U.S. strikes 3 Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump says | full coverage
for there to be a negotiation with the Iranians and we really expected some very serious robust diplomatic efforts to be going on between is Iranians and Americans but this is really catching everybody who was watching off guard i mean we knew that there was no breakthrough in Geneva where the European uh top diplomats were meeting with the Iranians to come up with some kind of last stage effort but we really didn’t expect this attack to come so soon and only only a few weeks ago uh the the Israeli attack the first air strike that was taken out on Iranian soil now that one was also a surprise because President Trump’s special envoy to Iran issue Steve Witoff was going to talk to the Iranians on that uh you know just a week ago in Oman and you know we were expecting that conversation to happen so Jake I’m just going to stop you now because u President Trump uh sharing on Truth Social another post saying Fordo is gone um that’s significant of course Jay uh because of course we’ve been talking quite a lot about Fordo and how deep underground it is and how these bunker busters were so critical to taking it out but this post on truth social from the president just coming into us saying Fordo is gone now Foro of course as we understand is the nuclear site of the Iranians where they are keeping uranium enrichment site i mean enriched uranium of course is the basic ingredient to put together a nuclear bomb so there was a lot of speculation that this will be the target if America were to directly attack Iran so there was a lot of speculation building up for the past week that America’s first target if it were to decide to attack Iran it will be Faro and the thing about this Bordeaux site was that it is deep underground and the understanding has been that the Israelis do not have the bomb that can reach this underground site that they only the Americans have the 30,000 lb bomb that could really reach the site and make the blast that’s strong enough to collapse the tunnels to collapse this uh the the the facility that it can really remove this site but here’s the thing uh whether it was actually destroyed or not you know you are going to need some kind of verification effort it is unclear how President Trump knows that the Foro is gone uh it may be his he’s getting some kind of assessment but I think we’ll really need to see uh for some kind of more further confirmation on whether Foro is truly destroyed well that’s it Jake because at the moment we’ve only seen these posts from President Trump we’ve had no reaction from Iran um as I was mentioning earlier Jake uh in the last couple of days there’s been a bit more fervent diplomacy certainly we saw those EU foreign ministers on Friday in Geneva uh meeting with Iran and even in Istanbul uh leaders from Muslim majority countries um so in some ways even though this was on the table it’s a bit of a surprise it really is uh you know like I was saying earlier this is probably the second surprise that we’re seeing you know there was this speculation at the very beginning before the Israel had attacked Iran that perhaps Israelis will wait until this negotiation effort with the the Iranians between sorry between us and Israel uh Iran will continue uh and then until that you know really exhausts itself that Israel will hold their attack so until the the um until the American and the is uh Iranians have that talk uh that the Israelis will will stop and President Trump certainly suggested that that was going to be the plan and then we saw an attack that came out of nowhere so this is really the second time we were really caught off guard uh perhaps this is part of his strategy or not but we’ll have to see jake what’s the political reaction likely to be here in Washington DC amongst his own Republican party but also Democrats well the Democrats has been very vocal in their opposition to this war uh I think there is a very bipartisan feeling right now where a lot of people are upset or disappointed at President Trump uh for you know getting America possibly into another drawn out war with Iran now there a significant part of President Trump’s support base people voted for him because he ran on the campaign trail with the promise to keep Americans out of war in fact to get Americans out of any existing conflict so we have seen some few revolts actually within his own ranks Republican lawmakers as well as Republican speakers uh you know media personalities who oppose this possibility and Jake we’re just seeing uh on the news agencies here reports in the New York Times as well that the White House has alerted US TV networks that the president is expected to address the nation later that of course is typical when uh the US takes this sort of action i remember uh seeing other presidents like Obama doing similar it is truly difficult to understate how how important of this moment this will be this is a very historic moment you know a lot of people we don’t know how this will roll out but we may be here standing at the the similar moment to 2003 when America entered the war against Iraq that invasion uh of Iraq will be something that many people who are watching this moment today will be thinking about and President Trump certainly promised to uh to end all these what he calls forever war so you know I think we’re really at the danger of America getting tangled into another decadel long war in Middle East and this is something certainly Mr trump as well as some of his uh his support base truly wants to avoid indeed uh Jake so just um just to remind viewers who are just joining us here on BBC News because it’s significant developments uh that we are bringing to you and that is that President Trump has confirmed US involvement in strikes on Iran um a post on truth social saying uh earlier that the US had completed a very successful attack on three nuclear sites in Iran including Fordo Natans and Ishvahan all planes now outside of Iranian airspace mr trump saying that a full payload of bombs was dropped on the primary site of Fordo and as we’re showing you now a second post on Truth Social there saying Fordo is gone it’s important to uh remind viewers that we have not had any confirmation of what the president is saying there we don’t know yet from uh Iranian state TV which is our likely we have breaking news now out of the Middle East president Trump announced the US has attacked three nuclear sites in Iran in a post on Truth Social he called the attack successful and says the planes are now outside of Iranian airspace mr trump went on to write quote “Now is the time for peace.” Let’s bring in CBS News Middle East reporter Courtney Keely to bring us the very latest courtney so Trump President Trump just announced this on True Social just not very long ago and what we’re trying to do is see if there’s any satellite imagery or anything out that would have been taken in real time as those B2 bombers would have bombed those nuclear plants especially for which was a place that would require the B uh the stealth B2 bomber to carry a 30,000 lb bomb over it to bust into the depths of that nuclear plant that’s built into a mountain side but it had seemed that President Trump was reluctant to do that now he did say around midweek this week that he could just decide at a moment’s notice i had seen today that B2 bombers had been moved to Guam so that was a little bit of a note let’s watch this space and now he has announced in his own space that it has been done which basically now makes the US complicit in an offensive way in in the war that it has taken an offensive stance and bombed Iran not through the not by supporting Israel defensively but by offensively unilaterally doing that it’s something that the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Jane had said was a red line unacceptable and now we have to see if the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps if the Supreme Leader who appears to be in hiding if there’s any kind of retribution because of these strikes they could go after softer targets oil facilities the Street of Hormuz now I don’t want to speculate while this is happening in real time so what we’re going to want to see next is there if there is any degradation on that Ford DAO nuclear plant did the job effectively really take it out now President Trump is saying it’s gone but the planes do take live pictures now they’re safely out of of airspace President Trump said and it what he call he’s calling it successful the next thing will be to see the satellite de uh images and and get analysts and especially nuclear analysts that are experts in the nuclear plant so we’ll be looking to the IAEA for reaction we’ll be looking for a lot of different reaction i’m also right now seeking comments and and videos from inside Iran they do have a robust system of VPNs um some of them that were actually supported by the US State Department the US State Department does not support regime change in any way but it has offered support in VPNs and right now those are very crucial for the Iranians to get any sort of information out because most of the internet has been cut most of the time in the last several weeks so I’m working on my sources uh it’ll just be late middle of the night now possibly early morning so it will soon we will be seeing daylight and we will be seeing possibly some reaction from the Iranians as well as the Israelis but this is all happening in real time president Trump saying that nuclear plant especially for DAO one of the three that the US hit is gone now we have to know and see as journalists and analysts uh and get the information but that is probably going to take a few minutes because this is breaking news right now let’s uh recap just for a moment Cornique president Trump does say that three nuclear sites in Iran were attacked what do we know about the conditions of those sites right now well the towns had been hurt before by Israel hitting it hard and taking out the power plant and the backup generators so just by doing actually just getting rid of the power plant that that operates Natans there could have been potential centrifuges that had been broken which are key to enriching uranium now Raphael Grossi from the IAEA the UN watchdog group had commented on that this week also in terms of Isvahan it’s been unclear how much damage there is and most nuclear experts were wondering what kind of degradation or what kind of operations would happen at Forau would it be something on the ground and some kind of sabotage by MSAD for instance it did seem that President Trump might have pulled a bait and switch by saying “I’ll decide in two weeks.” Because clearly he decided within 48 hours has there been any response from Iran just yet have they even had an opportunity to respond to what’s happened um just stand by let me just check one um um it’s 3:45 in the morning i’m just checking my sources um um they could be hitting mobile launchers they’re hitting close to Thran right now according to somebody I know there and they are hitting hard quote unquote so it’s not just um a US bombing of the nuclear plants but this might be Israeli air strikes in that are also launching in Tehran because my source says right now they are hitting hard so you’re saying that the bombardment is continuing as we speak right now but not necessarily US at all president Trump only said that the bombers went after the nuclear plant don’t forget that Israel is an active kinetic war space and has been bombing Iran daily so this might be Israeli air strikes after the US nuclear bombs and most likely that’s the that’s Iran hitting um excuse me Israel hitting Tehran iran and other areas not the US president Trump only took responsibility and claimed responsibility for these three nuclear plants he said those planes are back home the president had said that he was going to give Iran 2 weeks uh what could have happened between when this uh was said uh within 48 hours ago and now nothing happened significantly in terms of casualties uh whether um President Trump had used that to bluff is unclear um usually he says that part out loud and we’re going to have to listen closely to what else he says do we know anything about the reaction of lawmakers right now who uh pretty much did not want the US to get involved in these kinds of conflicts any longer um yes I’m um we’re going to have to be gathering that but again it’s 8:30 on a Saturday night and this was a surprise attack so we’re going to have to effort more information it’s really President Trump um he’s going to be addressing the nation at 10 p.m about these air strikes that’s um a little over an hour and a half from now and we’ll be learning more then too and as of right now we don’t know