Tucker Carlson interviews British journalist Steve Sweeney, who survived an Israeli missile strike while reporting in southern Lebanon
Tucker Carlson speaks with Steve Sweeney, a British journalist working for RT (Russia Today) who was nearly killed by an Israeli airstrike while filming a destroyed bridge in southern Lebanon.
Summary
Tucker Carlson interviews Steve Sweeney, a British journalist based in Beirut who works for RT (Russia Today), about the missile strike that nearly killed him and his cameraman while they were reporting on Israeli bombing of bridges in southern Lebanon. Sweeney describes the strike as a deliberate assassination attempt, arguing that Israel's advanced surveillance capabilities mean it knew exactly who was on that bridge. He details a broader pattern of destruction he has documented over two years on the ground: the demolition of Christian holy sites including the tomb of St. Peter, the targeting of ambulances and medical workers, the forced displacement of over 1.2 million Lebanese people, and the use of chemical sprays to permanently destroy olive groves and crops. Sweeney also explains how he came to work for RT after Ukrainian forces attempted to detain him and after finding it impossible to report outside the approved Western narrative on Ukraine — and describes how the British government, rather than supporting him after the assassination attempt, is instead investigating him for potential terrorist activity based on his journalism.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
The missile strike on the bridge
Tucker Carlson: Last month, about two weeks ago, a British journalist called Steve Sweeney, who lives and works in Beirut, Lebanon, was in southern Lebanon attempting with a cameraman to document what the Israeli military is doing to the southern part of that country — which is leveling it, moving people wholesale out, including Christian villages across the area. And as he was preparing his report, he was targeted by an Israeli-owned, American-made aircraft that fired a missile at him in an attempted assassination. Here's what it looked like.
[Footage plays — an explosion is heard, followed by Sweeney's voice: "Further rocket attacks were reported against Nahar and a— what the hell!"]
That wasn't an accident. It was intentional. The jet that fired it had flown over his position, attempting to assassinate him, as the Israeli government has assassinated — on purpose, not accidentally, assassinated, murdered — so many journalists, including Western journalists trying to cover its atrocities. Atrocities that are spreading even now under the cover of the Iran war: a massive land grab across the region, the killing of Christians, the desecration of Christian holy sites. That's all happening. It's all real. And one of the reasons you may not know about it is because the people trying to record it, to chronicle it, have been assassinated. But Steve Sweeney was not assassinated — by luck, or the grace of God, by a quirk of where that missile landed, he survived. He joins us now to explain what happened. Steve, thanks very much for doing this. I'm grateful you're alive. We just played the tape of the moment where you were almost killed. Can you add context to that and describe what was happening?
Steve Sweeney: Well, yeah, you've seen the footage. We were incredibly lucky to come out of that situation alive. It was only purely by luck that the missile ended up — as you've seen on the footage — going through the hole in the bridge, which had already been destroyed. So just to give you some context of why we were there: Israel had issued evacuation orders. It said that it was going to bomb every single bridge in South Lebanon — the bridges that cross the Litani River, which connects the south of Lebanon to the rest of the country. So this was a hugely important news story. This was essentially cutting off a whole swathe of the country. They'd started the bombing the night before. It was a Thursday when we went to the bridge. On the Wednesday evening and into the early hours of the morning, they'd started targeting the bridges. So, as a journalist and as a war correspondent, we were there to report on this huge news story.
We drove down — this is in Tyre District, as other people will probably better know it. As we approached, the Lebanese army have a base there, just ahead of the bridge. We approached them and said, "Is it safe to film?" And they assured us it was perfectly safe for us to go on that bridge. They would know, because if Israel is about to bomb a bridge — which they had already bombed the night before — they would get a message to the Lebanese army via UNIFIL, the United Nations peacekeepers. They don't have direct communication. So there was no pre-warning that this bridge was about to be struck again. There was no military objective in striking the bridge again — it was already destroyed. You could barely even walk across it, let alone take a vehicle across it. This was the Qasmiyeh bridge, the smaller bridge. These link villages and settlements in South Lebanon together.
So we approached the bridge, set up our camera, and started filming. There were fighter jets roaring overhead — and again, this isn't uncommon in the south of Lebanon. But we knew that the fighter jets were flying away from us. They were heading further south and bombing what they would describe as Hezbollah positions around that area. So we weren't unduly concerned. We went onto the bridge and started filming. It wasn't live — some people have said it was live, but it was what we call an "as live." My colleague Ali went to film B-roll. He went to film in the hole where the bridge had been struck. And then — we talk about luck, we talk about chance, we talk about God's will — as he was filming, there was a gust of wind and the camera on the tripod was shaking. So I called him over. I said, "Ali, yalla yalla, please come. The camera is shaking. I need you to steady it." As he came over, around 15 seconds later, we heard this tremendous roar and the Israelis struck the bridge again.
The immediate aftermath — I just remember thinking, "God, we're dead." That was it. It was an earth-shattering sound. The explosion was an almighty blast, and then there was just dust. I couldn't really see anything. From the footage you can hear the soldiers saying to me "yalla yalla," and I couldn't see anything, so I was saying "where, where?" They took me into their barracks. They put tourniquets on my arms. With the adrenaline rush I just thought I'd got some minor cuts — I couldn't really feel too much pain. But then I looked where they'd put the tourniquet and there was blood coming down my arms, blood on my clothes. I was alive, and again, it was completely by chance that we were alive.
