 The regional dimensions of Israel's genocidal war on Gaza majorly escalated on Monday when Israel attacked an Iranian consulate in Damascus in Syria. Two commanders of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were among those killed in the attack. Now diplomatic buildings are afforded protections under the Vienna Convention and the attack has been widely condemned both across the region and internationally, including by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. On Tuesday, the attack was discussed at a meeting of the UN Security Council. We go to Abdul for more details. Abdul, thank you so much for joining us. So quite a few tense days in West Asia as a whole starting with that attack on the brutal attack on an embassy, a diplomatic head care, a diplomatic office in the Syrian capital Damascus, followed by a chorus of condemnation. Now on Tuesday we had the UN Security Council session as well. Maybe could you first take us to the attack itself, what we know about that and then we'll come to the UN Security Council session. Well Prashant, on Monday Israel carried out an airstrike inside Damascus. You can say the diplomatic area where most of the embassies and other foreign offices are located. And in that attack, Iranian consulate building was hit in which at least seven Iranian officials, including two top generals of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed and six other Syrian citizens were also killed. This is of course, was a part of Israel's, you can say military campaign which is going on for a decade over a decade now, but it has increased post October 7 war in Gaza. Of course, Israel has not claimed the responsibility yet, but various other sources have confirmed that this is Israelis were responsible. And on basis of that attack, there was a special session called, of the UN Security Council called to discuss it, because this amounts to violation of international conventions and international law which basically provides immunity to all the diplomatic buildings and diplomatic enclaves from all such kind of attacks even during the days of the war. And this is a clear violation of all those conventions and laws. Right, Abdul in this context, what are some of the arguments that came up during the Security Council session? Well, during the session which was called by Russians and of course supported by other members like China and Iran, in which primarily two things have been discussed. One of course the UN Security General and other officials expressed condemnation to what Israel did because of course, as I said before, this amounts to violation of the international law and violation of the diplomatic immunity, which most of the diplomats are, all the diplomats are subjected to. But at the same time, there was a criticism on the line that this is basically a provocation carried out by Israel, not only violating the UN Charter and violating the Syrian sovereignty, but also an attempt to basically escalate the war which is going on in Palestine. This can lead to reactions and counter reactions which can spread to the region and which can create a regional war. And that's what the position was taken by Russians. Iranians also said the same thing and they demanded that there should be an action by the United Nations Security Council against Israel's repeated provocative acts inside Syria. Of course, they also linked it with Israel's repeated violation of the United Nations Security Council resolutions, particularly the resolutions related to the ceasefire in Gaza, and they demanded a punitive action against Israel. But of course, if you see the responses from the US claiming that they do not yet know whether the building which was targeted was a diplomatic building or not, if it was a diplomatic building, if it was Iranian consulate, they condemn the act. But since they do not know, they do not want to formally condemn Israel. Similar things were repeated by its allies like UK and France. In fact, they blamed Iranians for inviting attack from Israeli inside Damascus. And that led to a division of, you can say, the members of the United Nations Security Council, but other members condemned the act and demanded punitive actions against Israelis. Right. Abul, and finally, how do you sort of see this latest bombing specifically? What does it mean for the escalating tensions in the region as a whole? We talked about this on various occasions. The fact that the Israeli offensive on Gaza has not stopped with Gaza, despite the catastrophic toll, it has actually escalated to the entire region as a whole. Well Prashan, this is nothing less than a provocation for further escalation. And as we have discussed earlier, Israeli government at this moment wants to escalate the war and does not want to end it, despite the United Nations Security Council resolution for ceasefire and other pressures. Primarily, not only because there is a stake, Netanyahu government's survival is at stake, but also because escalation of war would invite greater involvement from the U.S. and so and so, which is not there so far. And therefore, Israel is using every opportunity to provoke the war. So the attack in Syria, despite the warnings, is basically deliberate. You can link it with the recent attacks on the international aid workers inside Gaza. Despite knowing everything, every detail about involvement of foreign activists in the aid delivery, Israel chose to basically attack those aid workers. So there seems to be a deliberate attempt to basically target multiple centers so that the war escalates and more and more players are involved in the region. And there is no other explanation at this moment, which basically because this cannot be an accident that one after the other international regional centers are being targeted and even international players are being targeted by Israel. Thank you so much, Abdul for that update. Our next segment is about the perennially controversial pandemic treaty. Another round of negotiations failed recently and there are questions about whether a draft will be ready for adoption at the World Health Assembly in May. Now to remind our viewers, this treaty seeks to institutionalize the lessons from the COVID-19 experience so that the world may be ready if a new pandemic breaks out. Now the only problem is that the richer countries and the poorer countries have very different ideas of what lessons we should learn. Richer countries have been reluctant to accept provisions which would ensure better equity and sharing of resources and funding for public health. We go to Jyotsana to see why these negotiations failed and what lies ahead. Jyotsana, every few weeks we seem to come back to the discussions around the pandemic treaty and there seems to be negative news quite often and yet again another round of discussions has failed. So could you give us a bird's eye view of sort of why these negotiations failed and what are the factors that contributed? Yeah, I mean we talk about it often and unfortunately