about the casualties experienced in that area where he’s where three strikes were made we do not hear about the casualties or the damage or anything that could have happened it did happen in the middle of the night it’s about 3:45 a.m in Iran right now so this would have happened in the middle of the night on a Saturday it’s unlikely especially with the Israelis attacks it’s unlikely that this was fully staffed let’s talk a little bit more about what the president said on his truth social can you go over that in terms of what he is telling the American people right now he announced that the US had a successful operation he put the word bombs in all caps and he said that the the bomb the the US had carried it out air strikes and that Fordo was quote gone fordo being that nuclear plant built into the side of a mountain very deep and many people had speculated it would it would be needed for the US to get um drop a 30,000 pound bomb in there from one of their stealth B2 bombers and that appears to be what happened but we still need to hear from the president what kind of plane was used and what kind of bomb was used he’s just saying bombs now but he’s not being specific at 10 o’clock he’s going to speak to the nation uh 10 o’clock Eastern time what do we think that he will tell the nation at that point in terms of what made him decide to uh do this at this juncture well President Trump often goes off script it’s a question of whether he writes the remarks or somebody writes the remarks for him um because this is a different kind of presidency and we’ve already seen him clearly announce it in his words on through social so in a more formal address to the nation from the White House we’ll get more of what maybe the president had decided um made his helped his decision-m or not uh but we should be getting more details by then anyway from Iranians and from elected US officials and from administration as well let’s talk a little bit about where these three three sites are located you mentioned Fordo um how close uh can you tell me are these sites to populated areas in Iran they’re not sitting within like a city population like some of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard were in their private residence when they were hit when Israel started striking and they went into um civilian neighborhoods because that was the way they were taking out the top leadership of the army and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard this is different um these are plants with locations and like I said which would unlikely to have much staff in the middle of the night on a Saturday um after nearly a week and a half of Israeli bombings um it’s not the equivalent of bombing a civilian area where you know closely densely populated Thrron for instance which has a population of sort of New York City and London approximately combined it did not happen in city proper you wouldn’t have a nuclear plant there you’d have it outwards but I we just are going to have to continue waiting for information this would be if they get fored this could be an end to Iranian nuclear power plants because if if m if President Trump is saying they’re gone instead of spinning a centrifuge or downgrading the uranium or killing nuclear scientists like Israel has done like killing in the past and most recently with the killings of Iranian scientists since this uh since they launched air strikes a week go Wednesday this is different this is taking out the whole structure and we’re going to need uh people analyzing satellite imagery to confirm that something the American people might be wondering at a point like this how do we expect the world to react to this news um other nations like China Russia well yeah i mean that’s guesswork um Russia does not seem to be uh supporting Iran uh completely uh China is not really speaking out yet but they will be and that will have to be closely watched absolutely because that’s uh I guess a number one concern for people in America is how could this play out on the world stage and how other countries might react to America um bombing these three sites in Iran right Courtney people people are quite clear about the Iranian regime the Iranian nuclear plants and the Iranian people and while it’s not in the US government dictate mandate um in the State Department for regime change or to back any political actor um coming out of the DoD and bombing nuclear plants is something that President Trump will have to explain the thinking and whether it was within the law or not this would be a military offensive and we’re going to have to hear more about that um we don’t know if this was just the one plan and to not actually get involved anymore and to leave at the Israelis again we’re going to have to hear what President Trump has to say about but we should be looking for that and are we hearing anything about um the military themselves any injuries in that respect president Trump said it was a success and that everybody had safely gotten back out of airspace and and he did not mention any casualties no casualties so those are the things that people watch he didn’t mention casualties he didn’t mention any casualties okay on his truth it’s a big difference between what we’re hearing from our president or what we hear hear from our defense department but I can’t say that as fact okay so we are going to just I want you to sort of just tell us again what we’re experiencing right now um if as people are joining us uh tell us exactly courtney Keilly is joining us on the line right now to tell us what’s happening in Iran uh America has struck three sites give us more details again for people who are just joining us what has happened president Trump announced on True Social not very long ago that and it was breaking news that the US had bombed three nuclear plants in Iran most significantly for DAO which had a big question mark over it whether the US would use its stealth B2 bomber with its 30,000 pound bomb to to destroy deep down into the embedded structure of that nuclear plant for deep into the mountains israel deep into the mountain israel had does not have that kind of bomb not that weight not that that depth um the US had moved their bombers today some of them to Guam it appears that might of where they started the original stationing uh they’re often in Minnesota and they had been somewhere near when the US was firing on the Houthies but they had been returned to the US today we heard that they gone to Guam it ra it put a big question mark in my mind but Trump had said he was going to wait two weeks so when we when he just did this you know yesterday Italy and Germany and France were talking about some kind of meetings to have with the Iranians the Iranian foreign minister more about the nuclear plant well clearly after yesterday Trump has now made a decision and that was to take out fore and he says it’s gone now what the president says and whether they’re casualties or not or whether it was a complete success or if there’s even a way to qualify that will have to be coming out from experts and satellite imagery they’re going to have to be facts satellite imagery is going to have to be analyzed and we’re going to have to see what happened it’s early morning just before daylight in Iran and separately Iran is under heavy bombardment i’m hearing reports of really heavy bombs hitting everywhere quote unquote was what one Iranian told me right now so this is the BT bombers President Trump has said have returned out of airspace and he’s calling it successful he will speak at 1000 p.m eastern time which is soon we will see what kind of government officials have something to say this is happening you know on a quiet night here in the States people are going to be scrambling to get more information to listen to what he says and to figure out what this actually means in terms of what other nations say we’ll have to look at it they will speak about it tomorrow uh if Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn’t say anything tonight um he will he usually has his cabinet session on Sunday morning so we’ll have to look for that we’ll have to see if Putin says anything i’m seeing something online but I cannot confirm that he does not want to engage with Iran we have to see if that’s truth true or not i don’t know if Russia wants another involvement at all right now with Ukraine we’ll have to see what the Gulf States say if there’s any firing on any of their soft targets of oil fields if there’s any firing into the street of Hermuz if Iran retaliates on soft t target targets and US allies and possible servicemen will be looking to the region they do not have weapons that have the trajectory to go as far as the US but they certainly have the trajectory within the straight of Hormuz and to close off that waterway to close off those oil depots and to attack targets like Bahrain for instance where the fifth fleet is so and possibly in Iraq we are just watching now but these are all possibilities we have to hear what the president said the you know there’ll be many countries with many different opinions europe is going to be key germans French and UK are going to be key they were originally in this JCPO agreement with Iran and the US we have to see if how what their level of support is we have to see what net Netanyahu says and the IDF claims so there’s a lot of information that’s ongoing right now that we will be waiting for but right now President Trump is claiming that he has eliminated taken out and the Natan’s power plant is gone and that’s an offensive move by the US it’s not necessarily a declaration of war but it’s a bombing another country is an offensive move that was very unclear if he would do it or not and now he has it’s very interesting that you mentioned uh those European countries because the relationship with our typical allies has been so rocky um for the past few months so it will definitely be interesting to see how these other nations uh respond to this attack let’s uh take a look at the history of how this uh came to be at this moment in terms of the uh situation with Israel and Iran talk about that a little bit Courtney and how we got involved at this point well it goes it’s we’ll go back to 1979 um with the Islamic Revolution the US had been a great supporter of the sha and the sha was deposed and what took the sha’s place was an Islamist organization group that believes that the 12th imam was supposed to come to back to the world and for it to be for that imam that saint to be received well that Iran needed to be in the hands of fundamentalists people that were pious but believed in all sorts of culture that many find extremist so there were crackdowns and women had to wear hijab and there was all sorts of ways that people could not have any human rights in Iran also Iran saw Israel as an enemy and the US as an en enemy especially with the US getting involved in places like Beirut uh during the Lebanese civil war there was the US Marines barracks bombings there was the US embassy bombings and the annex bombings iran had basically stood up proxy militias trained in the Becca Valley of Lebanon to base themselves in southern Lebanon and fight Israel and that would be Hezbollah prime Minister Benj Benjamin Netanyahu after what’s been happening in Gaza last October he ran rough shot over Lebanon and and pretty much diluted and got rid of and decapitated the leadership of Hassan Mrala he died in an air strike which pretty much took all the power away from Hezbollah so that doesn’t menace Israel um Prime Minister Netanyahu is intent on not really having a ceasefire Hamas until he can say that every Hamas member is dead and while there are question marks about that he has taken Hamas and it ba basically neutralized Hamas so these were issues that were kept up in America in the 80s and Iran bombing in Buenosares and Israeli tourists in in in Bulgaria and war regional wars popping up every now and then but it’s never really happened between the two foes the two arch enemies which are Israel and Iran but then also the US and Iran and that comes from history pre979 the mullas taking over and and saying that the US is the great Satan and then the US getting involved and and Iran striking back with terrorist attacks so there is history here but there also had been a nuclear deal that President Trump took us out of tried to get us tried to get one back clearly wanted the peace and the deal and that’s not how this has gone since Israel bombed Iran several days before what was supposed to be the sixth round of talks between the US and Iran instead Israel and Prime Minister Benji Benjamin Netanyahu and his government acted unilaterally and launched air strikes all over Iran and different places including some of the nuclear power plants that they