This was a very heavy munition — a GBU-38 missile, we believe, fired from an F-16 fighter jet. After the Lebanese army put the tourniquets on and gave us some water, they called an ambulance. The ambulance came, they put me on a stretcher, and off they took me. I should note that the paramedics, the emergency workers, the doctors, the nurses, and all of the medical team that attended to us are the real heroes of this story.
Targeting of medical workers and ambulances
As we were traveling from the bridge to the hospital — maybe about 10 minutes, probably less — they had the blue lights on. Now, in any normal country anywhere in the world, having the blue lights on and being transported by ambulance, you would be safe. Not in Lebanon, because the Israelis are now targeting medical staff. More than 50 have been killed. Hospitals, including the one we attended — the Jabal Amil Hospital — part of that has been destroyed in Israeli air strikes.
We've been working in the field for many years. We're very experienced journalists and we take safety very seriously. We've spoken to a lot of medical workers, and they told us that the logo on the top of the ambulances — which is supposed to give them protection under international law, under the Geneva Conventions — instead of giving them protection, it now places them at risk. So many of them have removed those logos from their emergency vehicles. Barely a day goes by now that we don't hear of a medical worker being struck. The IDF, soon after they carried out a massacre of 12 emergency workers in the south — targeting their station — put out a statement saying that Hezbollah is using medical facilities and ambulances for military purposes. Of course, they didn't back that with any kind of evidence. This is a statement they've reissued again quite recently. But we've been on the ground. We've been in the back of the ambulances. We've been in the hospitals. We've met the civil defense workers, the paramedics. We've been to these stations. And all that you can see there are the kinds of things you would find in any hospital, any medical station, any ambulance anywhere in the world. These are medical facilities, and they should be protected under international law. Targeting them deliberately is a war crime — but it's just one of many that we're seeing here on the ground in Lebanon.
Steve Sweeney's background and arrival in Lebanon
Tucker Carlson: So you're a Westerner — by your accent you sound Irish. You live and work in Lebanon. How long have you been there?
Steve Sweeney: I came to Lebanon in October 2024. This was during the period we call the 66-day war — it was a week or so after the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah, the former secretary general of Hezbollah.
Tucker Carlson: Yes.
Steve Sweeney: I came then. We quite often joke and say that if Steve Sweeney arrives in your country, it's not good news. But Lebanon, as you all know — and I think I've heard you say, Tucker, if I'm correct — it's a beautiful country, a wonderful place. You look at the rich culture, tradition, and history of this country. Even in the south now, which is the area coming under heavy bombardment — this is the area of Jesus. Cana is where Jesus performed what I believe was his first miracle, turning water into wine. There's the tomb of Shimona Safa — this is Simon Peter, St. Peter — who, for many Catholics, they believe was the first pope. Some Christians believe that's his burial site. And of course, this has been destroyed by Israel. They bombed it.
Tucker Carlson: Wait — may I ask you to stop for a second? I'm ashamed by my ignorance as usual. The Israeli military bombed St. Peter's burial site?
Steve Sweeney: Yes, they did.
Tucker Carlson: When?
Destruction of Christian holy sites
Steve Sweeney: This was back in 2024. This wasn't an accidental bombing. The Shimona Safa site — I think it's protected under world heritage law as well. It's a very important site — the burial place of St. Peter, and also a holy site for Muslims. What they did during that period was they brought in an Israeli researcher — the Israeli Defense Force brought him in — and the purpose of that really was to reinvent history. The aim was to say, "Well, this is a Jewish holy site and this land belongs to Israel." That was the narrative they were trying to spin. That researcher, who was actually a very well-known settler activist, was killed during that time.
We visited the site in early 2025 after the ceasefire period. The missiles had gone through the domes. The whole area was destroyed. Bullet marks across all of the buildings, including the area of the shrine of St. Peter himself. So this wasn't accidentally targeted. It wasn't collateral damage. This was a deliberately targeted attack on the tomb of St. Peter.
It's not the only church or religious building that has been attacked. We were in a place called Deir Qanoun — there's a Greek Catholic church there, and that was destroyed during the 66-day war. They killed eight people who had taken shelter inside. A lot of those were emergency workers, the civil defense team, who had taken shelter there, and they bombed it to oblivion. It was completely destroyed.
And in Yarun — another border town — there are two buildings there. There's the Imam Ali mosque, which is a very well-known mosque in the south of Lebanon. But there was also the Church of St. George — St. George, of course, the patron saint of England — and this was a Catholic church. They're very close to each other. You may have seen the footage circulating on social media: there's footage of an Israeli soldier, with a body cam or helmet cam, destroying the statue of St. George. Both of those were completely destroyed.
Tucker Carlson: So what's interesting is —
Steve Sweeney: This is a pattern across the south of Lebanon. Hezbollah — and I'm not defending Hezbollah, it's not my fight, but they're designated, I believe, by the US government as a terror group — they've controlled big parts of Lebanon for many, many years, more than 20 years.
