The Decibel - Israel-Iran conflict escalates as death toll rises

Episode Date: June 17, 2025

The long shadow war between Israel and Iran is now out in the open, as pressure mounts over a nuclear peace deal pushed by the U.S. and President Donald Trump. The growing conflict reached its fourth day – Israel continued its bombardment of Iranian cities and infrastructure, while Iran’s missiles evaded Israel’s aerial defence system and hit targets in the country. More than 200 Iranians have been killed so far, while at least 24 Israelis have died, as the two nations trade attacks.The Globe’s Senior International Correspondent, Mark MacKinnon, joins The Decibel to break down the latest developments of an escalating war, how Iran is facing its most serious security breach in nearly 50 years, and what role the U.S. plays in the combustible situation brewing in the Middle East.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

The conflict between Israel and Iran has continued to escalate. On Monday, Israel hit Iran's state broadcaster. In response, Iran was preparing the largest and most intense missile attack so far against Israel, according to state media. Both countries have fired barrages of missiles at each other over the last few days. Iran has said that more than 200 people have died, most of them civilians. In Israel, two dozen civilians have died. The conflict started on Friday, when Israel launched an attack on Iran. It claimed that Iran was on the verge of building a nuclear weapon.

The strikes killed senior military leaders and damaged one of Iran's key uranium enrichment facilities. An Iranian official called the attack a declaration of war and the country retaliated. And now, there's fear that the conflict could escalate. So today, we're talking to Mark McKinnon, the Globe's senior international correspondent. We spoke on Monday around midday Toronto time. Mark will help us understand what this conflict means for Israel and Iran, the implications for the Middle East region, and where things could go from here. I'm Manika Raman-Welms and this is The Decibel from the Globe and Mail. Mark, thanks so much for being here today. Thank you, Menaka.

Of course, Israel and Iran have long had this kind of shadow war that's been going on, but these actions that we've seen in the last few days are very different. How significant would you say is this escalation between these two countries? It's very significant. As you alluded to, there's been a shadow war between Israel and Iran, really for the past two decades, if not longer. And since October 7th, 2023, since those attacks, we've seen Israel confronting first the perpetrators that attack Hamas in Gaza, and then go after, in response to rocket fire from Hezbollah,

another major Iranian proxy. And now with Hezbollah extremely weakened, Hamas very weakened, Iran sort of progressing. We don't know how close they were to developing a nuclear device. You know, they were saying it was a civilian nuclear program, but Israel obviously has been worried about this for those two decades, that Iran will someday acquire a nuclear bomb, and Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, has chosen now to take action and to launch

what looks to be the start of a major operation to weaken Iran militarily and to prevent it from approaching a nuclear bomb. So as you alluded to, of course, yes, Hamas has a lot of kind of proxies that Iran has been using in ways to kind of get at Israel, but now there's this kind of direct confrontation. And you mentioned the nuclear developments happening in Iran. Is this, I guess, what prompted then this latest round of attacks from Israel? Do we know? Well, there was a report last week from the IAEA saying that Iran was out of compliance with its non-proliferation obligation. Iran was not explaining or not answering all the

questions the IAEA had about its Iranian enrichment. That's of course the UN body that looks at nuclear development. Yes, there was growing concern about what is Iran doing here, although it was still, you know, had IAEA inspectors in the country, etc. It was still theoretically cooperating with international non-proliferation. But Benjamin Netanyahu has been talking about Iran's nuclear program as an existential threat to Israel for the 15 years that he's been in office and has said that if necessary, Israel will eliminate this threat militarily. Now, as Prime Minister, I've made it clear time and again, Israel will never allow those who call for our annihilation to develop the means to achieve that goal.