could degrade from above ground and also against oil refineries gas depots straight into Iran um into Tehran which is densely populated this was not something that President Trump had signed on to and now he’s reacting he’s he’s gone a step further with this US involvement for the first time being offensive not defensive in this since Israel bombed a week nearly a week and a half ago and in the president’s truth social uh message was there any indication as to uh what made him decide that the US would do this um today of all days no um and I say that a little bit surprised because it came out of I I wasn’t expecting it it came out of nowhere i like I said I had seen the B2 bombers had been moved to Guam by knowing that they were no longer just in the States that meant by closer proximity that they could be used but there was no expectation um and no heads up that they would be used today and no post information about why President Trump did it today um rather than any other time um maybe by the element of surprise on a Saturday but there are no significant dates or anything that could be mentioned right off the top of my head right especially considering that he gave Iran a new deadline um saying that he would decide within the next two weeks whether this would be uh taking place or not and here we are uh today that um three sites in Iran have been bombed we have a map of the location uh Courtney let’s uh go over once again which areas in Iran were hit right now and um how far away these areas are to uh populated cities in Iran um I would have to um because I’m on the phoner I’m not going to be able to see that map okay um so I I’m not going to really be speak to population centers right now but I think you can point to see that there’s there um Isahan is near the town of Isvahan for instance um you to um see that how large the country is you want to see how close or far away it is from Teron um if you can point if there’s something that says Thran look to Tran and then look at the borders of Iran and where these three places are you’re looking for Natans you’re looking for Foro and you’re looking for Isaf is Fahan yeah we’re looking at those areas right now now the thing is is what you’re talking about which is really crucial too is what kind of radioactive levels above ground would this create for any any populations nearby and when Natansa had been hit earlier several days ago earlier in the week the IAEA announced that the radio that there was danger from chemicals inside Natans but not outside um that and that if Bahan was fine and that Fordo really hadn’t been touched now if Fordo is completely gone we have start thinking about radioactivity levels as well and um so the top top nuclear that I know says this is just too early to tell too early to tell okay so what do we know about the conditions of these sites right now Courtney um we know that they they’re nuclear plants and we know that pres the US president decided to bomb them we know that he’s speaking at 10 10 p.m tonight Eastern time that he will hopefully give more information that he has on that breaking news that he put out on Truth Social he says for DAO is gone there were B2 bombers that had been moved to Guam if the US used a B2 bomber with a 30,000 pound bomb which only the US has which Israel does not we’re going to need to know hear that from the president um he um probably is preparing his remarks but President Trump does what President Trump needs to and wants to at the time so I would advise monitoring his true social and waiting for his remarks to this nation which will come at 10 p.m eastern time which is just about an hour and uh 15 minutes uh from now we will be hearing from the president to see what made him make this decision uh very shocking to the world uh we BBC has been was on uh discussing this the entire world is discussing this as to why the president made this decision after saying that he would be giving Iran uh two weeks to um do what it needed to do and let’s talk about that a little bit what did he want Iran to do what was this deadline what did he expect Iran to do within these two weeks that he uh he he said he would be giving them he didn’t really say any expectation i mean I think he was expecting diplomacy and he wanted Iran to talk to him he wants the deal you know he wants to be the dealmaker um I mean obviously Bernie Sanders is announcing Trump’s quote illegal attack on Iran but you know the president has not been into making wars he’s been into making peace but now these GBU57 bunker buster bombs were dropped on Iran’s underground nuclear facility reportedly in foro and the president is going to have to tell us more about that the speaker of the house Mike Johnson was reportedly informed at advance about this it remains unclear whether the full gang of eight were also informed on time that’s the speaker of the house and the house minority leader and the senate majority leader and the senate minority leader as well as you know the vice chair of the senate intelligence committee among others so um we have we’re going to have to wait carolyn Levit the White House press secretary is just saying tune in at 10 p.m but President Trump called it successful he hit four donut towns in Esahan and then he said now is the time for peace so he did say you know I dropped the bombs and now is the time for peace so that’s also an interesting comment to look at yeah and we once again we’re seeing what he did announce on uh Truth Social we have that up uh he he did say that in caps in all caps now is the time for peace and it is quite interesting um after the bombs have have hit those three those three sites in Iran how do we think Iran will react to this what do we think they will they will do given the history between the US and Iran well some experts and Iranians have told me that they think uh the Iranian regime is at its weakest since 1979 so we’re going to we’re going to basically have to wait and see and then we’ll have to get back to this but it’s not really unclear why this decision came now Courtney Keely our Middle East reporter we thank you so much for all of those details and just to wrap up we want to take you to uh we want to toss back to the BBC for more coverage on this breaking news able to destroy that is so important because it will help them the US and Israel come to the calculation of how much damage they really did in other words how far they set back Iran’s nuclear program did they really we’ll see destroy everything is it set back for years months we don’t really know at this point and we’ll have to see how much the public is really told but this is going to be the key question tonight how much was really destroyed and how much is Iran’s program so Barbara I’m just going to pause you for a second if I may because we do now have our first reaction from Iran the deputy political director of Iran’s state broadcaster Hassan Abadini has appeared live on Iranian state television a few moments ago he says Iran evacuated the three nuclear sites that have been mentioned in that true social post from President Trump a while ago he also says that even if what President Trump says was true Iran I quote didn’t suffer a major blow because the materials had already been taken out um Barbara I’ll bring you back in that’s first reaction there from Iranian state TV it kind of plays into what you were saying which is um these posts have to be taken uh with some skepticism until they’re actually confirmed well I think skepticism on all sides uh we don’t know what the Iranians are really talking about if they had moved the material it would be fair to assume at least that Israeli intelligence would have seen that in some fashion because they’d been keeping eyes over Iran again satellites reconnaissance flights radars uh uh personnel possibly covertly on the ground they’ve been keeping eyes on Iran for some time in the run-up to all of this and sharing that intelligence with the US because what does it take to actually drop a bomb on this for target we know it’s deep underground so US intelligence US military intelligence had to know the exact formation if you will of the rock of the geology the dirt how deeply buried it was what was the exact GPS precision point that they wanted to strike at the site to do the maximum damage if the Iranians had moved material out it’s difficult to see uh how Israel might not have known that now you know they they may well have and that will be a problem uh and they might have been doing things at multiple sites that intelligence services were not fully aware of this has been going on for some time in Iran where they have dispersed their program uh to various sites so again it it’s really a question of what now one thing to drop a bomb quite another thing to figure out what it all means and where you go from here will there have to be additional US strikes that may be a key question tonight okay Barbara Star thank you very much for sharing your thoughts and insight i’m going to ask you one more question on this sure um the likely political reaction here in Washington DC across party lines well I think the one fundamental that underlies all of this in Washington tonight is no one really wants to see another war US involved war in the Middle East uh after the years of Iraq and Afghanistan both on the Democratic and Republican side there’s just no appetite for that but here’s the problem it’s that old saying you break it you bought it so if this goes uh if this goes uh badly in some fashion if there is Iranian retaliation against US interests that is the big concern against US bases US troops in the region US shipping US assets or even allied assets if the Iranians were to retaliate in some fashion and uh it becomes a a problem in terms of what does the Trump administration do next easy to get into a combat situation which they did tonight very difficult to get out of it because any top commander will tell you the enemy gets a vote okay Barbara Star uh experienced broadcaster on these matters thank you very much for joining us here on BBC News well let’s go live now to Israel and uh speak to my colleague Mark Lohen who is in Tel Aviv for us mark first of all what reaction have we had from the Israelis no official reaction yet Rajini it is of course the middle of the night here um and uh Israelis will be uh waking up uh or will be woken to this news in the same surprising fashion as the rest of us but of course the Israeli government may indeed have been foreworned because this was what they had been wanting they had been wanting to co-opt the Americans into this deployment they’d been wanting to use those B2 bomber planes uh to drop those bunker busting bombs that they lack they had been wanting desperately to take out fore in particular the the the the nuclear site very buried into the mountain perhaps as low as 90 or 100 meters underground we don’t yet know how many uh bombs and indeed which bombs uh were dropped on the three nuclear sites we assume it would be those 13 12 ton munitions that only the Americans possess possess the the largest uh non-nuclear weapons in the uh American arsenal uh there was discussion for days um and and actually back into previous US administrations as to how many of those bombs would be needed to potentially destroy Fordo uh there was uh talk even of mock um uh Fordo uh models being given to the Obama administration years ago um uh with uh sort of uh presentations in the Oval Office showing what a a destruction of that nuclear site could look like were the Americans to to drop the bomb and and Trump has done it uh it appears we won’t know exactly uh more detail on that until it comes from the president’s posts or the president’s uh statements uh but you know two days after he gave uh Iran this two week window for diplom for the for diplomacy he has gone in it changes the dynamic of this war entirely it makes it completely unpredictable we now don’t know what the reaction will be from Iran we don’t know what what their military reaction will be and so we are in very very uncharted territory now Mark I’m just going to jump in because we’re seeing on one of the agencies uh that uh an Iranian official cited by the Tasnim news agency has confirmed that part of the Fordo nuclear site was attacked by I quote enemy air strikes um we’ve heard that these attacks were the US acting in coordination with Israel um just tell us more about that from an Israeli perspective given that’s where you are yeah I mean uh I’m just trying to see actually whether there has been any kind of uh word yet from the Israeli government um and I’m just going to ask uh my team here to keep an eye on that and to feed me any uh any lines that are coming in uh I mean the Israelis had been pushing for this for for a very long time um