Transcription
Welcome to Navara Live. I'm Michael Walker, and on a very busy news day, I'm joined by Ash Saka. Um, Ash, how are you doing?
I'm very well. You're right. It is a busy news day. Let's just keep my fingers crossed that I can remember who's prime minister of where, and we'll get through it.
I have I have so much faith in you, Ash. Um, coming up tonight, I have an interview with Sheamus Manakali, um, of course, about um, Iran and Israel's conflict entering day four. Um, also, uh, there have been some similarities between media this weekend in the West and media before the Iraq war. Um, is consent being manufactured for regime change? And finally, we'll be discussing Karma announcing um a national inquiry into grooming gangs as Louise Casey um has released her report um into the scandal. Um, do stay tuned for all of that.
Um, and uh, before we get going, thank you to everyone who has signed up to back our work over the weekend. You really do make all of this possible. We're so close to our targets. We wanted a thousand new monthly subscribers. We're very, very close, almost there. Um, if you want to help get us over the line, head to navaramdia.com/support. Um, as ever, make sure to let us know your comments in the YouTube chat, or you can tweet us on the hashtag navara live.
One more um announcement, one more piece of housekeeping before we get going. Um, we have got a very exciting event coming up next Wednesday. Um, my colleague Aaron Bastani will be live and in conversation with the French leftwing leader Jean Luke Melon for an episode of Downstream IRL. Um, one of the most significant leftwing politicians in in Europe, and that will be held at Earth Theater in Hackne. Um, there are some tickets left, but they're going fast. So, do snap those up while you have the chance. Um, the link to um those tickets is in the description.
This was the moment Israel bombed Iran's state TV channel just before we came on air. So the presenter there was Saha Imami, one of the most popular TV figures in Iran. And according to Al Jazeera, before the Israeli missile hit, she was saying, um, listen, what you hear is the sound of the aggressor. You hear the sound of the aggressor attacking the truth when the bomb lands.
Um, this is Iranian journalist Yuna Shaloo standing outside the burning press TV building, um, just a short while ago. Um, it's not yet known um how many journalists have been injured um or killed in the blast.
Um, that attack on Iranian journalists is just the latest in a series of escalatory attacks carried out by Israel on Iran as tensions in the region threatened to spin out of control following Israel's sudden assault on Iran last Friday. And but it isn't only Iran that's taking damage. Whoa.
That was the moment that what appears to be two Iranian ballistic missiles hit the Israeli port city of Hifur last night, causing a large fire. And you can see the effects of those explosions here as Israeli paramedics and fire crews rushed to the scene in the north of Israel, which left cars and buildings ablaze. Iranian missiles also hit an oil refinery in the port city, causing this fire and damaging Israel's central grid. And in Israel's major city, Tel Aviv, there were further strikes last night with multiple Iranian missiles managing to pierce the country's defensive shields.
Um, of course, including the Iron Dome and Arrow systems. Amongst the buildings damaged in the attack was the US embassy in Tel Aviv, though there were no injuries to any personnel. And according to Israeli media, eight people were killed in last night's attacks, taking the total number of Israelis killed to 24 since last Friday morning. And around 600 people have been reported to be injured.
Um, civilian casualties inflicted on Iran by Israel seem, however, to be much higher. Iranian rescue crews continue to search for people trapped under rubble after several residential buildings were reportedly hit by Israeli missiles over the weekend. Israeli weapons also struck the Shahan oil refinery outside Tehran, causing this vast fire as well as multiple explosions. And a wave of car bombs struck the Iranian capital yesterday, reportedly targeting Iranian nuclear scientists, adding to the sense of fear in the city. Israeli operatives have also been accused of sabotaging Tehran's water system, causing sewage water to flood the streets of the capital.
Um, strikes have been spread widely across Iran. Israel has been continuously bombarding Tehran since it launched its attack in the early hours of Friday morning, but have also struck sites across the west of the country where Iranian nuclear facilities are located. The Israeli military says they are striking uranium enrichment facilities, um, nuclear scientists and high-level Iranian officials in an effort to stop the country building a nuclear bomb.
Iran's response to Israel's attack has been mostly focused on Tel Aviv, where several military installations are located. Now, according to the Iranian government, over 200 people have been killed since Israel began the war at the end of last week, and many of them were civilians with dozens of women and children reported killed in the attacks. More than 1,400 Iranians have been injured.
Yet, Israel is trying to make the argument that its strikes are precise and targeted. Of course, we've heard that before, um, making its approach to warfare more civilized than the Iranians strategy, who are accused of indiscriminate attacks. Some Israeli government ministers haven't quite been able to keep that pretense up, though.
Earlier today, Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, posted this: "The arrogant dictator from Tehran has become a cowardly murderer who fires targeted shots at the civilian home front in Israel to deter the IDF from continuing the attack that is collapsing its capabilities; the residents of Tehran will pay the price and soon." Katz later backtracked on that statement, perhaps after someone pointed out that he was threatening a war crime and saying instead that he only wanted to displace Tehran civilians, which I think is potentially also a war crime.
Um, Israel has also claimed military dominance of Iran. The Israeli Air Force has claimed to have gained full control over Tehran's airspace with over 100 missile launchers destroyed. But what is also known is that Israel doesn't have the firepower on its own to destroy Iran's most fortified nuclear facility. The Ford uranium uranium sorry enrichment facility is buried deep in a mountainside near the city of K, causing many to believe um it could only be destroyed by a massive US bunker-busting bomb. Um, Israel doesn't have that bomb, and so far the US has appeared reluctant to be drawn into Israel's war with Iran, um, at least sort of explicitly.
