(dramatic music) - Hello everyone, and welcome to "Amanpour & Co." Here's what's coming up.

- Gaza is a tragic, it's a tragedy.

It's a tragedy, and he wants to get it solved, and I want to get it solved.

- [Christiane] But still, no ceasefire and Israeli strikes have killed hundreds more in recent days.

The UN's James Elder tells me about Gaza's critical conditions.

Plus, Galia David desperate for her son's release from there, he's still being held hostage by Hamas.

And... - We've gotten closer to it, and I hope we can cross the line.

- [Christiane] What is Israel's big strategy?

I ask former Israeli Military Intelligence Chief Tamir Hayman.

Also ahead... - This is a direct attack on rural America that is gonna make it so much harder for struggling Americans to get by.

- Michel Martin speaks to Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear about the impact of Trump's sweeping domestic policy bill in his state.

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Thank you.

- Welcome to the program everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington for what's now an extended visit with President Trump.

But their talk on the imminent ceasefire has yet to come to fruition.

Instead, Israel's renewed offensive in Gaza has killed hundreds more in recent days, according to authorities there, even distributing aid meant to save lives has resulted in ever more deaths.

Last week, more than 240 NGOs called for an immediate end to the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and its operations, saying that Palestinians, "face an impossible choice, starve or risk being shot while trying to collect food."

On top of this, now Israel's defense minister is proposing to move 600,000 Palestinians into a concentrated area of Rafah in the south of Gaza while ceasefire talks continue in Doha, Qatar.

Let's get a sense of the situation and the urgent need in Gaza.

James Elder has just returned from a recent trip there for UNICEF and he's joining me here in the studio.

Welcome back.

This is your first trip since before winter, right?

I think since November.

What can you see on the ground that has changed then and now?

- I think, Christiane, three things struck me really vividly.

One is the previously I would see, you know, the level of injuries onto children, the level of trauma onto children.

I'd never seen that until I went to Gaza, you know, in November, 2023.

This time I was not just seeing children with those horrific wounds of war, the burns, the shrapnel wounds, I was hearing them, I would hear girls and boys, the screams, because the lack of painkillers is just so, so prevalent.

So very, very hard to see girls and boys in that situation, but also to hear them.

Lack of water.

I expected things to be worse, they always are in Gaza.

But now to see the deprivation of water, there's no one in Gaza that's getting the basic emergency level of water.

Now, when a child is deprived food and a child is deprived water, that is a collision on a child's body, which is lethal.

And then the third thing was to see just how much damage GHF is doing to people, to an aid structure.

So yeah, I knew it would get bad.

I was not prepared for just how bad it would be for Palestinians.

- There's a couple of things I want to drill down on.

Can you explain, 'cause I understand what you're saying, there's not enough clean potable water.

How do 2 million people survive when there isn't?

I mean, what is the physical state?

How much do they drink?

I mean, there has to be some water, otherwise it'd all be dead.

- Yeah, there is some water, and it depends on the family, depends on where they are.

Depends on if that desalination plant is still able to produce water.

It depends if that truck had fuel that particular day.

So it might be several liters.

A lot of people are drinking brackish water.

A lot of families know their children are getting unwell, but they can't access a hospital.

Nasser Hospital in the south, Christiane, serves a million people, but it's in an evacuation zone, so you can't get there.

Now water's really important because we've had so many arguments around all this, you know, claims around misuse of humanitarian aid and UNICEF has been very clear about the last mile distribution we do.

I'm very lucky.

I get to see our nutritional food in the mouth of a child.

I understand the checks and balances we put in place.

Nonetheless, there are allegations made about a diversion.

None of them have evidence, but there are.

Okay, but water- - [Christiane] A diversion?

- A diversion- - Oh, allegations by the Israeli government that Hamas is diverting- - Quite exactly.

- Yeah, so that's one of their claim.

- That is a constant claim and it's an allegation as to why GHF exists, even though during this- - Right.

So GHF, let's just go back, is the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, created to essentially subvert the actual operating group, which was a UN group UNRWA?

- Yes, exactly.

And now the entire system.

So if you just look at water, whatever allegations you have, utterly unproven, water goes from the source to the recipient.

There can be no diversion.

So it's so troubling to see that level of deprivation, because this is political, this is not logistical.

You turn on a power supply, you allow fuel in, and you change the water scenario within 24 hours for a population.

- So they're not turning the power on.

- Yes, the power's been turned off.

UNICEF managed to lobby late last year extensively to get that turned on, but it was turned off again during the ceasefire.

- Now, in your experience, and Gaza is a war zone and frankly has been a war zone for a long time, there've been many, many, you know, war, counter war, all the rest of it, what is the point of turning off the electricity and turning off the clean water?

What is the strategic point of that from an Israeli perspective, would you say?

- Well, I mean, for me, of course as a humanitarian, Christiane, it's difficult to have a supposition on that.

- When you ask them, what do they say?

- Well, they made statements very clearly after the horrors of October 7, that this would be the stated intention.

So you don't need to- - But why water?

I don't understand it.

