Transcription
Uh, Michael, uh, fourth day of these strikes. What are the patterns of what we are now seeing? Tell us.
Yeah, it's it's quite a different pattern actually, Jane, in the respect that the Israelis are very methodical, as you'd expect, and they it's not just an air air strike uh strategy from them. They used a lot of their intelligence people who were inside Iran when this all began for targeting and assassinations. So, as with Hezbollah last year, they um they they assassinated, took out a series of commanders. They took down a lot of the air defense sites and then they bombed the sites that they wanted to.
And the thing about using those intelligence assets is that when you've used them, you can't use them a second time. You once you once you press the button, they go into action. They've been planning this for years. They work once. You won't get them to work again because you you've blown their covering effect in what they've done. But they've done it. It's been very effective. And the bombing itself. I mean, it's a big country, Iran, and there the sites that they're after are very specific. They want the nuclear sites, but also they want to damage Iran's military capabilities and the IRGC, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. And the nuclear sites they've gone for in particular are Natans and and Isfahan. They've more or less demolished Natans, they think, and certainly damaged Isfahan. The one they really want is the one just to the north, that Fordo, which is in the mountains. They probably can't do that on their own, but we'll see. But those are the sites that they really want to go for.
And the question is, they can damage the Iranian nuclear program to a high degree. Are they really trying to bring down the regime? It looks as if they would like to do that. They they're ambiguous as to whether that's definitely what they're going for, but that might turn out to be the effect of it.
The Iranians, on the other hand, their their options are pretty limited because their ability to strike back has been limited by the effectiveness of the first Israeli strikes. And they tried to throw a thousand ballistic missiles and drones at Israel and only managed to just over a hundred, and even so, some of them got through. So I mean, some of them have gone for Haifa, uh, which is is part of the energy infrastructure of Israel. A lot of trade, oil trade goes in and out of Haifa and gas from the uh the gas oil field, the gas fields in the Mediterranean, but also for civilian areas as well. So that the um the Iranians can't do anything in a sense other than just throw missiles at Israel and try to hurt Israel as much as poss as possible. But unless they're going to widen the war, which would be very dangerous, widen the war to Americans and British and others who are in the region, close the straight of Hormuz, try and do something about that. Unless they're prepared to do that, their options are really quite limited from a military point of view.
Uh, what about Israel's ability to to shoot down these Iranian weapons? How is that working? I mean, what what's the sort of impact of damage you've seen inside Israel?
Well, it's working as well as you might expect it to work. The Iron Dome system that everyone talks about has never been tested like this before, and it has actually uh it it stops a lot of stuff getting through, a lot of drones and missiles, but eventually they start to run short of anti-aircraft ammunition. And the Israelis issued this um image series of images of their sea-based uh the Barak Megan system um which is very effective. Uh, it the the Barak systems, the 8 and the MX systems are are basically land-based systems, but they also work at sea, and this is their latest version. It's very capable of dealing with lots of threats together. And the Israeli, the IDF have issued this to show that it's effective and really I think to reassure the people of Israel that although ballistic missiles will get through, we are still able to uh deal with them quite effectively, but some have got through, and this morning more material came through from Tel Aviv of some of the damage there. I mean, very extensive-looking civilian damage. I mean, that's no joke um and that looks like a ballistic missile hit, just looking at the range of destruction, and the Israeli public have got to expect that this will go on for some time.