Hello and welcome to a new episode of Real Politics. I am your host, Firas Modad.

I am joined today by Graham Connolly. He's a barrister in Sydney who's advised the Australian

government on national security and law issues. He served in the naval intelligence at the

Royal Australian Navy, South China Sea, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian Sea,

so he knows the topics that we want to talk about rather well. He regularly writes about

national security and governance, and he gives always a realistic conservative perspective,

I'd argue. You should check out his blog at

Strategy Council and his Twitter at Gray Connolly. Just to clarify, these are his own views that he'll

be sharing with us tonight, not those of the Australian government. Gray, how are you? Very well.

Thank you for inviting me on and very much looking forward to the discussion.

My pleasure. My pleasure.

Maybe we can, well, the issue of the hour is the Middle East and what's going on with Iran.

We're recording this on the 20th of June. There will be a lag before it comes out.

But maybe we can start with your

perspective on Russia and Israel, because you're in an unusual position where you have been

quite understanding of the position of both the Russians and the Israelis, things online tend to be either or here.

The Russia supporters end up being Hamas supporters and the Ukraine supporters end up being

Israel supporters.

So I wanted to understand the worldview and mindset that lets you be a little bit more distinctive than the rest,

please.

Well, okay.

I come to the debate slightly differently from everyone else, and I think perhaps this is because

...