(jet engine roars) >> Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival.

(explosions) >> JACOBY: It was the start of the war between Israel and Iran.

Two enemies that had been fighting for years in the shadows.

>> Iran's retaliation has begun.

(distant explosion) Now launching missiles at each other's cities.

>> (speaking Farsi): >> JACOBY: Within days, the U.S. would join in.

>> There has been an attack inside Iran... >> American stealth bombers and submarines launched a massive coordinated attack... >> A short time ago, the U.S. military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime... And we've gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel.

>> JACOBY: The so-called 12-day war marked a dramatic shift in the balance of power in the Middle East.

And it was the culmination of decades of escalating conflict.

>> We're ready to roll?

>> JACOBY: Leading up to the war and after it began, we've sat down down with officials, insiders, and experts on all sides.

>> This film is going to cover a large swath of history.

>> Yep.

(crowd chanting) >> JACOBY: And we've drawn on years of FRONTLINE's recording to trace the roots of the conflict.

>> It's an amazing, amazingly complex story.

>> JACOBY: From the rise of Iran's powerful regional proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas.

>> It was a huge threat.

>> JACOBY: To the diplomatic efforts to contain Iran's nuclear program.

>> The leaders of Iran must recognize that now is the time for a diplomatic solution.

>> JACOBY: From the October 7th attacks... >> There's an Israel before October 7th, and there is an Israel after October 7th.

>> JACOBY: To the wars between Israel, Iran, and its proxies ever since.

>> We will not allow those threats to come to our borders.

>> Annihilation.

Extermination.

Do I need to give you numbers?

>> We faced aggression by Israel and by America.

And then we resisted.

>> JACOBY: And now, the uncertainty gripping the region.

>> Israel hit Syria's capital with airstrikes.

>> President Trump said he would absolutely consider bombing Iran again.

>> We're in new territory now.

We're in undiscovered country.

♪ ♪ >> When I last stood here, I spoke of the consequences of Iran developing nuclear weapons.

Now time is running out.

The more Iran believes that all options are on the table, the less the chance of confrontation.

>> JACOBY: The roots of last month's bombing go back many years-- to a long campaign by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

>> And this is why I ask you to continue to send an unequivocal message, that America will never permit Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

(applauding) >> I don't think I had a single meeting with the prime minister where he didn't raise his concerns about Iran, and certainly the fact that Iran was pursuing a nuclear program that might enable it to have a nuclear weapon.

He was single-mindedly focused on that, and he would never let me forget it, that that was his number-one priority.

>> JACOBY: What was often your response to that?

>> My response was that the United States largely shared that analysis and that understanding of the Iranian regime.

The only question was, how would we deal with it?

How would we deal with the most significant and most dangerous threat that Iran could pose, which is if it ever acquired a nuclear weapon, and how to make sure that didn't happen.

>> JACOBY: Netanyahu had reason to be concerned.

Western intelligence services had recently uncovered a dangerous new phase in Iran's nuclear ambitions.

>> Western leaders in Pittsburgh this week were unhappy, but they weren't surprised.

>> President Obama and the leaders of France and the United Kingdom revealed what intelligence had shown was that Iran was building an underground enrichment facility at a place called Fordow.

>> This is not the first time that Iran has concealed information about its nuclear program.

>> There were a number of clocks ticking.

One clock was the rate at which Iran was enriching uranium.

Another clock was the rate in which they would complete the enrichment and move underground, at which point, it'd be too late.

>> JACOBY: Iran denied it was building a bomb, and insisted Fordow was for its civilian nuclear power program.

>> Never Iran was after nuclear bomb.

>> JACOBY: Hossein Mousavian spent years as an Iranian diplomat and nuclear negotiator.

Why would Iran build a nuclear facility in the side of a mountain, 80 meters underground, if it were only for peaceful purposes?

Why, why do that?

>> The answer is very, very simple.

It is because of the U.S., because every U.S. president repeatedly said, "All options are on the table."

It means the U.S. may attack Iran.

When you threaten a country for military strike, why they should not have their nuclear facilities under the ground?

They would be crazy if they would not have done it.

>> Tough new sanctions are designed to slow Iran's nuclear ambitions.

President Obama is expected to sign those penalties into law.

>> I'm pleased to sign into law the toughest sanctions against Iran ever passed by the United States Congress.

>> JACOBY: The Obama administration had already imposed crippling sanctions on Iran, and behind the scenes, pursued a series of covert cyber operations against its nuclear program.

>> You know, for them, you're the great Satan, we're the little Satan.

For them, we are you and you are us.

>> JACOBY: But Netanyahu wanted to go further-- a military strike.

>> The prime minister did not believe the Iranian nuclear program could be contained and prevented from producing a nuclear weapon without military action.

So for him, it was a matter of when and who and how.

>> There is strong likelihood Israel will strike Iran in April, May, or June.

>> JACOBY: In early 2012, the Israeli military was planning for an attack on Iran's nuclear sites.

But as the possibility of a strike grew, Netanyahu's own cabinet and intelligence agencies were divided on whether to attack.

>> The issue was whether right now they're building a bomb and this is the right time to do it.

>> JACOBY: Zohar Palti, head of Mossad's intelligence directorate, was arguing against it.

>> You're not coming and starting a war with a huge state like Iran without those discussions, and if somebody's pushing you as a professional, "I want to do it," I said, "Okay, but you have to understand, "right now, at that moment, the Iranian are not building a bomb."

>> The head of the Mossad was against it, the chief of staff was against it, and around the table, from the professional, I think that I was the, the only one who thought that this is the right moment and we should do it.

>> JACOBY: Yaakov Amidror was Netanyahu's national security adviser.

>> We are asking ourselves every morning one question: will tomorrow will be too late?

If it is not, we don't do anything.

If it is, the answer is yes, tomorrow will be too late, we have to decide what we do.

>> JACOBY: With his cabinet divided, Netanyahu turned to Obama, and asked him for assurance that if Israel did go ahead, the U.S. would back them up.

>> What Netanyahu wants is either a green light or a yellow light to go bomb the Iranian program, and the knowledge that if the Iranians retaliated against Israel, Obama would be right with him to get into that conflict.

And Obama wasn't gonna give him that.

He couldn't imagine how you bomb Iran without triggering a general war in the Middle East.

>> JACOBY: In the end, Netanyahu stood down.

(demonstrators chanting in Farsi) >> JACOBY: The animosity between Iran and Israel goes back almost 50 years, to 1979... (demonstrators cheering) ...when Iranian revolutionaries overthrew a repressive monarchy supported by the U.S. and allied with Israel.

(demonstrators shouting) >> Ayatollah Khomeini, who was the chief ideologue of the Iranian Revolution, had written a lot about Israel in his proclamations, in his writings.

He saw Israel as a aggressive outside force which had taken Palestinian territory, exiled Palestinian from their land.

(demonstrators chanting): >> JACOBY: And was part of this actually enshrined in the revolutionary Iranian stance on Israel?

>> Yes, it was part of the ideology.

(demonstrators chanting) Eradication of Israel, restoration of land to the Palestinians, was an aspiration of all Arabs, all Muslims at that point in time.

And it would be the Islamic Revolution that would fulfill that aspiration.

>> JACOBY: The new Iranian regime was heavily sanctioned by the U.S., which backed Iran's rivals in the region, like Iraq and Saudi Arabia.

>> Iran is Shia, Iran is Persian-speaking, the Arab world's consciousness is Sunni, it's Arabic-speaking.

Iran in the region is an absolute loner.

>> JACOBY: Iran would bolster its standing in the region through its support of the Palestinian cause.

>> No other issue gives Iran a role, a say in the Arab world.

Right?

No other issue speaks to Arab hearts and minds than Iran's support for the Palestinians.

>> The devastation in the west of the city is appalling... >> JACOBY: Initially, Iran backed Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization, the P.L.O., which was engaged in an armed struggle against Israel from its base in Lebanon.

(fires, explosion pounds) In 1982, Israel invaded and occupied Southern Lebanon to drive out the P.L.O.

(weapon fires) Iran went on to train and fund a Lebanese Shia group to fight against Israel.

(automatic rifle firing) It would become known as Hezbollah, Arabic for "the Party of God."

>> Allahu Akbar!

>> 120 Americans killed today... >> JACOBY: Soon after, a massive suicide bombing at a U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut would be widely attributed to Hezbollah, acting as a proxy for Iran.

>> It left really, really bitter taste in American mouths.

It really hardened America's views on Iran.

>> These deeds make so evident the bestial nature of those who would assume power if they could have their way and drive us out of that area.

>> But it also taught the Iranians that there was a strategy here, that you could actually extricate the West by using, call it terrorism, call it asymmetric behavior, et cetera.

>> A huge explosion apparently caused by a bomb shattered the Israeli Embassy in Argentina today.

>> Then Hezbollah units, or those militias Iran was training, started suicide bombing against Israeli targets.

>> We shall look for the people who are responsible for this terrible crime.

>> JACOBY: By the 1990s, Israeli intelligence was growing increasingly concerned that Iran was escalating and trying to develop a nuclear bomb-- a red line for Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East.

>> There's already very deep animosity between Iran and Israel, and it's a very ideological animosity, from Iran's perspective.

So, if we do the one-plus-one-plus-one, we understand that there is a nuclear weapon being developed to be put on a missile that is probably destined to end up in Israel.

(applauding) >> JACOBY: Netanyahu began calling for international action against Iran.

>> The most dangerous of these regimes is Iran.

If this regime, or its despotic neighbor Iraq, were to acquire nuclear weapons, this could presage catastrophic consequences, not only for my country, and not only for the Middle East, but for all of mankind.

>> Prime Minister Netanyahu has been after bombing Iran from early 1990s.