- Well, I think that the argument would be made from some senior Israeli, some senior officials, UN officials, is that, you know, there is an entire population is somehow at fault here, which, of course is, is abhorrent because I walk the corridors and see those children.

Now, with humanitarian aid, we talk about that Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, you know, the United Nations worked in many, many difficult places, this is not the first time we've worked in a place that doesn't have law and order.

And we don't have to look at other conflict zones.

We don't have to look to Ukraine, we don't have to look to Afghanistan or Sudan.

We can look to two months ago and 400 distribution points.

Humanitarian aid, it's so important that you work on two things.

One is going to where people need it, moms, the elderly, children, and that's 400 distribution points versus four.

The other is you've gotta use an evidence base.

So you've gotta make sure that humanitarian aid you're supplying is reducing malnutrition, is increasing access to water.

Those things aren't happening.

And again, the stated intention of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation is to push your population to the south and sideline a humanitarian system.

And we're seeing that, and that is lethal for moms and children.

- And why do you think they're trying to put them?

And actually, Israel Katz, who's their defense minister, said that they are, let me just get this straight, has laid out plans to force all Palestinians in Gaza into a camp on the ruins of Rafah.

They wanna call it a humanitarian city.

They want to say that Israel forces will police it from afar, but not inside, 600,000 and maybe more.

But what...

I mean, that international officials according to blueprint for crimes against humanity, but also it means that they, what, that they will what?

I mean, what will happen in that?

- Well, exactly that.

It's interesting, isn't it?

The statements made around international humanitarian law are so grave, I almost find myself sometimes moving on because it seems that people have dismissed international humanitarian law, the principles, which is very dangerous for all other conflicts where children are involved.

But let's focus just on the practical level, you know, if you are creating any zone, you can't forcibly push people into it, but you must also have food, water, medicine that is a legal requirement.

None of those things are there.

So you're putting a very, very exhausted vulnerable population in a cage within a cage at a time when you and I speak that meningitis is on the rise.

That's on the rise really because of a lack of sanitation, a lack of medical supply.

So polio, we are still fearful of a polio outbreak.

It still exists within Gaza.

So all we will see happen in those spaces is expedite a humanitarian catastrophe from the ground for a population.

I mean, as you and I speak, I'm not even mentioning that, you know, we're still at a point the reports of 17,000 girls and boys killed.

That's a child killed in Gaza every single hour since the horrors of October 7th.

Every hour, and the world has somehow just moved on.

- And, well, they say they're trying to come to a ceasefire, but we don't know, and obviously to release the hostages as well.

But your, I believe it's UNICEF says, that actually 50,000 children in Gaza have been killed and wounded.

- [James] Yeah.

- So the numbers are huge.

And to your point about the hospitals, one of the directors says, "If fuel isn't made available in the next few hours, the Al-Shifa hospital will get out of service in the next few hours.

This will lead to a high number of deaths."

And other hospitals are saying the same thing.

You visited Nasser Hospital and you posted a video, and it's actually quite emotional, and I want to play it and have you talk about it.

- I think of little Rihab I met who said, and I'll I'll read it, "They killed my mother.

I used to be beautiful.

Now I cannot wash. What do you want me to say?"

What is there to say in the face of such pain, oh, such pain here in Gaza and such impunity everywhere else?

Ah, sorry.

Maybe that's it.

Sorry.

- It is very powerful, very dramatic.

And talk me through what had you been seeing that day?

You're sitting in what looks like a blown out part of the hospital.

- I'm seeing that, it's uncomfortable, because, you know, here I sit now in London and there are children, little girls who've been there for 640 days.

And there I am having a moment, exhausted by the horrors.

I've never been somewhere, Christiane, where every single hospital room has many, many children.

And so that particular hospital room, I sat with a little girl who was 11-years-old, who had a leg amputated.

But because the lack of medical evacuation and denial of medical care in there, they had had to amputate her other leg.

So you're watching children disassembled.

Next to her in the bed was a little girl, Jenna, who when an airstrike hit her shelter, her school, she was paralyzed from the hips down, but she wasn't unconscious, so as she lay on the ground, she watched her friend die in front of her.

These are children and this graciousness of parents to tell their stories 'cause they're so hopeful that something will happen about it.

And as I walked out of that room with my young Palestinian colleague who sees all of this and is 25 and somehow keeps pushing through to tell stories on behalf of people for UNICEF, as I walked out, her mother, her mother just grabbed me and was utterly distraught, Christiane, saying she'd spent nine years conceiving her child, her only child, and her husband had just been killed, and that level of despair.

So there, you know, there is no time for despair for UNICEF.

We have colleagues on the ground in unprecedentedly dangerous places.

But yeah, that was a moment of just, of, I think, a bit of despair and a little bit of anger for the amount of impunity that still exists for 21 months of these horrors against children and their parents.

- I wanna ask you about something that's just really egregious and really controversial.

There are many, many reports and they're more and more, not only of the number of Palestinians who have been killed just trying to come and get food, but you know, so many reports of gunfire, drone attacks on those.

