i'm joined now by my panel historian and fellow of the danube institute, david oldroyd bolt, and theter eamonn archewell turner , amy. eamonn archewell turner, amy. iran has overplayed its hand now, hasn't it, that the missile launches on israel were a step too far, that it's moved away just from funding its proxies to a direct attack, and that iran has shown that actually it's not as strong as people thought it was. >> i think the issue that precluded that would be that perhaps a lot of people would see that israel has has was disproportionate in the way that it's handled the conflict since october the 7th. now , i would october the 7th. now, i would never say that israel doesn't have the right to defend itself. of course it has the right to defend itself, but it doesn't have the right to commit war crimes. it doesn't have the right to break international law. and i think a lot of people would probably think that this conflict would have been contained better and more efficiently, and perhaps we wouldn't have the missiles coming from iran if that had if that had happened before. >>

i'm absolutely delighted to say that, as usual, ihave delighted to say that, as usual, i have david oldroydere to discuss his his weekly roundup of the arts and culture. david, welcome to the show. so what have you been doing this week? what's been happening? >> well, the first thing was a production of tchaikovsky's opera eugene onegin at the royal opera house, covent garden, which i saw last week and has one performance left tomorrow night. there are tickets left. it was a supremely good production. the director is the american ted huffman. it's quite sparse staging, but not it doesn't get in the way. really excellent performance. i want to single out of olga by the young mezzo soprano avery amaro. gordon bintner a very, very good eugene onegin , and a eugene onegin, and a particularly fine performance from the principal ballerina, lauren bridal. the opera has, along with most of tchaikovsky's operas, a balletic scene because it was at the time necessary for performance both in russia and in france, to have a balletic scene. and the i can't remember, i'm afraid , who the producer is i'm a