He doesn't care about enrichment or nuclear bomb or even nuclear program.

He just want to drag the U.S. in a war with Iran.

That's it.

(gun firing, man shouting in Arabic) >> JACOBY: Throughout this time, Iran's proxy strategy was evolving.

>> (translated): Today, we are preparing a whole new generation, which will fight the State of Israel in the future.

>> JACOBY: With Arafat and the P.L.O.

negotiating the historic Oslo Peace Accords with Israel, Iran began backing a new, more extreme Palestinian group, Hamas.

(siren wailing) >> The car bomb was aimed at killing the maximum number of Israeli schoolchildren.

Militants belonging to the Islamic group Hamas said they carried out the attack.

>> When the Oslo agreement is signed, most Palestinians said, "Let's give this a chance."

But there was that core constituency among Palestinians who said, "The peace process is a sham, it can never succeed.

Only armed struggle can liberate Palestine."

And Hamas became the embodiment of that sentiment.

>> JACOBY: Hamas's founding declaration called for the destruction of Israel, and it violently opposed a two-state solution.

>> In this decade, of the 1990s, there's only one country, and since then, effectively, there has been only one country that continues to arm militias against Israel, that continues to not accept the two-state solution.

And that is the Islamic Republic of Iran.

(explosions pounding) >> JACOBY: In 2003, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq... (explosion roaring) ...Iran seized the chance to expand its regional influence even farther.

(man shouting) >> It starts supporting, arming, funding, and, in fact, cultivating militias and political groups in countries around the region, and it defines that as part of what becomes known in the security lingo of Iran as "forward defense."

The idea is that we will fight in Lebanon, we will fight in Syria, we will fight in Palestine... (men giving call and response) ...so that we don't have to fight in Iran.

>> JACOBY: In time, this network of militias would become known as the "axis of resistance"-- from the Houthis opposing Saudi influence in Yemen, to Shia fighters in Iraq.

The Iranian government denies the groups act as proxies, insisting they are independent organizations all fighting against Israel, which, to this day, it says is an illegitimate state occupying Palestinian land.

>> We have supported, you know, the Palestinian people in their struggle to end occupation in Palestine.

>> JACOBY: Majid Takt Ravanchi is Iran's deputy foreign minister.

Iran has supported, with both training and military support and money, certain regional actors-- Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis.

The Israelis and the Americans describe this strategy as building an axis of resistance.

They see it as an offensive strategy.

>> I mean, the axis of resistance, you mentioned the axis of resistance.

Axis of resistance against whom?

Against, against the occupation.

I mean, the, the Israelis and the Americans have been, you know, floating this, this idea that the axis of resistance is against America or against Israel.

They, they do not say the fact that the axis of resistance was in response to occupation, in response to more than 70 years of, of Israeli occupation of Palestine.

If they want to, to see an end to, to resistance, they should end the occupation.

Pure and simple.

>> The Iranian objective, and it was not only propaganda, was to remove the Great Satan, which is the United State, from the Middle East and to wipe Israel off the map.

So death to America, death to Israel.

>> JACOBY: Amos Yadlin was head of Israeli military intelligence in the years the proxy network was expanding.

>> And basically, as chief of intelligence, I saw three main effort.

One is the proxy-- supporting Hezbollah, supporting the Palestinian terrorists, the Houthis, the Assad regime, the Shia militia in Iraq.

Second, ballistic missiles.

And then the nuclear.

>> Now, the professor was killed by a remote-controlled bomb.

>> JACOBY: Israel began engaging in a shadow war of its own... >> Two of Iran's top nuclear scientists were targeted by hit squads.

>> JACOBY: ...against Iran's nuclear program.

>> Two men on a motorcycle stuck a magnetic bomb to the door, then detonated it as they pulled away.

>> If there is someone who is very important in the process, and without him, it will be delayed for a while, he will be eliminated.

>> JACOBY: Cyber attacks, assassinations... >> Cyber attacks, assassinations, blowing some tools inside the system, agents which are going in and putting explosives here and there.

It was understood it cannot destroy the, but it can delay it, and, and when you buy time in the Middle East, you buy everything.

(applauding) >> The leaders of Iran must recognize that now's the time for a diplomatic solution, because a coalition stands united in demanding that they meet their obligations, and we will do what is necessary to prevent them from getting a nuclear weapon.

>> JACOBY: By 2013, having refused to support an Israeli military strike on Iran the year before, President Obama was now pursuing his own strategy.

He wanted to negotiate.

>> When we set up the early stages of the negotiations, it was very secret-- it was a very small group.

I was chief of staff to the president at the time.

There were half a dozen people who knew that the conversation was going on.

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Israel was not included in the talks.

It found out through its own intelligence.

>> It was a type of an implosion.

We're confronted with this reality, in which our principal ally has negotiated behind our backs for seven months with our worst enemy.

(chuckles) Now, that is hard to square.

>> And when he learned about this, of course, Benjamin Netanyahu was furious.

He sees this highly sensitive, secretive intelligence coming from Tehran.

The Iranians are happy.

The American delegates are making concession after concession.

And it leads, I think, naturally to harshen the line against the U.S. government and say, "This is a very bad deal.

You are going to make a very bad deal."

>> This is a bad deal.

A very, very bad deal.

It's the deal of the century for Iran.

It's a very dangerous and bad deal for peace and the international community.

>> President Obama is going to speak today at 7:00 a.m. on the Iranian deal, we will see... >> Today, after two years of negotiations, the United States, together with our international partners, has achieved something that decades of animosity has not: a comprehensive long-term deal with Iran that will prevent it from obtaining a nuclear weapon.

>> JACOBY: In the summer of 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action-- JCPOA for short-- was signed by the U.S., Iran, and five other countries, over Israel's furious objections.

>> What a stunning, historic mistake.

>> JACOBY: It restricted Iran's nuclear activities in exchange for lifting economic sanctions, and it put in place intensive monitoring by international inspectors.

>> The objective of the agreement inside the Obama White House was to make sure that the Iranians always were at least a year away from being able to produce a weapon.

On the theory that if they ran for it, we'd see them, and there would be political time to react.

>> It cuts off all of Iran's pathways to a bomb.

>> There were problems with this agreement.

The provisions expired too early.

The Iranians demanded that they get dwindled down over time.

By 2025, as we speak today, they were supposed to be allowed to produce more and more uranium.

By 2030, the agreement would end.

>> At some point, the question is, if you want to stop something as significant as Iran getting a nuclear weapon, is that a, a worthy objective?

Are you better off with no deal or the best deal you can get?

We thought, and I continue to believe, that the best deal you can get was something that left the United States, Israel, and the world safer.

>> JACOBY: I mean, to those who would say that a deal was better than no deal, how do you respond to that?

>> Always, deal is better than a war.

But it should be a good deal.

(chuckling): That wasn't a good deal.

>> JACOBY: The Israelis were upset that the deal also gave Iran access to billions of dollars by unfreezing its bank accounts and allowing it to sell oil-- money they said would embolden the regime and its proxies.

>> The notion that Iran got the money as a result of sanctions relief and has spent on, on certain groups or certain parties in the Middle East, that is, that is far from the truth.

In fact, we spent lots of money that we received from the sanctions relief on our economy.

JCPOA was welcome not only in Iran, but by the whole international community as a success story of, of diplomacy.

>> JACOBY: In spite of Iran's denials, the so-called axis of resistance grew in the wake of the deal.

>> (speaking Farsi): >> JACOBY: At the center of the axis was Iran's most powerful military strategist, General Qassem Soleimani.

>> Qassem Soleimani was a truly irreplaceable guy.

He did something that is actually rare in modern history.

He was able to build a multinational army of tens of thousands of people, of Afghans, of Syrians, of Iraqis, of Palestinians, who would all fight under the command of Iran.

This is not something that you learn in military school.

It's not something that you learn from a book.

It was something that Soleimani had been able to bring about through years of experience.

>> JACOBY: The most formidable force of all was Hezbollah in Lebanon.

It came to be considered the best-armed non-state actor in the world.

>> Militarily speaking, Hezbollah is a bigger threat.

It has a lot more fighters, more advanced capabilities than other proxies.

But it is more, I'd say, controlled by Iran and also more deterred by Israel.

(man speaking Arabic) Hamas is a different kind of proxy.

Hamas is more independent.

It's a Palestinian resistance organization in terroristic means, but it has its own ethos and is more independent in its decisions.

It's, it is accepting funding and training and equipment from Iran because Iran is willing to support it, but they have their own motivations and their own decision-making.

>> Palestinians will vote for a new parliament, and the results could have a major impact on relations with Israel and matters of war and peace.

>> JACOBY: By now, Hamas was a political force, as well as a military one.

(gun firing) >> The sweeping victory by Hamas is being described as a political earthquake.

>> JACOBY: In 2006, it had swept national elections... (rifle firing) ...and then seized control of Gaza in a civil war.

>> Hamas has done a lot of damage to our prospects, including the coup d'état they done in Gaza, and that really undermined Palestinian national unity and Palestinian international standing, of course.

>> Hamas gunmen seized control of the rival Fatah government and security offices.

>> JACOBY: The Palestinian Authority, heir to Arafat's P.L.O.

and longtime participants in the peace process with Israel, retreated to the West Bank.

(man shouting) >> Gaza becomes a fortress for an organization whose founding charter talks about killing Jews and eliminating Israel.

And they are now not just a terrorist organization in Gaza, but the governing organization in Gaza.

And that means that the Israelis have to figure out how to deal with them.

>> The Erez crossing point between Gaza and Israel is now barred to almost all Palestinians.

>> JACOBY: The Israeli government imposed a blockade on Gaza.

It said it was trying to stop Hamas from bringing in weapons and prevent its fighters crossing into Israel.

>> The civilian population are facing increasing desperation and misery.

