0:02 You're gambling with World War II. As a military strategic planner, a former planet, you don't want politicians telegraphing what your next moves are going to be. The US will take over the Gaza Strip and we will do a job with it, too. A peacekeeping force does not exist with a ceasefire. [Music] Israel is continuing its air strikes on Iranian military targets following its barrage of rockets overnight. Several of Iran's military leaders and six of the nation's top nuclear scientists were killed with state television reporting that civilians including children are
0:47 among the dead. Well, the operation called Rising Lion targeted Iran's nuclear sites and also the capital Tan, killing among others the leader of Iran's most elite military unit, the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard. Iranian state media say that 78 people, including children, were killed in Thran alone. The figure has not been independently verified, and of course, we'll bring more on that as and when we get it. Now, in a video statement, the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that his country has launched Operation Rising Lion to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival. Well, we can cross over to speak to the security briefs. Mikey Kay, former senior officer, assault
1:33 helicopter pilot in the British military, joining us uh live from France. Of course, this is happening. It's happened so quickly, we didn't even get time to get you into the studio, Mikey. So, it's good to see you remotely. Just when it comes to what was targeted by the IDF, by Israel inside Iran, talk us through it. Yeah, hi Casher. Um, it's a it's a hybrid target set if you like, not an unsurprising one in terms of the IDF's objective to ameliate or attit um Iran's nuclear aspirations. Let's take a look at this slide, please. Let's go slide on the target map. Um, not an unsurprising uh target set there if you like. You've got some um military bases out to the left or to the west of Iran on the uh the Iraqi border. You got Tran
2:20 in yellow at the center top there and around the center of the screen you got um uh Nat Natans. Let's just have a quick look at those. Um I think let's start off with um Tran. This is interesting for me. It's a a target set that involved high value high value targets. HVTs, we call them in the military, leadership inside the Iranian Guard Corps. You alluded to it earlier, but it was the chief of the IRGC, which is Iran's most prominent military capability. Um, let's go slide. Let's take a look at this individual. Uh, this is Hussein Salami. He is the IRGC guard's chief. Uh, killed in an air strike. Uh, so he's the he's literally, you know, a massively important person when it comes to military planning inside Iran. Additionally to him, the chief of the Iranian air forces, if you like, regarded as the architect of the
3:05 Iranian Shahed drone program, he was also uh targeted and assassinated. And and what's really important about the um shahed drone program um casher is it's basically the drone program that's come to prominence with Iran selling it to um Putin and Russia and the shahed has been used extensively to attack Ukrainian cities. So that individual has also gone. And then other individuals that were targeted, high value targets regarded by the IDF were nuclear scientists in and around the Tran region. Now if you look in terms of infrastructure, if you just go back to slide, please on the map, we'll look at Natans, which is pretty much center of Iran. It's the red dot there. That is effectively the epicenter um of Iran's main enrichment facility. Now this was
3:51 struck and we now have what's called a BDA assessment, bomb damage assessment which is a satellite image which shows where Natans was struck. Let's go slide on that please. Four areas you can see basically across the facility. Um, reports from the IAEA, which is the International Atomic Energy Agency, indicate that the nuclear facility was severely damaged in the strike, although the actual specifics and details of where we can see um those areas of uh destruction, um they need to be interrogated a little bit more to work out what those areas do inside the facility. Um let's obviously go uh sorry, let's go back slide again to the map, please. on the left hand side of the map now um up towards the Iraqi border to Breeze uh Piranha and Kamanchar their their target sets that
4:37 are associated with um Iranian military capability likely ballistic missile facilities and radar sites which the IDF also targeted Casher in October last year after Iran launched a massive ballistic missile and drone attack over 180 projectiles in October. So I think the the culmination of all of this information is that cash given that Iran relies on engines from North Korea for its ballistic missile program. It relies on sodium perculate from China. Sodium percolate is the chemical that's used for the solid fuel propellant that goes or propels the ballistic missiles. This will hurt Iran in a big way and and it's not going to be able to redevelop and and re-energize that ballistic missile program anytime soon. Although it won't
5:23 be through um it won't be through lack of trying. Indeed. And so that Mikey was the damage done when it comes to the IDF and its attack. Just talk us through how this attack was launched. Yeah. And I I I cash I don't think this um I don't think this operation should be underestimated. Indications suggest over 200 Israeli Defense Force aircraft in five waves of strikes uh including and we've spoken about this on the security brief before the the F-35 um fighter which has stealth capability. Let's take a look at the F-35. We've talked about it before in security brief. Um the IDF has just under 40 of these. Um they're about 100 mil a unit a pop for an aircraft. Um but what's important about these for this particular operation is it's got what's called a low RCS cacher, a radar
6:10 cross-section. So it basically allows the F-35 to get closer to the target with a reduced radar cross-section in order to improve the success of the target, especially if that target is a surfaceto-air missile system. For example, um other lightly aircraft within these packages, these five waves are the F-15 and the F-16. All of these aircraft, incidentally, are supplied by the US um to uh Israel. Uh and the F-15 and F-16, they can carry a cruise missile capability. What that gives them cash is the ability to deep strike from far away. Again, reducing the risk on the pilots and the aircraft and increasing the probability of success on those strikes. and they'll be going after Iran surfaceto-air missile systems, a layered surfaceto-air missile system, not too indifferent to the Iron