Iran has also denied that it's seeking to build nuclear weapons, arguing instead that its enrichment facilities are aimed at developing nuclear energy. Um, Iran is currently a signatory to the international nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Israel is not, and its stock of nuclear weapons is an open secret. But in response to Israel's attacks, Iran has now said it is preparing to leave that non-proliferation treaty in a move that will likely raise the temperature of the region even further.
The justification, at least publicly for Israel's attacks on Iran, is that they say um the country would have built a nuclear weapon imminently. It's not clear what the basis of that claim is, though. Israeli Prime Minister Bin Netanyahu appeared on Fox News last night.
"Why did you launch this operation now? Because we were facing an imminent uh threat, a dual existential threat. One, the threat of Iran rushing to weaponize their enriched uranium to make atomic bombs with a specific and declared intent to destroy us. Second, a rush to increase their ballistic missile arsenal into the capacity that they would have 3,600 weapons a year, new weapons. Within three years, 10,000 ballistic missiles, each one weighing a ton coming in at Mach 6 right into our cities as you saw today. Uh, and then in 20 in six years, 20,000. That's no country can sustain that and certainly not a country the size of Israel."
That's quite a series of claims. First, that Iran would go from having no nuclear weapons to suddenly producing several. And second, that the country would be making more than 3 and a half thousand ballistic missiles a year within 3 years. Now, according to US estimates, Iran's entire arsenal of ballistic missiles was only around 3,000 before this weekend's attacks. So, do Netanyahu's claims accord with US intelligence? Well, apparently not.
Less than two months ago, the new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, testified on Capitol Hill, um, saying that everything had been suspended since 2003 and had not restarted. Uh, that the nuclear program had not been restarted by the Iranians. So, did something change from end of March until this week? Uh, was the US intel wrong?
"The intel we got and we shared with the United States was uh absolutely clear was absolutely clear that they were working uh in a secret plan to weaponize the uranium. They were marching very quickly. They would achieve uh a test device and possibly an initial device within months and certainly less than a year. That was the intel we shared with the United States. I think we have excellent intel in Iran. I think we've proven that. uh, and that is something that we couldn't possibly accept. Uh, whether it would be 6 months or 12 months or 13 months is immaterial."
Now, Israel, to be fair, does clearly have good intel when it comes to Iran, which is why they've been so successful at taking out top military commanders, but I suspect that was lying here. I I don't see why the Americans would have the intention or the motive to understate Iran's nuclear ambitions. And if the United States said just a few months ago that it wasn't pursuing nuclear weapons and sort of for them to have been siding with it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I mean, and Netanyahu we know is a sort of professional liar who likes to lie to justify bombing civilians and bombing journalists as we've seen today.
Um, to get an update on where the conflict stands though um very complex over the weekend. Um, I spoke earlier to journalist and friend of the show Sheamus Maliksi. Since then there have been multiple different missile barrages uh by Iran um every single night uh against Israel, mostly focused against Tel Aviv, even Haifa, um using larger warheads um much more targeted towards places like oil refineries, power plants. Um, the Ministry of Defense inside Tel Aviv was was struck uh the first night. Um, this kind of destruction has never been visited upon Israel before by Iranian missiles. Even in the last times in which hundreds of ballistic missiles were fired, drones were fired, all those different times. This I mean buildings are being destroyed inside Tel Aviv, people being trapped under the rubble. Um, there is definitely a feeling that that things have changed and they and they've changed pretty severely.
You've said that Israel hasn't sort of been struck by this, I suppose, ever by by Iran. Um, at the same time, it does feel like Israel probably has the upper hand when it comes to sort of the the ballistic missiles and the the strategic bombers they have at their disposal. I mean, what's your what's your assessment of of how both militaries, I suppose, will be thinking about um the first few days of well, can we call it a war now? I suppose we can.
"When Iranian military leaders talk about the fact that oh this is only a fraction of our abilities, we have many more ballistic missiles uh in tow. I believe that to be the case. There's probably thousands of ballistic missiles in the arsenal. But this kind of large-scale barrage day after day is not sustainable on Iran's part. When Israel runs out of interceptor missiles, when it runs out of rockets, it can always go to the United States for that kind of help and it will willingly give up any amount that they want. Iran does not have those kinds of relationships with uh Russia, China. It exports those weapons to Russia, for example. Um, the Yemenis, the Houthies had discussed them adopting a different strategy where they would fire a limited number of missiles like they were doing, which is more sustainable. But if Israel is hitting you with all that they have constantly, that that strategy isn't uh isn't a sure thing."
What are they hoping for then? Cuz I mean it seemed and and the way sort of we were discussing this on on Friday on the show is that Iran is in quite a weak position here and Israel is I suppose trying to I suppose take out as much of the regime as they can while the axis of resistance is much less powerful than it than it once was. Um, does Iran seem helpless to some degree or do you think they do have sort of some ability to enforce their terms um in this dispute?
"I wouldn't say the the right word is helpless, but I wouldn't say that it's it's, you know, it's extraordinarily secure position where they'll defeat all their enemies no problem. I mean, they're talking about, you know, they're ready for this conflict to be prolonged however long it needs to be, but that's that that's that's just rhetoric. Iran's strength in its military has always been in its ability to defeat a a potential invasion. That's what this has been preparing for. The military has been preparing for its entire existence. Asymmetric warfare against the United States. If it gets to that point, god forbid if it gets to that point, that is where its power can be um extended. But if it remains in this holding pattern where Iran is just continually pounded by air strikes until I mean what they're discussing is like a dah doctrine style attack on Tehran. That is a very difficult position for the the government to be and there is no easy way out of that when the only major target of the west this whole time has been Iran. Um, trying to go back to the negotiating table or whatever is being discussed that's what's there to be negotiated what's there to be discussed. It's not clear and I think Iran at this point is in a is in a survival position more than anything else."