A former Gaza aid contractor told the BBC that he saw a guard from a watchtower open fire at women and children, was told by a team leader, "If you feel threatened, shoot, shoot to kill and ask questions later."

Now, the GHF, as we've talked about, says this is categorically false.

But what are you hearing?

And we can see it, we can see the number of people who've been killed just trying to get food.

- You know, I made a real point of going in and setting as many testimonies as I could.

And then I was finding, Christiane, that I'd go and see a family who was getting cash from UNICEF, and I would suddenly meet three young guys who had been there.

So I wasn't seeking out testimonials.

So those three young men, for example, in their 20s, they'd been there seven times, they'd never been successful in getting aid.

I met a young guy who spoke perfect English, whose family did not want him to go 'cause they were well aware of the dangers.

And he said he got there, he did everything he was told, he was corralled into a cage-like area.

And then, suddenly, he said there was a drone overhead shooting people.

James, why did they do that to us?

Now, I can't give him an answer to that.

On the very first day, Christiane, I met a little boy who'd been given money by his dad to go and buy bread, Abed Al Rahman, he was 13.

But he wanted more than that.

He's looking, he's watching his mom, you know, he's watching his mom quite literally level of malnutrition made to the point of starvation, he wants more than bread.

And he sees a flood of people heading to one of these sites, so he went, you know, he just... And he told me the story from a hospital bed and he told me, his father was in tears, 'cause he was almost apologizing to his dad, and this boy was in immense pain.

And he went, same thing, firing, shooting.

He didn't get any aid.

It's survival of the fittest.

It's the same people get supplies all the time, Christiane.

Instead, he got shrapnel from a tank shell into his pancreas, into his stomach.

And he sat up in the hospital bed.

I'll never forget this little boy, he sat up wanting to tell his story, his own dignity, even as a 13-year-old.

And on the day I left Gaza, after two weeks, I got a message that, you know, he died of those injuries, died trying to get food for his family because a perfectly well-functioning humanitarian system, again, for UNICEF as a part of 400 distribution sites, is being deliberately sidelined.

And this is the, this is what people are being pushed into.

The last story, if I make, Christiane, was a 23-year-old woman.

Terrible wounds from wire, from barbed wire and so on.

But she said, "I will go back."

She got nothing.

"I'll go back James, because I'm the oldest in my family.

My dad's got a heart condition."

These are the choices.

You hear sentences you never imagine people would say, which is, in her case, "Please just don't let me die an empty stomach."

So she will return.

- [Christiane] So the GHF.

- So the GHF.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Which is just a horribly impersonal acronym, anyway.

And as you say, I just want to read, Tom Fletcher, the humanitarian, you know, head of of of the UN said a while ago, "We're seeing foods set on the borders and not being allowed in when there is a population on the other side of the border that's starving.

And we're hearing Israeli ministers say that is to put pressure on the population of Gaza.

How do you... What can you do?

Because you can almost not get in to deliver.

Even this GHF, has it got enough food to- - No, no.

And that's a great question.

So first, you know, four distribution points.

So again, if you are disabled or a single mom or the elderly, and you're my age, you're above and you're 35 miles away, it's absolutely impossible.

If you are fit and healthy and close by, then you go and it's survival of the fittest and the same people taking sugar and oil because they're more valuable.

So, so no.

- [Christiane] So taking sugar and oil because they're more valuable to use or to sell?

- [James] To sell.

And this is the thing, the idea that, you know- - So some of these gangs.

- Yes, the idea of, you know, circumventing an aid system because of looting.

Now, UN's been very clear on looting.

I think Tom Fletcher was right here in this on your show that looting is the economics of scarcity.

You know, if you close off a part of London for two and a half months and then allow a few trucks down one point, that will happen.

But within five days of the ceasefire, there was no looting 'cause there was no black market.

So you, you know, and right now there is food in trucks across a border for a million people for four months.

Now, for UNICEF, I mean, I've seen those moms, I see the moms and the grandmoms.

I was at a nutrition point getting that malnourished food.

So we know what's not being done.

We are fortunate because we do trauma work, we do education work, it's not all supply driven.

But my goodness, for colleagues, the level of frustration when you see malnourished children with grandmothers, with that denial of food is heartbreaking and beyond.

- Well, we are pleased that you're here to tell us about it, James Elder, because people have to know and try to do something to make it different.

Thank you very much for being here.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

So as long as there is no ceasefire, not only no aid for Gaza, but no respite either for the hostages who are still held there by Hamas or for their families.

Evyatar David is one of them.

He was taken by Hamas from the Nova Music Festival on October 7th, 2023.

For his mother Galia, it has been 641 days of anguish and dashed hopes, as she told me here in the studio.

Galia, thank you very much for coming in.

And it's extraordinary to think that it's more than 640 days since this atrocity happened and your son was among those kidnapped and held hostage.

Do you think that this time, as they talk about hostage release and potential ceasefires, do you have any extra hope or have you been this route too many times?

- This is the first time that I really have hope because in the last deal, when it began, it was just the first phase.

- Tell me what happened.

He was taken from the Nova Festival.

- Yeah, yeah.

