Live now to Ehud Olmert. He's the former Prime Minister
of Israel.
He also previously served as
Israel's defence minister. He's with us from Tel Aviv.
Prime Minister, thank you so much for your time.
Just characterize the extraordinary developments we've seen in the last
48 hours in Israel and around the region.
Iran's direct attack on Israel,
while somewhat symbolic, seems to mark a shift in a
red line.
Would you say this is a new Middle East?
I will not take it that far.
I think this has been
a decision of Iran to respond to what they
argued was the
Israeli elimination of
Iranian general in Damascus. Israel never took responsibility for it,
but the Iranians were
firm in their decision to respond to this,
and they declared war in Israel.
There is no question about it.
They declared war Saturday night
and it may have become something much more dramatic.
But as a result of the
most impressive response by the alliance of Israel,
the United States and Britain,
France and some other countries turned out to be
defeat to the Iranians. This was
a humiliating defeat to the Iranians.
They shot more than 300
UAVs, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles
and they were all intercepted.
Was incredible. I must say it is an historical day
in terms of the
military performance, but the outcome
provides Israel with, I think,
time to be able to
think
in a cool head before we
retaliate. And that's therefore, I think
it's not so dramatic as it may have been.
So what do you expect to happen here?
We know that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been meeting with
the War Cabinet,
deliberating when and how to respond.
Israel has vowed to respond to this Iranian attack.
So how do you expect that to happen?
What will that response look like?
That's what the entire region is looking to hear about.
So what will happen next?
I think there is, Yeah.
There is much Edo about,
very little.
I think that
the there are pressures within the Israeli community by the
messianic groups,
the right extreme right wingers that are not just supporting
the Prime Minister but
but squeezing him and can break down the government and
they want reprisal by Israel in a very tough
and and painful reprisal. I think most people that I'm
familiar with and most those with experience
think that it would be a mistake
to attack Iran. Now we
defeated Iran on Saturday night.
I mean we had a great achievement which is a
source of great pride for many of us because the
Israeli army proved what we knew
that with the sophistication, the technologies and the
and the professional
level of the Israeli pilots and the
under
systems that we have developed,
we can do very well and we did very well.
So the question now is how do we,
I will say the Prime Minister,
lots of questions about why we didn't see that type
of response
in October. Clearly a major security failure back then that
Israel is now trying to make up for domestically,
politically on the ground here.
But let's just quickly move forward here with regards to
the US position Now,
do you think President Biden has the desire and capacity
to use his leverage against Netanyahu to ensure that we
don't see a wider regional conflict?
That's also a primary concern here.
As I mentioned, Netanyahu has vowed to respond.
We want to know how rogue he's going to go.
Yeah, I just have to say comments to your
saying in October we didn't fight with an army
of another country. This was
a terrorist organization which broke through into the Israel,
the Israel South Park Israel,
and was butchering and killing in the most primitive and
brutal way,
innocent people. You couldn't use missiles and airplanes in order
to defeat them or to stop them.
We did it in another way
since then. Now, obviously President Biden wants to contain the
situation,
not to allow it to expand.
And we all are in the same page with President
Biden.
We don't think that it should be expanded now.
We don't think that it is the right time now
to continue or to
perhaps cause the Iranians sent to retaliate to the Israeli
retaliation and so on and so forth.
It will become like a regional war,
something that we want to prevent.
We need to achieve the goals that we set forth,
which for us now the Israelis,
the most important thing is to
return back The hostages that were caught.
Had the Iranian attack on Israel
resulted in a different way,
there have been casualties. Had the Israeli military bases,
Air Force bases were destroyed,
it may have required a different response.
But considering the failure of the Iranians,
and as a result of the great performance of the
Israeli Air Force and the Israeli missiles
and the assistance of the United States and the other
parties,
I think we can afford ourselves now to
act in a quieter and more restrained and more
reserved manner to
somehow bring to a halt
the confrontation with the direct confrontation in Iran.
We have an indirect confrontation with Iran all the time,
because all the the Hezbollah,
the Hamas, the militias in Iran in Iraq and Syria
are all proxies.
The Houthis are all proxies of Iran anyway,
But it is different to have a confrontation with the
proxies than to expand it into a full-fledged
war with Iran that we don't need.
I think the Iranians understand now that we are not
afraid,
if necessary we'll know how to deal with them,
and I'm not certain that they have the same capacity
to defend themselves as we have manifested on Saturday.
So we are in a good
position right now. What we need to do is to
make an agreement that will bring an end to the
war in Gaza
for the return of all the Israeli hostages.
This is, in my mind,
the most important fundamental obligation.
It's true that there are many Israelis and some
factions in the cabinet which are
squeezing the Prime Minister and he's a very weak and
the
person and he seems to be able to surrender to
them rather than to the call or voice of reason.
And therefore things may happen,
but we'll try to do everything
in order to stop it.