Channel 4 Reporter Clashes With Israeli Official Over Iran Strikes: 'You Don’t Have The Moral High Ground'

A reporter told an Israeli spokesperson his country does not have the “moral high ground” following the joint Israel-US strikes on Iran.

Israel said the attacks were “pre-emptive” to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons and firing at their own country.

Meanwhile, when he announced the bombing over the weekend, US president Donald Trump said his objective was to “defend the American people by eliminating imminent threats from the Iranian regime”.

The strikes took out Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Iran has since launched retaliatory strikes on Israel and US bases across the Middle East.

Standing outside one of the targeted buildings in Tel Aviv, Israel’s foreign affairs spokesperson Oren Marmorstein began criticising the Iranian attacks.

But reporter Secunder Kermani from Channel 4 News said: “Khamenei, the Iranian regime, have clearly done terrible things, particularly to their own people, but your prime minister is a wanted war criminal.”

The International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Benjamin Netanyahu in late 2024, saying he was a co-perpetrator for war crimes including starvation and crimes against humanity in Gaza.

So Kermani put it to Marmorstein: “You don’t have the moral high ground here at all.”

“This is a war crime,” the spokesperson replied, pointing to the destroyed buildings. “Targeting civilians. The Iranian regime is targeting not only us in Israel, they are targeting the entire region.”

“What about the hundred of so schoolgirls in Iran killed in a strike?” Karmeni replied.

Iranian state media reports that 148 people at a girls’ school in southern Iran were killed by the attacks.

“This must stop, this is what we are trying to do,” the spokesperson said. “Next question, please.”

Kermani’s challenge comes after the BBC’s international affairs editor Jeremy Bowen called Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu’s strikes “a war of choice”.

He said: “The Islamic regime is certainly their bitter enemy. But it is hard to see how the legal justification of self-defence applies given the huge disparity of power between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other.”