ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
The ceasefire between Israel and Iran got off to a shaky start. The countries had been at war for 12 days when President Trump announced the pause in fighting last night. Israel hit Iran again soon after that announcement, and Iran struck back, which prompted a furious reply from the U.S. president. Of course, the U.S. is directly involved in this conflict, having bombed nuclear and military sites in Iran over the weekend. Today, the war appears quiet. NPR international correspondent Aya Batrawy is in Dubai, and she's here to explain the status of the conflict. Hi there.
AYA BATRAWY, BYLINE: Hi.
SHAPIRO: OK, so almost as soon as the ceasefire was announced, Israel seemed to blow right through it. Tell us more about what happened.
BATRAWY: Yeah, it was a very shaky, uncertain start. Israel pounded Iran with strikes during a window between when Trump announced the ceasefire and when it was supposed to come into effect this morning. And then Iran hit southern Israel, killing four people there. And then after the ceasefire began, Israel said Iran had fired some missiles. It didn't cause damage, and Iran denies firing anything, but Israel was ramping up to hit even harder when President Trump issued a very rare public rebuke of Israel. He told reporters, I am not happy with Israel. And then he said, these two countries don't know what the blank they're doing. And then he posted online a message to Israel in all caps saying, do not drop those bombs. If you do, it is a major violation. Bring your pilots home now. And that's when we saw Israeli warplanes bomb an Iranian radar installation and nothing more.
SHAPIRO: So strong words in public. What about behind the scenes? Can you tell us about the conversations that have been going on among these three countries since the war started?
BATRAWY: Like, immediately after Israel first launched its attacks on Iran that started this war, countries in the region rushed to condemn the attack. And behind the scenes, there were all these calls from Arab leaders to the U.S. to one another to Iran's president. There were messages being passed here and a whole full network of back channel efforts to really try to de-escalate things. And we even saw how that played out just before the ceasefire was announced.
So last week, the U.S. started moving aircraft into hardened shelters at its largest base in the Middle East, at Al Udeid in Qatar, last week. And then the U.S. bombed Iran's nuclear sites soon after that. And then what we saw when Iran came to respond to that U.S. attack with missiles fired at that same airbase, that Qatar had closed its airspace only hours before. And that also involved back channeling, with Iran giving prior notice and warning about that attack to mitigate fallout.
SHAPIRO: Interesting. Just taking a long view over the last couple years, the region has changed so dramatically, with Syria's leader falling, Hezbollah decimated in Lebanon, Hamas being pummeled in Gaza and now the conflict with Iran. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says his country is reshaping the Middle East for the good of the region. What is the view in Arab states?
BATRAWY: You know, Ari, it has changed a lot, but war for particularly Gulf Arab states, especially where I am in the UAE in Dubai - it's never a good thing for any country, but especially here because you've got 10 million people. Nine million or more are foreigners. This place really relies on tourism and investment, foreign workers and international travel. Now, that said, there was some support for Israel's attacks. I asked Emirati political science professor Abdulkhaleq Abdullah about that, and here's what he said.
ABDULKHALEQ ABDULLAH: We have Iran with all these missile capabilities, drone capabilities. So any weakening of Iran, no matter who does it, whether it's God or a devil or Netanyahu or Trump or wherever, at the end of the day, it's good for the stability of the entire Middle East and the Gulf included.
BATRAWY: Now that's the view of some in the Gulf. But also, Abdullah says - and he represents other views also here - that Israel, too, is wreaking havoc. And he says that goes from the West Bank to Lebanon to Syria and Gaza.
ABDULLAH: Israel now is so arrogant, wants to be the hegemon, and it wants now to somehow engineer a new Middle East in its own image of a sort. None of that is comforting. None of that is good for the region.
SHAPIRO: That's NPR's Aya Batrawy in Dubai. Thank you.
BATRAWY: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