Tucker Carlson: And has Hezbollah blown up Christian holy sites? Has Hezbollah targeted ambulances? I mean, maybe they have. You live there. You tell me.
Steve Sweeney: No, they haven't. In fact, the opposite. And there's plenty of footage of this that people can check for themselves online. Hezbollah was in fact protecting the Christian churches and protecting these symbolic areas of religious importance to Christians. There's footage of them going into churches and cleaning up and tidying up and standing around protecting the Christian faith. If you listen to the speeches of Hassan Nasrallah, he said they are the main defenders of the Christian faith in Lebanon. So no, they're not destroying ambulances, they're not destroying churches, they're not destroying mosques, they're not destroying people's homes. But Israel is, and it's doing it with American and Western-supplied weapons. And it's happening without pretty much anybody in the United States even noticing. I think people's attention is drawn to what's happening in Iran and the unfolding disaster there, and they don't even know that this is happening.
The assassination attempt — was it deliberate?
Tucker Carlson: So back to what happened to you specifically. You said that the missile that almost killed you and your cameraman was launched from an American aircraft — an Israeli-owned, American-made aircraft. Do you believe that was one of the planes that had flown over you? Do you think it was targeting you?
Steve Sweeney: Undoubtedly, we believe it was targeting us. There could be no other explanation for what happened. People have asked this question: why were you on the bridge, and were you deliberately targeted? And we are unequivocal about that. This was an assassination attempt by Israel to silence the voices on the ground, to silence the truth.
The reason we say that is because we've been working in the field for the last two years. Our vehicle is very well known in the south of Lebanon. We were in a clearly identified press vehicle. We had our press jackets on, as you can see in the footage. Israel has the most advanced military technology anywhere in the world. It has the most advanced surveillance technology anywhere in the world. It knows everything that happens in the south of Lebanon. It knows every vehicle. It knows every number plate. It reads our messages. It listens to our conversations. This is why we say it was deliberate — because there's no doubt that they knew we were there.
The other issue, as has been raised by the Russian Foreign Ministry — Maria Zakharova said that this can't have been accidental. There was no military objective in targeting that bridge. It was already destroyed. So we believe it was a deliberate assassination attempt, absolutely. And it's only by luck that we survived. Had the missile not entered the hole in the bridge, had it exploded on the bridge — we've spoken to military experts, weapons experts, who have told us that if it had been maybe a few inches or a foot the other way, there wouldn't even have been bodies to recover. We'd have just been incinerated. These are incredibly powerful munitions, and there was no military objective in targeting the bridge.
The forced displacement and the Greater Israel project
Tucker Carlson: What I mean — because you are a Westerner, you do have a certain advantage. You're an English-speaking Westerner from the British Isles and you're on television. So you're the subject of an assassination attempt by a supposedly Western government, one that's armed by Western governments. What's your recourse? What do you do after they try and kill you but they fail?
Steve Sweeney: That's a very good question. Obviously I am an English-speaking white Westerner, which gives me a certain advantage, a certain privilege. I have to say that just over a week after our very close shave, our dear colleagues and friends in the field weren't so lucky. Fatima Hassouni and Muhammad Hassouni were killed in a targeted strike by the Israelis just after they'd been reporting in the south. So this is the kind of conditions that journalists are working in on the ground.
In terms of recourse — I work for Russian state television, which of course means that my own government, the British government, doesn't like me. In fact, instead of supporting me, they've persecuted me. I was detained on a family visit last July at Heathrow Airport. I was met by counterterrorism police off the airplane. They took me away for interrogation. They quizzed me over my relations to Russia, the Russian state, working for Russian state television. Also about my work here in Lebanon, my associations or connections to Hezbollah, my connections to Ansarallah in Yemen — because I reported from Yemen and from the Hashd al-Shaabi — and my work in Donbas. I spent two years in the field in Donbas on the Russian side. So they were very interested in that, and they're still currently investigating me for potential terrorist activity based on my journalism.
So I don't expect anything from them. Some friends of mine at Declassified UK — a British media organization — inquired. They asked the British government for comment after this assassination attempt, and they simply said — I'm paraphrasing — something along the lines of: "The Foreign Secretary has given Britain's position on the Middle East in a statement to the Commons on Tuesday." That was all they said. They didn't address the specifics of my case. They haven't commented on it. They haven't offered any kind of support whatsoever. Even the British embassy here in Lebanon hasn't contacted me. The only support I've had — I've had lots of love and well wishes from individuals and organizations across the world, for which we're incredibly grateful — but the only country that's actually given me strong and solid support has been Russia.
Tucker Carlson: Are you a British passport holder?
Steve Sweeney: I'm a British passport holder. Yes.
Tucker Carlson: So you're a British subject. Even though you don't live there most of the time, you have family there, you are a citizen — but the British government is taking the side of the Israeli military over its own citizens.
Steve Sweeney: Well, that's how it seems to me. Yes. Not only taking the side of the Israelis, but they're helping provide the weapons and the ammunition and the political and military support to carry out such strikes. So somewhere along that chain — we know it was an F-16 and a GBU-38, American-made, American-supplied — but Britain is well involved in that supply chain. Some of the add-on equipment that enabled them to carry out that strike against me is almost certainly provided by the British government, without a doubt.