Tonight, Israel backs those words with action. Two years ago, before the October 7 attacks on southern Israel, that would be starting a major, major war because you had heavily armed Hamas in Gaza, you had Hezbollah with tens of thousands of missiles on the northern border in Lebanon, you had the Assad regime in Syria which was allied with Iran, and what's happened over two years of war and at enormous civilian costs that has to be said is we've seen you know the reduction of Hamas as a military threat. Hezbollah incredibly weakened to the point where even the Lebanese government is talking about disarming it, the collapse of the Assad regime, which is a major Iranian

ally. The timing was right, obviously, in Mr Netanyahu's opinion, to go after what it sees as sort of the head of the snake in this case and to end what he saw as the imminent nuclear threat. Whether this, you know, Iran was weeks away, months away, years away from having a nuclear bomb, let alone threatening anyone with it, is not really relevant to the Israeli calculation, which was that this was going to be a threat someday and everything had lined up for them to sort of go ahead and try and deal with it. And of course they made this calculus.

This all began very early on Friday, a few days ago. Now Israel launched strikes into Iran, killing top military leadership in that country. Mark, what exactly have we seen happen since then? I know there's been a lot of back and forth, but I guess if you had to kind of sum up the, you know, the significance of what we've seen, how would you describe that? Well, Israel in those opening attacks, you know, very much as they did at the start of the war against Hezbollah, sort of

eliminating a lot of the military leadership, destroying a lot of Iran's air defenses. And today, Monday, Israel said that it had gained freedom over Western Iran all the way up to the capital city Tehran, meaning its fighter jets don't feel threatened when they're flying missions in that part of the country. So Israel has been advancing its planes and striking deeper and deeper into Iran. Iran says more than 200 people have been killed, most of those civilians. And Iran has fired back hundreds of missiles and drones at Israel. And one of the big developments, I think that was a surprise for many Israelis, is some

of them have gotten through and caused substantive civilian damage inside Israel. I think the death toll is now in the 20s. Israel's had this vaunted iron dome air defense system, and Iran clearly has enough missiles and drones and have high enough technology to penetrate it. Yeah, how rare is that for these missiles to actually get through Israel's iron dome like that? I I mean I think this is a bit of a shock to some

Israelis because through the wars with Hamas and Hezbollah there were civilian casualties inside Israel but not so many so fast as we've seen over the last few days here and part of the calculus going forward will be not just how long can they each side militarily fight on but what will be public sentiment towards carrying on this fight. And that's something that obviously the leaders in both Tehran and in Jerusalem have to keep an eye on. Well let me ask you about that then. Do we have a sense in general how the public in Israel and how the public in Iran are kind of viewing this situation? So Israelis were extremely tired of the war in Gaza after 600 days

and you know the most recent polling suggested that more than 60% wanted to accept a ceasefire that would bring the hostages home. They weren't looking for any other conditions, just end the fighting and bring the hostages home. In terms of fighting Iran, there's a willingness to go ahead and confront Iran. It was sort of a 50-50 split, I think, in most recent polling for 45-45, about whether Israelis supported

carrying out military action against Iran. That was before this started, of course, and I think the early successes fueled a mood in Israel. This had been carried out very well by their military. They were proud of it. Now we're seeing the other side of that with Iran showing its military capabilities and getting through, as we've

been talking about, Israel's air defenses. So there's no polling that's taken place since the war began, but a lot of Israelis accepted the idea that this would be, eventually be a necessary war for their country. On the Iranian side of things, there's a national rallying right now around, you know, we must stick together against this outside enemy. And the Islamic Republic has faced a lot of internal dissent over the last 20 years. You know, one of the factors in how long this war goes on is whether the population supports their leadership right now or turns against them. And that remains to be seen.

Okay, so it sounds like public sentiment in Iran is maybe a bit harder to gauge at the moment. But if we can just go back to Israel for a second here, Mark, of course, this is all happening while the war in Gaza continues, right? So that's got to be some additional pressure there. Yes. And while the world right now obviously is focused on what's happening between Israel and Iran, the possibility for escalation there, The war in Gaza continues. On Monday there were dozens of

people killed again near a food distribution site. You know the Gazan journalists that I'm talking to say that it's actually one of the worst weekends they've had in a while. So you know this war is being waged in many directions. You also touched on the idea of militarily how long could these two powers continue what we're seeing now. Do we have a sense of Israel's military, Iran's military, and and how this could escalate or how long they could escalate this for? That's harder to tell. I mean there's been calculations over, you know, on my recent visits to Israel there have been conversations with military people who