What's your read on Israel's war aims? I mean, I suppose they they keep flitting between saying what we want to do is is um damage their ability to generate nuclear weapons. They also keep slipping into the idea that they want regime change. Do you think this is a regime change war on the part of the Israelis?
"I go back and forth on that. I think their main intention right now is just spreading chaos in addition to degrading the Iranian military and its nuclear program. When they talk about or they speak casually about wanting to kill uh the supreme leader or to assassinate him um and there's no successor in place and there's no real opposition leader abroad that could take the reigns in the same way that Khomeini took the reigns after the Shah. The intent is to just keep the Iranian government fighting off um potential protests or uprisings or different um rebel groups, opposition organizations, keeping it occupied with things that are not a unified front against Israel and the United States. If it can be weakened like that, if it can constantly be at odds with other people, then winning a war is a much um less uh much less of a possibility. Iran can't um rebuild the resist the axis of resistance if it is doing all these things inside of its own country."
You were sort of talking about internal struggles in Iran. That is now a talking point, I suppose, among Western commentators and you are hearing it from the Israelis as well. They're saying the Iranians should rise up um against their tyrannical leaders. Um, I normally take that to be a bit of a caricature of the situation, but I mean what is the the status of of divisions in Iranian society, let's say?
"I mean there are um ethnic divisions that that can be exploited here. There are um you know Kurdish rebel organizations, Baluchi rebel organizations that are already taking advantage of this situation. But I I really do need to emphasize this and I'm not even saying this is bluster. I saw not a single protest against the Iran government up until this point. And I've been watching opposition channels um throughout this process. you know, however much there is distaste towards the um Islamic Republic, towards Islamic governance, that does not automatically entail that when Israel is attacking you, you take that as the opportunity to to go full force because what's the obvious accusation? You're taking it you're you're listening to Benjamin Netanyahu. You're listening to the United States and you're doing their bidding. that is not um good policy in a place in a in a country that is historically very distrustful towards these countries regardless of its opinion about the government. Um I think if they go forward with assassinating Khamenei they know that that if anything else would maybe cause something because that's the the top dog being taken out but even then that's not a guarantee of anything. That's when they immediately preemptively go on about setting up Starlink, contacting Elon Musk, um making sure that people could organize a coup or or rise up. It's wish casting. They're desperate for this thing to happen because then this war can have like a moral dimension to it instead of what it is, which is the development of a country."
Let's talk about the reality when it comes to Iran's nuclear program. Obviously, the line from Netanyahu is this war is to stop um this tyrannical um insane regime getting nuclear bombs because as soon as they got nuclear bombs, they would threaten the whole world and so Israel are doing us a favor. Um, what is the reality when it comes to Iran's nuclear ambitions?
"I mean, when Iran entered into a nuclear deal with the United States, it maintained civilian levels at at around 3% 3 to 4%. When America left the deal, they ramped up that production, that uranium enrichment to 20%, then to 60% where it is now. Um, that's still below weapons grade, but the point is to bring United States back to the negotiating table, which it did. Um, though that didn't end up obviously being a good thing. Um, the reality is is that, you know, the supreme leader is the primary obstacle to Iran getting a nuclear weapon. that fatwa banning the production of nuclear weapons has always been the main thing here. Um, one of the nuclear scientists that was assassinated, Fereydoon Abbasi, spoke about an interview last month where he said they've had this technology to build a weapon for something like 15 years and they never received the order to do so. And he clearly spoke with a level of disappointment that he as a nuclear scientist could not achieve this this massive thing for the nation. So, you know, generals are continually talking about the fact that even under these circumstances, they won't produce a nuclear weapon. Um, even though public opinion in the country is now rapidly going towards we need a nuclear weapon now, but I don't think the Iranian leadership is going to do that, at least not at the moment."
Israel is now saying it has full control over Tehran's airspace. First of all, I suppose do you believe that claim? Um, and second, if so, what would be the significance of that?
"I think it's partially true. Um, where they're talking about like aerial superiority, that was something that Trump attempted to do in Yemen um during those air strikes there. And even though they were able to use fighter jets uh during that process because drones kept getting shot down, they never actually achieved that that superiority that they wanted. Um, it's a kind of a similar thing here. The IDF regularly says that they've already achieved something well before they've actually done it. You know, to create a sense of progress. So fighter jets, Iranian fighter jets can't do anything that it's really fighter jet. We can just put that out there. But consistently aerial defenses are shooting down drones and missiles. There's videos to this effect. So while it can fight off, you know, a large percentage of what's happening, I mean, just for recorded, they struck the state TV building, no problem. Um, I'm sure that they will continue hitting places like the defense ministry like they struck yesterday. the important things, right? The major assassination operations, um major strikes on major buildings, that's still possible for the IDF and there's no real um opposition against that from the military things that they're able to do, I should say."
Finally, let's look at the sort of international situation. You you said earlier in the interview that sort of Israel can rely on on the United States for support. Will it need that support? I mean obviously it it it will need the support in terms of American military aid and American the Americans supplying them with weapons. But do you think the Americans will have to actively get involved or do you think Israel feels that it is in a strong enough position um to achieve its war aims whatever they are um on its own?
"It can't achieve what it what it needs to on its own. At least from the Israeli side of things. They need bunker busters if they want to destroy the Iran nuclear program. They need bombers. They need things that only the US military has and doesn't hand out that easily. Um, it needs US soldiers to die instead of Israeli soldiers. It needs US defense systems that it can send to Israel. It it it needs all those things and that's why it's going so uh quickly."
To getting Trump into the war with full force. Um, it can do a lot against Iran, but it can't affect the total collapse of the state without American assistance. It can do that kind of thing in Gaza and in Lebanon. It can't do that in Iran. It can get close, but it can't achieve that total collapse that it so desperately wants.