>> JACOBY: But it also trapped the population.

>> Israel says that Gazans will not starve on a more basic diet.

>> The notion that you could keep two million people locked up indefinitely, with no real economy, who are entirely dependent on Israel opening and closing the border to allow movement of goods and people in, where the majority of the people are now impoverished, I think, was not only absurd, but also quite cruel.

(explosion pounds) >> JACOBY: Hamas, with support from Iran, fired rockets and mortars into Israel.

(explosions pound) Israel launched airstrikes on Gaza.

(people screaming) >> I don't suggest that the number of casualties be the determinant of what is proportionate and who's in the right.

>> JACOBY: Benjamin Netanyahu used the violence to amplify his long standing concerns about prospects for a Palestinian state.

>> Netanyahu believes that if you have a Palestinian state in anywhere approximating the '67 borders, the potential for peace is zero; that the capacity for Israel to maintain its security, even in the state it's in now, will be radically diminished; that Hezbollah to its north will be stronger; the problem of Gaza will not be in any way remotely solved.

Syria, Iran-- shall I go on?

>> Rockets are still being fired into Southern Israel.

>> JACOBY: But Netanyahu also thought the threats on Israel's borders could be contained without engaging in all-out wars.

(explosion roars) >> A whole building demolished.

A member of Hamas lived there, but had left the day before with his family.

>> JACOBY: For years, most notably in Gaza, he would pursue a fateful strategy known as "mowing the grass."

>> So the idea was, from time to time, there will be a round of hostilities.

Hamas will be beaten hard.

This will establish deterrence.

Let's keep them on a very low level of capabilities.

♪ ♪ >> This notion that every so often, there would need to be predictable rounds of violence-- "mowing the grass," as Israelis call it-- only to result in reinstating the status quo that existed before the violence was an untenable situation.

(siren wailing) >> The philosophy was that Israel doesn't want to go to a big war.

Most of the decision makers in Israel, with uniform and without uniform, thought that to go to war is a mistake.

I thought the mistake is not to initiate a war.

And that was the biggest mistake.

We allowed Hamas and Hezbollah to be very strong organizations.

After the seventh of October, it was understood by the establishment in Israel that we made a huge mistake allowing the beasts to grow close to Israel.

(cheering and applauding) >> Thank you.

>> JACOBY: The volatile dynamic in the region would begin to shift with the rise of a new American president.

>> I speak to you today as a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel.

(crowd cheering and applauding) My number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.

(crowd cheering and applauding) >> Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will meet with President Trump today... >> JACOBY: That was welcome news to Benjamin Netanyahu, who was one of the first world leaders to meet with Trump at the White House.

>> Mr. Netanyahu says he's looking forward to a stronger alliance between the U.S. and Israel.

>> JACOBY: Netanyahu arrived with a plan to create a unified front against Iran; a vision for a new Middle East, where Israel made peace deals with its Arab neighbors.

>> Netanyahu felt very strongly that that's something we should pursue.

>> We can seize an historic opportunity.

>> And I would say, you know, pushed it pretty hard.

>> And I believe that under your leadership, this change in our region creates an unprecedented opportunity to strengthen security and advance peace.

>> JACOBY: It was a radical idea that challenged decades of conventional wisdom about the Middle East.

>> The dogma was basically there'll be no peace between Israel and its Arab neighbors unless and until you solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

>> And I believe that the great opportunity for peace comes from a regional approach-- from involving our newfound Arab partners.

>> JACOBY: Trump liked the idea, and on his first trip overseas, courted Iran's rivals in the Gulf.

>> Until the Iranian regime is willing to be a partner for peace, all nations of conscience must work together to isolate Iran, deny it.

Funding for terrorism-- cannot do it.

And pray for the day when the Iranian people have the just and righteous government they so richly deserve.

>> JACOBY: He had a receptive audience.

>> We focused on the Iranian threat, which our Gulf partners felt very acutely.

They had viewed the Iran nuclear deal as a betrayal.

And the president comes in and says, "We're going to stand up to Iran together.

"We're going to counter Iran together.

We're going to get out of the Iran nuclear deal."

And this is what our Arab partners and Israel were waiting to hear after eight years of the Obama administration.

>> President Trump is reviewing whether the U.S. should stay in the Iran nuclear deal or cancel it.

>> JACOBY: President Trump's efforts to get out of the deal would get a boost from an Israeli intelligence operation inside Iran.

>> It was about two years in the making by the Mossad, until the night of January 31, 2018.

>> This heist was, like, the most brilliant, movie-worthy operation.

There's this warehouse in a nondescript part of Tehran.

The Israelis figure out that it houses the entire nuclear archive, and they do a raid on it, they ship this stuff out when they figured the Iranians wouldn't be looking.

Then they begin poring through it.

>> I was leading the team that analyzed the findings of the nuclear archives once it arrived, providing us with a comprehensive understanding of Iran's past nuclear weapons activities.

>> Iran lied.

Big time.

>> JACOBY: Netanyahu seized on it.

>> This is where they kept the atomic archives.

Right here.

Now, from the outside, this was an innocent-looking compound.

It looks like a dilapidated warehouse.

But from the inside, it contained Iran's secret atomic archives locked in massive files.

>> The idea behind the press conference was that we have this amazingly important information to tell the world about Iran.

>> 55,000 pages.

Another 55,000 files.

>> What was the bottom line?

Prior to 2003, there was an active bomb project.

After 2003, not so much.

>> Incriminating blueprints... >> It left you with very little doubt that the Iranians were trying to deceive the inspectors about past nuclear activity.

But that didn't tell you very much about the present day.

>> Again, you don't have to read Farsi to understand this.

This is U-235-- that's enriched uranium... >> Netanyahu spun this very skillfully to say to the inspectors, "The Iranians are pulling your chain."

>> JACOBY: Was there any evidence in this trove of documents that the Israelis obtained in Tehran that the Iranians were out of compliance with the nuclear deal that Obama had struck with them?

>> Well, Iran was in technical compliance with the deal.

But if the Iranian regime was serious about its nuclear program being peaceful, then what are they doing keeping a warehouse full of tens of thousands of pages on how to build a nuclear weapon and not disclosing it to the Obama administration?

>> Iran continues to lie.

>> JACOBY: The Iranian government called Netanyahu's press conference "childish and ridiculous"... >> We never wanted to produce a bomb.

>> Yes, you did.

Yes, you do.

>> JACOBY: ...and claimed that the documents were fake.

With all due respect, sir, what was the purpose, what was the reason Iran would have a warehouse in Tehran in which there were documents about how to build a bomb?

>> I can, I cannot, I cannot, you know, concur with the news that, that, you know, that warehouse was, was full of, you know, documents related to a so-called Iranian nuclear weapon program.

The Israelis needed to, to create certain documents so that they, they could persuade President Trump in terms of leaving the JCPOA.

>> The most important value of, of the press conference was a way of giving more ammunition, adding fuel to fire, to say that this was an awful deal.

>> The nuclear deal gives Iran a clear path to an atomic arsenal.

>> In that press conference, Prime Minister Netanyahu's most important audience was President Trump.

>> President Trump will decide, will make his decision, on what to do with the nuclear deal.

I'm sure he'll do the right thing.

(camera shutters clicking) ♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: It happened a week after the press conference.

>> I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

>> JACOBY: He'd go on to impose severe sanctions and boast about it on Twitter.

>> After we got out of the deal, we reimposed economic sanctions.

Trump called it "maximum pressure."

>> JACOBY: What was the strategy of maximum pressure?

What was the actual aim of it?

>> If you put enough pressure on Iran economically, uh, the hope was, at least my hope was, the people would rise and say, "We're not going to put up with this anymore.

"You've spent billions of dollars on nuclear weapons, "on supporting terrorist groups.

"People of Iran have not benefited at all, and we're done with it."

>> America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail.

>> President Trump made a very big mistake.

He destroyed the mutual trust, mutual confidence, uh, backing of the negotiations or endeavors, not only Iranian endeavors, but also all of the international community, because after the JCPOA, all of the international community welcomed it.

And President Trump destroyed all of these achievements in international arena.

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Inside Iran, Trump's move emboldened hardliners in the government and military.

>> I think what the Revolutionary Guard took away from Trump coming out of the deal was that their belief that the United States never intended to make peace with Iran was validated.

(men chanting) So the wing of the regime that argued that the only way to back the United States off is by being aggressive had won, and they became empowered.

And that would continue all the way to, eventually, the Israel-Iran War.

>> From Iran's president, an ominous threat.

>> Hassan Rouhani delivered an almost instantaneous response.

>> Tehran warns it may restart its uranium enrichment program on a "industrial scale."

>> JACOBY: No longer constrained by Obama's deal, Iran would start increasing its uranium enrichment.

>> When the U.S. withdrew, I wrote and I said many times that more sanctions and pressures using the Iranian nuclear issue would lead to more enrichment, and Iran will increase the capacity and the level of enrichment to show to the U.S. that they are not going to capitulate under pressure, and they will resist.

>> (speaking Farsi): >> After we left the Iran nuclear deal, it wasn't a surprise that Iran started increasing its enrichment levels.

We expected that to happen.

But we thought that that illustrated the problem.

What does it say about the Iran nuclear deal that Iran is able to restart it so quickly and to increase its enrichment levels to such a degree?

>> JACOBY: During the first Trump term, Iran's nuclear capabilities continue, if not accelerate, the proxies grow stronger.

So what was the net effect of maximum pressure during the first Trump term?

>> I don't think we applied maximum pressure.

I think it's great rhetoric, but it didn't really work.

We had to do more.

We should have done more to undermine the regime in Iran.

>> JACOBY: Iran's top general, Qassem Soleimani, taunted Trump.

>> We had a clash of personalities.

