never saw anything like that in Gaza? You basically have to, um, you have to be able to read tea leaves to understand the distance and the, um, resolution quality that we get, uh, on Israeli, uh, satellite imagery.

Okay, let's look at another lost aircraft. A, uh, a Chinook, US Chinook lost on, uh, base in Kuwait. And as we do every week, um, number 22 is the Iraqi front. Um, the Iraqi front has been, uh, battling fiercely in this, uh, in this, uh, 40-day war so far. They joined immediately on day one. They've executed more than 850 operations targeting Syria, Jordan, Kuwait, but especially concentrated on US positions in Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan, particularly the embassy and the Baghdad airport. Um, those are have been the main targets for the Iraqi resistance. Um, and I've shown you one on each, uh, of the shows. Um, so let's take a look now at Lebanon. And I will just remind you that you are watching and listening to the electronic Inifat. This is the resistance report for day 916. We're going to look at Hezbollah right now. Um, because, uh, Hezbollah has been fighting a fierce battle against Israel's. So Israel suggested attempts that they were going to take up to the Litani River. We're looking at a map here on the screen that shows Israel at the bottom. The blue line is the, um, de facto border. Um, and then all of South Lebanon up to the Litani River. Um, Israel said that they were going to hold. Well, they changed their mind this week. That that's no longer the goal. The goal is now simply a 3-kilometer buffer zone, um, around the border to push fire up. And as, uh, Roa, Rokaya Shamsadin reported for us excellently again for the second week in a row, you can listen to that along with Norah's Gaza News report, reported on the, uh, massacres of civilians that happened, uh, yesterday. A large wave of Israeli airstrikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon using 50 fighter jets dropped 160 bombs on 100 targets within 10 minutes. However, the air force, they bragged about it even more. They said it was 60 seconds, uh, that there's their intention to carry out that heinous massacre in 60 seconds, and they called it, uh, eternal darkness was the way they named, um, their operation. So again, another revealing, uh, Israeli, uh, sadism, I guess you could say. Um, let's take.