A festival of love, a music festival.

And he was with three friends.

One of them, Guy Gilboa Dalal was kidnapped with him, and other two were brutally murdered, - Which is horrible.

Did the one who was kidnapped with him, he's come out, right?

- No.

- No, he's still there.

- He is still there.

- But you have heard about your son.

- I heard testimonies from others- - Others who were with him being held.

- Yes.

For a long period of time.

- And what do they say about how he's doing, how their conditions were?

- Very bad, very bad condition.

Right now, at this time, at this minute, they're under tortures, physical and mental tortures.

They are underground right now in a narrow tunnel and one meter wide and 10 meter long with a hole for the needs.

They barely have food or water to drink and no medicine care.

And... - How do you think, you know your son, how do you think he's holding up?

- My son is very modest and also he have strong personality, but I hope that he is still know that we are doing everything to bring him back this hell.

- Bring him back.

- Yeah.

- So I know you're not a political person, but you have endured and all the Israeli families have endured, you know, 20 months of this and of not knowing when you're going to see your relatives back.

And I wonder if you have a message for your prime minister now who seems to have put defeating Hamas above bringing back the hostages.

Do you feel that way?

- I think that he's talking different in the last two weeks.

And I hear that he changed the priority of the war.

And I hope that at the end, and it'll be soon, peace will achieved and it can be possible just after all the hostages will come home.

- There was a video of your boy, Evyatar, kind of in the background when others were released, you saw that.

- Of course.

- That must have been just hellacious to see your son having to endure other people's freedom and not be able to get out then.

- It was, first of all, a torture for him, a sadistic one.

And for me, it was a sign of life, but very tough one, because the look in his eyes, his body language, his gestures, this is not my boy, this is not my son.

Imagine, after 505 days, they brought Evyatar and Guy Gilboa Dalal out from underground and they just forced them to watch, to see, and they're begging for their life.

And after that, they closed the door, the one door and took them back underground.

- This time you hope though things might be a little different, you think the prime minister may be, you think the negotiations are closer than they've ever been?

- I hope so.

- How do you get through the day every day and the night?

- Barely eat, barely sleep.

And I'm trying all the time to make Evyatar's voice because he just can't speak for himself.

So I must do it.

- Well, you're an eloquent voice and people will relate as they have done to the pain of the hostage families and of all the hostages.

So thank you, Galia, for coming in.

- Thank you very much.

And I hope we will receive good news as soon as possible.

- [Christiane] I do too.

- And all this, the war will finish.

And first of all, all of the hostages must come home, and the war also must be finished.

- Thank you.

- Thank you very much.

- President Trump, this week, touted the success of the 12 day war between Israel and Iran, and teased the possibility of expanding the Abraham Accords, a set of agreements which saw Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the UAE normalize relations with Israel during Trump's first term.

But the assessments of the actual damage inflicted on Iran are ongoing.

And there are still questions like why Israel chose to bomb Iran's notorious Evin Prison, resulting in dozens of deaths there.

So as talk increases of a ceasefire in Gaza, let's examine Israel's aims and its strategic goals with Tamir Hayman, who was the IDF intelligence chief from 2018 to 2021, and who's now the head of the influential Israeli think tank, the Institute for National Security Studies.

He's joining me from Tel Aviv.

Mr. Hayman, welcome to the program.

Can I first start by asking you whether you know much more than we do about what's happening in the talks in Doha, in the talks in Washington, and whether you think, like Galia David, the mother of Evyatal, who's still a hostage, that this time there appears to be more hope for a ceasefire and a hostage release and prisoner exchange.

- Yeah, thank you, Christiane.

And the only, the good news is that there's no news, there's silence, nobody talks about that.

Not Hamas, not leaks from the press, from the Israeli side or the Palestinian or the Qatarian.

And in that aspect, the no news is a good news.

And according to what is being declared by from the White House, it seems like it's all comes down to one single point of disagreement that is now being negotiated, which is where are the lines that Israel will gonna withdraw during the temporary ceasefire and what will be the distribution of the humanitarian aid available in those area.

And this is a very crucial step because we are not talking about a single stage deal.

There is this two stage deal, we have still 20 living hostages, and in the first stage, only 10 of them are gonna be released.

So Israel must keep some leverage to the second stage negotiation, which will be the more crucial one because this is the last stage and the last remaining leverage of Hamas in order to ensure its existence in Gaza.

- So sorry, what will the second stage look like then?

- Well, this will be the final stage and it will be crucial.

From Hamas side, they will insist a full withdrawal from Gaza and assurances that the war has ended and there will not be a renewal of hostilities.

From the Israeli side, we must release all of the living hostages and the dead one.

And it'll be very hard negotiation because it's a matter of complete lack of trust between those two negotiating parties.

In order to create that kind of trust, there need to be a third party assurances and that's probably will be the Trump effect.

And if he will ensure to both sides that they will keep their red lines, there might be hope, but it'll be certainly very, very complicated.

- Can I just pick up on what you said the two main issues are, at least, you know, one huge issue as you articulated in your first answer was the humanitarian situation.