The bombastic Soleimani with his global fame, certainly regional fame, and President Trump.

His favorite word is the "tough guy."

They start posting memes about each other, "Games of Throne" memes.

And Soleimani starts giving speeches.

He calls him, Trump, "the gambler."

>> (speaking Farsi): (audience cheers and applauds) >> And he used this phrase, and it's kind of a bit of a cheesy line, it's almost like a B-movie in Hollywood, but the Iranian military leaders love to repeat it, which is, "You have started this war.

We will finish it."

>> (speaking Farsi): ♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: The heated words turned into action.

>> U.S. intelligence indicates the unprecedented attack on Saudi oil fields originated from Iran.

>> JACOBY: Iran and its network of militias launched a wave of attacks in the region.

>> ...and this intelligence over recent weeks have led them to believe that Iran or its proxies may have had a hand.

>> JACOBY: Soleimani was also stepping up his support for Hamas.

>> Soleimani used money, guns, effectively an unlimited blank check, giving them suitcases full of cash, giving them advanced military equipment-- not just any military equipment-- logistical, military trainings, which at the time didn't all look to be relevant.

Some of these trainings included attacks from the sea.

They included paraglider attacks, tactics that they're later used in October 7, 2023.

(crowd shouting, chanting) >> (speaking Arabic): >> JACOBY: The Trump administration was growing increasingly concerned about Soleimani.

>> He was a threat.

He was a threat to us and he was a threat to U.S. citizens across the region.

And that threat rose as we went into the final months of 2019.

>> There came a time when the intelligence was fairly clear that General Soleimani was plotting a mass casualty attack against American troops in the Middle East.

President Trump's National Security Cabinet concluded that the risks of not taking action outweighed the risks of taking action.

♪ ♪ Iran's military commander, General Qassem Soleimani... >> ...Qassem Soleimani killed in a U.S. drone strike outside of Baghdad's international airport.

>> Missiles from the U.S. drone hit their convoy as it left the airport.

>> We elected ultimately to strike him in Baghdad because we could strike him there with minimal collateral damage, which was always of concern to us.

>> Last night, at my direction, the United States military successfully executed a flawless precision strike that killed the number-one terrorist anywhere in the world, Qassem Soleimani.

>> I was the officer responsible for it.

It was a CENTCOM-controlled operation using special operations task force.

>> Some of the reaction pouring in today-- big threats towards the United States from senior Iranian officials, including Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who called all of this a heinous crime committed by the United States.

>> We won that round.

We took a major asset off the table, an asset that the Iranians miss to this day as you and I speak, and has affected their planning in every way that you can affect a nation's planning.

>> JACOBY: In the wake of Soleimani's death, the leader of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, was widely viewed as the most powerful figure in the axis.

>> (speaking Arabic): (crowd chanting) >> Nasrallah sees this as a, as a alliance or network of like-minded groups who would basically create an arc of fire around Israel.

So you have Hezbollah, something in the West Bank, maybe down the road in Jordan, Hamas in Gaza, and then you have Iranian militia presence in Syria.

You have these militias in Iraq.

You have Houthis that are being armed to the teeth with long-range missiles, who also were being trained and mentored by Nasrallah and Hezbollah.

>> JACOBY: But as Iran and its proxies were strengthening their arc of fire... ("Hail to the Chief" playing) >> At the White House today, Israel and two Arab nations... >> JACOBY: ...Israel was making alliances of its own.

>> ...will normalize relations and bring them closer together.

>> JACOBY: Trump and Netanyahu's vision for the region was becoming a reality: two Arab countries, the U.A.E.

and Bahrain, announced they would normalize relations with Israel in what was known as the Abraham Accords.

>> After decades of division and conflict, we mark the dawn of a new Middle East, thanks to the great courage of the leaders of these three countries.

>> This day is a pivot of history.

It heralds a new dawn of peace.

>> The interest of the Gulf countries to come to the Abraham Accords is very much connected with Iran's influence in the region.

They feel threatened by Iran.

They want security assurances from the United States.

They see how Israel is a gateway to the American public and to the American administration.

And they are being pressured by the influence of Iran and by the way that Iran is sometimes attacking.

And now they understand that they might need this alliance with Israel.

(audience applauding) >> JACOBY: It was the first peace treaty between Israel and any Arab country in almost 30 years.

>> They're doing all this without any real movement on the Palestinian issue.

For Netanyahu, this was the crown jewel of his legacy, to a certain degree.

>> Left out, the Palestinians, abandoned by their Arab neighbors, powerless to do anything but protest.

(crowd chanting) >> It was primarily a confirmation to us that Israel is truly, truly not interested in peace.

That the only agenda is to completely undermine, avoid, bypass the issue, which is the issue of Palestine, by almost working-- that is, Netanyahu-- like a magician.

You know, "Abracadabra."

You know, "Here you go.

"You see, I'm normalizing and I'm opening new relations.

I'm going all over the Middle East and the Arab world," without having to resolve the issue, which is the Palestinian issue.

>> (speaking Farsi): >> JACOBY: Iran's leader used the Abraham Accords as a rallying cry.

>> (speaking Farsi): >> It's the perfect opportunity for Ayatollah Khamenei to come in and say, "Don't worry, there is a state that will continue "to champion you, that will continue to fight Israel, "that would buck this regional trend, "that is not motivated by material interests."

That there's nothing that they could give Iran that would have it give up the cause of Palestine or to become friends with the Jewish state.

Khamenei takes his mantle and uses it to expand the axis of resistance against the Arabic states and Israel.

>> The International Atomic Energy Agency presented its latest report.

>> Iran has been openly breaching these limits for some time now, apparently in retaliation for the U.S. withdrawing from that nuclear deal.

>> JACOBY: The consequences of leaving the nuclear deal continued to rack up... >> ...uranium stockpile is now 12 times its limit under the agreement.

>> JACOBY: ...and would soon confront a new presidential administration, one more inclined to re-engage with Iran.

>> The U.S. has said it is ready to restart nuclear talks with Iran.

>> We're prepared to re-engage in negotiations on Iran's nuclear program.

>> Iran's foreign minister saying that the U.S. must lift all sanctions before Iran will make any move... >> JACOBY: President Biden began trying to get Iran back to the negotiating table.

He would eventually ease some of Trump's so-called maximum pressure sanctions.

I mean, by not enforcing sanctions, though, wasn't the Biden administration basically empowering Iran during this period of time?

>> President Biden was trying to demonstrate his willingness to return to an agreement that would lift some sanctions, lift additional sanctions, but Iran would have to abide by certain commitments.

Iran wasn't willing to abide by those commitments.

So at the end of the day, there was no agreement.

>> JACOBY: With the U.S. and Iran at an impasse, Israel was consumed by crises at home.

>> ...for allegedly accepting bribes in a breach of trust.

>> JACOBY: Netanyahu was embroiled in a corruption scandal that would reshape his government.

>> His own personal affairs lead eventually to three different indictments on criminal charges, including bribery, charges that he has always claimed are bogus and are an attempt to persecute him.

>> JACOBY: To survive politically, he formed a coalition with Israel's most extreme right-wing parties.

>> Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has inaugurated the most far-right government in the country's history.

>> The appointment of Bezalel Smotrich as finance minister and minister of the Defense Ministry and Itamar Ben-Gvir as the minister of national security was a real sea change.

>> Itamar Ben-Gvir supports relaxing open-fire rules against Palestinian rioters.

>> Ben-Gvir actually pulled out a gun while on a recent visit to a predominantly Palestinian neighborhood.

>> We had never seen those extreme parts of the Israeli political system present in the Israeli cabinet before.

And because Prime Minister Netanyahu was so dependent on them for his political survival, it raised the question of whether these two extremist figures would really be the ones pulling the strings of Israeli policy.

>> JACOBY: The new government faced pushback as it tried to consolidate power.

>> ...controversial plans to overhaul the justice system.

>> It was a sudden outpouring of rage.

>> ...triggering weeks of massive protests.

>> Bibi is not here for the democracy, thank you very much.

>> That led to, I would say, the biggest wave of protests in the history of the country.

And probably the most severe political crisis and social crisis in the history of the country.

In many meetings, the chiefs of Israeli intelligence warn Netanyahu that the political crisis and its effect on the military are perceived by Israeli enemy as the time to take more aggressive initiative against Israel.

>> There were actually quite a lot of warnings saying, "Look, we're creating here the perfect storm.

"And at one point or another, one of our enemies "would use that to start a war, "because they would feel that we're weak "and that we're consumed with our own domestic political problems."

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: That summer, Hamas dispatched officials to Iran and Lebanon.

>> Hamas is pitching an idea to Tehran and Beirut.

And the idea is, "We can destroy Israel.

"We will invade Israel.

"And then Hezbollah, "you'll shoot in the north and you'll invade Israel, "then Iran will join.

"And then we'll have volunteers coming from across the Muslim world."

>> The Iranians did not know the timing.

They may have known the overall intent, but not the timing, and that was mostly for operational security on Hamas's part.

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Throughout that summer, Iran and its proxies were also hearing of other plans-- that Netanyahu and Biden were preparing to bring Saudi Arabia into the Abraham Accords.

>> Khamenei was certainly very worried that Saudi Arabia could establish ties with Israel.

Not only because the fact of the relations, because that would have further isolated Iran, would have opened Israeli presence in the Persian Gulf even more, but part of that deal would be the deepening of American-Saudi relationship.

>> ...the prime minister of the State of Israel.

I invite him to address the assembly.

>> JACOBY: By late September, Netanyahu was talking about it on the world stage.

>> He said, "We are going to have peace with Saudi Arabia, and the Palestinians should not have a veto on that."

>> I've long sought to make peace with the Palestinians.

But I also believe that we must not give the Palestinians a veto over new peace treaties with Arab states.