So there's five Israeli, uh, uh, divisions that are fighting spread across from Nura, Bint Jbeil, and then up the Galilee panhandle over to, uh, Meiron and, uh, Hiam, that are up on the top of the, uh, uh, panhandle that you see on the right-hand side. And you can see how those places touch, virtually touch the Litani River. So, Israeli forces are attempting to push forward for a few kilometers, take a picture on the Litani River, and say they achieved their military goals. But really, this week during an IDF briefing, um, they claimed that they're no longer trying to disarm Hezbollah, which they said they already did. If people remember back for the last two years, they said they won that war because they blew up, uh, a bunch of people's hands with pagers, um, in a mass terror attack, um, and they assassinated senior leadership. So they believed that they had won the war, but that was not the case because in 2024, the 60-day invasion of South Lebanon failed. Israel didn't invade Lebanon. Um, they were unsuccessful. And what they did achieve in Lebanon was to put five advanced military posts inside Lebanon. But they did that under the cover of the ceasefire, um, as Israel is want to do for these things, um, violating the ceasefire in its fundamental way. Um, now let's look at the next map because this will show, um, you can see it over that previous map. This is where the engagements, um, face-to-face fighting has happened from Nakura on the west coast to Bint Jbeil, um, and then up again up at the top, um, in the Marjayoun area, and then up at the very top on the right, that's Hiam, um, where they're facing ground forces that are repelling Israeli operations. Um, we can take a look at one of those operations here, number 25, we're at now. Um, this is in, uh, Taba in the, uh, Marjayoun area, and you can see a tank here that is withdrawing. Um, Israeli newspaper clippings talked about this operation because this was Israeli soldiers fleeing. Um, and Hezbollah is showing us that here. That's a report from, uh, MCO News that says the vehicles were left behind. They left three excavators behind, um, during a panicked withdrawal, a panicked retreat. Information received by MCO agency indicates that during the attack launched by forces in South Lebanon, which included deep penetration into hostile territory using heavy engineering means, um, heavy fire was opened on the forces using mortars, um, high-altitude rockets, and precision missiles. The incident did not end at this point. Shortly after the panicked retreat, uh, Hezbollah fighters came down and encircled the, uh, area, um, in case the troops came back to get their, uh, uh, their, what do you call excavators, front-end excavators, front-end loaders that they had left that they were trying to, um, change the geography of the land in South Lebanon to make it a little easier for them. Here is how Hezbollah dealt with that. Um, launching here 122-millimeter Grad rockets, Katius as they call them in, uh, Lebanon. They're actually Iranian rockets. They're not GRDs. Um, all of these weapons are Iranian, built by an indigenous, um, Iranian weapons industry. And many of them are built by Hezbollah. The drones, um, and the, uh, guidance systems that are added onto rockets for precision to make them precision-guided missiles, that is all done by Hezbollah. But you can see here they're pounding them, uh, at the site with, uh, with rocket fire. And rocket fire underpins all of these operations. It's been the thing that they've done the most. Upwards of 7,000, uh, rockets and missiles have been fired, um, during this part of the war, during the last, uh, 30, um, 38 days. Today's day 38, um, of this battle. Um, and you can see that, uh, this is the field report because Hezbollah puts out these field reports every day. Um, we log them and track them, and it's how we can, uh, on this program, uh, connect the dots because, uh, and count the operations and understand, uh, what's going on in the battlefield because their command and control is perfectly intact. They're filing these field reports immediately. They're not delayed. Um, they clearly have communication. Now we're watching them walk through what looks like an abandoned campground. Um, but it's where Israeli forces were setting up. Yahalom tunnel units. Apparently, one soldier was killed and five were wounded in the, uh, artillery and rocket attacks. There's a bridge that they used to get over the river, the River Bedar, um, there to cross over, and they were ambushed in this site, um, and fled. And you can see their shoes left behind there. Um, you can see their belts, you can see their attempts. This is a, a, a makeshift bridge, um, to get over to this area. So, just complete abandonment. And we're going to see in a moment here as the fighter works his way along. Um, there you see a dinghy used for supplies to get across the river. Um, and we're going to see them walk up here to the excavators. Three, uh, excavators that were abandoned, um, during the, um, during the retreat. And the soldier that was killed, um, was a lone soldier, a foreign fighter from New Jersey who didn't live in Israel, didn't have any connection to Israel, but wanted to go and fight in Israel's army, and he was killed in this operation. One of at least 13 the Israelis have admitted to. Don't feel super confident that that's an accurate number. The Israelis and the Americans have been very tight-lipped about, um, the information front in this war. There you were looking at the, uh, excavators there left behind. Um, that one looks like it had been hit. It's got broken glass. Um, but you can see these are the excavators that we saw in, uh, Gaza as well. Caterpillar, always supporting Israeli apartheid and criminal aggressions with their gear. You can see there also blown up, um, through the rocket attacks that are, um, throughout this whole video. And one of the interesting things that we're going to see throughout this, uh, report is that the, uh, military media department in Hezbollah has given the fighters cameras in a way that they didn't, um, in the previous war. So these are not, um, official media. These