you you know they had been uh There have been statements in the last couple of days uh from various Israeli officials saying you know they believe that Trump will be on the right side of history they believe that Trump would be would be listening and sending in uh the military at the right time um of course you know in the United States there’s not the same um uh there’s not the same kind of cross party political fervor for this here in Israel polls show that the majority of Israelis want this war and want the destruction of the Iranian nuclear sites 70% of Israelis were backing this war against Iran in the US of course you’ve got the splits in the MAGA movement i’m just going to jump in because uh you probably haven’t seen this yourself but I’m seeing that YoV Galant Israel’s former defense minister has said the world is now a safer place he said it is a bold decision for the US for Israel and for humanity so starting to get some reaction Mark yes uh you have Galant uh you know kicked out of the government here um as defense minister on difficult terms with Benjamin Netanyahu but very much portraying that kind of united political support that I was mentioning here you know it is uh the the uh the Iran um war has you know crossed the political lines here uh so uh Yo Galanto it appears is the first uh of the uh Israeli ex ministers to react we haven’t yet had anything from the foreign minister or the current defense minister um we’ve got uh we’ve got some lines coming into us saying that the there are changes to the home front command destruction um determined that at 3:45 a.m local time so that was literally 10 minutes ago immediate changes will be made to the homeront command instructions those that’s the basically the national security advice which is given to Israelis as to how close they should be to bunkers and how free they should be to operate and they say that as part of the changes it was decided to shift all areas of the country from partial and limited activity to essential activity that a recognition that uh what has happened in the last hour greatly in uh increases the risk and the vulnerability to Israelis uh so uh the instructions include a prohibition on activities gatherings and workplaces except for essential structures so we’re beginning to get a a a sense of what how the strikes there may be impacting daily life here okay Mark Loen thank you very much for those updates from Israel we’ll be back with Mark throughout our coverage um Benham Ben Talib still with me here in the studio i’m just going to say Ben and we’re hearing a little bit more from Iranian officials who’ve been speaking to the Iranian Broadcasting Corporation uh one saying nuclear sites struck by the US do not contain materials which cause radiation what’s your thoughts on that well if the Iranian official is sending his message clearly and I think he’s trying to inonate what the regime has been doing and there’s no way yet to verify that then he is saying or bragging that the regime has engaged in diversion diversion of the file material that was enriched including to high levels at a facility like Fordo so on the one side this is a public relations message to the Iranians saying yes the facility may be gone but the file material the thing that actually you use to create a nuclear weapon uh is not gone at the moment there is no way to verify that it probably will take at a minimum up to 24 hours for a full complete battle damage assessment from the United States of America but if this is true that means that there is loose unaccounted for file material in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the risk of that is what the regime will dangle to avoid a counterpoliferation strike from becoming a counterregime strike okay just in the next minute or so just want to mention this as well that the security deputy governor of Isvahan has confirmed that there were several explosions heard in Natans and in Isfahan he said we saw attacks near the nuclear sites um and so essentially now Benham all three strike sites mentioned by the president now confirmed by Iranian officials i wonder if in just 30 seconds you could give me your thoughts on that well this is the regime trying to put you can say meat on the bone behind President Trump’s uh tweets and comments about strikes on these facilities but because they come amid a wider war because they come amid a whole host of comments made by regime officials this is them trying to update the public but also water down We’re following breaking news out of the Middle East president Trump announced that the US has attacked three nuclear sites in Iran in a post on Truth Social he called the attack successful and says the planes are now outside of Iranian airspace mr trump went on to write quote “Now is the time for peace.” He also says he will address the United States from the White House at 1000 p.m eastern time this is the truth social uh message that he put out right now we do have CBS News senior White House correspondent Ouija Jiang joining us right now with the very latest ouija uh Cararissa we are waiting for the president to speak in just about one hour and certainly there are so many questions um about how this was carried out and about the plans uh that led up to it because of course as we have been reporting it was just on Thursday that he declared um a self-imposed twoweek deadline for Iran to really have another chance a final chance at diplomacy and trying to give them an off-ramp of course that now appears like it was a ruse to give the Pentagon time to get its assets in order in order to take out this massive unprecedented operation i say that because earlier this week we interviewed the former Secretary of the Air Force under the Biden administration who said this particular bomb has never actually been used in practice it is a bunker buster bomb an M OP um that has really been tested and it was designed for um a mission like this to take out a nuclear site like uh for DAO which we’ve also been reporting on because it is um its primary nuclear site right now for the Iranian nuclear program and so um there are a lot of outstanding questions not only about the actual uh attack but also about the implications afterward of course you said in that president’s post that he is now calling for peace but it is almost unimaginable that there will not be retaliation on the part of the Iranians who have made crystal clear leading up to this that if the US were to involve themselves militarily and join Iran in its efforts to strike nuclear sites that there would be consequences forceful ones and so at this hour um uh we are waiting to learn more from the region and certainly from President Trump who again is supposed to speak in less than an hour now here at the White House he just returned from his golf club in Bedminister New Jersey a few hours ago he did walk by a group of reporters and he sort of waved and gave his normal fist pump but walked right into the White House without saying a word um and so uh we uh will wait to see what he has to say but this is a massive development because um you know he had been signaling that there was still hope for diplomacy which obviously was not the case reaction from lawmakers on Capitol Hill so far well it really depends it’s pouring in so there are uh you know hawks that have been um pushing for this sort of um response because this is not a new issue um administrations for decades have been wondering how to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions um of course it was a historic deal that the Obama administration brokered years ago the JCPOA it was known as um but as soon as President Trump came into office he pulled out of that deal because he said it was not a good one um and so it depends on the lawmakers but they have been very vocal some of them um about the need to do something just like this on the other hand there are plenty of voices who were warning the president not to become directly involved because of the potential implications uh not only for a wider conflict in the region but what this could mean for US troops in the region and on the ground some have said in the past that no one wanted to see another US-led war in the Middle East after the history that the US has had with war in that region over the past several decades would it be fair to to say that well the president himself said that many times on the campaign trail many times as president that he did not want the US to be entangled in any foreign conflicts um which is exactly why there is a significant section of his MAGA base that um is uh not on board with this plan that we’re urging him not to become involved because this was a campaign promise to end all wars and certainly not to involve the US in any other wars uh the White House press secretary Caroline Levit was asked about this directly during her last press briefing on Thursday and her message to those skeptics um about the possibility of a strike was to trust President Trump was to trust uh any decision that he would make because it would be for the best for national security at this point um what do we expect the president to tell the nation at at at 10 p.m i mean there’s so many questions right now i think he will uh share a lot of details about the actual success of the strike which he has already declared in one of his posts so we anticipate hearing more details about what he means when he says they were successful um there was uh reporting from other outlets The Guardian exclusively actually um in an article that said one reason why he hadn’t um given the green light yet was because he did have some doubts about whether uh the operation would be fully successful and our CBS news reporting was that he was briefed on all the pros and the cons about uh launching an attack on the Ford nuclear site but his mindset his thinking was that he had to do it because he believed that was the only real way um to ensure that Iran would not uh move even closer to having a nuclear weapon and I just asked about this the other day for clarification on what he meant when he said they were just a few weeks away from having a nuclear weapon and the press secretary told me um that it wasn’t just about having enough to enrich uranium which is the main component required to build uh one of these nuclear bombs but she said that all it would take was the Supreme Leader making a decision to move forward and they could have one uh within two weeks and that is a very specific timeline um it doesn’t exactly align with what the IAEA which is the agency that monitors nuclear sites around the world assessed they said that Iran uh was not actively making a nuclear bomb but they certainly had an unprecedented amount of that enriched uranium uh the US intelligence the latest assessment that has been made public also mirrored that and so uh we will be listening to see if the president had has more information about exactly what led to this uh big decision but you know I’m imagine he will also talk about um what the plan is for for next steps because even though he wrote that now is the time for peace reality is that now is the time um for many different stakeholders in this conflict to try to determine what the next steps are because there’s so much at stake here what do we know about the national security meeting that took place today come back here around 6 pm which he did and meet with his national security uh team which is not out of the ordinary given the tight deadline that he had set for determining whether he was going to do this or not he had been having frequent national security uh team meetings since he rushed back from the G7 summit earlier in the week because he said he wanted to monitor the situation in Iran um and so we are trying to learn more about uh all the timing we need a timeline a tick tock for exactly when this happened and uh you know where the president was you know how did he monitor uh these attacks how did he receive uh information in real time as these teams were carrying them out and again what the plan is uh moving forward do we know what Iranian state media is saying about all of this at this point or have they said anything at all we are still you know this is obviously breaking news right now so we are trying to get information from all of our teams in the region um from London from Iran and so far as far as uh just a few minutes ago about 10 minutes ago we have been monitoring Iranian press and there has not been a formal response yet so nothing out of Iran at this hour but that is a critical question um as you know we wait to see what the response is going to be and also response uh from the rest of the world uh Europe for example well Europe just had meetings uh to try to uh have a diplomatic end to all of this and