>> Which is, in a different language, "From my point of view, the Palestinians can (bleep) off."

Sorry, but, excuse my French.

>> Now, for years, my approach to peace was rejected by the so-called experts.

Well, they were wrong.

Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia will truly create a new Middle East.

(audience applauds) (man shouting, car horn honking) >> The leaders of Hamas, as they explain to us, they see this and they understand that in a moment, the Palestinian issue will be completely taken off the world agenda.

(explosion echoes) Now they came to the conclusion, a jihadist conclusion, of blood... (fires) ...of murder, of massacre.

(firing) They wanted regional war.

>> This morning, Hamas opened a murderous surprise attack against the State of Israel.

>> ...and sent dozens of fighters across the country's heavily fortified border area of the Gaza Strip.

(men shouting) >> We failed-- we failed.

The IDF was built in order to prevent such incidents.

>> The militants infiltrating multiple cities in Israel... >> Such scenes we saw, raping and killing Jews for the sake of being Jews.

(guns firing) We were thinking that we can contain these threats.

We can live our lives and they will live their lives, and that's it.

And we allowed this threat to grow and grow to the extent they launched the attack on October 7.

>> JACOBY: The architect of the attacks was Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader in Gaza.

>> It became clearer over time that Sinwar had really jumped the gun.

Now, it's not to say that Hamas had not discussed such prospects with Hezbollah, with Iran, but on the day of, it appears, you know, from everything we've seen that he really decided to go for broke himself, without coordination.

(men shouting) >> JACOBY: October 7 would transform Israel's security strategy and the region.

>> It was understood in Israel that we have to change the whole sentiment and the way that we are acting in our neighborhood.

(men shouting) We will not allow our enemies to build capabilities that might endanger the existence of Israel.

(crowd shouting, horns honking) And it was very important lesson from the seventh of October.

But we will take it on about the future of the Middle East.

The mistake that we did before the seventh of October will not repeat itself.

>> It's been a day that has shocked this country.

Their defenses breached with ease.

>> The scale of these attacks, waves of attacks, are absolutely stunning.

>> Israel is at war.

We didn't want this war.

It was forced upon us in the most brutal and savage way.

But though Israel didn't start this war, Israel will finish it.

>> Israel says it's on war footing.

Now the mission is to destroy Hamas.

(weapons firing) (explosions pounding) >> Israel itself is striking back, launching its own airstrikes.

(explosion pounds) >> JACOBY: Within hours, Israel began bombing Gaza, and Hamas called for the rest of Iran's axis to join the fight.

>> (speaking Arabic): >> JACOBY: Netanyahu feared an all-out attack was imminent.

>> So, the prime minister and I spoke that day.

He laid out his concern about how Iran and its proxy forces beyond Hamas would try to take advantage of the situation and hit Israel hard at a moment when Israel, frankly, was reeling.

>> Our ask from the Biden administration was, first and foremost, to send deterrent messages in words and deeds to both Iran and Hezbollah.

Our senior leadership were concerned about Hezbollah, lest Hezbollah follow Hamas.

♪ ♪ (men chanting) >> The Lebanese militant group Hezbollah has gotten involved in the fighting.

>> JACOBY: On October 8, Hezbollah began to fire rockets into Northern Israel.

>> There was an exchange of fire between Hezbollah and Israel.

♪ ♪ >> A senior Hezbollah official pledged solidarity with the Palestinians who carried out attacks on Israel.

>> (speaking Arabic) (translated): The nation is with you.

Our heart, minds, souls, our history and guns, and rockets, and all that we have is with you.

(fires, explosion pounds) >> An escalation along one of the most volatile borders in the region.

(weapon fires) >> October 7 really was a point at which this circle of fire went into offensive action against Israel.

The balance seemed to be in Iran's favor.

I mean, its axis was ascendant.

It had Israel on its back heel.

>> It seems clear we are heading for a wider war.

>> The U.S. is moving a carrier strike group and more fighter jets to the region.

>> I have to say, we came perilously close to a much broader regional conflict in that first week.

In the fog and the friction and the unknowns.

The lack of clear information of exactly what was happening, honestly-- in Israel, in Beirut, in Tehran, in Washington-- it's a classic security dilemma where one side sees another side moving and believes the worst is coming and might act preemptively to stop it, when in fact, the other side might just be moving to more defensible positions, or they're moving because they're uncertain.

(men chanting) >> JACOBY: In Tehran, the ayatollah praised the October 7 attacks.

>> (speaking Farsi): >> JACOBY: But he denied Iran was involved.

>> We totally reject the notion that Iran was aware of the attack.

We, we totally reject the notion that there was, there were meetings between Iranians and others on this.

(fires) >> JACOBY: With the violence threatening to spiral into a full-scale regional war, President Biden warned Israel's enemies to stay out of the fight.

>> To any country, any organization, anyone thinking of taking advantage of this situation, I have one word: don't.

Don't.

>> Biden referred to Iran, Hezbollah, though he were not saying this explicit.

He said, "I'm saying to anyone, "'Be aware.

"'Do not dare to join this, this fight, "'because then, at the end of that, you'll find the mighty firepower of the United States.'"

>> JACOBY: But Hezbollah's rockets continued.

60,000 Israeli citizens would be evacuated from Northern Israel.

The defense minister, Yoav Gallant, began to push for a pre-emptive strike against Hezbollah's leadership.

He would later talk about it on a podcast.

>> Now, on October 10, we got information that 14 leaders, 11 from Hezbollah and three Iranians, are going to meet together in a place that we know where it is.

This include all the chain of command of Hezbollah, meaning Nasrallah... Now, I came to the prime minister, and I said, "When you fight two enemies, "you need to hit the stronger one first.

"Otherwise, you will be exhausted by the time you are finish with the weaker one."

>> JACOBY: The Israelis informed the Biden administration they were considering a strike.

>> That led us to inquire with our intelligence professionals and our military experts, "Hey, are you seeing a massive attack from Hezbollah about to unfold?"

And we were told, "No, not at all," and communicated that back to the Israelis, basically to make the case, "If you're going to take "some dramatic military action in Lebanon, "you should at least be doing so "on the basis of really solid information.

"And we have our doubts about whether this information is truly solid."

>> JACOBY: Netanyahu's war cabinet convened.

>> It's a dramatic meeting.

There are two former chiefs of staff that just joined the government.

It's an emergency government.

It's the first time they hear about this plan.

They think it's crazy.

They're saying, "Let's focus on Hamas."

They are saying to the IDF, "You're still reeling from what happened in the South.

"You're not thinking clearly.

"Think about this strategically.

"You're gonna open another front while you already have a hot front in the South."

>> JACOBY: To the relief of the Biden administration, the cabinet decided against the strike, for now.

But a future attack against Hezbollah remained on the table.

>> I think that the Biden administration never understood that this is not gonna be short.

You can't shorten it, and it cannot end with armed militias, on the record, saying, "We're gonna destroy Israel," 100 meters away from Israeli borders.

They never got that memo.

(weapon firing) >> JACOBY: In the weeks that followed, other members of the axis joined the fight.

(explosion pounds) The Houthis fired on Israel from Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq hit U.S. bases, and Hezbollah and Israel continued to exchange fire.

But the clashes didn't escalate further.

>> We kept the engagement between us and Hezbollah in a very low fire.

That was the interest of Hezbollah, as well.

>> Nasrallah and Hezbollah wanted to support Hamas symbolically, as well as put pressure on Israel on its northern border in order to prevent the IDF to fully focus on, on Gaza.

But Nasrallah also had to think about, what does it mean for his community if Israel began to hit Lebanon with a lot of missiles or invaded Lebanon?

Nasrallah believed that actually he could contain the level of engagement.

♪ ♪ >> Israel's ground war has started.

(fires) >> Their mission, to root out Hamas and also to find hostages... >> More than 200 hostages are still being held.

>> Hamas says its fighters are involved in clashes with Israeli forces.

>> JACOBY: For the moment, Israel was focusing on Gaza.

(explosion pounds) >> They have moved on more than 600 targets... >> ...and trying to target Hamas infrastructure, in particular the network of tunnels.

>> The IDF has said repeatedly there are command centers stationed underneath hospitals in Gaza.

>> (shouting) >> For people in Gaza, a growing humanitarian crisis.

>> Israel has cut off all food, water, and help.

♪ ♪ >> A panel of U.N. experts is warning of the potential for war crimes.

(women crying) >> Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called those comments "hogwash" and said Israel doesn't target civilians, and any innocents who die in Gaza are "collateral damage."

>> Allahu akbar.

(men responding, coughing) >> More than 11,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war.

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: By December, amid mounting civilian casualties and international criticism of Israel's campaign, Biden's team was growing alarmed about Netanyahu's strategy.

What was the vision, what was the war aim, as Netanyahu was stating it?

>> None.

I mean, it was basically total victory without definition of what total victory actually was.

We have to go in, we have to destroy, and you try to have that next layer of conversation, like to do what, right?

And you know, he would publicly make the case, total victory, we can't talk about the day after until we've achieved total victory.

>> There is no substitute for victory.

And our victory will be your victory.

Peace and security require total victory over Hamas.

>> JACOBY: What does "total victory" actually mean?

>> I don't know what it means, but I will tell you that the fact that we did not present a coherent strategy was not because we did not discuss it.

I think it was more due to political reasons.

(crowd chanting) >> JACOBY: Some far-right members of Netanyahu's coalition fiercely opposed any ceasefire or compromise that would leave Palestinians running Gaza.

>> We knew that Ben-Gvir and Smotrich, the two most extreme ministers, ultimately did not want the war to end, or at least, for them, the war meant total victory and then Israeli reoccupation and settlement of Gaza.