are not official cameramen or, um, as we can see, skilled cameramen, um, but they are, um, recording their operations, and we're seeing things because of that that we never saw in the first battle in, in 2023 and 2024. Um, Hezbollah was very secretive about, uh, about the, um, about the operations, about the tools that they were using. And now we're getting to see, um, a lot more in these recent videos. Um, let's take a look at number 26. This is the map of, um, the rocket strike. So you can see in the bottom of this map, there is, um, an inset map, zoomed in on the, the border line up at the top. And what Hezbollah is doing is hitting Israeli military positions, troop movements, makeshift bases. Um, anywhere the Israelis move to, they're being shelled from across the border. Um, all the way along, more than 6,500, upwards of 7,000 rockets, um, have been fired, and they're aiming at troops all along the borders there. And it's been the underpinning, um, of this operation, uh, which has carried, which has been, uh, using all different types of weapons, but really founded on, if you look on the left, you can see, um, that the red circles mean, uh, the dark red circles mean more than 60 hits on the same positions, or the smaller ones are 30 to 50 hits on the same position. Um, 15 to 30 hits on the same position. So, they're just being pounded, um, in, uh, in their, their, their rear bases. Um, and as we saw in the previous video, in their forward bases as well, but, uh, this has been critical to, uh, Hezbollah's operations. Let's take a look at this next video because this is going to, um, combine all the things that I just described. Um, here's fighters. Um, the first fighter says that, um, we're going to show you the outside now. He's talking to the FOD launcher here. This is a, uh, Fati rocket launcher that is in a hardened shelter, truck-mounted. And you can see that he is smashing out the cinder block walls of the hardened shelter. And that's what the other, uh, Hezb fighter says. He says, "Let's show it the outside. Let's show the Fati the outside because it's been hiding in here, um, all this time." And there's the truck, um, in pretty rough shape, but it gets the job done. Um, there was a long report, uh, by Hezbollah about another FOD launcher that, um, we'll break down in a future show because there's a lot of detail to it. Um, but you can see there from a hardened shelter. Now we're going to watch the fighters wire it up. We can see them with their control panels. These are all things that were previously never shown, um, in Hezbollah operations. Um, so we're seeing a lot. Um, previously we would just see the launch, or we might see the fighters there. There you see the fighters give the victory sign before launching. Uh, and this fighter who's got the camera, he says, uh, he says, "This is my first time, uh, with the camera, so if I flinch, don't judge me." As the Fati launches, uh, makes a significant noise. Um, and he's saying, there's another victory sign from the fighters. So we're really seeing the fighters for the first time, um, rather than being behind the fighters, uh, that we saw in the, um, the first war. There's the launch. Um, and the, uh, cameraman didn't flinch. So, uh, good on him for that. But it's important to note that Hezbollah were the founders of this military media. They did it going back to Beta and VHS tapes, um, that they would deliver, um, to, um, to television stations that would show it to prove their operations against the Israelis because the Israelis just lie. And then the fighters all get back in the truck and they drive off. And so this is definitely something we never used to see. Um, but they're driving off in the truck after a successful operation. Um, so a very interesting one there. Um, the next one we're going to see, the multiple launch rocket system. And this is, um, what's really, again, we're seeing them in the truck on their way to the site. This is a dangerous operation. But, um, one thing that we learned from the Israelis, and one of the reasons why the Israelis don't think that they can take the area all the way up to the Litani, well, they can't because of the fighters. But also that they, um, they can't do it. They would take heavy losses. And also they've realized that, um, the rockets aren't fired from south of the Litani. Um, these are, uh, these larger, particularly these larger multiple launch, they can be fired from behind the Litani River, and many of the heavier missiles and rockets that they have have 200-plus kilometer range. So the Litani River isn't any kind of a border. Previously, when they only fired Katius rockets, it was somewhat useful because of the range of the Katius. But that's a bygone era. Again, we get, we see in this video, um, the fighters all around, um, the, the, um, the launcher. We see what the circumstances are around the fighters. This is a dangerous moment for them. They've got a Hezbollah flag hanging off the launcher. They're communicating with each other, um, about the launch. Um, um, yeah, and Israel says that they, that Hezbollah has between 1,000, sorry, between 8,000 and 10,000 missiles left. This is compared to 40,000, um, that they had before October 7th. But we know that before October 7th, Israel said that number was in the many hundreds of thousands. So, um, there's a lot of, uh, revisionist, revisionist history going on here because Israel said they defeated Hezbollah. They clearly didn't. We're seeing Hezbollah fighting at a tempo of operations that we've never seen before. In any of their previous wars, going all the way back to the 1980s, um, the number of operations, um, in the last two days before the war, there was 160 operations. Here again, you can see them pulling up the truck for another multiple launch. Um, and it's just very interesting to see, um, these details, um, from the commanders. Um, and this fighter is, uh, addressing the camera saying that they will not leave, um, the battlefield. Um, so significant, significant developments on the rocket, um, and, uh, missile front here by Hezbollah. Let's take a look at the next one. It's, uh, this is a remarkable