hello and welcome to press press tv spotlight, i'm marsia hashimi, 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 of the people in gaza. on friday night, the united states targeted syria and rock and

killed at least 16 people and wounded at least 25 others. 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 wake my guest now to the program. elijah macneer journalists and a political activist out of brussels. "and julia costam, journalist and political analys out of beirot. thank you both for being with a 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 uh attacking the position of the resistance in a..." 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 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 represent the main income of the iraqi 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 crimes 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 enl 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 countries when they are completely claiming the opposite, so the... is something fundamentally wrong in what the of americans are doing, and this attack is in my opinion, concentrated a presidential campaign for joe biden who is 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 uh in retaliation 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 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's a... 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 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, the united states made up this lie. that was condemned by the iraqi government that it was uh striking in coordination with the iraqi government, which uh right now it's pm is uh 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 hashtashabi uh so of course that makes no sense and at the same time uh they they said that they notified iran in advance which is also laughable um that uh even on the us's terms um thinking that that's an effective way to carry out a counterstrike is just to notify um iran in advance or as excuse to to uh to show its diplomacy uh in that context and th on the third it's you know it's joe biden trying to save face in the face of a force withdraw that the us is going to have to take sooner. due to its illegal bases being hit so hard um trying to save face in in the face of 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 again the split. in this rhetoric within the the ruling class, the ruling parties, 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 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 an. 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 candidate, 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 takfirist target in syria, and 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 abu mahdi muhandis, the possibility to target any us military base in the area, in the whole middle east, so we're 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 demonstrate. that it has in the last few years, so that from the military approach. secondly, the targeting of the different 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 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 maldive and another one opposite the indian coast, which means that iran has the capability to... close maritime passages, including the straight of homes, the iranian ally, they can also close the mediterranean, and then the whole world and commerce will be totally blocked, 'if 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 superpower and the strongest country in the world, that is a'. attacking small groups that are in the area seaking an independent country, which is

showing how the american that are attacking these groups to aim to impose the terrance, immediately after the attack the american bases in syria were attacked, today the the american bases in iraq were attacked in two different places in assad and in harir in kurdistan, which shows that the objective. the americans has catastrophically failed before the first 12 hours of the attack. right, what julia your take on the your overall assessment of uh uh 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 what. 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 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 we look at what is 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 its 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 people killed in gaza, and it was not enough to shake. the 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 by. act and the extermination the palestinians, which make them target and

legitimate 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 are going to... to suffer, but also this is an opportunity to show how weak is israel, but also how the terror is the united states and the uk that claim to have the strongest maritime power in the world where they are continuing bombarding ansarullah and ansarulah are responding in yemen, blocking the red sea, and the americans are proudly saying, well we have bombed ansarulah, but today we have managed to inter intercept 12

um drone which shows that the objective of the americans have not been met. okay, well julia, 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. their land, 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, in order to support gaza from within their capacities, the other resistance groups uh, such as the

iraqi resistance such as hazbullah, they've been striking both occupations, the us and the zin. 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 um and such as al-qaida that have revaged 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 blast nights. 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 derrazuur and yesterday night in anbar, they also struck another

major pmu headquarter site, and what this the message that this shows essentially, on the ground to the iraq resistance to the people of syria and iraq um is that uh as the us is you know forced to make another wave of withdrawals that they are attempting to activate their that to dash in the region again to fight and to weaken the resistance groups the syrian army and and we're already seeing that come up again because after the us attacked anbar last night and dash came. around and attacked it again uh last week the the iraqi resistance they they made major strike against the adash leader in the zida region in in the fields between the border region between iraq and syria so what what this essentially does in practice is punish the efforts of the resistance in effectively

fighting and deterring the us occupation and again reinviting another wave of of dash terror that and another instance is when along the highway between the two border regions another another instance of fighting between dash and the resistance recently you know came about so that's essentially what america's next plan is for this region is to create the conditions for a resurgence of dashh in response to and in punishment for the attacks its basis which have been incredibly successful. well, elijah, your take, basically, we know that uh iran has said time and time again about the israeli regime and and it's the source of uh terrorism and uh uh encouraging lack of

stability in the region and also we have the united states itself uh playing that same role. uh creating instability, supporting terrorism, as julia has just said, i mean they have attacked the anti-terror team, if we're talking about hashadby, we look at them how they have uh uh tried to and had thought against daesh, and of course they 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? that with this genocide taking place 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 resources, we've seen how they blocked tanaf between syria and iraq to stop and block the exchange of commerce and that iran and its allies managed 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 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 icj, 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, it's standing against the injustice okay, stay with me, let me get julia in on this last question, well julie, the zinanis 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? so so far the resistance is uh 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 the us occupation and it's proxies whether they're terrorist proxies um or or others definitely hold no reservations in in attacking civilians in the process as we saw last night um, but for the time being that these are the main targets and there is kind of like this escalation ladder um where the resistance is gradually using more and more advanced weaponry and hitting more and more consequential sites with higher intensity and uh that's essentially is what uh is happening uh recently in the last few weeks the iraq yeah, basically the uh, the the the intex will intensify on israeli sites, and even we say

the iraqi resistance, basically joining the ansar allah and joining hazballah in attacking design entity um itself within the occupied palestine. okay, and 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, elijah magner, journalist and political analyst out of brussels, julia kostam, journalist and political analys out of beirot, and thank you viewers for being with us on another spotlight, i'm marsia hashimi, hope to see you right here next time, goodbye. it was the epoc of belief, it was the epoc of incredulity, it was the season of light, it

was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. there was a king with the golden crown and iron fists on the throne of iran. the shaw was a dictator, it was clearer than crystal to them that... things were settled forever, the cia formally concluded in august of 1978 that the shah of iran was in no serious trouble, but they failed to see the writing on the wall. the american embassy in tehran was wowfully ill informed about what was going on on the street. follow one of the defining moments of the 20th century in what caused the islamic revolution.

your headlines on press tv. damascus says us strikes on areas where syrian forces are fighting daesh remnants once again prove washington's collusion with terrorists. "gaza's health ministry says israel strikes have killed over 100 civilians in just 24 hours as the total death toll from the regime's genocide exceeds 27,200, and tens of thousands of people marched in the uk's capital, london to voice their support for palestinians facing israeli aggression.