uh the thing is that the US was not directly involved with those and so the Europeans really were trying to um you know insert some kind of diplomacy and and tried to convince the Iranians to really come to the table with President Trump and the US to discuss getting out of the conflict but the Iranians made very clear that they would not engage in direct talks with the US unless there was a ceasefire unless Israel uh stopped bombing stopped the attacks and vice versa obviously because they said they wouldn’t negotiate during an active war um but when I asked the White House about that uh they dodged the question they didn’t say that that is something that the president was calling for and in fact he himself said uh that it it’s not something that he wanted because he thought the situation had already moved beyond that that he wanted something bigger than a ceasefire that he really re guarantee to an end of Iran’s ambitions to develop a nuclear weapon so many questions um that need to be answered tonight in less than an hour the president will be speaking at 10 p.m as you mentioned uh and we are awaiting what the president will say but in the meantime uh how do you think uh Democratic lawmakers are going to react to to this news uh so we are gathering all of uh the reaction from uh these lawmakers on both sides because this is obviously uh critical but you know I you know I imagine that many of those voices will be saying they warned um that something like this could happen that there could be an escalation in the region and so again we are just waiting to hear from more voices and because this is just breaking and developing um you know some lawmakers might have are still getting read in on this or still trying to get the latest intelligence on this of course there were briefings on the Hill ahead of this we know that um uh the house speaker was briefed ahead of the US strike and uh don’t know whether he relayed that information but this is a very ongoing situation so we are just um waiting to compile all of that reaction for you you’ve been following the White House for quite some time what do you take of all of this that’s happened um this unexpected bombing of Iran at this point with with no warning whatsoever especially given the fact that the president had said he was going to be giving Iran uh two weeks so this comes as a a complete surprise well it it does and it doesn’t um because there was always some concern that even the announcement of that two-week window to try to reach a deal was just a head fake to you know clear the path essentially for this to happen because you can’t just do this overnight it takes time it takes calculation it takes uh you know it takes the Pentagon and all of the teams that carry this out um having the space to be able to do that and so there was always one school of thinking that perhaps this was just an arbitrary deadline um but on the other hand uh we had extensive reporting that there were loud voices and advisers surrounding the president who were um you know having him really think through whether this was the right move because of the potential implications and all the unknowns uh involved with this and so with this particular president it’s not necessarily ever a surprise even though it might be shocking because it is unprecedented unprecedented and quite the gamble as well um let’s talk about the sites that were hit um what do you know about this from covering the White House and these particular sites that were targeted Ouija these are Iran’s nuclear sites and so obviously these are where they are developing um their potential components for the weapons um and the for DAO is extremely tricky because it is built into the side of a mountain and it is very difficult to get to which is why uh the US bunker buster bomb that was used um this particular kind of bomb is really the only option to completely destroy uh for DAO and we don’t even know if that was the case whether it completely took it out or just partially Um but the 30 lb bomb had to also be transported by USB B2s to drop it down because you’re talking about such massive um you know weaponry here and so the hope and President Trump said as much in his post is that it was able to disable and decapitate really these uh sites that are so critical to Iran’s nuclear program and so America has known about these sites for quite some time and it isn’t until Israel and Iran got into their latest conflict that the US um seems as if it decided to do this right these sites have been well known for these no to answer your question these are not new to the United States the question was always whether the US was going to become directly involved to strike them and with the developing situation between Israel and Iran the US decided to do this offensive move israel has been lobbying for the US to join its efforts um and even publicly we saw Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu say as much without explicitly saying it so yes that is always what Israel has wanted um but there were you know a lot of skeptics who the president was speaking with who said they should just carry this out alone we should not get entangled in this for all the reasons that you know presidents have to consider when they uh decide whether to become directly involved with any conflict do we know if there are other uh sites that have this potential uh the nuclear potential wua sorry no so Iran has several sites and what started this entire conflict with Israel was Natans which was also a very significant site that Israel bombed on Monday um the Forign site and there are several of these as you saw the president post uh he said that the US actually targeted three of these sites that hold um different components different stockpiles of uh chemicals that are used to build nuclear weapons and so uh the again this is nothing new to the US that has been tracking Iran’s nuclear program for several decades there was always concern among other administrations here at the White House that if you were to do something like the US just did today that there would be uh consequences and there was always concern about what those consequences are those concerns are still very real tonight uh diplomacy has worked in the past with Iran has it not uh for the US you the US not to wait for diplomacy to work but it has worked in the past hasn’t it Ouija well as we just talked about the Obama administration did broker an Iranian nuclear deal um to have uh the Iranians abide by a certain set of guidelines that several other countries also signed off on but when President Trump came to the White House he found that agreement to be um inadequate and so he promptly pulled out of it and Iran hasn’t uh entered another such deal yet and it was something that this administration had been trying to do the president said he gave them 60 days to do that and then on day 61 that is when the president says that Israel um Israel launched the attack on Natans once again as people are joining us now we just want to let them know what has taken place president Trump announced that uh three strikes have or strikes have happened on three Iran nuclear sites and that’s the breaking news that we are covering right now we have Ouija Jang with us live talking about the very latest developments uh Ouija take us back to how this um started within these past few months how this has escalated between the US and Iran and with uh Israel get uh with the conflict with Israel and Iran as well let’s h get give folks a little bit of history here who may not have been following this as closely um this conflict between these two nations extends back decades and obviously we can’t forget that there is another conflict in the region after Hamas um brutally attacked Israel on October 7th um and of 2023 which led to a conflict in that region and there was always accusations and concerns that Iran and its proxies were backing uh Hamas and other terrorist groups that were trying to um attack Israel even further and so um you know that set the stage for a potential opening for Netanyahu because there has been conflict with Iran for so long and there have been other attacks um in in recent times uh and so um you know the the concern is that Israel recently came out and said that they had intelligence that Iran was extremely close to developing a nuclear weapon and that’s why they felt like it was an existential threat to Israel that they could not wait any longer and they had to attack which is what prompted that last week and uh obviously the US has been in lock step with Israel um in in many conflicts but interestingly when this unfolded the White House’s first um statement was that this was done unilaterally by Israel and the United States was not involved that quickly changed and uh after Israel’s strikes were successful the president um you know made public remarks to make it seem like uh the US may have at least been a partner because uh they do supply so much aid and weaponry to Israel every year um and so that quickly escalated with this administration and President Trump repeatedly talking about how close Iran is to obtaining a nuclear weapon uh which is why they um uh you know said they were going to put an ultimatum on Iran to come to the table and agree on their own to dismantle their program or that the president was weighing a strike ouija Jang thank you so much for your live report bringing us the latest uh from the White House on what’s going on this evening and just to uh sum things up we are following breaking news out of the Middle East where President Trump has announced US strikes on three Iran nuclear facilities and he is expected to address the nation at 10 p.m eastern time we’re going to bring you to the BBC now who’s continuing to follow this breaking news has essentially neutered the long range strike capabilities the political infrastructure and the military capabilities of two of them that flank Israel hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza that leaves the Houthis which the US battled for nearly two months in Yemen and the Iranbacked Shia militias in Iraq which traditionally have attacked US bases as well as those on the border with Syria uh these two do not have necessarily the political wherewithal to enter at the same level that the state of the Islamic Republic of Iran has uh but if you’re looking abroad those are whom the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps which sits at the head of this axis of resistance may be looking to adam I’m just going to read you this we’re getting a bit more details about some of the diplomacy uh leading up to those US strikes uh our partners uh CBS News here in America are saying that the US reached out to Iran diplomatically on Saturday to say that the strikes are all it plans to do and that I quote regime change efforts are not planned um Benham your reaction to that well one it’s quite clear that President Trump or at least what President Trump has been saying and signaling in public is greatly the same is greatly believed to be and now known to be the same thing that which he’s signaling and saying in private meaning the president has not been interested in regime change operations this entire time yes he was critical of the Obama era nuclear deal but indeed he wanted a drastically different one a better one he wanted his own he was unable to get that with the Iranians in his first term he was unable to get that within the 60-day window he gave the Iranians in his second term now how much of this message that he has communicated to the Iranians in private how much of that is filtered through the lens of the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary ideology the lack of willingness to trust a message from America particularly from President Trump who they have particular enmity with from term one how much of that will be filtered remains to be seen and particularly if Iran’s aging supreme leader now believed to be in a bunker somewhere tweeting 4 hours ago about the defense of Palestine for example how much of his desire and his enmity and his personal hatred now sees this as not a counterp proliferation operation but as a regime change operation and if the Islamic Republic ignores it how might it go about responding one more question for you if I may as someone who watches Iran very closely what do you think the Iranian people are likely to be thinking about this and those uh calls from some quarters for regime change because we know amongst many people they are unpopular uh yes the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran is drastically unpopular on the Iranian street you’ve seen boom and bust cycle of anti-regime protests really from 2017 go away from reform and really seek wholesale change of the system now