one. Um, we're going to watch them set up here. World War II era field guns, um, that we're seeing them set up here that we have never seen before. Didn't know they had. Um, but this is for the defense of Bint Jbeil. They said that there are, uh, fighters, Israeli soldiers mustering into the south of the town. Um, and so you can see the fighters here. They're talking about amongst each other, talking about, uh, recording this part. Is it okay to record this part? He's like, "Yeah, it's fine to record it." And you see them setting it up. You see the cameraman there, um, again, and these are firing off very rare weapons that I don't think many people expected to see. Um, this is a KS-19 100-millimeter anti-aircraft gun that's being loaded up here and being used as an anti-personnel weapon to fire on those troops that are down, um, in this, uh, southern area of Bint Jbeil. If this war continues, Bint Jbeil will be a major battleground, strategic, uh, location, a long history of resistance in Bint Jbeil. The 2006 war essentially died, uh, in Bint Jbeil because of the resistance, uh, there. So the, the fight for Bint Jbeil will be significant there. Again, the fighter with the victory signs, we see a little bit of their personality. We see the details that go into covering this. We're watching a fighter here, um, remove the netting that, um, that covers the, the weapon in the forest. They're deep inside the forest here, um, setting up these guns. Um, the second one is a 122-millimeter towed howitzer. So a full-on, um, World War II era field gun that they're going to fire with the rope that you can see there pulling it off. And it's a massive blast. Um, but these kind of guns, should they have enough, um, ammunition for them, will definitely slow the advance of the Israelis. Um, although for, uh, Hezbollah's fighting doctrine, um, they're not, they're not treating the Israelis entering, um, the town, the city, the town, it's really a town of Bint Jbeil, um, as, uh, the defeat. They're not fighting for a single rock. Nasrallah said it, um, many times before, that our fighters are more valuable than a piece of, of stone. So they're not going to hold some arbitrary line. They're going to encircle, um, and fight a guerrilla warfare that allow, that doesn't allow the Israelis to, uh, take control, um, of the city. And when they are in the city, they will be hit, um, regularly. And you can watch this be fired, um, out of the bush, and it's pretty remarkable bush that you see there. Um, this is the, the nature of the fight in South Lebanon and part of the, um, significant advantage that Hezbollah has, um, on this territory. Let's take a look at the next one because we are seeing here the underground missile bases, um, of the, uh, Hezbollah fighters. We're watching here, um, a flashlight fighter walking down into a tunnel apparatus. He chose one direction, but it looked like he could have gone two directions. Same with that one there. He could have gone to the left, he went to the right, suggesting that these missile silos, these missile bases are significant. They're not single, um, they're not single rail. But here, they're now walking in this cave, in this tunnel, and they're going to turn here, and you're going to see, um, the rail launcher here for the Koder, precision-guided ballistic missile. There's Imad Mughniyah, the, um, the military, uh, architect of Hezbollah, uh, uh, always saluting the fighters. We saw it in Gaza. We saw it in Iran. We always see it in Lebanon. But you can see the single rail there. So this is being launched from underground on a single rail. It can be launched, you saw at each of the turns when he decided to go left or right, you could see a blast door at each of those turns. And that's how you know, um, it's a fully functioning, um, missile silo because those blast doors have to be blocked at all times, um, for the launch. Um, and and it's why the Israelis can't defeat the missile silos, um, in Iran. We're going to find that in this two-year period of time, Iran is going to dig out, um, their buried silos in so far as they were hit. They can simply be, um, dug out. And here's Hezbollah showing, um, the, uh, locations of these missiles because they were high-value targets. They targeted the Kirya, the IDF's headquarters, and Aman, their military intelligence, uh, barracks on this operation was March 26th. We're getting these videos about a week delayed, um, about a week after the operations. We're getting them. And you can see even just from week to week, the, um, the improvements in targeting and, um, the, uh, the tempo of it, the just the straight number of operations. There you see Nasrallah under this. And this second, uh, 622-millimeter Koder 2 that carries a 400-kilogram warhead, is aimed at, uh, the human, uh, shields base, IDF base, in Tel Aviv. The Kirya, the campus is the headquarters of the IDF in Tel Aviv and is completely surrounded by civilians, even though it's a new, it's an old base, but it's been modernized, and they embrace the fact that it has human shields, um, in downtown Tel Aviv. Number 31 is a map about anti-tank operations because, um, using rockets as cover fire, keeping troops, um, behind the lines, um, under fire. Um, the anti-tank ops are the first level of defense, um, of the territory in South Lebanon. Again, these match up, um, pretty straight, pretty directly with the, uh, Israeli areas to press on. You can see anti-tank operations. This is from the first month of the war. So this goes to April 1st from March 2nd. Um, and they're, they're talking about, uh, 136 Israeli tanks had been targeted, um, along with, uh, 25 other vehicles, bulldozers, um, Humvees we've seen be hit. Uh, but again, that map just gives you a sense of where those anti-tank operations are. And you can see the massive hole in the middle of what is supposed to be the area, um, that Israel says that it's going to claim. And you can clearly see after a month that they have, um, barely advanced. They've barely advanced because they already were in forward positions inside Lebanon because of their positions in the ceasefire. Um, so they really only