TLO President Diane Sare interviews independent journalist Vanessa Beeley, who spent several years reporting from Syria until she was forced by the coup in 2024 to relocate to Lebanon. Here she talks about the latest developments following Israel's illegal attack on Iran, and the Iranian response, as well as the duplicitous U.S.-Iran "negotiations," which now appear to have merely served to buy time to prepare the attacks. Beeley refers to a Brookings Institute report from 2009 as the guide for the "decapitation" of Iran, while also providing strategic background on Russia-Iran relations and insights from the population and the resistance on the ground.