6:55 Dome, but not as capable. Um, so differing aircraft, intercapability waves from what's called SEAD, suppression of enemy air defense, which gets rid of all the surfaceto-air missiles and then in come the other jets with the cruise missile capability or offensive strike capability to be able to clear the way. So that's effectively the way that it was conducted. Mikey, as we talk, I'm just keeping an eye on Israel's uh televised briefing. They're saying that an official there saying that these strikes were due to incoming Iran attacks. So, just a line there and we'll keep an eye on it. But when it comes to Iran itself, they also have a some form of layered protection system for from to protect themselves from air strikes from Israel. Yeah, they do. It's it's tier. It's it's layered. It's tiered a little bit like Iron Dome. It's
7:41 nowhere near as capable as Iron Dome. Let's take a look at the major component of that. It's uh let's go slide. This is the S300 anti-aircraft missile system. There'll be no surprise to hear that that is designed and developed and supplied by Russia. That goes out to about 200 km. And then you have a middle system called tactical hunter. That's out to about 120 km that the Iranians use. And then the innermost system is the KOAD 15 and that's out to about 75 km. So they do have a tiered layered defense and again that's what those F-35s and the suppression of enemy air defense. Their main objective would have been to try and target and identify and take those out. And Mikey just talk us through the route that the IDF jets take. Yeah, I was looking at um flight 24 and this is this is quite fascinating. Let's let's go slide and look at a little bit of the geography of
8:26 the um of the area. Um on this slide on the left hand side of the screen you can see Israel in between Israel and Iran which is in the white on the uh center and right of the screen you got Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. What would makes most sense to me cash in terms of a the path of least resistance and the most direct route would be across Iraqi airspace and into Iran. I think what's really interesting is if we can go to a slide of the flight radar map and the software. Um this is it here. Hopefully this will is it brilliant. Okay, this hopefully this will move in a in a moment. But if it doesn't, what you can see here is basically um Iraqi airspace, you got Baghdad in the central screen there and then Iranian airspace was completely shut down and cleared rapidly
9:14 um after the um the operation started. So to me, the fact that Iraqi airspace was shut down and cleared means that that would be a viable option for the IDF to use in terms of striking Iran. And just just so people just so the viewers know, the the aircraft that you can see, if we just go back to that slide, please back slide. The these basically are civilian air traffic. Their airliners all have what's called a transponder, which has a fourdigit code that civilian air traffic is required to basically uh put up. uh it will be given to them by air traffic and secondary surveillance radar will see each one of those. So basically this software can see every single aircraft that's airborne and you can see right in the middle of that screen there that Iran and Iraq were cleared and and obviously that's a good thing cash when it comes to deconliction and the the reduction of
9:59 risk on civilian air traffic when you've got military activity in the area. Yeah, it's staggering when you look at it like that that it's completely cleared. Now, just this week, the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency said that Iran had failed to comply with its non-prololiferation obligations for the first time in two decades. Mikey, could that be what prompted this strike or has it been in the planning for quite some time? Uh, Cash, I think the answer to that is a a combination of both. So you know we've seen the negotiations going on between uh the US and Iran and and contingency planning or comp planning as we call it in the military that will be required because behind every soft power negotiation you need a hard power big stick and that's what effectively the US would have been planning for. It's what the it's what Netanyahu administration
10:45 would have been planning for for a long time. What would they be planning? What would they be looking at? Let's just take a look at a slide and look at Iran's nuclear facilities. uh as you can see they're quite extensive and they're quite spread over um Iran but you know an operation like this looking at those sites in Iran is a massive amount of detailed planning um we can see the uh Natans which was targeted on this airirst strike but interesting interesting above that in green you got Ford that's a secondary enrichment um site that is more fortified that has more more um surfaceto-ear missile systems around it making it hard to penetrate um you've then to the left of that in yellow you've got Iraq. Um that's basically um it's a water facility uh used to cool reactors but also as a byproduct of that cooling you
11:32 get plutonium and that can be weaponized uh as well. And then just interestingly down into the the bottom left of Iran you can see that red dot basher that is um Iran's only nuclear power plant that is currently in use and that uses not enriched uranium from uh Iran but it uses enriched uranium um from Russia. So all these areas will have been scrutinized heavily by IDF military intelligence by planners also the readiness states of capability they will have also been prescribed. So if a trigger mechanism was initiated the plan was set. So and just when it comes to Israel they say that they have never officially claimed to have nuclear weapons although it's understood that they do. Iran has been building its
12:18 program for decades. Mikey, how far off are they and what actually constitutes a nuclear weapon? Yeah, let's start let's just unpack that a little bit. Let's start with Israel. There is very little uh transparency on Israel's nuclear capability. It does not confirm and it does not deny the existence of a nuclear arsenal, but it is widely believed that Israel does possess a nuclear capability for sure. Um what it looks like in numbers, that's uncertain. Uh in terms of delivery systems, the IDF the the IDF does have a capability very very quickly. What constitutes a nuclear weapon? Enrich uranium up to 90% a warhead and a delivery system such as a ballistic missile or an aircraft. Combine those three and then you have an
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