moved one ridge forward, um, in this entire 40-day battle. Um, let's take a look at 32 because the anchor of these operations, of course, are these Almas attacks, these, um, uh, cloned Israeli, uh, Spike systems. And this here is the longest we've seen of the setup of the Almas anti-tank guided missile, um, launcher. Here you can see the fighters setting it up. And again, this is just a, a totally different view than we had seen of them before. We maybe got this view that you're seeing here now with the fighter, uh, holding on, just about getting his readings in, and just about to launch. You can see his spotter beside him. We might have gotten just the front half of that in previous videos, but now we see the way the tandem, the team works together. Um, these are, uh, hunter-killer teams, tank-killer teams, firing these top-attack anti-tank guided missiles that come, as the name suggests, from above, which is, um, partially designed to, um, evade countermeasures, active protection systems from the Israeli military. But here we're going to see him put it right through the hatch, um, of that, uh, Merkava tank there. This operation was in Alba, so right near where the, uh, the troops fled from, uh, earlier on. And again, you see the footage because we're on the missile with the Almas. Um, and number 33, we'll get to these drones. Israel showed us, uh, the drones that the quadcopter drones that we've seen, um, been flying. Israel showed us, wanted us to see what they looked like on the ground. And I'm not sure that that was the best idea because what it shows is a brilliant, um, setup by Hezbollah. Clean, smart, cheap, easy to assemble with resilient, undetectable, um, supply chains. They're using common parts that are in all kinds of other things, um, that make it impossible to stamp out the supply chain. They're all easily available. And at each component, at each choice that they've made here, from the battery pack to the propeller to the brushless motor, um, to the weight, the number of batteries per pack, um, all of these are interchangeable and can be, um, tweaked as, uh, necessary for heavier, um, warheads. And you can see the warheads there. You may remember those from Gaza. Those are anti-tank warheads. Those are just single charge 80-millimeter anti-tank warheads, high-explosive warheads. Um, I, I expected we would see more tandems like we see Yasin 105s. Um, it's possible that Hezbollah just doesn't have a lot of those because they trained their forces to be tank killers and they use the Kornet system and they use the Almas system, um, which are far heavier, more effective, um, systems. Whereas in Gaza, they didn't have the ability to import. And a smart move for them was to make super light, very easy to use, put it a weapon in the hand, anti-tank weapon in the hand of every fighter that has the ability to penetrate, um, the Merkava tank, um, not nearly as much as a Kornet or an Almas. So, it's possible. We have seen some tandems in, in Lebanon, but we see Hezbollah using them for the RPG-29, um, which is a shoulder-fired, um, system. And it's just far more effective to use the tandem, um, warhead in the RPG-29 rather than on these, um, uh, quadcopters that we're seeing. But the, the total build here, these are all parts, parts that are costing, you know, propeller, carbon fiber frame, brushless motor, customizable battery array, um, custom flight controller based on the weight, the camera, the transmitter, the antenna. All of these choices were smart choices, widely available, all used in other applications. That's what we've seen for Iran to, um, stifle sanctions for the Houthis who are under blockade, um, to use these parts that are not specific to this one, um, drone, like using Chinese G drones that don't allow you this kind of flexibility. So this is really a brilliant move that, um, Israel's accidentally showing and presumably showing other resistance groups, um, as well. So, it's like, you know, to put this entire package together minus the warhead, um, it, the range is something you could get them for 150 bucks. Um, the top end of the range was a few hundred. So, let's say $250 per drone. Um, and they've been really effective. Um, let's take a look at how effective they've been. I made a, um, uh, a stitch-up here, a mixtape, if you will, um, of a bunch of drone strikes. And again, look at the topography here that they're fighting in, that Israel has to navigate through these low-lying areas, um, in the mountains. Here we're going to see a tank get hit and aimed at the tracks for a mobility kill of that tank because as we know from Gaza, Hamas never fired these single-round warheads at a tank because they don't penetrate. Um, so what you have to do is you have to pick your targets. You have to hit tracks. Um, you have to put it through open doors that we're going to see in a bit here. Um, and, and to make them effective because they're essentially carrying an RPG warhead underneath. You can see the, the propellers there on the upper right, and the, um, the anti-tank missile is underneath. So there we saw the back door of a Namer troop carrier, which makes perfect sense. We saw from Hamas's, um, targeting documents that the back door is where they are targeting from. Here's an Eton. This is the first Eton wheeled fighting vehicle that we've seen. But watch, he'll bypass the Eton and go right into the base and take it right in through the front door of the base. This is a hospital that Israel is using. They evacuated the hospital, destroyed it, and now they're using it as a base. Um, you're going to see the pilots, even just the development of the pilots in the, in the four weeks of this war is significant. Rather than barreling into that, uh, target, he's looping around to see if there's a better target. Here he sees, uh, an unarmored or lightly armored Humvee, and it's attacked. So these, uh, we've seen adaptation of the, uh, targeting system as well, um, underpinned by the adaptation to create these drones, uh, in the first place. Here they're coming down on another set of, that looks like a school. Um, I couldn't, I couldn't, uh, pinpoint which school it

