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tv   SPOTLIGHT  PRESSTV  February 3, 2024 10:02pm-10:31pm IRST

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crisis devastating wars, terrorism, the israeli lobby, crackdown, diplomacy, us support for terrorism.
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hello and welcome to press press tv spotlight. i'm marza hashimmy. thanks so much for being with us. well, how does the us respond to the continuous genocide of palestinians in gaza by attacking the countries which are involved in trying to stop the almost four-month zionist killing spree? the people in gaza, on friday night, the united states targeted syria and iraq and killed at least 16 people and wounded at least 25 others. well, what does this all mean and what is next for the region? stay with us as we take a look at all of this on the spotlight. i'd like to walk my guest now to the program. elijah macneer journalists and political activists out of brussels and
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julia coast and journalists and political analys out of beirot. thank you both for being with us. well, let's start off with you, elijah, do you think that the united states is being hit hard by the islamic resistance in various places in the region? let's start from there. thank you for having me. thank you for coming. the americans are really attacking the position of the resistance in iraq and syria in retaliation to the attack that happened against their position on the borders because they are considered as occupation forces and legally they have no right to retaliate because they are not in defensive position but they are occupying two countries basically they indeed occupying syria. and in iraq they are not
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welcome and they are still there only because they are blackmailing the iraqi government, if they are asked to leave, they will withhold the money that the in represent the main income of the iraqi uh government in oil revenue that falls into american banks, so instead of going toward gaza and stopping the war in gaza, stopping the israeli crimes and against humanity and intent of genocide that the whole world is acknowledge, acknowledging that this is what the israelis are committing, they are enlarging the war and they are saying we don't want to enlarge the war, but they then they go and bomb yemen, they bomb iraq and they bomb syria, so the only thing they are doing is really expanding this war and hitting other sovereign.
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countries when they are completely claiming the opposite, so there is something fundamentally wrong in what the americans are doing, and this attack is... in my opinion uh concentrated a presidential campaign for joe biden who's trying to show his strengths, but instead of that he's showing his real weakness. what about that? julia, elijah, said biden is trying to basically flex the muscles of the united states, at the end of the day, what do you think that they're trying to accomplish with these attacks? is it an expansion of the war, is it just, as he said, just fl flexing uh... the muscles of the united states, especially an election year, or how do you see it? so on on the international front regarding the the middle east region, these attacks have invited the resistance to strike back at in retaliation
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for us occupation aggression, and the the resistance obviously, especially with yemen, they're prepared and they're ready definitely to to directly attack the united states. occupation and and the british reinforcement, so of course in in one sense it definitely does invite a more of an expansion in a region and it justifies more of a retaliation from the resistance, which which responds in kind to these acts of aggression, and on the other hand what it does is it uh is essentially the us's um stage in in its withdraw, they've been they've been hit so badly um regarding occupation bases in iraq and syria, not just in the last three months, but over the last three four years as well, by especially the iraqi resistance, that it it is now staging another wave of of
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withdrawal, and at the same time it wants to inflict damage upon the resistance, while not escalating it to the level where it has to have a direct confrontation. with iran uh the united states uh made up this lie that was condemned by the iraqi government that it was striking in coordination with the iraqi government, which right now it's pm is relatively on good terms with the iraqi resistance, so it makes no sense that they would be coordinating with a government that has factions um that are of the party that is also of of the the resistance the hashtabi uh of course that makes no sense and at the same time uh they they said that they notified iran in advance which is also uh laughable um that uh even on the us's terms um thinking that that's an effective way to carry out a counter strike is just to notify um iran in
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advance or as excuse to to uh to show its diplomacy uh in that context uh and on the third it's uh you know it's joe biden trying to face in the face of a force withdraw that the us is going to have to take sooner or later due to its illegal bases being hit so hard, trying to save face in in the face of a crumbling administration and in face of horrifying and humiliating failures of this administration's ventures in eastern europe, ukraine and the and the gaza genocide as well, and at the same time, but that's backfiring as well. because what you see in in the us rhetoric is this uh again this split in this rhetoric within the the ruling class, the ruling parties uh where the republicans are are saying that biden's actually trying to appease iran by being attempting to be so indirect and and to avoid
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confrontation directly with iran while at the same time um having that backfire by by pushing all of this aggression across yemen across iraq. across syria, that is in reality just leading to more and more of escalation. well, elijah, your thoughts, because us is saying that, of course they've targeted, they said iranian back militias or iranian proxies. um, your take on why it did not or has not, um, it would not attack iran itself. well, first of all, because joe biden is not a suicidal candy. attacking iran, it means declaring a war in the middle east and iran certainly will not be its own. secondly, iran just few weeks ago launched missiles against jihadis and takfiri target in syria, and