If you've been paying attention to Western media this weekend, and if you have a long memory, um, you might have become aware of some scarily familiar framing. And this was Israeli ambassador to the UK Subihoti appearing on GB news. This is exactly the difference between Israel and Iran. Israel is targeting only the military targets. Well, Iran is aiming to hurt our civilians, our people. Look, yesterday I was devastated really to hear about a mother and a daughter that got killed in one of our cities in the north. And then we heard about more casualties being caused and more children that got killed yesterday from Iran's attack. You know, my own parents, they live in a city that was attacked yesterday by the ballistic missiles of Iran. And I want everyone who is listening to us, whether you are in Manchester, in Liverpool or in London, to know Iran developed a ballistic missile program that can get to London, that can hurt your communities. We could have seen the same damage happening in Europe. And this is part of why should a regime that is thousands of kilometers away should develop a nuclear program together with a ballistic missile program with a range to go all the way to Europe.
Now those claims went completely unchallenged by Camila Tomminy and they're completely false. So back in January the Telegraph reported that Iran was secretly building missiles that could hit Europe. That article was based on leaks from the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an anti-regime organization based in Paris. But even those reports only claimed that a missile capable of traveling 3,000 km was being developed. A good 2,000 km too short to reach London. And the point of Fali's remarks isn't her great fear for London's safety, though. It's about striking fear into the hearts of the British public and paving the way for British support for Israel's war in Iran. And we've seen all of this before. Any country on the face of the earth with an active intelligence program knows that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction which could be activated within 45 minutes, including against his own Shia population. The choice is his. And if he does not disarm, the United States of America will lead a coalition and disarm him in the name of peace. That was Donald Rumsfeld, Tony Blair, and George W. Bush making the bogus case for regime change in Iraq. And that's of course a war that's thought to have killed up to a million people. Um and I suppose if you sort of count the chaos it caused in the region, potentially many more.
Hotelli's message of imminent nuclear threat to Europe um was also echoed by Israel's former prime minister Navtali Bennett who posted this morning at 8:42 Paris time. A nuclear bomb was dropped on French territory in the southeast in the area of the city of Lyon. Military sources confirm this was a direct attack by the Iranian regime. Israel is saving the world from a nuclear Iran. It's completely batshit, right? The really I mean obviously this is it's an obvious thing to say but there is an element of being completely gaslit when a regime that has a secret nuclear weapons program which everyone knows but they won't admit is warning us about a country that doesn't yet have nuclear weapons and might not even be trying to get them in the first place. And there's the idea of sort of mutually assured destruction, the idea that if great powers with nuclear weapons um they're less likely to go to war obviously because you can cause so much damage with a nuke that it's not going to be in anyone's interest to do so. And for some reason in the Middle East, we've decided uh that it's really good for only one country to have nuclear weapons, Israel. It means Israel can do whatever they want without any consequences in the region because they're the only one with nukes, right? Why if Iran got nukes would mutually assured destruction not at that point come into play and then maybe war between Israel and Iran would be less likely? Now obviously you know from a sort of objective neutral perspective in a way the fewer countries who have nuclear weapons the better because the more countries that have nuclear weapons the greater chance of accidents, but the Israelis cannot say we are protecting you from a belligerent state having nuclear weapons. You are the belligerent state with nuclear weapons.
In an interview with Fox News, Israeli Prime Minister Bin Netanyahu also um gave American audiences the sense of a domestic risk posed by Iran. They have plans to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles right now 8,000 kilometers very soon. Just add a little distance and they can reach the eastern seaboard of the United States. These people who chant death to America, try to assassinate President Trump twice, kill 241 of your Marines in Beirut, killed and injured thousands of American soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq, try to bomb a restaurant in Washington DC, chant death to America, burn the American flag. Do you want these people to have nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to your cities? Of course not. So, we're defending ourselves, but we're also defending the world.
Now, that claim that Iran was behind um two assassination attempts on Donald Trump is pretty bizarre. Um and it seemed to fall apart under even the gentlest of journalistic probing. You just said Iran tried to assassinate President Trump twice. Do you have intel that the assassination attempts on President Trump were directly from Iran? Through proxies? Yes. Through their intel? Yes. They want to kill him. Look, he's enemy number one. He's a decisive leader. He's uh he never took the path that others took to try to bargain with him in a way that is weak. Given them basically a pathway to enrich uranium which means a pathway to the bomb patting it with billions and billions of dollars. He took up this fake agreement and basically tore it up. Uh he killed the Kasamsulani. He said made it very clear including now you cannot have a nuclear weapon which means you cannot enrich. He's been very forceful. So for them he's a he's enemy number one. We've got the intel uh via proxies. I mean then he just makes an argument that Iran have reason not to like Donald Trump. And boy do Iran have a lot of reasons not to like Donald Trump.
Right? Iran signed in good faith a nuclear agreement with Obama. Um you know when people say there is a threat of Iran getting nuclear weapons. If that is the case the only reason it is the case is because Donald Trump ripped up a nuclear agreement that was working perfectly fine. So Iran in good faith and actually there was lots of division in Iranian society about this. It was sort of a big win for suppose the moderates who had to exert a lot of political capital to get this agreement across the line and then a new American president comes in. It's completely ripped up. The most aggressive sanctions sort of ever imposed on the country collapsing the economy and now um suddenly they're the enemy because they restarted their nuclear program when it was the Americans that ended the deal that would have controlled it.