was, but um they're using them. And here you see them assembling. Again, something we would never see from Hezbollah. We saw this a little bit from Kasam.

um but assembling the uh the drone there from the various parts and it's easy to do. Anyone can do it. You don't have to have your drone specialists. Um you don't have to have a special supply chain that could be cut off. Um it's all just really smart um wise way of conducting guerilla warfare in the 21st century. And this is a D9 armored bulldozer and an excavator that we're seeing. Again, Casam would fire this weapon at a bulldozer. So, this makes uh what the resistance calls an appropriate weapon, uh fit for purpose, if you will. Um so, we've seen those adaptations.

People might remember back a couple weeks ago when I was showing these um we show there underneath towards the engine, uh trying to hit the engine block for a mobility kill. Early on in these videos, we saw some of them where they were flying them and just hitting off the turret of the tank, which is the most heavily guarded or one of the most heavily guarded uh uh parts of the tank. Now, watch what they do here. There's a Marova tank. Watch how the back door is open and they're going to put it right in through the back door there. and it looks like he hits the the bottom of the back door, but if you're detonating an anti-tank weapon in the g in the entrance way of a tank, you're making an absolute mess. And again, casualties just don't match what we're seeing there.

Um, let's look at uh 30. Where are we on now? Is this 36? The Abobil. This is the Abobil T. This is Hasbal drone. Uh, also you can see with the forward Canard wings there that distinguish it from the other drones that they fire the side 107. Although we're going to see side 107s entering Israel there. You can see the wooden propeller to lower the radar signature on these. Um, they have a bit more distance um than and can carry a bit heavier uh warhead than the SIAD 107s. Um, these are also built by Hzbollah from Iranian drone um um specs. I'm not sure what the word to use there is. Um, from designs um, and this is how the resistance axis is fought and this is the realization of the resistance axis throughout this whole battle.

Um, number 37 we are on now. We can see a drone coming in in Israel. There you can see the Siad 107 flying over. You're going to see the Ratat uh Israeli flag there. It looks like it's been a tough war for Israel judging by those flags. Um, they seem sad. And then um, there's two shots from civilians of the uh Siad 107. And now let's look at some air defense operations. Uh number 38 here. Uh we can see them using the Misog. This is an Iranian uh um uh manportable surfacetoair missile. There we see the Apache helicopter. They're going to miss uh they're going to miss the helicopter, but they show us everything that went into setting that up. The helicopter has a lot of advantages over uh that particular missile. Although you see the helicopter make a uh beline to land. He didn't want to be up after that near miss. Um, but here just let's watch this for one second. See, you can see how they set up and that's something we never would see before from Hezbollah.

Okay, let's look at number 39. This is um the more uh ones we're more used to here uh through the scope here. Um, you can see they're going to use uh here another this is a North Korean HT pattern manportable air defense system. They're going to fire it against an Elbit uh Hermes 450. And there you go. Minus one uh Hermes 450, one of four that have been shot down in the last few weeks. This is a second generation SA18 um manportable uh surfaceto-air missile man pads as people may see um jargony people use um direct hit. So, another strike there.

And then one last Hezbollah video because I think this one uh really wraps up how Hezbollah feels. You're looking at a Fata 110, possibly a Fata 360. Um short-range ballistic missile. Um and you see they're a fixing a sticker there. You see uh Naim Kasam Nasalla and uh the Virgin Mary. Um, there's Nasalla again on the missile. You see uh there's Musader, Imam Musadder there. Um, and then um on this on the missile is a sticker that says um it's for the people of South Lebanon. And the message says, "You will return to your homes with your heads held high, oh honorable people of the south." And then it says on the missile launcher it says the classic Casam line. Uh, it was not you who threw but God when you threw. Um, so they had that on the the missile launcher there. And these are very effective short-range ballistic missiles that are the same short-range ballistic missiles that Iran is firing at the Gulf. Um, and so these are doing damage and these are targeting uh Israeli military bases and installations which we get no coverage of whatsoever. I showed you that drone factory that got blown up because it was in the middle of a city. But the bases that are outside of the city, we're not hearing anything about casualties, about hits. It's all being kept secret.

Um, and just on the final note, let's uh turn to Gaza here. Um, Abu Oda, um, the new Abu Oba who replaced uh, Hufa al- Kalud who was assassinated um, during the war. Uh, Abu Oda gave a speech today uh or the other day, two days ago, um saying that we emphasize that what the enemy failed to take from us with tanks and genocide will not be taken from us through politics and negotiations. He blessed the people of Gaza for their steadfastness and sacrifice. Um, he said after a war of genocide and ethnic cleansing and some of the most horrific massacres in modern history, the aggression continues to expand, spreading across the region. It launched a treacherous aggression. Israel launched a treacherous aggression against Iran in the most deceptive negotiations in full coordination with the United States. The true nature of the Zionist entity has been exposed, revealing its weakness and total dependence on external support for help um for it will not last. Amid global silence and double standards, the world demands concessions only from the Palestinians. While ignoring the occupation's violations and refusal to honor agreements, the occupation continues targeting civilians to create chaos, turning safe zones into death traps, restricting aid and movement.