And you also talked about Israel, you know, needing its leverage.

I don't know whether humanitarian aid is used as leverage, as you say, but you have heard some very, very serious and compelling testimony from a UNICEF official.

You've heard it from the head of the UN, you've heard it from people all over on the ground in Hamas, who can get the word out.

You've seen the number of Gazans who've been killed trying to come to this weird creation of some apparently not very functional distribution center.

I mean, I wanna know your your point on this.

What is the point of starving or reducing the amount of food and water to a population?

How does that serve your strategic goals, and do you think it's in Israel's interest?

- It's not the Israeli interest and it's not the Israeli goal, it's not the Israeli method.

It has no intention to inflict some pressure on the humanitarian, on the civilians.

The pressure that I referred to is Hamas.

Hamas leverage over the civilian is taking control of humanitarian aid.

What Hamas does in the former way of distribution, it took control the humanitarian convoys, raided them, and then resell the supply in a very, very expensive prices to the civilians.

By that he ensured two things.

One, funding money that you gain in order to recruit new recruitment into his line.

And secondly, the authority, the sovereignty of the aid.

What the IDF is trying to do and Israel is trying to do is circumvent Hamas and directly deliver the humanitarian aid to the civilians.

There is no any efforts to starve or I need to do, and by doing that with two different methods that you have criticized, but it's a matter of a major attempt to circumvent Hamas and reach to the final, to the civilian.

- Yeah, you know, I understand what you're saying, but it just doesn't appear that way.

And you know that your own prime minister has, you talk about people stealing food, but your own prime minister has enabled a whole another group to circumvent Hamas in what he might think is a strategic, you know, win for him.

But clearly, that's just adding fuel to this gangland of fire.

And you know, that when the UN was doing it, they were able to make sure that they had the security and the ability.

So what I just wanna know from you is, really, is it in Israel's interest to become a global pariah in the eyes of many people for forcibly, you know, restricting food and clean water just by not turning the electricity on?

It's called collective punishment.

I just don't understand after 20 months whether... You're a strategist.

Do you think this should go on?

- No, of course, Israel has no interest on blackening its name and become a pariah state.

And some facts need to be added to this conversation.

First of all, water, you have asked a very perfectly good question.

So let me deliver part of the answer.

As we speak right now, there are three pipes of water that delivers clean water from Israel to the Gaza Strip, one directly to Gaza Strip to Gaza City, one to the Mawasi area, where most of sanctuary for Palestinians there, and the third one goes to the central camp, as we speak right now.

Secondly, there are three distribution methods that being implemented as we speak.

One, convoys, trucks full of humanitarian aid that enter the entry from the north directly to the civilians.

By the way, those are being raided by Hamas as we speak, but in order to relieve the pressure of the Gaza Strip in the north, we are continuing to do that.

Secondly, the GHF, which strives through these four distribution points to deliver the aid directed to the civilians, they have already distributed more than 1 million and a half the packages for families.

And the third method, which you describe differently than what I would've described it, it's what is trying to achieve in the southern part of Gaza Strip in the former city of Rafah where a local warlord, he is a warlord, he's took control of this area, and we hope that civilians that will choose to go south to the former city of Rafah will receive all the necessity, all of the humanitarian aid available to achieve.

- [Christiane] Okay.

- This is what's happening right now, and it is slightly different than the descriptions.

- Yes, you know, I'm relying on the people who've been there.

But you've just said a warlord, voluntary, and he's going to be in charge of it.

Doesn't sound great to me.

I want to ask you something though, because you've written serious papers about this.

You have said that there's a contradiction, if I'm reading you right, between Israel's two central goals, securing the release of the hostages and eliminating Hamas fighting capability.

What is the contradiction?

And do you think that Netanyahu's maximalist goal that he keeps saying, destroy, eliminate, all those maximalist words about Hamas is possible to achieve?

Because the US believes, what Biden administration believed, that Hamas is, you know, the capabilities that you're trying to end, you had done it last summer.

So what is the point of this continuing war?

- If you are presenting it, like sometimes my prime minister says, as a zero sum game, it's contradiction, it's a full contradiction.

Because if you say to Hamas that my aim is eventually eradicate you, obliterate you from the face of the Earth, he will not let go of the only insurances for its survival, which are the hostages.

In order to somehow balance or get those two contradictional objectives, you must first of all replace Hamas as a ruling entity by a third element, maybe along the lines of the Egyptian Arab proposal combined with the Palestinian authority in some manner.

And that is the only way that Hamas will be able or accept to release the hostages.

And what will happen with Hamas, because Hamas is the entity that's responsible for all the misery that we are seeing right now by launching this massive attack on October 7.

Well, my answer to those who ask this question that it will be a long attrition war beneath the level of full scale war like we have done in the West Bank in the Second Intifada, and it will take years.

But first of all, we must replace it as a ruling entity, release all the hostages, declare the war ended, and continue gradually eroding its capability till the end, till we have finalized and achieved this mission.

- I think you guys call that mowing the lawn, this endless trying to, you know, this attrition.