Even so, however ridiculous what Netanyahu is putting forward, the hawks in the United States are beginning to gather. This was Republican Senator Ted Cruz on Fox News. Senator, do you want to see regime change? Do you think that happen soon? And what would the future look like in that regard? Look, I think it is very much in the interest of America to see regime change. I don't think there's any redeeming the Ayatollah. He is filled with hatred. 2003 all over again. Terrifying stuff. When has regime change gone well? Even if you don't like the Ayatollah, when has regime change gone well? Um, I suppose Israel doesn't Israel much prefers having a failed state with an endless civil war and millions of people dying than having a united coherent state that wants to challenge Israel. Right? So you point to Libya, you point to Iraq, you point to Syria, that's not going to be persuasive to Israel because they're like, "Oh, that's great. We prefer having these failed states." Failed states a block to Arab unity. Obviously Iran not an Arab state, but a block to unity among our enemies.
Um others in the media have been lining up the preferred new regime in Iran. So on Sunday, you can't make this up. The BBC's Laura Kunberg interviewed Reza Palavi um the son of the deposed shah of Iran um and perhaps a contender, I don't know, for the country's leadership if the West um does manage to pursue and achieve regime change. Um here's how she introduced him. The brutal regime in Iran is not of course the same as the Iranian people. Opposition in that country has been repressed for many years. Women forced to cover their hair. Political critics jailed and same-sex relationships banned while the economy is in terrible shape. You might remember back in 2022 the frustrations of many thousands of people who took to the streets were met with force. So, might this be a moment for those who want to overturn the regime? Raza Palavi is the son of the former shah of Iran and he told us this morning it's time for the population to rise up. We have to be clear. The Iranian government does not represent the Iranian people. This is an oppressive, undemocratic regime. Who does represent the Iranian people? Aha. The son of the shah. We'll get on the son of the shah. He's the person who can tell us what Iranians really think. Um he went on to say something that I think, you know, no Iranian will agree with. Well, not many of them. Uh which is that it's actually great that Israel is bombing us. uh because maybe that will bring forward the collapse of the regime. See people I follow on Twitter sort of from all different sides of this debate. So people who are you know supportive of the opposition in Iran saying this is you know even for this guy's sort of self-interest going on TV and saying it's great that Israel is bombing Iran is not going to help you get back to power.
Um, Ash, are you getting some deja vu? Um, when it comes to the coverage of this conflict and the run-up to the Iraq war, it is difficult to think of a class of more historically ignorant people than Westminster's elite journalists. Getting the son of the shah of Iran onto your Sunday morning politics show would be a bit like getting a descendant of General Pinochet on to talk about how awful the state of modern Chile is. Because for all of the political repression and religious repression of the Iranian Republic, what was going on under the shah was industrial systematized torture and executions. The secret police um which is abbreviated as Savak under the shah were found by the Federation of American Scientists to have regularly used forms of torture that would really not be out of place, you know, in Machiavelli's worst imagination. I mean, really incredibly brutal stuff. And this of course was the autocratic dictator who was backed by the west in order to overthrow a democratically elected leader, Mosaddegh, who wanted to nationalize Iranian oil. So it's it's astonishing that any journalist would invite the son of the shah on as a sort of lost leader. You know, the king waiting over the water. Um, but I think that shows you just how particularly bad our media class are when they're talking about foreign affairs and geopolitics. I mean, it really is just like the hand of MI6 is wedged up there, you know, puppeteering the whole thing. Like, it's an absolute joke.
When it comes to um comparisons with the Iraq war, I mean, yes and no. The most significant departure from the buildup to the Iraq war is that there was a buildup to the Iraq war. Instead, what we're seeing now is war first and putting the case for it afterwards. So, yes, there's a repetition of the themes of weapons of mass destruction. It is a complete absurdity that Netanyahu is saying, "Oh, well, you know, Iran were just months away from a nuclear weapon." He's been saying that Iran are months away from a nuclear weapon for decades. I'm old enough to remember him showing up at the UN in 2012 holding up this sort of big cartoon bomb and saying that Iran were about, you know, 90% of the way there. So, this has been something that Netanyahu has been talking about for literally decades. Only a few weeks ago, you had Tulsi Gabbard presenting the view of the US intelligence community saying is saying that Iran are not making a bomb. So this is a complete it looks to be a complete fabrication or at least to be a real outlier from what's even coming from the American intelligence community. But you wouldn't know that. You wouldn't know that if you listen if you listen to a lot of UK media. I mean it's ridiculous even to listen to the words of the likes of Natali Bennett who called this war a preemptive defensive action. Well, if a defensive action is preemptive, by definition, it is no longer defensive, right? It is offensive. That is the literal meaning of the word offensive. Um and and I think that in a in a way the newspeak element of it, the inherent contradiction, you know, that that tells its own story to British audiences. But the lightness with which regime change is being discussed um in when it's so clearly a discussion which is being led by Israel's actions. So Israel advances into previously unthought of territory and then the arguments come in behind it. I mean regime change in a country of over 90 million people with an army which is hundreds of thousands strong and also has various religious paramilitaries as well. um is is not a not you know it's no small feat. I mean you couldn't even really get regime change in Afghanistan which had a far less developed military-industrial complex and state an army than Iran ever have. I mean look at what creating a failed state in Iraq did. I mean it completely destabilized the region and led to forms of terrorism in on European soil which were completely brutal.
Um, if there's one shorefire sign of a bad idea, um, it's when the Westminster political class are in agreement about something and so the minute they all start talking about Iranian regime change as though it's as simple as repainting your living room, you know that we're in for a historic mess of epic proportions. I mean, even framing it as, you know, sort of like, a tyrannical Iranian regime that they don't represent the Iranian people. So, when we're judging, when we're condemning what Iran is doing, we're not we shouldn't be condemning the whole Iranian people, just the terrible tyrannical government. They're the ones getting bombed, right? Israel started the war. Like the the flip whereby everyone is reporting this as if Iran is the aggressor and Israel is the attack with I mean this all European leaders and American leaders are saying Israel has a right to self-defense. They started it. They literally bombed Iran and then Iran responded. And that is not to you know I don't have very strong opinions about the Arabia regime. I'm not an expert. I imagine their politics don't accord with mine. But to posit the country that got bombed as the aggressor and saying, you know, when we're condemning Iran, we're not condemning their people. We're going to be really reasonable here. We don't it's not the Iranian people we have a problem with. It's their very very aggressive leaders who we do. They got bombed.