Um, he also says that we received with great pride the message from the Islamic Republic addressed to our people through the spokesperson uh Ibrahim Zagari um dedicated to the operations uh dedicating operations putting them on missiles um to our fallen leaders such sake Ahmed Yasin and Yahinar the actions of the fighters in Iran, Lebanon and Yemen are extensions of the Al Axa flood punishing those responsible for those war crimes. We declare full support for Lebanon, its people, and its resistance. And renew our call for the fighters of the Lebanese resistance to turn direct confrontation into a real opportunity to capture US soldiers. And he ends by saying once again, we emphasize that what the enemy failed to take from us from with tanks and genocide will not be taken from us with politics and negotiations. Kasam is not disarming. As you know as a regular viewer of this show, that is the resistance report for week uh for week six of the Iran war and day 916 of the genocide in Gaza.

>> John, uh thank you. I um that was that was like cinematic. Um, and I just I don't think I I get the the chance that often to just thank you for putting in all of those hours every day. Every day. um and curating this collection of um of evidence of not just the war crimes of the West um but also the resistance of the people um fighting back and and defending themselves and it's just it's uh it's marvelous. So, thank you.

Well, they give us the videos and it's a unique moment in military history where we have that and we can really understand what's going on on the front without speculating, without uh theorizing. We can just literally watch what happened, connect it to the field reports, connect it to the battle damage assessments and tell a story. And we do that because we have the correct analysis. And you know with uh especially with your background in you know very nerdy scientific you know engineering um of of the kinds of of weapons and the kinds of terrain and the way that these uh indigenous resistance forces fight. Um I think you know that's that's what we do best here at the electronic and defat. So just uh just thank you again.

>> Um and uh there's you know coming coming back kind of to the to the political analysis of all of this. Um Alli, can you talk a little bit about how the media, you know, corporate mainstream pro-state media um is covering this and and and uh and what you're looking at closely?

Well, since we only have a very short time, I'm just going to make a couple of of points and point to a couple of things that I think are worth noticing. Remember that Donald Trump, Pete Hexith, the US war secretary or secretary of defeat as I like to call her, are all saying this is a fantastic victory, uh, stunning victory and the US is doing so well. But what is actually being said? So, I'm going to point to two stories. One, the first one a lot of people talking about is in the New York Times. It's a long story headlined how Trump took the US to war with Iran. And it uh says that in early February um well it talks about the key role Israel played in early February. Benjamin Net went to the White House and made his pitch. He told Donald Trump that Iran was ripe for regime change and promised a fast decisive victory. Israeli officials even staged a stick slick presentation with the intelligence chiefs there on video, the head of the Masad, David Barneer. Uh, and it worked. Trump reportedly reacted. Sounds good to me. But when US intelligence officials took a hard look, the story fell apart. The CIA director Radcliffe um called key parts of Israel's plan faracical. Even Secretary of State Marco Rubio called it, pardon my French, [ __ ] Israel's top general, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Kaine told Trump, "Sir, this is, in my experience, standard operating procedure for the Israelis. They oversell and their plans are not always well-developed. They know they need us, and that's why they're hard selling." Advisers also warned Trump that it would be impossible to stop Iran controlling the Strait of Homus. None of that stopped the momentum. Trump was fixated on killing Ayat Ali, Iran's leader, and crushing its military, and just brushed aside all doubts. Only one person in the room really pushed back, and that was Vice President JD Vance. He warned of regional chaos, spiraling costs, and unpredictable uh retaliation. But ultimately, Vance said he would support whatever the president decided, and he and everyone else went along. In the end, Trump made the call. I think we need to do it. Now, in part, this article reads like an effort to exonerate uh Vice President JD Vance of responsibility, perhaps to preserve his political prospects, but we wouldn't be seeing this story if the war was a stunning success. This is uh part of the blame game. And it's also remarkable to see Israel's role given such prominence. Normally, the New York Times would conceal the Israeli influence. But again, that's uh part of uh pushing the responsibility off of the United States and onto Israel. Of course, this is the US is responsible.

A second article uh appears in the Washington Post uh a couple this was just two days ago early this week and the headline there, Hexath's boastful claims about Iran contradict reality, officials say. So, this is citing unnamed administration officials throwing Pete Hegsth under the bus. And I'll just read one sentence from this article. Pete is not speaking truth to the president. One administration official said, as a result, the president is out there repeating misleading information. So, we can expect that Pete Hegth is not going to stay in his job very long. Again, uh we do not see too many uh senior officials rushing to claim ownership and credit for this uh incredibly successful war.

And then uh Asa, I think you've been looking at how uh top Israeli politicians have been talking about this. Tell us very quickly what's going on there.