the Iranian people have been unable to achieve that wholesale change of the system because they are outgunned by a much stronger national security state but over the past week and a half they’ve seen really uh the Islamic Republic’s adversaries Israel and America who long from their own bully pulpit have been supporting the Iranian people really neuter the long range strike capabilities the missile military infrastructure that the regime has built so this deals a real status blow to the regime and I do worry actually about the population not just because I’m an Iranian-American but I do worry about the population because as the regime loses these capabilities due to defeats from abroad it may turn around and more intensify uh that political pressure that abuse of citizens those human rights violations at home this is really the only way uh that the regime will again try to rebolster its deterrence and I fear right now that Iran 2025 could look like if Donald Trump does not finish the job if Israel also shies away from a larger counterregime operation that Iran in 2025 could look like Iraq after 1991 where Iraq did not have the capability to fight Israel or America but what happened there was a totalitarian terror was locked in for a decade that ultimately pulled in the US a decade later in a larger land war okay Ben and Ben Talib thank you very much for all your contributions this evening i do understand that you have to leave us now but thank you very much for sharing your insights just a reminder if you’re just joining this rolling coverage here on BBC News that President Trump has confirmed that the US has struck three nuclear sites in Iran uh the Fordo site the Natans and the Eshvahan site mr trump posting on social media that a full payload of bombs was dropped on the site of Fordo he said there is not another military in the world that could have done this now we understand that this was done in coordination with Israel who were aware of this happening iranian state media has confirmed those strikes saying that part of the Fordo site was I quote attacked by enemies and in just over 30 minutes uh the president is going to make a televised address to the nation from the White House well joining me now is Colonel Brendan Kernney the former chief of staff for the US Marine Corps forces thank you very much for waiting patiently it’s good to talk to you here on BBC News um what do you make of what we’ve heard so far about this military operation well it’s not a surprise uh I mean we’ve been anticipating this for the last couple days there’s certainly been open-source reporting in terms of aircraft movement aircraft carrier movement into the region and President Trump is uh been very uh frank with what he intended to do he was trying to give peace a chance but seemingly some indicators have shown him that uh the chance is up so uh I’m not surprised at all that that this operation is ongoing um have you ever come into any sort of contact with the B2s yourself can you tell us more about if it’s uh confirmed that they were used just how they operate well you know most of the time they fly very very long distances and that’s because uh they’re an aircraft that uh needs very sophisticated maintenance so you’re looking at Diego Garcia you’re looking at uh an airfield in Montana Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana uh I have seen them operate however I was retiring just as they were coming into full operational uh capability but uh I certainly know what aircraft uh like them and B-52s can do as I witnessed that myself in the first Gulf War and also uh reports on Fox News that Tomahawks were used uh when it came to striking Natans and Ishvahan so again just your thoughts on that well that’s not unusual the United States has a very very sophisticated capability when it comes to cruise missiles and we use them very successfully over the last number of years um they’re a superb capability there’s not many countries that have anything even closely um capable of doing what a Tomahawk can do they’re they’re sea launch so they’re very mobile and um I think it’s all part and parcel to what is probably going to be a couple days if not a couple weeks of an aerial campaign that’ll be launched against the uh Islamic Republic you think this is just the start then Colonel i do i get I think we’ll get a little bit more out of the president here in about a half an hour okay thank you so much for sharing your insights and expertise on this developing story that’s Colonel Brendan Kernney former chief of staff for the US Marine Corps well it’s uh 9:30 almost here in We’re continuing to follow breaking news out of the Middle East right now President Trump announced the US has attacked three nuclear sites in Iran in a post on Truth Social he called the attack successful and says the planes are now outside of Iranian airspace trump went on to write quote “Now is the time for peace.” Mr trump says he will address the nation from the White House at 10 p.m eastern time which is just about 30 minutes from now sources tell CBS News the US reached out to Iran today and said these strikes are the only ones that the US has planned for more on this breaking news story let’s bring in CBS News national security contributor Samantha Vinegrad on the phone with us samantha good evening tell us what the significance is of an attack like this by the US in the Middle East well at this juncture the primary concern for the president and his national security team are the safety and security of Americans in the region around the world and that includes here in the homeland when I was at the Department of Homeland Security we were deeply aware of Iran’s capabilities to inspire and direct attacks against US assets that’s through their vast network of proxies including individuals here in the United States so right now law enforcement and intelligence professionals are on heightened alert for any indication of reprisal attacks against Americans in the homeland or US assets overseas of course that includes military installations in the Middle East as well as uh Americans uh tourists and those living uh abroad as well the significance of the attacks is in the first instance going to come down to whether the attacks were successful whether these attacks actually destroyed the ability for Natan Bordeaux and Isahan to function if bunker buster bombs were used I think it is quite likely the attacks were successful so right now again the president and his national security team should be reviewing any threats to Americans as a result of these strikes and trying to ascertain whether they were successful on truth social the president did indicate that uh the strikes were successful that’s what he said um we’ll hear more from him once again in less than uh 30 minutes but what kind of response we can go into this a little bit deeper are we expecting from Iran and how quickly could we see this actually take place well the United States has already taken precautionary measures to try to mitigate any kind of reprisal that includes dispersing US military assets in the region so that they’re not all concentrated at particular bases it also includes moving additional offensive assets to the region in the event that Iran tries to act and to try to deter Iran from taking more aggressive action we’ve moved an additional carrier strike group and fighter squadron among other assets us bases are certainly at risk as well as the hundreds of thousands of Americans living in the region so we could expect Iran to unleash missiles at US bases in the Middle East iran has a significant network of proxies all around the world that it could activate against Americans and Iran also has very advanced cyber capabilities that it could leverage if it’s so chooses sam we know that plans have been set in place to protect or replace um Iranian I’m looking right now we do have the map up of the three areas that um were hit uh let’s go into that first let’s talk about the areas that the where uh the US struck in terms of the three sites that they believe have nuclear uh capabilities sure so they are Natan Foro and Isahan the first two are uranium enrichment centers fordo the site there is buried deep inside of a mountain nitan was struck earlier uh this month by Israel and again these are the uranium enrichment centers the third site Ispahan is where uh we believe the Iranians are keeping most of it highly enriched uranium if these attacks were successful the United States would have destroyed Iran’s ability to burst enrich uranium and have destroyed a significant amount of its almost bomb grade material and how badly uh have they been hit do we know for sure is there any indication of in terms of how close they are to uh populated areas and what’s happened in that region as a whole well we don’t yet know how successful these attacks were but again if the bunker buster bomb known as the massive ordinance penetrator was used I do think that there is a strong chance that they were successful um these sites are located uh not you know directly within a major city uh Isvahan actually is a a very populated center actually so we don’t yet know if there were civilian casualties certainly individuals working at these facilities would have been impacted by these massive bombs but we have to wait for the battleground assessment what do we know about plans um to protect or replace Iranian leaders what do we know about that those talks well we understand that the Israelis may have had the capability to assassinate the Supreme Leader Ayat who ultimately is a key decision maker on whether to break out to a nuclear weapon and who will ultimately give a signal as to whether for example Iranian proxy should be activated president Trump reportedly told Prime Minister Netanyahu not to assassinate Ham later President Trump himself said the United States had the capability to assassinate how many we don’t know if that’s true but he did make that statement so uh there are concerns that the United States and Israel are focused on regime change although President Trump has indicated that he’s focused on the nuclear program and not on regime change itself but time will tell israel obviously has been key in all of this has Israel issued any type of official response to these US strikes israel will and Prime Minister Netanyahu will likely be very pleased that President Trump decided to take this action dating back to my time in the Obama administration Prime Minister Netanyahu has asked US President to take exactly this type of action so certainly Israel will issue uh perhaps celebratory if not highly positive statements about this military action by the United States sam what what can you tell us um about the payload actually used in this in this attack in in these strikes this particular bomb that we keep talking about the massive ordinance penetrator mob has a is a 30,000 pound bomb and is like anything else in the world various countries have asked us for it uh throughout the history of this of this bomb but we’ve kept it to ourselves and it was really the one munition that had the capability to strike deep within the mountain facility at Bordeaux this decision uh came after Israel was attacking Iran right and it was what was the Israel’s aim during its attacks on Iran israel was focused on the same thing since President Trump which is degrading Iran’s ability to uh obtain a nuclear weapon there were very deep concerns that Iran was closer to a nuclear weapon than ever before based upon stockpile of highlyenriched uranium israel did expand its strikes beyond just nuclear facilities however uh and killing nuclear scientists israel attacked military installations as well as some energy infrastructure so Israel at least was more focused on putting pressure on Iran more broadly than the United States president Trump kept his military strikes in nuclear facilities on Truth Social the president um said that this is a I’m quoting here this is a historic moment for the United States of America Israel and the world iran must now agree to end this war what do you take of that uh comment from the uh the president i take it that uh President Trump and Israel are focused on using military pressure to push Iran to the negotiating table to give up any remaining aspect of its nuclear program so the strategy here is maximum pressure military pressure to try to get Iran to the negotiating table to give up any remnant of its nuclear program samantha Vinegrad thank you so much cbs News National Security contributor for us to give us some more insight right now we have General retired General HR McMaster on the phone joining us uh as we speak uh General good evening hey good evening Christie good to be with you thank you for for joining us um I’m going to ask you