Um, Ash, I mean, it is it's bizarre, isn't it? And I suppose it is on national security something does just sort of come into effect whereby Israel is our ally. So, it's it's natural and normal that they have a nuclear bomb. Um, even though the idea that they are the restraining force in the Middle East is kind of the most ridiculous idea I can possibly imagine. This is a country that is committing genocide. Why are we trusting them with the nukes and not Iran? Um, there is something about it which is it feels weird, doesn't it? It does feel like you're constantly just being gaslit the moment something happens in the Middle East like this. I mean even the very morning after Israel's first aerial attacks on Iran the language of surgical precise targeting you know military infrastructure the means by which they assassinated Iranian nuclear scientists and you know the army's top brass it was by bombing whole apartment blocks and this is how you know Israel carries out its assassinations it's not snipers it's not poison pens it's blowing up an entire apartment block and just hoping that amongst the civilians, the women, the children that the marked man is also killed. Um and and if you were Iranian, no matter how forthright your opposition to the regime may be, no matter how how much you may loathe religious theocracy, you're probably going to hate the foreign invader more. It's just it's it's just a natural way people feel, which is okay, you know, I've got these religious theocrats dictating my life, but they're not blowing up the apartment block where I live with my wife and kids. Um, so this this fantasy that the Iranian people are going to rise up because they've been bombed into democracy. It's never worked before. Why why on earth would it work now? I mean, I agree. Let's go on to our next story.
Also, that's not what any of these people are interested in doing. Even to sort of I'm not saying you were suggesting this, Ash, but even to say sort of like, oh, you know, is if Israel are hoping to bomb Iran into a democracy, they're going to fail. Israel is not Israel wants Iran to be a failed state, right? That that is its aim here. It wants Iran. It wants every every single state in West Asia to be a failed state apart from Israel so that Israel can say not only are we the only democracy in the Middle East, even though they're an apartheid nation that doesn't allow the population to vote for the government that rules over them on the basis of their ethnicity, right, because they're in the West Bank or Gaza. Um I mean, we could we could go on about this for ages.
Louise Casey has today published her independent national audit on group based child sexual exploitation and abuse. And the audit was requested by Kier Starmer after Elon Musk brought the issue of grooming gangs to the forefront of political debate in Britain. That was at the start of the year as you probably remember. Now at the time Starmer resisted calls for a full national inquiry into the scandal and he said enough inquiries had already taken place. We should just implement their recommendations. However, um after Louise Casey came to the conclusion that we do in fact need another national inquiry, the government has committed to a full statutory inquiry. So that will be on the way.
Um Home Secretary Yvette Cooper laid out some of the findings of the Casey report today in the comments. The audit describes victims as young as 10, often those in care or children with learning or physical disabilities, being singled out for grooming precisely because of their vulnerability. Perpetrators still walking free because no one joined the dots or because the law ended up protecting them instead of the victims that they had exploited. Deeprooted institutional failures stretching back decades where organizations who should have protected children and punished offenders looked the other way. And Baroness Casey found blindness, ignorance, prejudice, defensiveness, and even good but misdirected intentions all played a part in this collective failure. And on the key issues of ethnicity that I'd asked her to examine, she has found continued failure to gather proper robust national data despite concerns being raised going back very many years. In the local data that the audit examined from three police forces, they identify clear evidence of over representation among suspects of Asian and Pakistani heritage men. And she refers to examples of organizations avoiding the topic altogether for fear of appearing racist or raising community tensions.
Louise Casey's um audit is 197 pages long. It was published at 4 p.m. today, so I can't claim to have read it all, but I have read the executive summary. Um on the question of ethnicity, which is why this issue has become so contentious, um Louise Casey says this, "Our collective failure to address questions about the ethnicity of grooming gangs has dominated political and institutional focus with energy devoted to proving the point on one hand or avoiding or playing it down on the other and still with no definitive answer."
At the national level. Despite reviews, reports, and inquiries raising questions about men from Asian or Pakistani backgrounds grooming and sexually exploiting young white girls, the system has consistently failed to fully acknowledge this or collect accurate data so it can be examined effectively. Instead, flawed data is used repeatedly to dismiss claims about Asian grooming gangs as sensationalized, biased, or untrue. This does a disservice to victims and indeed all law-abiding people in Asian communities and plays into the hands of those who want to exploit it to sow division.
On top of the avoidance of ethnicity issues, we also retain an ambivalent attitude to adolescent girls both in society and in the culture of many organizations. We too often judge them as adults, so-called adultification, especially those in local authority care who too often are fast-tracked into growing up before their time.
Ash, I think you've had time to read a bit more of this audit than I have. Um, what stood out to you? I mean, there was a lot that stood out to me, and I think that it it really did persuade me of the need for a national inquiry. Firstly, because the recommendations of the J report haven't been fully implemented. So one of the recommendations was about collecting data on the ethnicity information of both perpetrators and victims. And still, um, for the uh majority of victims, ethnicity is not recorded, either in terms of appearance or self-defined ethnicity. And a substantial proportion, um, of perpetrators aren't having their ethnicity recorded. Which is why, even though uh Casey was able to find clear evidence of over-representation of Asian men from Pakistani backgrounds in the three local police forces she looked at, she's very clear. She says you can't draw a national conclusion from that. The data simply isn't good enough. So I do think there needs to be a national inquiry. Um, and there certainly needs to be much more robust uh collection around the the identity of perpetrators.