there is nothing new to talk about that is a sad state of affairs. So the recently concluded pandemic treaty negotiations which actually lasted for 10 days. Again this seemed to have failed and I would say failed because we do not see what we have actually seen is that the text has broadened. It has only added more and more numbers of pages. Though I mean if the negotiations proceed in general the pages become leaner and thinner because then you are arriving at consensus and extra text gets goes out of the negotiations. But that is not happening and that is because the developed countries are not letting the negotiations go forward. There are things which developing countries have clarified in as many words that they will not accept or what they want and those issues the developed countries especially the US are just not taking on board. And again I would say the entire thing of access and benefit sharing is something that developed countries are holding on to. They are making it obligatory on everyone especially the developing countries to give data free of cost, put it in public domain about pathogens, newly emerging pathogens etc. But they are not saying that they will share monetary or non-monetary benefits with the developing countries for all of this. And it will cost money because surveillance costs money. So it is not that it is coming free of cost for anyone but then there is no corresponding benefit that the countries seem to be getting developing countries. For example they are also saying that if we actually talk about equity then what we need is and when I say non-monetary compensation or non-monetary benefits that you give us the technology to produce the vaccines and medicines and other tools during a pandemic because we saw that there was definitely lack of all of this which led to a lot of deaths and other sorts of devastation. So the developed countries are not accepting these. There are still concerns about intellectual property and the kind of things that exist in R&D. There is a major concern again throughout the text where a lot of things are still obligatory and sorry where things are voluntary by the people and the developed countries and the pharma companies to give and not mandatory. So till we do not have a language to make it obligatory on people to share information and not impose intellectual property barriers and many other issues. Till it is not obligatory till it is only voluntary it won't work. We saw voluntary mechanisms did not work during COVID they simply did not work. So we are standing in the same place and so that is where we are but if you talk about next steps what are the next steps in the next few months. So because these negotiations failed the WHO has said that based on these negotiations a text will be put in the public domain by 18th of April in English and translated versions later and there will again be negotiations starting end of April which will go till 10th of March before the World Health Assembly which starts late in May. So Joseph in this context I think there's also been a certain set of demands or proposals by civil society groups regarding the financial aspect of this pandemic treaty. What is the money involved? How can it be raised? Or rather how can for instance developing countries benefit in this context? Could you tell us a bit about that? Yeah so there is a group of countries led by Indonesia which is called the group of equity and one of their major demands is about talking about equity in financial aspects during a pandemic also. So they are saying the fund whichever fund is created for the pandemic the WHO's member states should have the control over it and they should monitor it. And they have to say it because at the level of UN they are talking about having a fund which actually be hosted by the World Bank where the member states do not have much of a say. It has a very different structure. WHO is more democratic in that fashion or even the G20 a group of 20 those countries they are also asking about talking about a pandemic fund. But again it is not with the WHO and we know that every country's capacity is not same when we talk about G20 it is extremely I mean the power there is held in our hands of certain countries the developed countries. So to make it more democratic it will be good to have that fund being monitored by the WHO which is led by member states. So that is one but there is also a larger understanding within the civil society when it comes to financial matters. For example what we saw during COVID is that something that could have given more money in the hands of the developing countries especially the LDCs the least developed countries say in Africa and many others. That could have been done by cancelling their debts the World Bank cancelling their debts and the IMF and many other such mechanisms. So that should also become inbuilt when we talk about the pandemic also having a better global text regime could help. The other thing is that even in the pandemic they are talking about some sort of financial mechanism without exactly spelling out what does that mean and how will we go about it. So all of these things should be taken care of and a robust equitable mechanism of funding should be developed which if just we talk about it in very very simple terms it would be a differentiated responsibility. Where the developed countries because of the kind of exploitative system we have across in all aspects and financial aspects the developed countries have more resources. So they should be feeding in more resources taking more responsibility at that front and a lot of the work would come from the developing countries they will share their skills. They will ensure that the production of vaccines etc would happen on their land which will make it cheaper for everybody to access. And not just for developing countries even developed countries poor people and we know about the blacks in US who did not have access to the vaccines and medicines in time. So if the developing countries could produce there would be more products available and even they would have benefited. So in all these terms so the developed countries will pool in money and which can benefit everyone across the world. So those are the proposals that have come again we are nowhere close to talking about it. In fact those people who are on ground in Geneva are monitoring and following the negotiations they say the whispers are right now. Either there will be a 20 page lean text which is quite unlikely or the negotiations will extend beyond May. And I would say yeah one of these two things should happen we should not have a bad treaty because that will be worse than having no treaty at all. Thank you so much Joseph for the update. And that's all we have in today's daily debrief we will be back with a fresh episode tomorrow. Meanwhile do visit our website peoplesdispatch.org follow us on all the social media platforms. And if you are watching this on YouTube please hit the subscribe button.