(crowd cheering) >> That was not the position of the government, that was not the position of the prime minister, and that was not the position of the defense establishment and all of us who were involved in this process.

But it created a lot of pressures in our government.

(crowd chanting) >> Netanyahu, we believed, was concerned that if he agreed to any post-conflict option that didn't allow for Israel to maintain control over Gaza, to establish settlements, he would risk seeing them bolt the coalition and collapse the government.

>> Thousands of Palestinians have been killed, wounded, or are missing.

(crowd shouting) >> These are disproportionate attacks that could be war crimes.

>> JACOBY: With no end in sight, some of the president's advisers argued he should break with Netanyahu and publicly criticize how the war was being fought.

>> There was some openness, both at the State Department and at the White House, to this idea, and they did discuss it.

I think, ultimately, the concern was that if we demonstrated daylight with Prime Minister Netanyahu, it would embolden Israel's enemies.

So Hamas would be encouraged, because they would think the U.S.-Israel relationship was breaking up.

Hezbollah would escalate.

Additional proxies would get involved.

Iran might see an opportunity.

>> JACOBY: Six months into the Gaza offensive, it appeared that a full-scale regional war had been averted.

Then, in April, Israel made a provocative move against Iran.

>> Iran is accusing Israel of attacking its embassy complex in Syria.

>> ...eliminating one of Tehran's most senior military commanders.

>> ...killed in what they described as an Israeli airstrike.

>> Israel attacked Iranian Embassy in Syria.

They killed high-level IRGC commanders.

It was an attack on Iranian territory.

(man chanting over loudspeaker) >> The Iranians took it as we hit their own sovereignty, because they claim it was in their embassy building.

It wasn't.

It was a building next to the embassy.

And we made our calculations.

And we were ready for any implications for this action.

(crowd chanting) >> Iran's supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has led Eid prayers in Tehran.

He used his speech to call for retaliation against Israel.

>> (speaking Farsi): (crowd cheering) >> JACOBY: Were you concerned that basically Israel had just escalated the war?

>> I was concerned that, as a result of what Israel had done, there would be an Iranian reaction, and that could set off a chain of events that could cause an explosion into a wider war.

And I think-- one thing that now, sitting here in 2025, it's hard for people who weren't living this day to day to appreciate, is, we were picking up the paper every morning and there were headlines, you know, "All-out Middle East war on the horizon."

You know, "On the edge, region teeters, on the brink."

We were living through a period where the possibility that the United States of America would be dragged into another major war in the Middle East was real.

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Within days, intelligence reports showed the Iranians were preparing a major response.

Biden and Netanyahu got on the phone.

>> Prime Minister Netanyahu said to the president, you know, "We'd like your support.

We'd like your help to be able to defend against this."

And the president said, "I think you misjudged "the consequences of your strike.

"You didn't think Iran was going to gear up "for a big attack, and they are.

"Nonetheless, I, Joe Biden, "am going to tell my military to make sure "that we help defend you so that an Iranian attack on Israel does not succeed."

(air raid siren wailing) >> Tonight, we are in uncharted, unprecedented territory.

>> Iranian drones on their way apparently to attack Israel.

♪ ♪ >> In April 2024, Iran finally does something that it had never done before.

It attacks Israel directly.

(air raid siren wailing) It finds a justification to say since Iranian diplomatic territory in Damascus was attack, Iran could now attack Israeli territory directly.

>> Israel's air defenses called to action.

Fighter jets battled waves of Iranian drones and missiles.

>> This is the first time that Iran has done a direct conventional military attack against Israel.

They had used their proxies.

They had used terrorism.

They had used every dirty trick in the books.

But never had they directed their military to load up a bunch of missiles and drones and fire them from the territory of Iran to the territory of Israel.

So this was a watershed moment.

>> JACOBY: Almost all of the drones and missiles were destroyed before they reached their targets by a military coalition including Israel, the United States, and several Arab countries.

(people talking in background) >> The regime tries to claim that this Operation True Promise I was a grand success, that it had give Israelis a lesson, that it had pushed the Zionists back, that it had shown that Iran was this heroic state that would stand up to the Israelis.

(man singing over loudspeaker) >> They did not want to kill Israelis.

They did not want to create big mess.

They just wanted to give a message that, "If we are attacked, we would reciprocate."

(man exclaiming over loudspeaker) >> JACOBY: The Iranians have said they didn't intend to kind of inflict damage in that April attack... >> (laughs) >> JACOBY: ...and that it was really just more to send a message.

What's your response to that?

>> You don't launch 200 projectiles, including ballistic missiles, into a state for not making damage.

Because they failed, they say that they didn't intend to make any damage, yeah.

You don't do it if you don't want to make damage on the other side.

>> JACOBY: Once again, President Biden urged restraint.

>> The message from the U.S. administration was, you know, "You're very successful defensively.

Take the win and don't strike back."

>> The Israelis decided to retaliate, but they were very careful not to strike the Iranian nuclear program.

>> Sources characterizing the early-morning strikes as limited.

>> Iran was dismissive, saying this was just a tiny drone attack.

>> They hit key cities and areas around it, but not at military bases that were nuclear-related.

You have to think of these as warning shots, of saying, "We can reach you when we want to."

(explosions pounding) >> JACOBY: In Gaza, the war ground on.

(weapon fires) Seven months after October 7, Hamas continued to hold hostages.

>> Tens of thousands of Israelis rallied in protest at delays in getting the hostages out of Gaza.

>> JACOBY: And the Israeli military had killed more than 30,000 Palestinians.

>> Breaking this morning, the International Criminal Court is seeking arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, including... >> ...Prime Minister Netanyahu on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

>> Mr. Netanyahu described the move as absurd.

>> (speaking Hebrew): >> JACOBY: The Biden administration's concerns about Israel's campaign were intensifying.

>> Israel is facing backlash for a deadly airstrike... >> ...that killed dozens of people in a designated safe zone for displaced Palestinians.

>> There were incidents that were deeply questionable, and you could see the possibility that it, it did violate international law in one way or another.

And I think that concern was widely shared throughout the administration, including by U.S. government lawyers, who tend to be pretty conservative in making such judgments.

>> Yahya Sinwar, the military leader of Hamas, is suspected to be hiding out in the tunnels under Gaza.

>> There are new reports that Sinwar has said that he has the upper hand over Israel and that... >> ...the civilian casualties seen in Gaza are "necessary sacrifices."

>> JACOBY: Israel defended its actions, accusing Hamas of using civilians as human shields, which it has denied.

>> Innocent people died in Gaza.

Nobody is saying otherwise-- this is war, and war is ugly, that's, things happen, but there was not a, a policy of deliberately targeting people there.

>> (screaming) >> We made mistakes, and we are responsible for the mistakes we made.

Many, many civilians were killed in that war, and that's tragic.

The loss of life, any life, Israeli or Palestinian, is tragic.

>> JACOBY: But pressure was mounting on the U.S. to rein in Israel's assault.

>> The U.S. should revoke the license of exporting arms to Israel.

There has to be an arms embargo, and then Netanyahu will listen.

>> JACOBY: Ambassador Husam Zomlot was making the case in the international media.

>> I was so looking for a word, a phrase, to coin what is happening.

What is it?

Apocalyptic?

Armageddon?

The U.S. is capable to tap on their shoulder and tell them, "Change course-- enough."

It's the U.S. that provides all these weapons and arms to Israel.

We all know that the U.S. could stop this.

And the fact that it didn't is, is a stain in the history of our international community.

And certainly, it's a stain on the U.S. history.

(protesters chanting) >> JACOBY: Protests against American support for Israel were spreading across the world.

>> You're a dictator, too, Genocide Joe!

Tens of thousands of Palestinians are dead!

Children are dying!

>> Genocide Joe has got to go!

>> Demonstrators demand an end to U.S. support for Israel amid the humanitarian crisis and devastating death toll in Gaza.

>> JACOBY: To those who want to know whether the United States used all of its leverage-- you know, it's the superpower in this relationship-- to basically avert a catastrophe, civilian deaths, humanitarian disaster in Gaza, what do you say to those who say that the president did not use all the tools he had at his disposal to basically avert a catastrophe?

>> I think the main argument that people make in saying President Biden should have exercised more leverage on the prime minister is that he should have stopped the flow of weapons to Israel.

That was the main source of leverage that people tend to focus on, "Stop sending weapons to Israel."

And I understand the logic of that.

I have my doubts about, even if we had done that, it would have stopped Israel from taking the actions they did, but set that aside.

President Biden decided he was not going to cut off weapons to Israel because they weren't just fighting Hamas.

They were fighting Hezbollah, the Houthis, the Syrian militias, the Iraqi militias, and they were taking attacks from Iran itself.

And President Biden wasn't going to leave Israel high and dry when it was facing a multi-front war.

>> The U.S. is ramping up diplomatic pressure surrounding hostage release and ceasefire talks involving... >> JACOBY: Throughout that summer, the Biden administration was focused on diplomacy: trying to get Israel and Hamas to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza.

But Israel was planning to take the conflict to another level.

>> At a certain point in the summer last year, Defense Minister Gallant said to us, "I have plenty of bullets, but I've run out of targets."

He didn't have large targets to go after to achieve this breaking down of Hamas's military organizational capabilities.

>> JACOBY: Behind the scenes, the IDF believed they had made enough progress against Hamas to take on Hezbollah.

>> When we felt enough confidence that we can contain the situation in Gaza and to move enough forces to Lebanon, we did so.

And we acted.

And we acted very sharply, very precisely.

(explosion bursts) (man moaning) >> Israel's Mossad spy agency placed explosives in thousands of Hezbollah pagers before they detonated... >> They were carried by members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah terrorist group... (sirens blaring, man groaning) (people chanting) (explosion bursts) >> A funeral for those killed a day before is disrupted by another explosion.

