Israel Strikes Iran
Politics Unpacked
Anna Covell
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2025
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Israel attacked Iran's nuclear programme overnight - is there anything the West can do to influence the situation? Or are Britain and the US reduced to the role of bystanders?
Ed Vaizey unpacks the news and politics of the day with Matthew Syed and Emily Sheffield.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | I'm Ed Vasey and we're going to be unpacking the news and politics of the day, including Israel's attack on Iran, the limitation of the government's spending review, and how rude can you be to your colleagues? |
| 0:16.3 | With me now are two of the politest people in journalism. Matthew Sayyad, the Times columnist. Welcome to the show, Matthew. |
| 0:23.5 | Morning. |
| 0:24.4 | And the journalist and editor Emily. Sheffield, welcome to the show, Emily. |
| 0:28.2 | Good morning. Right. We're going to obviously start by discussing the Israeli attack on Iran overnight. |
| 0:33.6 | It is quite understandably dominating the news agenda. We know that three Iranian generals have been killed, including Hussein Salami, the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC. |
| 0:45.8 | Israel said it had no choice but to launch an attack on Iran's nuclear weapons program. |
| 0:50.8 | Tehran has warned that it will inflict harsh punishment on Israel. |
| 0:57.0 | Emily, is Israel telling the truth, did it have no choice but to launch this attack? |
| 1:02.0 | Well, it did come a day after the International Atomic Energy Agency declared Iran to be in breach of its non-proliferation obligations. |
| 1:10.0 | And the International Atomic Energy Agency also |
| 1:13.9 | reported back in February that it was getting very close. So uranium enrichment that would |
| 1:19.4 | enable it to be able to build a nuclear bomb within a matter of days. And in fact, the most recent |
| 1:24.9 | calculations are that Iran could build a bomb, several bombs, within seven days. |
| 1:31.3 | And that even if Israel and the rest of the world had warning of this, their bunkers are incredibly deep where they keep their nuclear sites. |
| 1:41.7 | I mean, they're 90 meters. |
| 1:43.0 | Even America's best and biggest bombs, and I don't |
| 1:46.3 | have the name, bunker bombs could not reach these sites. So I think Israel will be arguing |
| 1:53.0 | that it feels incredibly threatened right now. You know, Iran's right on its doorstep. But I think |
| 1:59.4 | that the back story to this is, of course, |
| 2:02.7 | Trump pulling out of the Obama agreement back in 2018. And also, Netanyahu has wanted to weaken |
| 2:10.4 | Iran for an incredibly long time. And he'll be thinking in his head, this is absolutely the best |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Anna Covell, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Anna Covell and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.