are saying, you know, we can't keep fighting indefinitely in all directions. This was, you know, as Israel was heading into war with Hezbollah, it was my last visit there. They were fighting, you know, in the south with Hamas and the north with Hezbollah, and they were getting attacks from the Houthis, and there were these occasional exchanges with Iran, and there was sort of a feeling that, you know, it's a small country at the end of the day. Six million people can't be constantly at war. That's more of a sort of a national mood factor, though, than it is about, and about how long you can a sort of a national mood factor though than it is about and about how long you can keep sort of men and women fighting uniform. They continue to be supplied

by the United States and to receive weaponry from the United States. There seems to be no concern they're going to run out of air defenses or run out of fuel or weapons for their fighter jets. On the Iranian side, we've got different claims about how effective the original Israeli attacks were and you know what remains of Iran's capabilities. There's been some reporting in the last few hours suggesting that Iran is sending signals through back channels, suggesting that it wants to return to the negotiating table and that Israel and Iran should perhaps be ready to stand down, which may suggest that Iran is worried about how long it can continue fighting at this level, but also we've seen more publicly the declarations from the Iranian leadership have been,

we will fight our enemy as long as it takes. We'll be back in a moment. Mark, I also want to ask you about the US's role here. You mentioned that Iran is considering maybe wanting to go back to the negotiating table. This is probably an allusion to talks with the US over nuclear peace talks here. What have you heard from the Iranians? They'd like to talk, but they should have done that before. I had 60 days and they had 60 days and on the 61st day I said we

don't have a deal. They have to make a deal and it's painful for both parties but I'd say Iran is not winning this war and they should talk and they should talk immediately before it's too late. President Donald Trump also seemed to indicate last week before this escalation that he was at least aware Israel could could strike Iran What do we know about the US's and Trump's role in all of this? Yes, it seems that the Trump administration was aware of Israeli intentions But even the sort of the day before the public messaging from Donald Trump was that this would not be helpful if Israel went ahead

So on one level you'd think that if mr Trump called mr. Net yow and said firmly do do not do this, that, you know, given the level of support the American people, the American government provide to Israel, there'd be the leverage to sort of rein in an attack that could have consequences for the American economy, for American military prisons in the Middle East. He doesn't appear to have said an outright don't do this. He expressed a concern this might not be the right direction and then started to evacuate some U.S. embassy staff from the region. That said as soon as the attack happened Marco Rubio, the U.S. Secretary of State posted on social media this was a unilateral Israeli action suggesting that it was not something

the U.S. administration supported. Since the wars begun we've seen sort of more of a classic rallying of US support for Israel and warnings to Iran not to target its US installations in the Middle East. This is how it could sort of spiral out of control and Iranian media has been talking about, well, these are American weapons being fired at us with de facto support from the Trump administration. How can we go back to negotiating? You are part of the attack on us and that is a rhetorical shaping that could allow or see Iran start to target US bases, which could see the spiral out of control. That said, I don't think Iran wants a direct confrontation with the US military. spiral out of control. That said, I don't think Iran wants a direct confrontation with the US military.

Okay, you mentioned negotiating a couple times here, Mark. So let's talk about this. The US was engaged in active nuclear peace talks with Iran when this all began late last week. How has that, I guess, affected this situation going forward? Well, Mr. Trump, since coming to power, has been clear that he wants to be seen as someone who ended wars and he was going to try and end the war in Ukraine, he was going to try and end the war in Gaza, and he was going to try and resolve the Iran nuclear issue diplomatically. That was always slightly ironic given that there was an Iran nuclear deal, you know, multi-party agreement called the JCPOA that saw Iran effectively agree to curbs on its nuclear program in exchange for a loosening of some key sanctions. This deal was ripped up by Donald Trump in 2018, so the Iranians were very skeptical about entering into negotiations with the Trump administration again.