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these precision missiles went above kuwait, iraq and syria in three countries where there are united states military bases, third iran. had the capability as the world has seen in 2020 when donald trump assassinated general sulaymani and abdi mundis. the possibility to target any us military base in the area in the whole middle east, so we talking about dozens of military bases that are sitting duck for the iranian precision missiles, that we not talking about the drones and the advanced military capability that iran demonstrated that it has in the last few years, so that from the military... approach, secondly, the targeting of the different
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objective that iran launch, it has launched from different places in iran, showing the capability to have mobile missiles, not only statistic static missiles in one location that can be bombed and destroyed by the americans, so it is not possible from the first strike for the american to destroy the iranian capability, which... mean iran can easily hit the second time. moreover, we have seen how just the ansarullah in yemen managed to close the red sea and iran also claimed the attack on two targets, one in the mold and another one opposite the indian coast, which means that iran has the capability to close maritime passages, including the trait of homes, the iranian ally, they can also... close the mediterranean and then the whole world and commerce will be totally blocked if
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the americans want to turn that into a battlefield. this is why i don't think the americans had the appetite to start attacking a country like iran. so what they are doing, they are picking fight with non-state actors, the iraqi resistance and the syrian resistance in iraq and syria, and that's really degrading the... the superpower and the strongest country in the world that is attacking small groups that are in the area seeking an independent country, which is showing how the american that are attacking these groups to aim to impose the terrence, immediately after the attack, the american basis in syria were attacked, today the the american bases in iraq were attacked into... different places in asad and in harir in kurdistan, which shows that the objective of
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the americans has catastrophically failed before the first 12 hours of the attack. right, would you your take on the your overall assessment of what the uh resistance has been doing and and the reaction uh by the united states. now elijah talked about basically it's like a waining superpower. because uh, even they're attacking non-state actors, but we have seen it from, whether we're talking about iraq or whether we're talking about from lebanon, whether we're talking about from yemen or syria, um, that the uh resistance had been very persistent, especially since october the 7th in trying to uh defend the palestinians and to stop this genocide there, your overall assessment. okay, unfortunately, julia, i cannot hear you, um, hopefully we can we reestablish
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hopefully that uh contact uh, well elijah, i'm going to pose that question to you until we can fix that technical issue with julia uh, overall as i was saying when we look at what has happened and we look at the resistance front, whether we're talking about yemen, are we talking about lebanon or hizbullah, are we're talking? about in syria and iraq and and the way it has been consistent and persistent and putting pressure, trying to put pressure on the zionist regime and also it's backer, the united states during this time, well we have seen how all these non-state actors are determined to support gaza, to support the population in gaza to stop the massacre of the civilians, 27 thousand. people killed in gaza and it was not enough to shake the
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awareness and the feeling of the international community, and here we talking about mainly the americans and the europeans that theoretically they should have some kind of influence on israel, unless they are happy with what the israelis are doing, for that it shows that they are continuing to... support weapons to israel and ammunition to allow it to continue his barbaric act and the extermination of the palestinians, which make them ' target and illegitimate to be hit by the supporters of gaza, by those who are supporting other human being who are showing humanity like ansarullah in yemen, like hizbullah in lebanon, like the iraqi and the syrian resistance who are determined to stand by gaza, no matter what the casualties, they
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are going to suffer, but also this is an opportunity to show how weak is israel, but also how detair is the united states and the uk that claim to have the strongest maritim power in the world where they are continuing bombarding ansarulah and ansarulah are responding in yemen, blocking the red sea, and the americans are proudly saying, well we have bombed ansarullah, but today we have managed to intercept 12 um... drone which shows that the objective of the americans have not been met. okay, well julia uh, speaking about the objectives of the americans, now we look at the areas that uh washington struck when we look at syria for example, we we see that they've hit areas where the syrian soldiers are actually stationed and trying to defend uh their land,
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the country against terrorist group, and we've seen this time and time again. whether we're talking about syria or iraq and other places that on the one hand the united states says that it's fighting against terrorism, on the other hand we see that there have been military um moves that have been made that actually supports the terrorists, your take on that? yeah, so back to the the previous question, um, in order to support gaza from within their capacities, the other resistance groups uh, such as the... resistance such as hazballah, they've been striking both occupations, the us and the zinis entity from within their capacity, weakening the us presence and destroying the us presence means severing the entire reforcement that go reinforcement that goes to the zionist entity. this also includes the other auxiliary arms of the us occupation such as dash and such as al-qaida that have revaged
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syria for the better part of the last decade and and more even. so for example, in in the areas that the us has struck, beginning not just with last night's, you know, so-called 18 strikes, but also just within a couple weeks ago, the us struck major pmu security headquarters along the border, this was responsible for operations against dash, just as lot of the areas that they've been striking in derazuur, and yesterday night in anbar, they also struck another major pm new headquarter site um and what this the message that this show is essentially uh on the ground to the iraq resistance to the people of syria and iraq um is that uh as the us is forced to make another wave of withdrawals that they are attempting to activate their that to dash in the region again uh to fight