And actually, I asked you that in relation also to the Iran 12 day strikes between Israel, the United States and Iran.

This is what the Pentagon spokesman said about the assessments.

I'm just gonna read it 'cause we don't have that much time, but he said that, you know, allies and intelligence around the world share sentiments that the degradation of Iran's nuclear program is probably one to two years.

That's the initial assessment.

Now that, I'm telling you, and you know, is much shorter than what the JCPOA and the Iran nuclear deal had guaranteed.

They have guaranteed a much longer degradation of the abilities.

So I guess my question to you is, A, you think you've done what you wanted to do in Iran, and B, do you think there too you'll continue this mowing the lawn war of attrition every time anything pops up?

How do you think this is gonna end?

- First of all, moving out of the JCPOA was a mistake.

I agree with you.

If we would've continued the path of the JCPOA, we wouldn't have been in such a crucial situation like we were just before the 12 days war.

The situation was that Iran was a threshold nucleur state and there was dramatic achievements done in Iran and they have promoted themself in the threshold nuclear stage to a situation where they gained, added advantage over Israel capability in the future.

They might have got this advantage, so Israel had to act.

Eventually, what is being achieved right now, what is achieved, that Iran is no longer a threshold nuclear state and delaying that for a year or two year enables Israel to intervene in the future if they will decide differently.

- [Christiane] Okay, all right.

- And along this path, there is the path of pressuring for a new nuclear deal, which we hope that this pressure that we have inflicted will help us in achieving a better deal than before.

- Tamir Hayman, thank you very much indeed for joining us.

- It's my pleasure.

- Turning now to the United States.

President Trump's sweeping domestic policy bill is signed into law.

Millions of people on Medicaid are set to lose their health insurance.

Michelle Martin speaks with the governor of Kentucky about the real life effect this could have on rural communities like his own.

- Thanks, Christiane.

Governor Beshear, thank you so much for speaking us.

- Thanks for having me on.

- So let's just go right to it.

You call the president's tax and spending bill, which he and his Republican allies have called the One Big Beautiful Bill, the worst legislation you've seen in your lifetime.

As briefly as you can, tell us why.

- So this is the most destructive bill I've seen in my lifetime.

In Kentucky, it's gonna kick 200,000 people off their healthcare coverage.

That's gonna include kids and seniors.

It's gonna include people who need cancer treatment and who will lose their lives without that coverage.

On top of that, it's going to fire 20,000 healthcare workers from all around Kentucky and it may shutter up to 35 rural hospitals.

- Hmm.

- So whether you are on private insurance or on Medicaid, if you are a rural American, you're gonna have to drive hours just to see a doctor.

And then what it does to our rural economies is gonna be incredibly painful because if you remove hundreds of doctors and nurses and orderlies from that rural hospital that's typically the second largest employer in that community, everybody feels the pain, the coffee shop, the restaurant, the bank.

I mean, this is a direct attack on rural America that's gonna make it so much harder for struggling Americans to get by.

- Let's just talk about the patients themselves.

One of the arguments for this bill that its supporters keep insisting on is that it will shore up the finances of Medicaid in particular, so that in particular children, in particular people who are the most vulnerable, people who are disabled, that it'll stabilize the finances of Medicaid so that these people in particular will continue to get care.

You're saying that that's just not true?

- It's not.

Because if it was, they would've exempted them from large parts of the bill.

The way they're gonna get their "savings" is by increasing the level of paperwork, making you prove your eligibility multiple extra times when there are already so many checks in there.

And so what happens when a family has a child with a severe disability that is covered by Medicaid, doesn't check a certain box once or twice a year, that family could lose coverage for up to six months.

It is mean, it is cruel.

Think about that senior, because 70% of our long-term care costs in Kentucky are covered by Medicaid.

Now that senior who is already getting significant care, whose family probably has to fill out those forms, if it's not done right now, that person loses that long-term care coverage.

And so that family has to take them back into their home, try to cover those expenses, which is likely impossible, probably can't go to work because of the full-time help that's needed.

This is the damage it's going to cause to people's life, and they're gonna know exactly who did it to them, President Trump and the Congressional Republicans.

- Talk a little bit, if you would, about the, the impact on rural hospitals and the financing and why you're so convinced that it'll have such a devastating effect on rural hospitals in particular because, again, the administration and the their allies say that there's a fund specifically set up to support rural hospitals.

So tell us why you say that you think this many hospitals will close and why it'll have such a severe impact.

- The way I know that rural hospitals are gonna get hit hard and many are gonna have to close is that they are not only telling me, they're telling the country, the Kentucky Hospital Association is a pretty conservative group, but they have been out with these projections saying, please do not do this to one of the fastest growing sectors of the economy.

And they've been very clear about the numbers.

This is over a trillion dollar cut to the healthcare industry.

That's a trillion dollars of revenue that supports these rural hospitals.

And there is a $50 billion fund to help rural hospitals.

The reason it won't work is math.

It is grossly insufficient.

And when you look at rural hospitals, the reason they get hit more is that there is a larger Medicaid population than others and there are fewer people that may be traveling to them.