Some other things though were really important beyond the immediate question of ethnicity. One was about the kind of jobs that grooming gang perpetrators tend to have. So when it came to Rotherham, 70% of perpetrators, um, worked in the so-called nighttime economy. So that means things like takeaways, taxi drivers. Um, data provided by the National Crime Agency to Casey to perform this audit found that 53 out of 75 uh group-based child sexual exploitation offenders worked as taxi drivers. So this is really important for when you're trying to consider um two aspects. One is access. Being a taxi driver gave these men a lot of access to vulnerable uh young girls in a way which was, you know, seemingly completely um ignored or not taken seriously by those in positions of power. Um, the kinds of activities uh included, you know, these taxis picking up their victims from care homes, places where they were supposed to be protected from child abuse and neglect, but it seemed to indeed put them more at risk. Um, the other thing as well as access is that it gives them opportunity. Um, so obviously taxi driving is a form of work which is very solitary. Uh, there's also, you know, very few female peers around. So that's really important for when you're thinking about how is it that men are able to to abuse um uninterrupted by those around them. One of the one of the things which really amplifies risk is a is a lack of women.
Um, something else to to bear in mind is that because um uh because of the fact that uh ethnic data regarding victims isn't being uh collected is that one of the one of the pictures which is missing is whether or not uh victims from minority ethnic communities are suffering because culturally there are expectations not to report. The taboos against, you know, premarital premarital sex are so strong that abuse simply isn't being reported, um, but also whether there is a mistrust of people in authority that comes from experiences of of racism. So that's something which is really missing from our sense of what's going on um with child sexual exploitation nationwide.
The signs of of child sexual exploitation in some of these cases, she said, were really, really obvious. All too often, the victims of group-based child sexual exploitation are adolescent girls who have a history of living in care and/or having repeated episodes of going missing, with exceptions always present, and some victims coming from relatively stable backgrounds. And still services fail too often to spot these factors and evidence of of grooming and exploitation taking place despite some very obvious signs such as unexplained gifts or older men picking up girls from care homes and don't intervene in time to prevent girls who may well be known to them from falling prey to the men who target them.
And the reason why this is important is that there seems to be a grotesque mismatch. So these sexual predators are able to identify vulnerable girls, many of whom come from backgrounds where there's been domestic violence, family breakdown. Uh, some are are looked-after children, which means that they're subject to a child protection plan. Many have been uh care experienced. They're able to identify uh these girls as as prospective victims very quickly. And yet, for some reason, multiple state agencies ranging from protection, education, healthcare, police are unable to identify these girls in the same way. And I can't I can't um speak to this being in in the report, but something which has been said by many other uh reviews into child sexual exploitation is that part of the reason is that these girls, rather than being treated and viewed as victims, is that they're viewed as criminals. Uh, they're viewed as troubled. They're branded as promiscuous, sexually loose, particularly if uh alcohol or drug misuse is involved in the abuse. They're seen as having made a lifestyle choice, and even though the language like child prostitution is no longer habitually used by local authorities or policing, that's the view that's being taken, as if they are consenting parties in in a in a transactional exchange, and that I think that's the that for me is the core of the scandal because there are different parts of the country where the ethnic makeup of of child sexual um exploitation perpetrators appears to be different. One such area being Blackpool, for instance. Um, but the the way in which victims are viewed, the way in which they're seen as adults, the way in which they're demonized, the way in which they're treated as criminals, the way even some have been subject to arrest, including one girl um who uh was charged with possession of a bladed article after trying to fend off her abuser with a bread knife. um, you know, that they're punished even for the ways in which they're trying to to stand up to their abusers. That to me seems to be the most consistent pattern that girls, particularly when they're from uh very deprived backgrounds, particularly when they've gone through the care system and when their trauma means that they also behave in ways that are disruptive, the state all too often sees them as um co-conspirators in their abuse, as if they're making a choice. And that needs to be a cultural change which is is looked at, I think, by this national inquiry.
I certainly hope that that's part of the terms of the inquiry, and I suppose sort of in terms of the debate around this, we've talked about this issue a number of times. Um, I'm quite convinced, sort of having I'm not an expert but sort of having watched a number of documentaries, read parts of the various reports and news reporting, it seems to me that the main reason why these girls were let down, ignored, and you know, the state let them suffer the most horrendous abuse for really long periods of time is because the police and the authorities in general have an attitude whereby if you are from a very complex background, let's say, and don't present yourself as a uh, you know, a perfect victim or someone who's necessarily always going to make choices which sort of people in authority can understand where they can sort of explain your dreadful experience as something that's your fault. Well, this is a, you know, what do you expect? This is a girl who who drinks and hangs out with the wrong people. You know, what would be the point in intervening because she'll just get into some different form of trouble. From from watching, from what I know, that seems to be the main reason they were able to to get away with this. It doesn't seem to me that sort of there were all these various authorities who were desperate to to stop this. Um, but then for, oh no, we would stop this if they were white, but we can't stop this because they're Asian. That that doesn't ring true to me. And that is I suppose the the picture which is being painted by the right, and that's why they're particularly interested in this particular story.