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and to weaken the resistance groups the syrian army uh and we're already seeing that come up again, because after the us attacked anbar last night, then dash came around and attacked it again. last week, the the iraqi resistance, you know, they they made major strike against the dash leader in the zida region, in in the fields between the border region between iraq and syria, so what what this essentially doesn't practice is punish the efforts of the resistance in a effectively. fighting and deterring the us occupation and again reinviting another wave of uh dash terror that and another instance is when along the highway between the two border regions another um another instance of fighting between uh dash and the resistance uh recently you know came about so that's
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essentially what america's uh next plan is for this region is to uh create the conditions for a resurgence of dash in response to and in punishment for the attacks its basis which have been incredibly successful. well, elijah, your take, basically, we know that iran has said time and time again about the israeli regime and and it's the source of terrorism and encouraging lack of... in the region and also we have the united states itself playing that same role creating instability, supporting terrorism, as julia has just said, "i mean, they have attacked the anti-terror team, if we're talking about hasha shadi, we look at them how they have uh tried to and had thought against daesh, and of course they
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were the ones that were um attacked by the united states, would you say that for if there were any that did not know the real role of the united states in this region that with this genocide taking place uh against the palestinians, that the roles have been..." totally clarified, well, i think with the presence of the united states in the middle east, the world is becoming worse, we've seen their failure in afghanistan, we've seen their failure in iraq, in syria, how they occupy at the northeast of the country, which is which represent the bread basket and the source of energy, just only to deprive syria from the res. forces: we've seen how they blocked altanaf between syria and iraq to stop and block the exchange of commerce and that iran and its allies managed
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to open the road through abu kamal, the exact road that was bombed yesterday by the americans, we've seen how the american, they've done everything in their power to destabilize the middle east, they've tried to bring war in the middle east and they have succeeded because they're very strong. but they have not brought peace and they have certainly not earn the mind and heart of the population, on the contrary, everywhere they went, everybody want them out, particularly in iraq now and of course in syria, because they occupy the country, and when they are supporting israel today, it is actually something positive, not negative, because it has created awareness around the world population, about the us doing and about the israeli claim to be the only democratic nation in the middle east, all these false
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claims are visible today by the same israel on video, by the same americans who are supporting the israeli, justifying the violation of human rights, international law, committing crimes against humanity, war crimes and in front of the ic. the international court of justice today for the intent of genocide that the case was accepted, it is sending a strong message not only about israel but also about all the european countries and the americans who are supporting them, and i think this war on gaza was a real eye opener for the whole world, where so many people who had no idea about the injustice that the... palestinian population is suffering from and today the population around the world is not supporting gaza is standing against the injustice okay
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stay with me let me get julia in on this last question well julia uh the zionist genocide if it continues on the resistance front said it will continue in its attack uh whether we're talking about the regime itself or those that are supporting uh the regime your overall assessment of where this is going in the region, do you see much wider war or tell me your take? so so far the resistance is holding its study at what they called kind kind of this limited engagement um level where outside of gaza you see attacks on military basis and those are reciprocated with also attacks on um resistance sites or bases as well and of course uh the... occupation and its uh proxies, whether they're terrorist proxies um or or others definitely hold no reservations and and attacking civilians in the process as we saw
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last night um, but for the time being that these are the main targets and uh there is kind of like this escalation ladder um where the resistance is gradually using more and more advanced weaponry and hitting uh more and more uh uh consequential sites with higher intensity. and uh that's essentially is what uh is happening uh recently in the last few weeks the iraqi resistance basically yeah um basically the uh the the intex will intensify on uh israeli sites and even we say the iraqi resistance um basically joining the ansar allah and joining hazballah in attacking design entity um itself within the occupied palestine okay and uh they themselves are basically building up to um remove the occupation uh from its power and from its influence within the region. all right, well thank you both for being with us,
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elijah magna general. and political analys out of brussels, julia cassam, journalist and political analys out of beirot, and thank you viewers for being with us on another spotlight, i'm hashimi, hope to see you right here next time, goodbye, iran's islamic revolution turns 45, major strides. education and women's advancement under pressure and sanctions, the economy has advanced, because of being under the sanctions, we became self-sufficient in different kinds of, mean technological fields. join us in this edition of economic divide as we explore the economic ups and downs of iran's islamic revolution.
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the us launches air strikes on 85 targets inside iraq and syria and what washington claims is a response to deadly drone attack on american troops in the region. the us central command claims the targets include rocket, missile and drone depotes. us president says the strikes will continue. they barkas condemned the us strikes which killed 16 people as a violation of its sovereignty. assyria also said the attacks took place in areas where his forces are battling the remnance of daesh fery group and this proves us collusion with terrorists.