first what is your take on what has transpired this shocking uh breaking news that has transpired this evening well you know it’s not that shocking I don’t think because of Iran’s intrigingence you know uh President Trump decided to give them one more chance and of course the you had the you had the Iranian foreign minister meet with European foreign ministers yesterday and the response was kind of bellose and just said “Hey we’re not even going to talk until the until the attacks from Israel stopped.” So I think that’s really may have may have been the the last straw for President Trump you uh know about uh strikes like this tell us what transpired in getting this uh attack uh completed and how America got got this done well it’s extraordinarily complex and I I’ll tell you I I just have so much respect and and gratitude for servicemen and women who pulled this off and and so it’s orchestrated by the United States Central Command but as you know there there elements of strategic command because it involves the B1 and B2 bombers uh that were employing the larger munitions but it is not just an air operation it’s also a maritime operation and a land operation because on land you have to operate a lot of the air defense weapon systems uh you’re you’re also orchestrating a lot of the a lot of the collection on uh on Iranian capabilities uh but the maritime dimension is were very significant as well i think what we’ll see is is that many of our submarines were involved in in firing cruise missiles at at these multiple targets because it to hit for Isvahan and Natans simultaneously i think there there will would have been aerial strike packages as well as maritime strikes and something like this the concern can be for civilians in the in the region in the area uh because we’ve seen so many civilians um civilian casualties we should say in the Middle East over these past several months uh what can you tell us about that area in which these strikes have t have unfolded well in Porto it’s pretty remote so I don’t I think that the chances of civilian casualties are very low and it’s also very low chances of any kind of radiological leakage which you have to be concerned about but in Isvahan and the tans those are closer to population centers but what our military does is goes through a very sophisticated process of determining you know the chances of of collateral damage or or or you know damage uh or or harm or or death of innocents and the munitions that you use are tailored to not only accomplishing the objective of the strike but also minimizing civilian casualties retired General HR McMaster thank you so much for giving us that insight we do um appreciate it so much thanks for being with us great to be with you right now we have CBS News reporter Haley A joining us from Tel Aviv Israel at this moment um the first thing I want to ask you is what international reaction have we heard from the US strikes on Iran tonight hello well it is the middle of the night here but we have already had some reaction we’ve heard from Israel’s Homefront Command which is uh the group that tells people how to respond when there are missile strikes for example which is what we’ve been going through over the past few days uh the restrictions have been being released uh slowly people have been allowed to go back to work there was a sense that perhaps this situation um was kind of loosening up and then uh the other day they they do regular check-ins the other day um the the regulations didn’t change and people thought huh that is not the um that’s not doesn’t seem to have been the direction we were going and then we just um got uh some new regulations now which is advising everyone here in the country uh to stay as to stay close to a shelter to not go into the office schools remain closed um we’ve heard that uh the Israeli prime minister will be uh speaking after the president speaks um we’ve heard that he has spen spoken to Mr trump before this attack and potentially after um but people are asleep so they will be waking up in this region to a whole new Middle East do we have any information yet about possible casualties perhaps people who were working in that area because I understand that this uh the in the areas that were hit were pretty remote um we are we are scrambling to get as much information as we possibly can as you say those areas are remote and also um Iran has had a real information lockdown over the the course of this conflict it’s been difficult for us to even speak to our reporters there um we do know from a deputy um security official from Isvahan that he he’s confirmed to us that these attacks um on these three sites did take place but we don’t know the severity of them we don’t know the impact of them so that will be some information gathering that happens probably over the next 24 hours haley we appreciate you thanks so much for being with us we want to take you back right now to the BBC for more coverage on this breaking news story response so we have to wait till morning if there’s a damage assessment has to be done the other officials that came out in the last hour have been giving two information one is that the sites have been attacked but they don’t go into much of detail other than saying some damage has been done to Fordo but not entirely destroyed is the sense that they’re trying to give it the other thing they’re saying is that all nuclear material has been moved out of these sites already so if Donald Trump or US administration was thinking that this is lulling lulling Iranians into complic complicity it seems that they were expecting this despite the two weeks uh talk of two weeks diplomacy they seem to have thought that any minute an an attack could happen in Ford and so therefore they claiming they have taken all nuclear material material out of there and they’ve then then added that for that reason there is no worried worries about radioactivity uh from that these sites that could jeopardize health of um people who live in nearby cities one information might I just want to jump in on that because uh what we are hearing from our partners at CBS News is they are saying that America reached out to Iran diplomatically on Saturday to say the strikes were all it plans to do and that regime change efforts are not planned so a sense there that the US I mean of course we’ll hear from President Trump in about 15 minutes time says that this is one and done sure and it will that be enough for the Iranian regime to not the government in Iran to decide not to retaliate that’s unclear it’s it’s still very humiliating moment for them but it is very important that after a week of Israeli attacks the public in Iran wants this to end hundreds of civilians have been killed by Israel israel has killed families entire families have been wiped out in residential buildings in middle of the streets so these are seen as horrific situation that is this only a 7-day war has caused there at least much of the public would be hoping that the government won’t respond so this ends and there’s a line drawn underneath it uh so they would have to take that into effect as well into consideration as well but they would also have to think about their supporters they have talked about this nuclear facilities for years they have spent tens and tens of billions of dollars protecting it losing hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions for it so highest price have been paid and if they’re all destroyed what do you have to show for it and that could put pressure on them to respond somehow but let’s remember the first term of Donald Trump he attacked and killed a senior Iranian general the response that came from Iran was missiles shot to a US base in Iraq and that was the end so could there be an understanding that Iran uses some missiles to show some reaction but that doesn’t go far enough for us to have to react again that could also be a possibility it has been tried it worked last time is is the message that they’ve sent that we don’t want regime change i don’t think the regime was particularly worried that America is going to come and change their their rule in Thran but they most certainly do want to show that they are still have some sort of a deterrence or want one or that they’re not going to sit there like a duck and be hit by Israel and US at the end of the day two nuclear power countries have attacked a non-uclearpowered country in a week so we’ll see how they respond okay Buffman do stay with us let’s go straight back to Israel and rejoin my colleague Mark Lohen mark I understand that we’ve had the first reaction now from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu what’s he been saying i’m actually literally just watching it while we speak Rajini um because it has just come through to us uh but I will give you a little flavor of the uh I was halfway through it but I’ll give you the flavor of what he said at the start he said “Congratulations President Trump this is an awesome and righteous move that will change history uh there was also a written a couple of lines that came through um in a written statement let me just find that now he said “President Trump and I often say peace through strength first comes strength then comes peace.” And tonight President Trump and the US acted with a lot of strength uh we understand that uh President Trump President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu have already spoken by phone uh a senior Israeli official said that the White House gave the Israeli a heads up before the bombing began there was a small group of uh Israeli ministers who were huddling from uh 1000 p.m local time that’s 5 hours before the uh strikes uh before the confirmation of the strikes and they were sort of watching it all happen overnight but clearly there will be delight from the Israeli government but that something that they have long called for long craved long dreamed of in in the in in the eyes of Benjamin Netanyahu who has been talking about this since 1995 he has been taking every every public occasion he could to warn of Isra of of Iran’s imminent nuclear threat has that he has finally got a response and and a and the and the ear of an American president who has not only uh kind of allowed or or or sort of acquiesed in a sense for Israel to go into Iran but has now sent American bombers themselves into Iran despite all the queasiness that there is in Donald Trump’s political movement despite all the questions uh that there are in uh the m in the Republican base despite all the worrying echoes that people have constantly pointed out from 2003 when America went into Iraq um and toppled Saddam Hussein uh when they joined the mission to topple Colonel Gaddafi in Libya both countries losing their longtime despots and leading to political chaos uh the President Trump has gone in with a strike on the nuclear facilities that according to our report our American partners CBS CBS news the White House has passed messages to Iran saying that this is not a strike seeking regime change it is a strike against the nuclear facilities but what comes next how does Tehran respond militarily towards Israel how does Tehran respond against the American military assets in the region the US has 40,000 troops stationed in this region that this is a perilous moment for them and it is a perilous moment in terms of what comes next in Iran what how does uh the Ayatollah uh respond his backs to the wall you know is there going to be some kind of uprising in Iran and haven’t seen um we haven’t seen evidence of that yet but clearly Iran still has a military capability it has been firing drones missiles and the like and rockets towards Israel in the last few days and on top of that Rajini yesterday we had a threat from one of its a part of its defensive shield the Houthis in Yemen who said that they would start resuming attacks on American shipping in the Red Sea if America uh started bombing Iran so you know a reminder that yes Iran has been severely weakened its defensive shield in this region has been weakened but it still has bite okay Mark do stay with us i’m going to bring Bachmann Kalbasi from the BBC’s Persian Service who’s been monitoring uh what we’re getting from Iran into the conversation there mark uh talking about the position in Israel and saying it kind of depends now on what the Ayatollah and the Iranian government does next what is uh some of the conversation that you are seeing in Iran about what might come next really the only source right now is the state television and there’s one host that’s sitting there and talking about the response and what has happened at some point he says maybe Donald Trump is bluffing maybe the damage wasn’t so big h and then he also says but if it’s a war that Donald Trump started it’s a war that