A wave of walkie-talkie blasts across Lebanon killed more than a dozen and injured hundreds.

>> JACOBY: For around a decade, Israeli intelligence had been putting in place a covert plan to attack Hezbollah with booby-trapped pagers and walkie-talkies.

After the group became suspicious, the plan was activated.

>> The problem was, use it or lose it.

If you don't use it, you might lose it.

And the decision was, use it.

(people talking in background) >> JACOBY: Once again, the United States was caught by surprise.

>> Basically, I think they sensed a window of opportunity and they seized it.

>> JACOBY: And the president's thought on that was what?

>> First it was, "Wait, why did you work with us on this whole ceasefire thing?"

So we did feel that they veered off down a different road than the one that we had been coordinating on and working together.

But at the end of the day, in short order, dismantling the effective capability of a murderous terrorist organization that also has American blood on its hands is a good thing for the United States and a good thing for the region.

(man chanting over loudspeaker) >> All in all, about 30 people died, including two children.

Around 3,000 were injured.

>> JACOBY: With Hezbollah reeling, Israeli forces went after the group's missile capabilities.

>> The pagers attack is, of course, a story for James Bond movie, 007.

It captured the world in terms of Israel's military abilities.

But the real story is how Israel, through the Israeli military branch of intelligence, the same branch that failed on October 7, and the Israeli air force that also failed on October 7, managed to basically destroy most of the inventories of missiles and rockets held by Hezbollah in their silos, in their bunkers, without those being launched against Israel.

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Israel's air force could now take out Hezbollah's commanders.

They got precise intelligence about the group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

>> 15 minutes before we hit Nasrallah, I called Secretary Austin, and I said, "The planes are on the air.

We are going to kill this bastard."

(jet roaring) And he said, "It's going to, to create a major event in the Middle East."

I said, "Mr. Secretary, this guy is a bad guy."

(jet roaring) (explosion echoes) (car alarm blaring) >> A stunning escalation in Israel's fight against the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah.

Tonight, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country had settled the score with the killing of the group's longtime leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

(people shouting, man chanting on loudspeaker) MAN (speaking Arabic, crowd repeats): MAN: (crowd repeats) >> The Iranians threatening that the Israelis had opened up the gates of hell.

This was a major momentum shift across the entire Middle East.

>> JACOBY: The Biden administration message to you was, "Don't escalate.

Let's not risk a regional war."

Doesn't seem as though the Israelis really heeded that advice.

>> Israel felt that it had to do what it had to do.

Again, you have to understand the psychology of Israelis after October 7.

I think the main psychological gap between us and the administration was that we felt this is an existential situation.

After October 7, we cannot end this war with Hamas standing, with any of our neighbors being able to hit us this way, no way, no more.

>> JACOBY: After Nasrallah's death, there was no major response from Hezbollah.

>> If you would have told me in 2022 that in the days that we will assassinate and send Nasrallah to hell, that there will not be one missile over Tel Aviv, I will ask you, "What have you drunk?

What have you smoked?"

It seems like not possible.

>> The collapse of Hezbollah was possible not just because Israel was very clever, but also because Israel was willing to carry out the kind of operations that other countries might not do.

The kind of impunity with which Israel operated in Gaza without getting any pushback from Europe or the United States carried into Lebanon, as well.

(missile roaring) (explosion pounds) There are large numbers of civilians that were killed.

(explosion roars) For instance, in the killing of Hassan Nasrallah, which happened with a very massive bomb dropped on South Beirut.

So the assassinations, the pager attacks, et cetera, were successful largely because Israel was willing to accept the civilian casualties and the collateral damage that it would involve.

>> We are not aiming at civilians.

We are not aiming at innocent people.

>> JACOBY: But civilians are dying.

>> James, you are right.

This is the environment we are living in.

I would prefer to fight an enemy who prefers to fight me with his weapons, and not using his own civilians as human shields.

(crowd cheering and whistling) >> JACOBY: Four days after the assassination of Nasrallah, the retaliation came-- direct from Iran.

(people cheering) (air raid sirens blaring) >> Iran has just launched a retaliatory missile attack targeting Israel.

>> The supreme leader decides to order the Islamic Republic to enter the war again and attack Israel full-blown.

(explosions pounding) >> Israel says its air defense is taking out most of the incoming missiles.

♪ ♪ >> (speaking Farsi): (crowd exclaims) >> The world is now waiting to see how Israel responds.

>> This time, the Israelis went much further.

They took out Iranian missile defenses around Tehran and around some of the nuclear sites.

They took out Iranian missile operations.

And by taking out the air defenses, the message was, "We could own your airspace, so don't tempt us."

>> JACOBY: Iran's ring of fire was disintegrating across the entire region, with a major setback in Gaza... >> One of the world's most hunted men is dead.

Hamas military leader Yahya Sinwar, the mastermind of the October 7 attacks, was killed by Israeli troops in Southern Gaza.

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: ...and in Syria... (crowd cheering and whistling) ...where Iran's ally, the dictator Bashar al-Assad, was forced from power.

(guns firing, car horns honking) >> Assad has fled to Moscow, and it is now a coalition of rebel groups that are in charge.

>> The whole ring was broken.

Hamas was destroyed by us.

Hezbollah is now isolated within Lebanon.

It doesn't have any connection to Iran because the bridge was broken.

♪ ♪ The Iranians cannot send in through land anything.

♪ ♪ And without the ring, Iran became much weaker.

>> A number of factors, all in the span of just a few short months, completely upended the game in the Middle East when it came to the shadow war between Israel and Iran.

Iran's proxies are on their back.

Iran's client Assad is gone.

Iran's air defenses are gone.

And so this is just a different moment in the Middle East than what we inherited when we walked into office.

>> JACOBY: For Benjamin Netanyahu, it was an opportunity to do what he'd been advocating for decades.

>> Deterrence must now be reinforced with prevention.

Immediate and effective prevention.

This is not a hypothesis.

It is fact.

They're six months away from being about 90% of having the enriched uranium for an atom bomb.

...weeks away from having the fissile material... Iran lied.

>> JACOBY: The path was finally clear to attack Iran's nuclear program.

>> The horizon opened for Israelis and we suddenly realized that, you know, having hit hard on the Iranian axis, on the tentacles, we can now aim at what many people call the head of the snake, which is Iran.

♪ ♪ >> Now, if you listen to the Israelis, they will tell you that as soon as Hezbollah fell, they began receiving a new stream of intelligence, suggesting that the Iranians had made a decision to race for a bomb, and had built a separate cell that most Iranian leaders didn't even know about that was reviving the old bomb project.

They informed the Americans of their intelligence.

I have yet to find any American officials who believe that Iran was racing for a bomb.

>> JACOBY: In November, Netanyahu issued a secret directive to his military to begin planning for an attack.

But they needed help.

Only the U.S. had bombs capable of destroying Iran's underground nuclear facilities.

With two months until a new U.S. administration, Netanyahu decided to wait.

>> So I want to thank you all for being here.

Thank you very much, and... >> Thank you.

>> ...Benjamin, thank you very much.

>> Thank you, Mr. President.

>> Thank you, Bibi.

>> Thank you, Donald, thank you.

Mr. President, I want to first thank you for inviting me again to the White House.

You've been a remarkable friend of the State of Israel.

You stand by us.

You're standing with us.

>> JACOBY: Then Trump went in a surprising direction.

>> Wait a minute, wait, wait, wait.

We're having direct talks with Iran, and, uh... >> Trump announces that he is going to open up negotiations with the Iranians to see how it goes.

>> And I think everybody agrees that doing a deal would be preferable... >> You can just see Netanyahu's discomfort in his seat.

Wasn't supposed to happen like this.

He was supposed to have in the Oval Office the great Iran hawk.

>> But it's getting to be very dangerous territory, and hopefully... >> You don't have to be a great psychologist to see how unhappy Netanyahu was with the idea of another prolonged negotiation.

>> Officials from the U.S. and Iran holding high-stakes... >> JACOBY: A few days later, in Oman, negotiations began between the U.S. and Iran.

>> Both sides said going into these talks that they were looking for some sort of deal.

The Iranians want those crushing economic sanctions lifted.

The Americans want to see restrictions on Iran's nuclear program.

>> You know, we, we started negotiations in good faith, and Iran was sincere in its desire to arrive at a conclusion in terms of the nuclear, its nuclear program.

From the American side, they were also showing signs that they were also eager to find an agreement with Iran.

>> ...give us the readout on the Iran talks, sir?

>> I think they're going okay.

>> What was your, what... >> Well, I can't tell you, because it doesn't...

Nothing matters until you get it done.

♪ ♪ >> From Rome, where this morning, Iran and the United States are sitting down for a new round of talks on Iran's nuclear program.

>> A lot is at stake, and there's every sense that time is ticking for these sides to reach a deal.

>> JACOBY: Trump had given a 60-day deadline to agree to a deal.

>> The Israeli government was absolutely convinced that the Iranians are just trying to stall the negotiations.

"They're just playing for time," said the Israelis to their American counterparts.

>> The president means what he says, which is, "They cannot have a bomb."

>> JACOBY: As talks progressed, Trump's chief negotiator, Steve Witkoff, suggested a compromise was possible.

>> So this is going to be much about verification on the enrichment program.

>> Witkoff publicly said, "Well, "maybe the Iranians could "go back to the same kind of enrichment levels they had in the Obama deal."

Well, everybody leapt on that, me included, and wrote stories saying, "He's talking about reviving the Obama-era deal."

This was not what President Trump wanted to be reading.

The administration took a hard turn and said, "No enrichment.

Zero enrichment in Iran."

>> JACOBY: For the Iranians, this was a red line.

>> Dismantling of all Iranian enrichment facilities, which was impossible.