At the same time, um, I do feel like it would probably be helpful for everyone to I suppose to be able to talk comfortably about the fact that ethnicity is not necessarily irrelevant. And I suppose what I mean by this is that especially on the left when it comes to sort of sexual abuse or misogyny, we do talk about culture a lot. So, so the idea that sort of oh this is just men being men, this is just what inevitably happens. That's you know quite a reactionary idea, and we sort of explain or a large part of explanations of sort of like why sexual harassment and sexual abuse happens is because of rape culture, say, is a term that we use. And so then it does sometimes seem odd to me that while the left is really sort of in favor of cultural arguments for crime, it's often very unwilling to sort of take seriously the idea that that means that different cultures might have different attitudes to women and then there might be a propensity to behave differently in different cultures. Obviously, this comes with loads of dangers because you can end up type-casting a whole group of people. um, you can end up sort of saying well anyone from this ethnicity or with this religion is a pedophile, you know, it can there's a reason people are right to be sensitive about this, but do you think that potentially people have been too quick to sort of say no it can't possibly have anything to do with um men coming from a particular culture in rural Pakistan, for example?
I think this is something that my own thinking is shifting a bit on because I I think before the Casey audit, my my knee-jerk response was often to sort of take a step back, identify the gaps in data gathering, um, and to, you know, make it clear that when you take all forms of child sexual abuse, it pretty much has an ethnic breakdown which mirrors that in society. And my thinking and my responses are are are changing a bit. And I'll I'll tell you where my head's at at the moment. The first thing, and this is from the Casey audit, is that she writes that two-thirds of suspects offended within groups, but the groups were unsophisticated and informal, based largely on pre-existing relationships, mainly being brothers or cousins. They were also there were also lone offenders who were loosely associated to group offenders, for example, by employment. The the reason why I think that's important is because of course you find pedophiles, child sexual abusers amongst all cultures, all ethnic backgrounds. But to um participate in child sexual exploitation as part of a group and that group to include members of your family, you need certain things to be the case. Firstly, and I said this before, is the absence of women as social equals. Where you have women as social equals, very often that exercises an inhibiting factor when it comes to abuse. The second thing is that if you and your brothers or your cousins are participating in the same you know horrendous acts of child sexual exploitation. It means that you've got something of a shared worldview. Something which all abusers have is a a story in their head of why this victim doesn't deserve respect, protection, uh their bodily autonomy and integrity being safeguarded. Every abuser has in their head a story about why their particular victim deserves it. And this isn't in the case audit. And this is just me saying something that I think and it it doesn't have a a solid background in evidence. I wonder if in cultures where you have a lot of sexual shaming directed at women and you have this very strong emphasis of here are the good women, you know, women who uh dress a certain way, don't spend time in mixed company, uh, you know, don't spend a lot of social time outside of, you know, familial or educational environments. And here are the bad ones. And these bad ones are considered immoral, sexually loose, and degraded. That if you've got a culture which has those very strong norms and a sense of separation between good women and bad women, and a lot of that is defined by sex, um that forms part of the story that abusers are telling themselves about why their victim deserves it. And one of the things that does appear in the case audit is that she says, well, empathy is an inhibiting factor. So anywhere where you're able to present your victim as outside of your community, outside of the circle of protection, you know, they are othered in some way. Um that that is a is a is a risk factor um when it comes to uh child sexual exploitation of this nature.
The thing that I would say is I've talked a lot about culture just then is that you know these things can be found in multiple different contexts, particularly the um you know the separation of the good and the bad based on sexual shaming. I mean, that was also a factor within the Catholic Church and I think probably played a strong role in the kind of abuse um that you saw there. I would also say that the the massive over-representation of people who work in the nighttime economy is probably relevant because that's a that's a scenario where you're talking about ethnicity because people working in takeaways and taxi drivers, you know, certain ethnic groups are over-represented, but you're not necessarily talking about culture as in worldview right there. You're talking about um access, opportunity, and also impunity. I think that all of these things are are working together. Um, it's it's going to be difficult to say how much is is down to one and how much is down to the other. The thing that I would caution against is reading all when the minute you see ethnicity listed as as part of an offender's characteristics is then saying that ethnicity played a causal factor. When it came to, for instance, Ralph Harris or Jimmy Savile, uh, you know, the the men who were picked up by Operation Utri, I mean, to the best of my knowledge, all white British, that's not offered as a as an explanation for why they did the things they did. Uh, similarly, when you look at child sexual exploitation in London, you tend to see different patterns in terms of ethnicity, both in terms of offenders and also victims, but we tend not to look at that through through an ethnic lens. Um, so I think that there is some useful information to be drawn from recording ethnicity of both offenders and victims, and I think that should be done in all cases. Um, but that's not necessarily going to be the explanation. Um, and I would always caution people at at at looking at race as as the sole explanation when there are these other factors as I've said.
Yeah. I mean, I think obviously it would be crazy and terrible to consider it a sole explanation. Um, I think that was very sensitively handled, Ash. Difficult topic. Um, and presumably we're going to be talking quite a lot more about this, especially the National Inquiry. Will presumably unearth um quite a lot of information as to exactly what has gone on. Um, let's wrap up there. Thank you so much for joining me, Ash. Thank you.
And if very very quickly, if I could add just one last thing. Please do. Um, the the national inquiry will be important not least because um hopefully it will be looking at at places which which you know haven't received as much attention. Um, having had a a look at some of the reporting that's been done by excellent local journalists in Blackpool and local counselors who've been sounding the alarm on it. Um, you know, Blackpool has uh a a disproportionately high number of its children living uh in deprivation uh who are in the care system and also quite a high number of of um what's called Mapper offenders. So offenders who are subject to some sort of public protection plan disproportionately living in Blackpool as well. There have been many people who for a while have been trying to sound the alarm on child sexual exploitation in Blackpool. So far that's not hit the headlines in the same way as Rotherham or Rochdale or or Telford. Um, but it's the sort of place which really should be looked at in a national inquiry.
Uh, well said again. Um, let's wrap up there. Come back tomorrow for another live stream from 6 p.m. For now, you've been watching Navar Media. Good night.