But what it means is you're gonna have to drive hours just to see your family practitioner.

You're not going to have the same specialties.

Think about OBGYNs, 40% of all births in Kentucky are covered by Medicaid.

And that's an area that that hospitals struggle on the finances.

What you're gonna see is in rural America having to drive hours just to get to a big city to even give birth.

It's going to have massive implications for our country and for urban America too.

But just, I mean, this is a punch in the face of rural America in my state.

- Governor, your congressional delegation is weighted toward Republicans.

Your delegation was kind of split.

Your senators split.

One voted for the bill, one voted against the bill, Rand Paul voted against the bill, Mitch McConnell, who's the longtime Republican leader in the Senate, voted for the bill.

In the House, the one Democrat in the congressional delegation voted against it, along with one Republican, Thomas Massie.

I was just curious what you make of that.

Why do you think that they split, which they normally don't?

- Well, I'm gonna do something that people probably don't expect and that's to give Thomas Massie and Rand Paul some credit.

And I'm willing to do that because my job isn't to be the best democratic governor of Kentucky, it's just to be the best governor of Kentucky for my people.

Rand Paul and Thomas Massie are just about the only two individuals, save a couple others, that were willing to stand up to the president, and I'll give 'em credit for standing up on fiscal grounds because this is a hugely fiscally irresponsible bill, maybe one of the most irresponsible bills I've ever seen.

It's gonna add trillions to the national debt and it's gonna push hundreds of millions of dollars of new costs on states, blowing up our otherwise balanced budget.

But what I won't give 'em credit for is that they are not fighting this bill because it hurts people, and it does.

It hurts people in kicking them off their healthcare and firing healthcare workers and closing rural hospitals, but the cuts to snap also mean that seniors and children are gonna go hungry at night, are gonna wake up with hunger pains.

And this, in my faith, the miracle of the fishes and the loaves is one miracles in every book of the gospel.

What it means is in a country that grows of food, enough for everyone, nobody should starve.

- Well, SNAP is food assistance for people who perhaps aren't aware of it.

It used to used to be called food stamps, now it's called SNAP.

And to the issue of of of the deficit, the Congressional Budget Office's scoring says that the Senate bill, which was the one that was adopted, adds even more to the deficit than the House Bill would have.

- What's amazing to me on that is that these Senate Republicans just aren't telling people the truth.

They're telling people that those numbers are wrong.

And why the Congressional Budget Office was created was to have a nonpartisan group that would tell you what things cost.

And guess who created it?

Congress.

The same Senate and the same House in previous sessions.

And so this idea that you can argue the the numbers is just wrong and and blowing smoke.

- One of the arguments that they make is that this bill will somehow generate enough economic activity that it'll make up for the loss of, I don't know, spending, I guess, I guess that's the argument, that it'll sort of generate this explosion of economic activity.

And you are convinced that that's wrong.

- Yeah, that ain't gonna happen.

- This bill- - How do you know, how do you know?

- Because they've cut a trillion dollars of revenue out of one of the fastest growing industries in America.

If you cut a trillion dollars out of the economy, out of healthcare, then you are not going to generate extra dollars out of it.

And then on top of that, you have a tariff policy that is destructive, that is slowing our economy.

We're seeing fewer projects move forward and we're seeing small businesses lay people off.

But here's another point about this bill.

It's gonna hurt worker productivity because if you are a worker in rural America that concurrently go see a doctor in your community in the morning, but now you have to drive several hours, you gotta take the whole day off of work.

But then if your parent comes back into your home, you've gotta get them to their doctor's appointment two hours away.

So you take another day off work.

And let's say you have two kids, hopefully you can get their appointment on the same day.

You've gotta take yet another day off work.

Or if you lose your coverage, you get sick more often and you miss more days of work.

That makes our country and our workforce less productive.

- And I'm just curious why, if this is so obvious to you, it wasn't as obvious to the other people who represent your state.

And I'm just wondering why you think you see it so differently?

- Well, what I see are people who lack the courage to do the right thing and have abdicated their oath of office.

They were elected to be the best senator or congressman for their constituents, not to do the bidding of the president.

And they're more concerned with seeing the president's smile at them and whether or not they have a rural hospital open in their district or whether people are or are not starving in their district.

This was a test of basic humanity and those that voted for this bill failed.

- But then again, these, I mean presumably these are the same people who voted for President Trump and his argument is that this is what they voted for, so.

- I don't think anybody voted to lose their job.

I don't think anybody voted to lose their healthcare coverage.

I don't think anybody voted to have their rural community and economy hit and impacted, potentially even destroyed.

You know, President Trump is president because he convinced the last group of movable voters that he was more focused on helping them pay the bills at the end of the month and that the vice president was distracted on a whole lot of other issues.

But everything in his term is making it so much harder.

Seeing the doctor is going to be harder, paying the bills under tariffs are are going to be harder, and people are starting to feel betrayed.

And certainly, if you voted for President Trump and you lose your job because of this bill, you are being betrayed.

- Well, except that the way this bill is structured, you know, Governor, is that the tax cuts come in sooner and the spending cuts come in later.