Tucker Carlson: How does that — I don't understand, since you know both Britain and the United States fought against the Nazis and lost hundreds of thousands of their own men doing it. I don't really see where the moral culpability is here. Why would Britain and the United States have some duty to become subjects of the Israeli government? Where does that come from?
Steve Sweeney: Well, there's a long history. The two biggest supporters of Israel have traditionally been the United States and Britain. You can trace this back to the formation of the state of Israel. They have their own interests in the region. They use Israel as a proxy force for colonialist, imperialist expansion and plans for the region.
If you look at what's happening on the ground now, the reason that we reported on the bridges is that what you're seeing is the forced expulsion of 1.2 million Lebanese people who have been forced from their land, forced from their homes, and are now forcibly displaced. We describe this in Lebanon as an ethnic cleansing operation on a scale far larger than the Nakba — the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians that were forced from their homes on the creation of the state of Israel. The situation here is simply astonishing. 370,000 of those forcibly displaced are children.
Behind that is this attempt by Israel to grab that land. Not only are they forcing people out of the area south of the Litani River, they've extended that now to south of the Zaharani River — some 40 kilometers from the Israeli border that they've pushed people out of. The Israelis have been very open about it. Israel Katz, the defense secretary, has said that they want the land. They've said they want to create a security buffer zone, or whatever terminology they use. But these plans have been long in the making. Israel has invaded and tried to take that area before. They think it's their biblical right. We're talking about the Greater Israel project — which I know you know full well about after your conversation with Ambassador Huckabee — and it reappears in different guises over the years.
The most recent was the Trump economic zone, announced back in, I think, August last year. Around that time, Tom Barrack, the US envoy, arrived here in Lebanon. You might remember this sound bite from him — he spoke at the presidential palace to a group of journalists, there was a bit of a melee, and he described them as "animalistic." He was condemned for that — it was seen as an incredibly racist comment toward Lebanese journalists doing their job in the field. But behind that, he laid out this plan for a Trump economic zone, which meant that hundreds of thousands of people would be forced from their homes permanently. It was dressed up as a regeneration project: we're going to create new homes, create jobs, create roads, create infrastructure, make the area safe. But it meant that people who have lived on that land for generations — these are not just dots on a map, these are homes where people have lived for generations — are going to be turfed out. Nobody really paid attention to it at the time. Of course we did, as journalists on the ground.
People talk about the Gaza model now coming to Lebanon. Smotrich said they're going to turn Dahiyeh — the southern suburbs of Beirut — into Khan Yunis. And they've used Beit Hanoun and Rafah as references. Israel Katz said they're going to destroy all of these villages that they call frontline villages. And I can tell you now, having been here for two years, those villages are largely already destroyed. The south of Lebanon already looks like Gaza. Whole villages completely lie in ruins. No reconstruction plan.
Over the last 15 months, we've seen Israel break that ceasefire. We talk about a ceasefire from November 2024, but there was never a ceasefire. You can't have a ceasefire when only one side stops firing. More than 15,000 violations over the last 15 months. This has included the rigging and destroying of homes, drone strikes, targeted assassinations, the use of chemical spray to destroy crops. We witnessed and filmed all of this — the use of white phosphorus in a place called Blida, a village very close to the border. During olive harvesting season, we went to make a film there. The Israelis refused to allow the farmers to tend to their land unless they gave them all of the contact details and the names of who was going into the fields. While we were there, they started bulldozing the olive groves. These are olive groves that are older than the state of Israel.
So this isn't something new. What we're seeing now — the escalation on March the 2nd — has been going on for a very, very long time.
Now, you ask me why Britain and the United States would support that. They use Israel as their kind of proxy force in the area they refer to as the Middle East — we call it West Asia here. They use it to grab the land. The Greater Israel project suits Israel, but it suits Britain and the United States because this is a land of great wealth and resources. They want to extract that wealth, extract the resources, and use it for their own gain. And of course they want strategic control across the whole of the region. We've seen that with what happened in Syria, with the bombing of Iran, with what happened in Gaza. All of these have taken place not just with the connivance of the United States and Britain, but with their active involvement.
You can see signs along the airport road here in Beirut that say "Made in the USA" — and that's how they see the bombs that are falling on them here. They're made in the United States. They're made in Britain. And they're the root cause of the death and destruction taking place across this region. Israel fires the bullets, but the guns are well and truly loaded by Britain and the United States.
The destruction of olive groves
Tucker Carlson: Well, since you mentioned it, I have to ask you about a small point that has bothered me for many years, and that's the Israeli policy of cutting down olive trees, some of which are hundreds and hundreds — up to a thousand years old. They're central to the ancient economy of the Levant, but they're also beautiful and they're revered almost by the people who are actually from there — not the ones from Poland who pretend they're from there, but the people who actually are there. Why would the Israeli government chainsaw or bulldoze olive trees? That seems evil to me. I don't understand the explanation for it.
Steve Sweeney: Well, that's the only way to look at it. Of course it's evil. But these olive groves — like you said, some of them are thousands of years old. I think the oldest in Lebanon is something like 6,000 years old. It's the lifeblood of Lebanon. It's a symbol of Lebanese cultural heritage and identity. The people here are very, very connected to their land. They're deeply connected to their land. And this is the lifeblood not just for the south of Lebanon, where the farmers harvest their olive groves — tobacco is also a huge crop here — but for all of Lebanon.
