April 18, 2024
SHARRI MARKSON: Welcome back. Well, let's bring in now Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson. James, great to have you on. Look, Israel is being urged by the U.S not to attack Iran, although Joe Biden has written a piece in the Wall Street Journal where he pledges his commitment to continue supporting Israel. What do you think? Should Israel be retaliating against Iran?
JAMES PATERSON: Sharri, of course no one wants a wider war in the Middle East, but let's just take a step back and think about what Iran did last weekend. In any other time, in any other context, we would all regard that as a overt declaration of war, because one country from its sovereign territory launched 300 drones and missiles to the sovereign territory of another country with the intent to cause harm, and it was only thanks to advanced Israeli technology and their partners that they were able to stop most of those. But otherwise, it would have wreaked very serious harm against the State of Israel. Now, if that happened to Australia, if someone did that to us, we would regard that as a declaration of war and we would expect our government to respond accordingly. And the reason why Iran has got away with this is because everyone's so used to Iran waging war on Israel through its proxies, through Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis and others. But really, a very important threshold has been crossed. It's very clear that deterrence has broken down in the Middle East, and it's my expectation that Israel will want to reassert that deterrence by demonstrating to Iran that there is a very real cost for this behaviour, and they can't get away with this very serious escalation of violence.
MARKSON: Well, part of that deterrence that you say has broken down in the Middle East, and I agree with you, is because the US has been criticising Israel so much, have a listen to Joe, Joe Biden's half-hearted warning to Tehran.
JOE BIDEN: [CLIP] Don't. Don't. Don't. My message to any state or any other hostile actor thinking about attacking is remains the same as it was a week ago. Don't. Don't. Don't.
MARKSON: Like he can't get out a longer sentence. James Paterson, obviously, I don't expect you to be critical about the US president, but do you think the US could have been stronger in its support for Israel in recent months?
PATERSON: Well, Iran has done something that it has never done before. It has never so overtly launched an attack on Israel. We all know that Iran is devoted to the destruction of Israel. We all know that it funds proxies in the region to harm Israel, we all know it wants to see the Jewish state wiped off the map, but it's never crossed this threshold before. It didn't even cross this threshold so directly with the killing of Soleimani under the Trump administration, a senior IRGC commander. Yes, they responded to US bases in the region, but they didn't strike the American mainland, obviously. And they've never before struck Israel like this. And so I understand why many Israelis feel, and I suspect the government feels, that Iran has to pay a price for this, and that it too will strike back in return. And in similar terms to the way in which Iran struck them. I'm sure it'll be a carefully calibrated response, because Israel doesn't want to fight on too many more fronts as well, but it wants Iran to understand that there are consequences for this behaviour, and that if no one else will enforce those consequences, then Israel will.
MARKSON: You're right. Just on TikTok, you've referred TikTok and its parent company to AUSTRAC, the financial crimes regulator, after reports that they violated anti-money laundering and terror financing laws. What's this over?
PATERSON: It's a slightly complicated story Sharri, but the simple answer is, TikTok lied again to regulators about being busted for violating anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws. That's a very serious charge. It's no wonder the US Congress looks like they're about to vote through a really strong bill that's going to make TikTok safe for Americans by getting the Chinese Communist Party's influence out of it, and we need to do the same.
MARKSON: All right. James Paterson, thank you so much for joining me. Really appreciate it.
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