But Trump, having sort of portrayed himself as this peacemaker, launched a round of talks led by Steve Witkoff. The latest round was supposed to happen this Sunday, and then two days before that's supposed to happen, we see the beginning of this Israeli military operation. Again suggesting the Americans were going on a different course, hoping to resolve this in a different way and Israel said actually the time is right for us to do this and we can't wait. Let me ask you about the broader implications of this Mark. How are other countries in the region reacting? Are there fears that this could escalate into something larger? When Israel carries out an attack on Iran, its jets are flying over Syrian airspace,

over Iraqi airspace. When Iran fires back its missiles, its drones are traveling over Iraq again, over Jordan. So obviously there's a lot of room for something terrible to happen in these countries that are non-combatants. And so there's a lot of concern from the Arab states of the region including from Saudi Arabia which is a long time sort of enemy really of Iran's that has sort of been just starting to repair that relationship saying this is not helpful for this action to have been carried out and you're seeing Iran's allies as well Russia China Turkey you know throwing their support behind Iran calling this an illegal attack and then the West in this awkward box of even countries like Canada, Britain, France, that have become increasingly critical of the Israeli war in Gaza. Their initial statements are all,

we also are concerned about Iran's nuclear program when we respect Israel's right to defend itself, doesn't quite say they support this action, of course, because whether this is a defensive action or offensive action is, it depends on how you see these things. But it has sort of reestablished the Western support for Israel in this particular moment. And of course, we've got the G7 meeting happening right now in Canada, in Alberta, where a number of these world leaders are coming together.

I imagine, Mark, that this conflict with Israel and Iran is hanging over the meeting. Do we know how it's affecting things? Difficult to say what's happening behind closed doors. I think we'll see a statement close to what I just talked about, you know, where people can broadly state their support for Israel's right to defend itself and their concern about Iran's nuclear program without necessarily saying, we thought this was a good idea to attack Iran right now.

Mark, I know that last week you were actually at a peace conference in Paris that was looking at the two-state solution between an Israeli state and a Palestinian state and you were there while these strikes initially happened. What was the reaction in the room to all of this? Yeah, that was a really remarkable event to be at. First of all, because it was the first attempt since October the 7th for Israelis who still believe in the two-state solution and Palestinians who still believe in coexistence alongside Israel to try and get together restart this conversation about you know how to get to the end of the wars and how to uh how to live beside each other and these are peace activists who've known each other really for 20 years but in some cases hadn't seen each other

for the last two years since the war began in Gaza because there was just no atmosphere for conversation. So they were brought together in Paris by French president Emmanuel Macron. And on the Thursday night, we were all sort of at a reception, you know, people seeing each other for the first time in years and the mood was extremely positive.

And the first events were Friday morning. And by the time we got to this palace in the center of Paris for the conversation was supposed to begin, everybody arrived with sort of baggy eyes because this attack on Iran had begun. And it really did just sort of emphasize, you know, what a minority these peace activists were. The real power was, you know, in other places. These people of goodwill were just sort of absolutely blown backwards by the start of this conflict between Israel and Iran.

This whole effort in Paris was aimed at sort of setting the table for a United Nations conference on the two-state solution that's supposed to happen this week in New York, hosted by France and Saudi Arabia. That conference has been cancelled since the start of the Israeli attacks. So before I let you go here, Mark, from the people you've talked to, is there an expectation that this conflict between Israel and Iran will continue to escalate?

Or are we seeing possibilities for off-ramps, I guess, on either side? I think right now that decision will largely lie with Benjamin Netanyahu. We have seen some signaling that Iran, as mentioned, sort of has been going through back channels and saying, okay, like, let's keep this contained. Nobody wants a big war here. The sense I get from afar is that Benjamin Netanyahu, having decided to go this route,

having decided to take this major step and attack Iran directly, having identified a moment of weakness on the Iranian side, is unlikely to stop short of achieving substantial damage to Iran's nuclear program. And we don't know if they've achieved that yet. Recently the state of emergency in Israel was extended until June the 30th, which suggests early thinking is at least a couple more weeks of fighting ahead of us. Mark, always appreciate hearing from you. Thank you for taking the time. Thank you, Manika.

That was Mark McKinnon, Senior International Correspondent for The Globe. That's it for today. I'm Manika Ramon-Wilms. This episode was produced, edited, and mixed by Kevin Sexton. Our producers are Madeleine White, Michal Stein, and Ali Graham. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.