If you can disconnect people from their land and their culture, then of course you can take it over. And that's what they've been doing — not just by bulldozing it, bombing it, but by spraying these chemicals that will make sure these crops will never be able to grow on the land again. Then they can just brush them aside. They can build houses, build settlements there, just like they did on the formation of the state of Israel. They're building these illegal settlements everywhere. And that's exactly what they want to do in Lebanon.
Tucker Carlson: They're building settlements in Lebanon?
Steve Sweeney: Well, they want to. That's their aim. You look at the Greater Israel project itself. I mentioned Yarun earlier — the place where the mosque and the church were destroyed. Earlier this year, a few months before the escalation on March the 2nd, a group of settlers came in across the border into or very close to Yarun and planted trees. The message was — I can't remember the exact terminology they used — but this was them planting their roots in Lebanese territory. They believe that Lebanese territory biblically belongs to them.
Now, a few years ago this could have been seen as a conspiracy theory or a fringe movement, but this is now right at the heart of the Israeli government. Smotrich and Ben Gvir are advocates of the Greater Israel project. Benjamin Netanyahu himself is a supporter of the Greater Israel project. This isn't a fantasy. This is happening now. It's unfolding in real time in front of our very eyes. And they have some rabbis in Israel that justify this religiously as well — they will say that this is the land that belongs to them according to holy scripture.
This is why we're seeing this wholesale destruction over the last 15 months. They say it was about destroying Hezbollah, but it's not. You're seeing whole settlements lying under rubble. My beloved is from a village in the south and her entire village has pretty much been reduced to rubble. Her family home — rebuilt, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed — so many times. This is very common for the people in that part of the world.
And Israel has occupied Lebanon. After the ceasefire in November 2024, it built five military bases inside Lebanese sovereign territory. We filmed them. And rather than scaling them back, Israel was expanding the construction of those military posts — illegally, in breach of UN Resolution 1701, in breach of international law. The Lebanese government asked them to leave Lebanese sovereign territory. And of course they simply refuse and push further and further into Lebanese sovereign territory.
The interesting thing — and I don't know whether your viewers will be aware of this — is that there isn't really an official border between Israel and Lebanon. There's no officially agreed border. We have the Blue Line, which was established by the United Nations after Israel was forced out in 2000. This line is supposed to be the demarcation point that Israel is not supposed to encroach further across. Israel sees a lot of this land as belonging to it — there was the 1923 mandate line when it was the British Mandate of Palestine, a border drawn up then which Israel inherited in 1948 but was never really agreed to. The armistice in 1949 didn't agree those borders either. So Israel sees fit to push forward at will, and it's done so with total impunity.
There's no international outcry about the destruction of these villages and settlements, the use of chemical weapons, the use of white phosphorus, the assassination of individuals in drone strikes, the killing of paramedics, the murder of journalists. All of these things have been happening for many, many years. The world is maybe paying more attention now. We've had Western journalists arriving in the country since March the 2nd. The major news networks have arrived and they're kind of surprised at what they're seeing — they're seeing this for the first time. But this has been going on for a very, very long time. And I say this is a bit of a failing of the major media organizations, because had they been on the ground in Lebanon for the past 15 months, they would have seen this unfolding. Maybe the situation would be very different from what it is now. They weren't there, and the Lebanese journalists — the people that live on that land — were crying for help and nobody was listening.
How Steve Sweeney came to work for RT
Tucker Carlson: I have to ask — so you are covering this on the ground in Lebanon, living and working at the center of all this, and as noted, almost got killed for it. But you're working for a Russian news agency. You've clearly been a journalist a long time — you look over 40, so probably a long time. How did you wind up working for a Russian news agency? Why aren't you a BBC reporter? What was your path?
Steve Sweeney: MI5 would never clear me for the BBC organization. There's no chance. I mean, I wouldn't work for the BBC on a personal level. We've met some BBC journalists here and they've been very pleasant, very nice — as have all the journalists from the major networks, as individuals. I have no problem with them. But how I ended up working for RT — for Russia Today — is that I was working for a newspaper before I entered the world of broadcast journalism. I was the international editor of a national daily newspaper in Britain for many years. When the Ukraine conflict started — the special military operation — I was covering that and went to the western part of Ukraine to chase a couple of stories. I ended up in Lviv. The Ukrainians tried to kidnap me, and I managed to make my escape back out through Poland and then to Germany.
Tucker Carlson: I'm going to ask you to pause — why? Why did they try to kidnap you, the Ukrainians?
Steve Sweeney: Simply because I was a journalist that wasn't toeing their narrative. And the Ukraine conflict is the most propagandized war in history, in my view. You look at what happened — even the Iraq War, there was that space within the media field to criticize your government's policy. When it came to Ukraine, that window or that gap narrowed to the point where it was impossible, because there was no space to offer anything different from the narrative of the Western governments, the British government, the Ukrainian government. So if you were going there to actually do some proper journalism — and I say that because, with all due respect to those organizations, the BBC, CNN, Sky News, the Times, the Telegraph, Channel 4 — they were all saying the exact same thing. They were taking it in turns to stand on the top of the same hotel roof in Kyiv or Lviv and repeat the line, repeat the line. But they weren't actually seeing what was the reality on the ground. They were just stenographers — essentially copy-and-paste reports.