Yeah, there's been sort of uh mutual recriminations amongst Israeli politicians about the war, which Netanyahu's opponents perceive to be a an unprecedented defeat actually. I mean, even allowing for the fact that they have their own political access to grind in terms of the upcoming elections expected inside um the Zionist entity later this year. Um, they are using extremely strong language. You can see this the tweet here on the screen from Y laid the leader of the uh opposition in the Kesset describing the the temporary ceasefire truce whatever you you know you want to call it whatever is actually going to happen. Nonetheless he's describing it as a a real disaster. He says he says uh there's never been such a political disaster in all of our history. Israel wasn't even at the table when decisions were made uh by the US. He means obviously uh concerning the core of our national security. Um, you know he's obviously supporting the military, supporting the genocide and so on and so forth, but saying it will take years to repair the political and strategic damage that Netanyahu has wrought due to arrogance and lack of strategic planning. Uh, the next one is um another uh Israeli uh opposition leader. Oh, sorry. There's a sec. Sorry. Thanks. Yes, Tamara. You're right. Um, there's a second one from Y Leed where, you know, he's he's making a speech on TV and said Netanyahu led us to a strategic collapse. I mean, that's that's pretty significant that, you know, he's saying that, you know, again, these are opposition in name only, right? They're supporting the genocide. They're supporting the destruction of Iran. They're just saying Netanyahu is not doing it effectively enough. And the next one um is from Y Golan, who is the head of uh the Labour Party, I believe. Uh they're called something else now, the Democrats, I think it is. Who cares? But the historic uh Labor Party inside so-called Israel, uh they're much smaller now than used to be. Of course, they um carried out some of the worst crimes in the history against the Palestinians, including the Nakba and the invasion of 1967. Anyway, he they're they're a much smaller opposition force now, but nonetheless, he as well is saying Netanyahu promised a historic victory. Uh and in practice, we got one of the most severe strategic failures Israel has ever known. Again, allowing for uh you know, their political and electoral access to grind. Very strong language. You can see Israelis themselves uh Israeli political leaders themselves or some of them considered this to be a very significant setback for them.

>> and let's not deny them their defeat.

>> It's important. They really want it apparently.

>> Yeah.

>> Um well thanks for that Asa. Thank you Alli. um that I I think we can uh you know leave it there and and figure out what's going to happen next week uh as it as it comes. So there's there's always um so much more we could talk about but we are uh buting up right against the clock. So let's take a look at the website.

Um, there are some new features. Uh, incredible reports. I I was also um, I was debating whether or not to include the report that we just did on Kufur Akab um in uh just outside of Jerusalem um that uh both Hamdan I believe uh authored this extraordinary feature about. So um maybe I'll I'll put that on ne next week, but definitely go read that. It's just um it's beautiful and and haunting.

Uh >> and just published today, I haven't even read it yet, but it's already extraordinary is Month in pictures. This is an extraordinary collection of photographs by photographers across Palestine, also from other places, but the focus is on Palestine. And um our colleague Morin Murphy puts together this extraordinary uh review of the month. uh really a great way to get caught up on a lot of information particularly in the West Bank because it doesn't always get the same attention that that it should and so stunning pictures by many brilliant photographers in Gaza and across Palestine. So check that out.

>> Yeah, absolutely. Moren does an incredible incredible meticulous job. Um, and uh, as always to support this project, this publication, this live stream, our contributors in Gaza and the West Bank and in Lebanon and all over. Um, hit that donate now link at the top right.

>> only if you can afford to. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's how we do it. All this information, all this reporting is free to everyone in the world. We want everyone to have access to it. And that's only possible because some of you, those who can afford it and who truly care about this work, uh are willing to uh support it. So, we're very grateful. I'm just going to thank a few people. Uh, just a representation of those who support us. Daniel, Tyrone, Adrien, Moxen, Doug, Jane, uh, Senna, Janice, Zuba, Lisa, Martin, Gregory, uh, Ysef, Salem, and Jurgen. Thank you all so much. And if you would like to give a gift either one time or become a monthly contributor, um, go to electronic interfer.net, Click donate now or there are links in the YouTube description below. And thank you to each and everyone for liking, sharing, listening, uh uh writing to us, for all your comments, uh for being with us. We feel your presence and we count on you to help us spread the word spread the word to the world. Thank you.

>> Absolutely. Thank you, Ally. Um, and I want to give my deepest gratitude as always to Tamara Nasar. Um, I, you know, the the job that you do, Tamara, is um, second to none. And, you know, we all rely on Tamara's nimleness and uh, steady hand and organizational skills. And I just want to always appreciate Tamara for all of that work. Um, I also of course want to thank Ellie Gerzon for all the social media production that they do. Thank you, Ellie. Uh, thank you Pierre Loiselle for the radio show production. We're on I don't know a couple dozen radio stations now around the country and around the world uh and online. Um, and everyone at the electronic inifat, our colleagues, our contributors. Um, thank you to everyone who makes this publication and this live stream possible. And on behalf of myself and Ali, John, Asa, and Tamara, thank you all. And we will see you next week.