Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Hi, I'm Kim Vennell in Whanganui, New Zealand. And I'm Tara Oakes in Liverpool. It's Wednesday, March 4th. Today, the US-Israeli war with Iran enters a new, more dangerous phase, with NATO defences destroying an Iranian missile as it headed into Turkish airspace, and the US sinking an Iranian warship off Sri Lanka's coast. As Israel pounds Lebanon, will Hezbollah survive?
And primary season is underway with a hotly contested Texas Senate seat heading to a runoff. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. war in the Middle East is spreading.
Chapter 2: What recent events have escalated the US-Israel conflict with Iran?
Turkey says NATO shot down an Iranian missile heading into its airspace. Video from Ilhas News Agency shows a crane lifting the debris of the air defence system out of the water in Turkey's southern Hatay province. It was unclear what the missile's intended target was, But a NATO spokesperson said the defence bloc condemned Iran's targeting of Turkey.
An attack on Turkey, a NATO member, would mark a major escalation and risks drawing the alliance into the war. Defence Secretary Pete Hegsworth played down that risk to reporters, saying he didn't expect NATO's mutual defence clause would be triggered by the incident. We're aware of that particular engagement, although no sense that it would trigger anything like Article 5. No.
At that press conference at the Pentagon, Hegseth said the U.S. was just getting started on its war in Iran. First, we are only four days into this. Metrics are shifting, dust is settling, and more forces are arriving. It's very early. And as President Trump has said, we will take all the time we need to make sure that we succeed. He made the remarks after the U.S.
sunk an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka.
Chapter 3: Will Hezbollah survive the current crisis in Lebanon?
The strike triggering a Sri Lankan Navy rescue operation for dozens of Iranian sailors. Here's Heg Seth again. An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters. Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death. the first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War II.
And in Iran, Majdaba Khamenei, the son of late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has survived U.S. and Israeli assaults so far. And he's favored to succeed his father. That's according to two Iranian sources. 55-year-old Mojtaba is one of the most influential figures in the Iranian clerical establishment, and he's known as a hardliner with deep ties to the Revolutionary Guards.
Tehran says a new supreme leader will be chosen soon. Meanwhile, plans are in flux for the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His body was due to lie in state in a Tehran mosque from this evening, but state media says this plan has been postponed. The Pentagon has identified four US soldiers killed in a drone strike in Kuwait, the first American casualties named in the escalating war with Iran.
They were army reservists from an Iowa-based logistics unit. The youngest, 20-year-old Sergeant Declan Cody, had only enlisted in 2023. The Trump administration is warning lawmakers to expect more casualties. It comes amid criticism from some of a lack of unity on the messaging around the operation from the U.S.,
On Monday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested that an adamant Israel effectively forced Washington into the operation. We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.
But on Tuesday, Trump said that wasn't the case at all. Based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn't want that to happen. So if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand. Our State Department reporter Simon Lewis has been tracking the administration's messaging.
These messaging wrinkles in the last few days have kind of shown is that a lot of planning went into the strikes themselves, into targeting, into getting all these U.S. forces in the region involved. What doesn't seem to have been planned out is firstly the messaging of how we're going to sell this to the American people.
And we're also seeing there's not much planning on how to prepare US citizens and US embassies and those kinds of things in the region. It does seem like a lot of planning went into the strikes themselves and the targeting and the kind of kinetic aspect of this. But it would seem that there's been less thought, less planning has gone into what happens after
Rubio has since said that the administration did not strike Iran because of Israel, saying, quote, this had to happen anyway. While we're in the US, we'll go to Texas, where US Senator John Cornyn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton are set to square off in a high-stakes runoff for the state's Republican nomination for the Senate.
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