And it reached completely insane levels in Britain. I'm sure it was the same in the United States, but in Britain they started demonizing Vladimir Putin. One of the craziest reports I saw was that Vladimir Putin has an assistant that follows him around with a briefcase, and every time he goes to the toilet they collect his feces and urine so his opponents can't run any kind of tests on them. It got to completely insane levels. And anytime you were reporting anything different, you were shut down.
So I ended up at Russia Today after that, because I saw that my independence as a journalist and my ability to report on the truth had completely disappeared. It was impossible. The only way to do that was to go to Russia and work for RT. Our one of our logos is "Question More" — and that's what we do. I always say: question more, question us. That's the role of a journalist.
So I ended up working for RT. I ended up working for two years in Donbas on the Russian side, and I was seeing something completely different from the narrative being played out in the West. I was seeing war crimes committed daily by the Ukrainians against a civilian population. When I was there, they called it "Donetsk roulette" — you never know when a missile might strike you. I was seeing attacks on marketplaces — 27 people killed, body parts everywhere. These were babushkas, dedkas, old men, old women, the poorest people in that part of the city, selling homemade fruit and vegetables from their homes — just obliterated. Arms and legs everywhere. I was seeing hospitals that were struck, bus stops being attacked.
I spoke about it at the United Nations Security Council. I gave testimony of what I'd seen and the failures of Minsk One and Minsk Two and the path to peace. And what I always say is: what we were seeing in Donbas is the same playbook that we're seeing in Gaza, the same playbook we're seeing here in Lebanon. These are the most powerful countries in the world waging war, using the most sophisticated technology and the most powerful weapons, against some of the poorest, most vulnerable people in the world. They can't fight back. The people of Gaza, the people of Lebanon — they weren't sent HIMARS or Storm Shadows or these advanced weapons. These were sent to their oppressors to massacre them. This is what's happening.
And it's the very same forces. In Donbas, it was very simple for me as a journalist. It was a people that wanted peace, people that wanted to be able to speak their own language — Russian — people that wanted to be able to practice their own culture and traditions if they identified as Russian. You could put it as really as simply as that. But then the Ukrainian government decided to wage a war against its own people. I know for some this went back to the start of the SMO, but this has a much, much longer history, starting way back in 2014, the Maidan coup.
All of these things people forget about now, conveniently — including the media. The media has actually made them forget about it. Because one day there was a neo-Nazi problem in Ukraine — the Azov and the Right Sector were carrying out these horrific actions, these horrific killings, terrorizing the people — and the next day, all of a sudden, Ukraine is a paragon of liberal democracy. It's incredible. But people aren't getting the truth. This is why I ended up at RT — because the space to do proper journalism just wasn't afforded to me anywhere else, in any of the British press.
Like I said, I kind of semi-joked, but MI5 would never allow me to work for the BBC or for any of the other major news organizations. And I have to say, with Russia Today, with RT, I have complete freedom to report exactly what I want. Nobody tells me what to say. Nobody tells me where I can film. Nobody tells me who I can speak to, who I should speak to. I have total journalistic freedom. And I'm very happy working for RT. I'm very proud to work for RT.
We always say that here on the ground — obviously I came somewhat into the limelight after what happened to me, but it's not about me. Journalists should never become the story. Unwittingly, I did. But we always say that our job is to raise the voices of the people of this land. Our mic is a tribune for the people, and it will continue to be a tribune for the people as long as we remain in the field.
Tucker Carlson: It must be such a strange experience for you — since it sounds like you were in the British media for a long time, conventional media, a newspaper in a country that reads newspapers famously — all of a sudden to have this perspective where you have more freedom to do straightforward journalism at Russia Today than you had at a British newspaper. What is that like, as someone who I assume was raised in the UK?
Steve Sweeney: Yeah. The British media field — and I think it's not just in Britain, but if you look at the Western countries — it's very concentrated. It's owned by a very small group of people who own and control the media. They control what you say. They control the narrative. But I think the change is that the owners of these media organizations are now more and more forcefully pushing their view and their narrative. And you see it permeating through every word that's spoken on British television, written in every single word in every single newspaper. There's no divergence. They're all uniform.
Of course, people in the West think that Russia is some kind of authoritarian dictatorship, that we're living under the jackboot of Vladimir Putin. But you've been to Moscow. You know that couldn't be further from the truth. You see very educated people. They have a rich culture and history. Russia — I don't know any other nation on earth that has such a rich culture and history. Shostakovich, Dostoyevsky, Prokofiev, Yuri Gagarin — they put the first human being in space. Mendeleev, the founder of the periodic table. Huge figures in the field of science, literature, art, music. And you go to any bar in Moscow and within five minutes you've had one of the most intelligent political or cultural conversations you've ever had, sitting over a cold pint of Guinness.