They knew it's not going to happen.

Trump is telling Iranians, a nation with 7,000 years of civilization and history, he tells them, "When you negotiate with me, unconditional surrender."

Of course, Iranians would not accept it.

>> The sixth round of Iran-U.S. nuclear talks is planned as the two sides remain locked in a standoff.

>> Trump gave the Iranians 60 days, and during those months, I heard from people here in Israel, around the prime minister, they kept on saying, "Watch out for the 60 days."

>> JACOBY: Israel's military was now preparing an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

♪ ♪ >> During the discussions and deliberations in the cabinet, this closed cabinet, and with the chief of staff, Netanyahu was very clear.

He said, "Go do your stuff, "make sure it's a stunning success, "and on, upon that success, I will bring President Trump."

So he knew... His thought, gamble, whatever, is, if Israel succeeds, if it is indeed a stunning operation, President Trump would want to be part of the success.

♪ ♪ >> Moments ago, Israel launched Operation Rising Lion, a targeted military operation to roll back the Iranian threat to Israel's very survival.

>> More than 200 fighter jets were aimed at Iran's main enrichment facility.

>> Iran state TV says the strikes killed several top military leaders and nuclear scientists.

>> We took them by surprise and we attacked all these targets simultaneously and repeatedly for two weeks.

♪ ♪ >> They caught many of the military leadership-- the head of the air force and others-- asleep in their own beds.

The Israelis put missiles right into their bedrooms and killed them.

>> It was a war which was based totally on intelligence.

Israel succeeded to, to kill probably more than 12 very sophisticated, the hard core of weaponization group scientists.

(explosions roaring, people screaming) >> We will not have a second holocaust, a nuclear holocaust.

(speaking Farsi) (explosion pounds, debris clattering) >> (speaking Farsi): (air raid siren blaring) >> Iran's retaliation has begun.

(explosions roaring) >> JACOBY: This time, when Iran retaliated, some of its missiles got through Israel's defenses.

>> At least five people have been killed and dozens injured in the latest round of missile strikes launched by Iran.

(man chanting on loudspeaker) (crowd repeating) >> JACOBY: Iran accused the U.S. of using the negotiations as cover.

>> And I can hear people are chanting, "Death to America," who they say enabled the war.

(crowd chanting) >> When the Israelis attacked us, that showed that the Is, the, the Americans have approved this.

Now we have realized that they have been cooperative in the course of aggression from day one.

How can anybody else trust the Americans when they say something?

>> JACOBY: No current Trump administration officials would agree to be interviewed.

At the time, the president said that the U.S. had "nothing to do" with Israel's strikes.

>> I've never found any evidence that the Israelis got a green light from the White House.

I think they got a yellow caution light, which was, "You go do this, you may be in it for yourself."

(clock ticking) As the Israelis were increasingly successful, Trump began in that usual Donald Trump way to want a piece of the victory.

>> Doing pretty well-- right now we're doing pretty well.

Remember, Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.

It's very simple.

I gave Iran 60 days, and they said no, and the 61st, you saw what happened.

>> And meanwhile, a back channel developed about whether the U.S. would now be willing, since the Israelis have cleared the way, to go after Natanz and Fordow.

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: On June 19, President Trump's spokeswoman said he was taking time to decide whether to join the war.

>> "I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks."

>> From the beginning, that two-week utterance from President Trump was tactical deception.

He had already approved the plan, he signed the execute order the next afternoon, and the planes were in the air the next day.

>> The United States has entered Israel's war with Iran.

American stealth bombers and submarines launched a massive coordinated attack.

>> Unprecedented strikes against Iran's nuclear enrichment sites.

>> Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.

Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace.

(explosion roars) >> President Trump and I often say, "Peace through strength.

First comes strength, then comes peace."

(explosion pounds) >> For decades, Iran thought that it could say "death to America" and "death to Israel" without actually fighting these countries.

Now it knows how fighting Israel looks like.

It also knows that even Donald Trump, who had banked so much of his political career on not wanting to start forever wars, or not wanting two wars, he would, that he would not hesitate from attacking Iran.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: After the U.S. airstrikes, Iran and Israel continued fighting despite Trump declaring a ceasefire.

(journalists shouting questions) >> You know what?

We have, we basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the (bleep) they're doing.

Do you understand that?

(journalists shouting questions) >> JACOBY: But soon, the war came to an end.

(man chanting on loudspeaker) (crowd repeating chant) >> That bombardment is a crime.

We are for dialogue, we want to engage, but the Americans have, you know, failed the test.

They have failed the exam.

So they have to come and explain to us as to why they chose, you know, war instead of diplomacy.

>> JACOBY: The extent of the damage to Iran's nuclear facilities remained unclear, but Israel was confident the program had been set back.

>> It will take them, I don't know, years to rebuild it.

And if the Iranians decide to rebuild a facility, which we will be sure is connected to their nuclear military project, we will destroy it.

As simple as that.

(birds twittering) (missile flying) (explosion pounds) ♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Despite its military success in Iran, Israel continues to fight in Gaza.

Hamas is still holding hostages.

Of the 50 remaining, around half are thought to be dead.

Iran continues to back Hamas.

>> They are legitimate organization.

They are trying to realize their own rights: self-determination, self-, you know, sovereignty of their territory.

>> JACOBY: Do you see Hamas as bearing any responsibility whatsoever for the catastrophe unfolding in Gaza?

>> Uh, you see that we are witnessing very catastrophic scene in nowadays international arena.

There is no doubt that the Hamas, as a, as a combatant in the battlefield, they have their own obligation according to the international humanitarian law.

But I do believe now the Israeli regime is more responsible regarding to this battlefield.

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Close to two million Palestinians have been displaced, and amid airstrikes and widespread starvation, the death toll continues to rise.

(explosion roars) ♪ ♪ >> International groups are calling it a genocide.

(boy wailing) >> The U.N.'s human rights chief says that Israel's actions are tantamount to ethnic cleansing.

>> There's been another incident of Palestinians being killed while trying to get food aid.

(automatic rifles firing, people shouting) >> The IDF has acknowledged that its soldiers did fire at the civilians... (people exclaiming in background) >> 20,000 children.

More than 60,000 now recorded killed.

Mostly women and children.

And many of them are from my own family, by the way, and my wife's family.

We know the people.

To argue that Israel is doing all this because it's fighting Hamas, we don't accept that.

Israel is not fighting Hamas in Gaza.

Israel is targeting our society.

Call it extermination, call it erasure, call it whatever you want.

There is mass murder, mass destruction, mass starvation at industrial scale.

>> JACOBY: To those who see what Israel and the IDF have been doing in Gaza as ethnic cleansing, some even call it genocide, what do you say to the people that say that that is what, in fact, the IDF is doing?

>> I would say to these people that Israel wants to defend itself, period.

We didn't choose this war on October 7, and we have around our borders organizations, with the support of Iran, that wants to kill Israelis, that want to throw us into the fire of hell.

Keep saying it, and we believe them, and we will do our best to prevent them.

It's not true.

We are not killing innocent people in, for the sake of killing innocent people.

We want to live here and prosper here.

This is what we want for the sake of our children.

And we will keep doing it.

We'll keep to do whatever, we'll keep doing whatever we need to do in order to defend this country.

(automatic rifles firing) >> JACOBY: The wars between Israel and Iran and its proxies since October 7 have reshaped the region.

(explosion pounds) >> The balance of power has changed dramatically.

The Arab world has weakened.

Iran has weakened.

Israel has made its statement in terms of military triumph.

But can it translate this into kind of a political solution in the region that reduces threats, rather than increases threats?

Does Israel really want to live in that kind of a circumstance where it has to perpetually be threatening war and be on a war footing in order to maintain a regional order?

♪ ♪ >> JACOBY: Over the past few weeks, Israel has struck targets in Syria... (explosion pounds, woman gasps) ...Lebanon, Yemen, as well as Gaza.

>> I don't see a reshaped region for the better.

I mean, every bomb Israel drops anywhere in the region is a step back in the wrong direction.

What political project do they have?

What horizon are they offering?

What alternatives are they discussing?

What are they bringing to the table except bombs?

And bombs, and bombs?

Not just in Gaza.

>> JACOBY: What do you say to those who kind of are criticizing Israel for this new posture and think that Israel is now becoming a destabilizing force in the region?

>> With all due respect, there is no any logic in this argument.

There was nothing more destabilizing to the region than the proxies of Iran and Iran itself.

And if the proxies disappear, and Iran is weaker, automatically, it will be more stabilized area.

So this is the first step for a better and more stabilized Middle East.

(crowd chanting) >> JACOBY: Nearly two years after October 7, the region remains in flux.

>> Israel and the United States have withdrawn from the latest round of negotiations for a ceasefire in Gaza.

>> The Israeli military says it has begun air-dropping aid into Gaza.

>> French President Emmanuel Macron said that his country plans... >> ...to recognize Palestinian statehood.

>> Israel and the United States have criticized the decision.

>> The structure in which the Middle East existed has now been shattered.

The Arab-Israeli part of it, the Palestinian-Israeli part of it, the axis of resistance, Iran, et cetera, has been broken apart.

It's a moment for a whole new order.

But what order are we talking about here?

Where does the dust settle?

♪ ♪ >> Go to pbs.org/frontline to see all our coverage of the region.

>> There is already very deep animosity between Iran and Israel.

>> Undermine, avoid, bypass the issue, which is the issue of Palestine.

>> The balance of power has changed dramatically.

>> Connect with FRONTLINE on Facebook and Instagram, and stream anytime on the PBS App, YouTube, or pbs.org/frontline.

Captioned by Media Access Group at WGBH access.wgbh.org >> For more on this and other "FRONTLINE" programs, visit our website at pbs.org/frontline.

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