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Transcript

E&OE………

HAIDI STROUD-WATTS: This has just been an extraordinary sort of escalation in terms of the intensity. What do you expect to happen now? There's obviously a lot of speculation that there's going to be official US deployment and involvement. There's obviously the narrative that these so-called bunker buster bombs are the only way to really penetrate what is necessary to completely dismantle the nuclear programme. Is that the path that you see ahead?

DAVE SHARMA: Well look, to date the US has you know, obviously not been directly involved in the conflict, but they've been aiding Israel with their defensive effort against Iranian ballistic missiles and drones. Iran, Israel rather, has been attacking Iranian nuclear sites, known enrichment facilities like Natanz. But Fordow in particular is thought to require the sort of massive 30,000 bomb, massive explosive ordnance bombs that only B2 bombers can carry and that only the United States has in its munitions. So that has always been under consideration in Washington and it looks like the National Security Council of the White House is, is considering whether the US might get involved to basically severely dismantle or degrade Iran's nuclear capability. Because without attacking for now, Iran will always have a capability to rebuild their nuclear expertise.

HAIDI STROUD-WATTS: Well that's the optionality that I'm thinking of, right, because of the the intensity of this attack and perhaps the surprise that it came from, particularly with negotiations to ongoing. If there is sort of restraint, I guess is the view that that is going to kind of incentivise Iran and certainly the leadership in its conviction that it needs to rebuild.

DAVE SHARMA: Well look, potentially, I mean, I think, remember with these negotiations, Donald Trump had always said, I'll give you two months to make a deal. After that all bets are off. Well, two months expired last Friday, so I don't think we should be surprised. And it did not that those nuclear talks were making any progress. Iran was not moving on its red lines about retaining an enrichment capability and the potential to pursue nuclear weapons. I think now though, President Trump seems to be saying to Iran that they should consider a full style negotiation, unconditional negotiation. And I think dealing with these issues which have been of such concern to the international community for some time particularly the nuclear programme, also the ballistic missile programme, also their support to armed terrorist groups. Now those have been issues that Iran has not been willing to put on the table in negotiations to date. So as is often the way with negotiations when different sides obtain different leverage or impose different leverage, you get a different negotiating outcome.

AVRIL HONG: Senator, Avril in Singapore here. I'm just wondering what your assessment of the likelihood of US involvement is exactly, given the multitude of conflicts that the US has sort of had to mediate over and a trade war. What is the assessment?

DAVE SHARMA: Look, I don't think if we do see more active US involvement in this, you know, I think it will be limited to a number of operations. It's not going to be a full scale campaign like Iraq or Afghanistan, for instance, in the early part of this century will be limited operations designed to target, degrade and potentially destroy key Iranian nuclear facilities. So I think the United States certainly has the bandwidth to do that and the capacity to do that, should it choose to do so.

AVRIL HONG: Can I get your thoughts as well? I mean, given how this conflict could drag on, could be protracted, given what Israel has already been signalling. What do you think Australia's response needs to be? Does it have to sort of signal something beyond urging both sides to de-escalate?

DAVE SHARMA: Well, I don't think the Australian messaging to date has been particularly effective or grounded in reality. Look our biggest interest obviously is to look after the safety and security of our citizens in the region. A second biggest interest is to make sure that any tensions that arise from the conflict do not manifest themselves in Australia, because we have, you know, many people who trace their ancestry either to Israel or Iran in Australia. But beyond that we should be looking to support diplomatic efforts. But bearing in mind what is it is the outcome that we seek and we want a Middle east that is at peace with itself, that can grow and prosper. And the truth is that Iran has been a massively destabilising force in the Middle east now for decades not only through its pursuit of nuclear weapons, not only through its imperialistic designs on its neighbours, but through its support to US armed terrorist groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen. It's propping up of the Assad regime in Syria for many years, its fermenting of Shia militias in Iraq what we would like to see is a situation where that sort of destabilisation does no longer occur. Now, whether Iran is prepared to countenance that or not, or at least whether this particular leadership in Iran is prepared to countenance that or not, that is a question for them.

HAIDI STROUD-WATTS: Do you think Netanyahu is posturing when it comes to, not just this conflict, of course, the approach in Gaza and the approach to other proxies across the region. Do you think that's conducive to adding stability?

DAVE SHARMA: Well, sometimes, you know there can be a sort of a false peace in seeking to preserve existing arrangements, even if they lead to instability. I think what changed after 7 October, 2023, after the Hamas terrorist attacks, is that Israel realised it could no longer live with or contain or deter these actors that have been arrayed around its borders. Now, whether it was Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, across the, across Israel's northern border, Iranian facilities implanted in Syria under the Assad regime and the Iranian regime itself, and so Israel has. This is why you've seen Israel basically take more bold military action than we've seen in some years, because it recognised its previous doctrine of sort of deterrence and containment was failing and it needed to deal with the root causes of the problem rather than trying to deter the manifestations of it.

HAIDI STROUD-WATTS: Senator, really great to have you with us. Dave Sharma, who's a former Australian ambassador to Israel and Australian senator for New South Wales.

[ENDS]

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