And for those that think people are too afraid to criticize Putin — let me tell you, they're not. I've heard it myself. The same kinds of criticisms you hear in every country anywhere in the world. They're not afraid to express those views. They don't necessarily hold them. Vladimir Putin is incredibly popular, and he's incredibly popular for a very good reason: people remember the days before Putin became president. They remember it was a very, very dark time in the country. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and up until Vladimir Putin came to power, there wasn't that kind of national stability. Russia is obviously a huge country — 11 time zones — so to hold it together is incredibly difficult. But Vladimir Putin brought that stability. He made Russia into what it is today — a strong, economically thriving, independent country that, despite what the West says, still has good relations with other countries on the world stage. It's not isolated by any stretch of the imagination. It's only isolated if you think the world is the Western powers.
So there is this freedom to criticize, but of course he's hugely popular. And I think people in the West find that very difficult to understand — just how popular Putin is in Russia.
Tucker Carlson: Everything you're saying is true. I've seen it multiple times.
Steve Sweeney: Even for example — RT is banned in the United States. It's banned in Europe. In Russia, Vladimir Putin holds every year a Q&A for journalists, for members of the public. Every year the BBC is there. Steve Rosenberg asks a question. He tries to get a gotcha. Every year he fails, but he keeps giving it a go. But the BBC is allowed to operate freely inside Russia. I couldn't do the same in Britain. They'd try and arrest me.
Tucker Carlson: They would arrest you.
Steve Sweeney: If I took an RT microphone into London and started trying to interview people, or if I stood in front of a camera with an RT microphone and started trying to give a report, I would be arrested. We're banned. We're treated as foreign agents. So it would be unlawful for us to work there. We could be jailed, sanctioned — a whole host of things could happen. So we don't have that freedom to operate inside Britain.
This is something that always amazes me, because Russian state television was banned in Europe and America because — apparently — we're propagandists, or the Kremlin media machine, or these tired old tropes deeply rooted in Russophobia. But what they're really saying is that the people of Europe and America are stupid. People are able to disseminate fact from fiction. They're able to watch a news report and decide whether it's propaganda or whether it's true. They can make that decision themselves, and they should be able to make that decision themselves in a free and democratic country that operates with freedom of speech and freedom of the press.
The European Union has sanctioned a journalist — someone I knew, Hussein Doru — who is a journalist for Red Media. They sanctioned him because of his work. They accused him of something to do with the Russian state, but it was because of his reporting on Palestine. So there's no way that they uphold freedom of the press. I myself am being investigated for potential terrorist activities based on my journalism. Nothing else. That's it — for my journalistic reports.
So where's the press freedom? Can I walk into the United States? Can I freely walk around and start interviewing people? Can I interview Donald Trump? Can I sit down and speak to the people on the ground? Of course not. We're banned. It's an absurdity. It is an absurdity, but press freedom is alive and kicking — apparently.
Britain's suppression of criticism of Israel
Tucker Carlson: And it's also a little bit bewildering — it's surprising for me, and it's an ominous sign, I would say, as an American — to see people arrested in Britain for criticizing Israel. Why would it be illegal for a Briton to criticize Israel? What does Israel have to do with the UK? And by the way, it was Israeli terror groups who murdered British citizens, British soldiers, British diplomats.
Steve Sweeney: Exactly. The King David Hotel.
Tucker Carlson: Exactly. And many others. And they murdered a lot of Brits — murdered them with their hands slowly in some cases, blew them up with bombs. True terrorist acts. And the guy who did it later became the prime minister — Menachem Begin.
So actually Israel owes a great debt to the UK, which is responsible for its formation in the first place, as you know. So why in the world would British citizens be banned from criticizing Israel? They owe nothing to Israel. What is this?
Steve Sweeney: Well, it's a bizarre, dystopian situation. You've probably seen, but in Britain — maybe six months ago — the government moved to ban a group called Palestine Action. These were protesters that were throwing paint at airplanes or whatever. They were trying to stop a genocide, and Britain prescribed it as a terrorist organization. I think against all the legal advice that they were given, they ignored that and went ahead, and it became illegal to even support or hold up placards saying "I support Palestine Action." So they were arresting 80, 90-year-old women, dragging them away and charging them as terrorists under terrorism offenses.
Britain is obviously heavily invested in Israel — because it was Britain really that was behind the formation of the state of Israel in the first place. You can trace it back to the Balfour Declaration, where they drew a line in the sand and gave a land that didn't belong to them to another people whose land it wasn't. They gave away the land that belonged to the people indigenous to that land.
They talk about this historical debt owed to Israel. You can go to Germany and some of the European countries and of course they talk about the Holocaust — they bear a heavy burden and responsibility for that, or they feel that, and again there's this kind of historical debt that they feel. But in Britain now it's moved way beyond that. And like you said, in the early days, in the formation of the state of Israel, they were attacking Brits, killing Brits, blowing up hotels. So this kind of unraveled support — where you can't even criticize Israel, there's no space, any criticism of Israel is now deemed either anti-Semitic, an act of terror, or unlawful — means that you're ostracized from society. You're labeled an anti-Semite. You're labeled a racist.
And I think Britain's objective is — Israel is an outpost for Anglo-American imperialist interests, what they want to gain out of the region. So it acts as this kind of Anglo-imperialist outpost, and Britain will back Israel militarily to the hilt, politically to the hilt. But of course they're using it to strategically control the entire Middle East.