And it was structured that way.

The tax cuts come in before the midterm elections where presumably if people experience what you say they will, they could hold people for their votes.

But the tax cuts come in before the midterms and most of the spending cuts come in in the out years after the midterms.

So given that reality, how do you persuade people that this is what you say?

- Yeah, you're gonna see the pain and you're gonna see it earlier than they think.

Because if you are a business and you know you're going to lose a lot of revenue in two to three years, you don't wait until that moment and fall off the cliff.

They're having to make plans now on what lines to cut, on what services to provide, on what hospitals might have to be closed.

Those that that thought just pushing this off would prevent people from seeing it, first, that's really wrong, that we're gonna do something really painful, but we're gonna put it until after the next election so that you reelect us.

I mean, that's wrong.

That's not what public service is supposed to be about.

But they also don't understand how these businesses work, when the decisions are gonna have to be made, these hospitals are gonna have to right size their budgets before the full cut comes.

- So you said that you were elected to be the best governor of Kentucky, not the best democratic governor of Kentucky, but you are a Democrat and you know, your fortunes aren't always tied to the, so the National Democratic Party, that's been made clear by the fact that you've been reelected, you've been elected and reelected again in your state, which does lean conservative.

But overall, do you think that the Democrats have made the case that you are making?

- Well, I think the destructiveness of this bill is fact.

So Democrats need to be out there talking about it and the news needs to be out there talking about it.

What we need is for the people of the United States to understand what is specifically in the bill and what the Congressional Budget office says will happen because of the bill.

You know, in previous administrations that was considered fact, it still is.

And so I think that there's not just Democrats, but all of us that have an obligation for people to know what this bill does and who did it to us.

- Well, in addition to that though, there are provisions that are meant to be attractive to lower income people or middle income people like the tax on tips.

In fact, this was another one of the president's campaign promises, saying that he was going to add a new tax.

And also, he's promising that, you know, most seniors won't see taxes on their social security.

But I am wondering whether you think that that would be, that those provisions will be enough to make it attractive to people, even though you say it will be more harmful than it will be beneficial.

- It won't be attractive to people.

And this is why you don't put this much stuff in one bill and including some provisions that appear to just be buying off someone for a vote here or a vote there, sending something to their state.

The people you're talking about that rely on taxes and tips are the people that live on the margins in how they get their healthcare.

Many of 'em may be getting it through the state run exchanges, which are gonna take a beating as well.

Many of them are the working poor that are otherwise covered on Medicaid or they have a family member at home who are covered on Medicaid.

They are the people working in that rural restaurant that now are gonna have fewer people coming in because so many people that have affordable income have lost their jobs.

And when you think about the tax cuts, yeah, a tax cut would be really nice for a doctor if they still had a job, but if they lose their job because of this bill, they have no income and there's no tax cut.

- So Governor, what do you see as your role now?

I mean, what, what are you gonna do?

I mean, you got to manage the fallout, whatever it is.

How are you gonna do that?

- The best I can for my people.

I love the people of Kentucky and it's my job to fight for them regardless of their party registration, to try to move us not to the right or the left, but move us forward.

So I'm gonna- - So what does that look like?

What does that look like?

I mean- - I'm gonna look for every opportunity to help people make sure that they correctly fill out those forms to see what type of extra services and advice that we can give them.

But no state, not one state in the country has a budget where they can simply backfill these dollars.

Everything we're gonna do, we're gonna do our best, but the people of America are gonna feel the pain because of the size and scope of the damage of this big ugly bill.

- So before we let you go, and you know, I kind of hate this game that we have to play, you know, where you're gonna run for president, you're not, you know, you know what I mean?

But you have to be thinking about it.

I mean, you have to be thinking about it.

If you feel that the situation is as dire as you say that it is, so would you at least tell us whether you're thinking about it?

- Yeah, if you'd asked me a couple years ago whether I was considering this, I'd say no.

My family's been through a lot, I love this job, and it is more than enough to be able to serve the people of your state for eight years.

But I do not wanna leave my kids a broken country.

So this year and next year in my job as governor, I'm gonna be working to create jobs and try to expand healthcare what I can with this bill, to build safer roads and bridges, improve our public schools, and make sure everybody feels safe in their community.

Next year, I'm the head of the Democratic Governors Associations and we're gonna be playing in a lot of states where the Republican governors have said nothing about this big ugly bill and their people are suffering.

And then after that, when I sit down and and think about it, my question is gonna be, am I a person that can repair what's broken, am I a person that could heal this country?

Because we can't go on with the us versus the thems.

We can't go on divided when our pledge says we will keep our country indivisible.

So if I'm that candidate, I'll think about it.

If someone else is, I'll be fully behind them, 'cause I care a lot more about this country and its future for everybody's children than I do about what role I might play.

- Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky.

Governor, thank you so much for talking with us once again.

- Thanks for having me again.

- And that's it for our program tonight.

If you want to know what's coming up every night, sign up for our newsletter at PBS.org/Amanpour.

And thank you for watching.

Goodbye from London.

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