Everything that happens in this region is because of the historical mess of the British and the French — back in the time of the Sykes-Picot Agreement, the carving up of that part of the world, just arbitrarily drawing lines. "Okay, you can have this part, you can have this part." And the legacy of that lives on today. Which is in fact why, as a British journalist of Irish origin, as a Western journalist, I have a historical debt to the people of this land — because of what my country has inflicted upon them. I see that as part of my duty as a journalist: not to just fall in line behind my own government, not to be a stenographer for power, but to expose to the world what's happening here on the ground in Lebanon and in other countries.
For every bomb that falls on Lebanon — and there have been many — every bomb that falls on Lebanon is a bomb supplied by the United States, a bomb supplied by Britain. Israel just simply fires the bullets that they supplied. It's carrying out these actions with the support and complicity of Britain and the United States and other Western countries.
The role of Western media
Tucker Carlson: Do your former colleagues in the British media feel shame as they continue their stenography and see you speaking freely and risking your life to do it?
Steve Sweeney: They should. Yeah, they should. They should feel a great sense of shame. But I don't know whether they do. Like I said, on a personal level I've met the individual journalists from the major news organizations and they've been very gracious and very pleasant as individuals. But they all fall in line with the same narrative.
Even the journalists that are coming here — they'll describe Dahiyeh, which is the southern suburbs of Beirut. That entire area has been evacuated. We're talking an area of between 500,000 and 800,000 people. And that whole area has been evacuated. It's bombed every single day without fail. Fighter jets roaring overhead, drones overhead, civilian buildings being destroyed. Now for them, this is the southern suburbs of Beirut — they call it a "Hezbollah stronghold." That use of language is not an accident. It's deliberate. They call it a Hezbollah stronghold because it justifies the bombing of that area. But this isn't a Hezbollah stronghold. This is where we live. These are the coffee shops where we meet our friends. These are the places we go shopping. This is a vibrant area full of life, people's homes.
And the Western media play a very pernicious role — what I believe is this manufacturing of consent. Because outside of that, Dahiyeh is just a place on a map that gets bombed. Lebanon is a war zone — that's how they describe it. But Lebanon isn't a war zone. As we already discussed, Lebanon is a land of rich culture, rich tradition, rich history, full of the most amazing people you could ever meet anywhere in the world. The same with the south of Lebanon. They say, "Well, all these areas south of the Litani, they're all Hezbollah supporters." Of course there's strong support for Hezbollah in those areas, because people see them as the only organization that is standing up and fighting against Israel, that is defending their land, their territory.
Hezbollah was born — depending on your view — in the mid-1980s. The people of Lebanon don't have some predisposition to using weapons and guns. They were formed as an armed militia exactly to defend their land. The same as in Ireland. The same as in any country that's come under attack from the Western powers, from Israel, from their neighbors. That's the origin of these organizations. But to call it "Hezbollah land" — when this is, as we said, the land that Jesus walked in, a land rich in culture and history — the Western journalists are seeing it and speaking about it and writing about it very much in those terms.
We hear the same trigger words: "Iran-backed," "Iranian-backed militia," "Hezbollah strongholds." The terminology they use is absolutely deliberate — to justify Israel bombing those lands. That's all it is.
Whether they're embarrassed about writing that or not, I don't know. I think it's very difficult to get a job in the British media if you don't write those lines or speak them into a camera. Noam Chomsky — back in, I guess, the '90s — was interviewing a British journalist, Andrew Marr. He hit the nail on the head when he said, "I'm not necessarily saying you don't believe what you're saying, but if you didn't believe what you said, you wouldn't be sitting where you are now." And I think that's it, right? You're not going to get a job unless you believe those things or are prepared to say them or write them. Whether they're embarrassed or not, I don't know. And to be honest, I don't care very much either.
Will Steve Sweeney stay in Lebanon?
Tucker Carlson: They may not be capable of it. So my last question — I know you're only talking about yourself, but it is about you. Israel tried to assassinate you. They failed, just barely. I can't imagine interviews like this make them less inclined to try again. Are you going to stay in Lebanon?
Steve Sweeney: Absolutely. 100%, without doubt. I'll stay in Lebanon. Lebanon is my home. My beloved is here in Lebanon. My life is here in Lebanon. I always say: Lebanon isn't my country, but Lebanon and the Lebanese people belong in my heart. And I'll forever be in the service of the Lebanese people. They've been good enough to host me in their country, and I hope that my journalism does them justice, and I hope my presence does them justice. I always remember — and it's always important to remember — that I'm a guest in this land.
So no, I have no intention of leaving. I have no intention of stopping reporting. We've already been back to the front line just two days after the attack. We made sure that we went out, because we're not going to be silenced. And if they think that we're going to be leaving the field, then they're very much mistaken.
Tucker Carlson: What a remarkable conversation. It is one of the great countries and most beautiful countries in the world — top five in my opinion, top three. So I'm grateful you're there to chronicle what's being done to it in our name, with our weapons. It's really evil. Steve Sweeney, thank you very much for doing this. I appreciate it.
Steve Sweeney: A pleasure. Thank you.