we will end we had told the Americans through the Swiss government that is the protector of American interest in Iran that if you attack we will respond all of that is sort of stream of consciousness coming from him it is far away from what the official response is going to be we are just awaiting the Iranian energy atomic energy agency to come up with a statement that could happen any second i was just looking at my phone seeing if this has come out yet not or not yet and so that could give us a better sense of whether they’ve this um that statement has just come in i was waiting to see if it I can just tell you something yes yeah go ahead yes I got it yeah and in it they basically saying that uh this attack has happened and it is a violation of NPT and international law and Americans uh have said in you know via Donald Trump’s post that this has happened um and then we expect the world the world community to condemn this as this is a violation of international law that that’s basically where they they leave it and they say this this their their institution is still committed to defending the Iranian rights to have a a nuclear a peaceful nuclear agency or nuclear cycle so they they’re not in a position to say what is going to happen next their higherups being the supreme leader who is somewhere in in a bunker hidden and the president and the rest of the team and the new leadership of the military and IRGC who were just appointed in the last few days post the assassination of the previous ones they’re the ones who have to come and think about the cost benefit of a response to US forces and the dangers that that might invite or can they have a coordinated face saving response like the the one that they had in in in the last 2020 when Donald Trump assassinated an Iranian general series of missiles was was hit uh was thrown and targeted a US military base in Iraq no no American service member was hurt and that was the end of it can such a thing be managed or will it get out of hand that’s the question that we can get a sense of depending on how they they manage expectation when they wake up in the morning okay Buffman Kalbasi for the moment thank you very much but do of course stay with us we are getting more reaction now to the news that America has attacked Iran a statement coming into us from the United Nations the UN Secretary General uh let me just read it to you uh it says “I’m gravely alarmed by the use of force by the United States against Iran today this is a dangerous escalation in a region already on the edge and a direct threat to international peace and security.” Mr mr guteras goes on to say “There is a growing risk that this conflict could rapidly get out of control with catastrophic consequences for civilians the region and the world.” Um he says “I call on member states to deescalate and to uphold their obligations under the UN charter and other rules of international law i’ll continue on mr says at this perilous hour it is critical to avoid a spiral of chaos there is no military solution the only path forward is diplomacy the only hope is peace let’s return to broadcaster Barbara Star who has covered the Pentagon for a number of years barbara um you’ve been in this uh this sort of situation before where we’ve heard the UN call for diplomacy in other conflicts that the US has been involved in we’ve heard the UN say that there is no military solution but is there any room for diplomacy now certainly hopes uh that there is that something will bring Iran to the negotiating table i think the challenge for President Trump tonight as we await his remarks from the White House is baited breath really what will Iran do next will it launch some kind of asymmetric if you will not straight on but some kind of covert attack against US interests in the region will that force the president to then send in additional force or take additional military action we don’t know will he have to take additional military action to destroy Iran’s uh nuclear program we don’t even know how far the program has really been set back he’s calling it a successful mission and it certainly is because all the pilots are out safely but that in fine-tuned intelligence assessment has to be done how much damage how do you calculate how far the Iranians have been set back and gather all the intelligence around the clock about any suggestion of Iranian movement in the region that could be a sign of an attack or even uh here in the United States by potential sleeper cells if you will these are all you know huge questions tonight to which there’s no answers and as you and I were chatting earlier here in the United States the American people clearly are not really supportive of another land war another major war in the Middle East after the years of Iraq and Afghanistan the challenge for President Trump is I think most of the world believes he’s right uh Iran could not be allowed to you know gain a nuclear weapon they had to do something about it but did they give diplomacy enough of a chance we’ll have to see and we’ll have to see where it goes from here okay Barbara Star thank you very much for your thoughts on this story and uh we are expecting in the next minute or so to hear from President Donald Trump to share more information in an address from the White House about the news that the US has attacked Iran uh US President Donald Trump saying the US bombed Fordo and other nuclear sites in Iran this is BBC this is a CBS News special report i’m Margaret Brennan in Washington we have breaking news out of the Middle East president Trump is about to address the nation roughly two hours ago he announced via social media that the United States has bombed three nuclear sites in Iran cbs is reporting six B2 stealth fighters dropped 30,000 pound bunker buster bombs on at least one of those sites the very first time that weapon has been used in combat today it was to destroy an underground nuclear facility about 60 mi southeast of Tehran the president said that all American planes are safely now out of Iranian airspace these American strikes are in support of a war that Israel launched on Iran 9 days ago we know tonight that the Israeli prime minister has spoken to the president thanked him and congratulated him on the strikes uh we are awaiting word now from the president of the United States himself who is expected to address the nation from the White House as we await him taking the podium I want to go to our White House correspondent Ouija Jen ouija we know that the president returned to the White House in the 5:00 hour around 6:00 p.m he had a national security briefing what do we know about what was going on at that period of time Margaret that’s right he was in his uh golf club in Bedminster New Jersey but came back uh this evening which was actually always the plan even when he took off for that trip and right beforehand he said that Iran had at maximum two weeks to try to reach a diplomatic deal there was no indication at that time that he was going to follow through with the strikes but of course that quickly changed we just we see the president now the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime for Natants and Esfahan everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated iran the bully of the Middle East must now make peace if they do not future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier for 40 years Iran has been saying “Death to America death to Israel.” They have been killing our people blowing off their arms blowing off their legs with roadside bombs that was their specialty we lost over a thousand people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular so many were killed by their general Casm Solammani i decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen it will not continue i want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister BB Netanyahu we worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel i want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done and most importantly I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many many decades hopefully we will no longer need their services in this capacity i hope that’s so i also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Raisen Kaine spectacular general and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack with all of that being said this cannot continue there will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days remember there are many targets left tonight’s was the most difficult of them all by far and perhaps the most lethal but if peace does not come quickly we will go after those other targets with precision speed and skill most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes there’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight not even close there has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago tomorrow General Kaine Secretary of Defense Pete Hexath will have a press conference at 8 a.m at the Pentagon and I want to just thank everybody and in particular God I want to just say we love you God and we love our great military protect them god bless the Middle East god bless Israel and God bless America thank you very much thank you that’s so I also want to president of the United States uh walking away from the podium there where he had been flanked by the secretary of state and national security adviser Marco Rubio along with secretary of defense and his vice president announcing and congratulating uh the military on what he called spectacular military success in these strikes that were carried out inside Iran earlier today he said the sites were quote completely obliterated now he did seem in those remarks not to completely close the door on further military action he thanked the US military and said that he hopes that they their services won’t be needed again uh and he said all of this was meant to erase the nuclear threat posed by Iran to be clear US intelligence assessment has been that Iran was not yet building a nuclear weapon but that they had been enriching nuclear fuel at worrisome levels the international community had high degree of outcry on that point just a few weeks ago in Vienna you had the Israeli strikes come the following day after that in the midst of what had been uh a diplomatic effort by President Trump and his envoy Steve Wickoff to negotiate with Iran to get them to limit their nuclear program those did not result in an agreement though up until today I am told uh the US was trying to reach out yet just a few hours ago we saw these strikes carried out i want to go over to the Pentagon now where our Charlie Dageda uh is and apparently Charlie you’ll be there early tomorrow since the president just said there will be an 8 a.m pentagon press conference well he will detail these strikes uh the Secretary of Defense will what do we know at this hour i know Iran is acknowledging and saying that these strikes happened but that it will not end their nuclear program yeah Margaret we await that briefing tomorrow we have had very few briefings here at the Pentagon so it’ll be interesting to see how much detail is shared there but as uh it was already shared uh six uh bunker busters uh on Ford Dow that that would have meant u at least three of the B2 bombers that we’ve already discussed where they came from when they were deployed we were talking earlier today about whether they went from Whiteitman whether they were going to Guam maybe it was a head pump maybe it was a headshake of where this was going to go and where it was going to happen uh something like um 30 uh tomahawk missiles at two other sites there um they’ve been they’ve been called massive uh precision strikes i think what we need to know and I’m not sure whether that is knowable at this point is how damaging that was if the White House is to believe be believed whether it crippled entirely took out uh Iran’s nuclear capabilities at for Natans and sovereign um he’s calling it a spectacular success but the other thing we need to to be concerned about now is he he mentioned when he took out Kasam the assassination of Kasam Solommani when he was president and we saw the retaliation then across multiple American targets there are 40,000 US service members spread throughout um the Middle East and they have come under attack before and we we’ve already known even leading up to this because it was always a whatif but leading up to where we are now we’ve been speaking to people here at the Pentagon DoD saying if there is an Iranian retaliation how are we postured how is the United States postured to defend against that there are multiple multiple in fact I can’t remember how many times or how the last time we’ve seen this many military assets flooded into that area in order to defend uh against a possible Iranian retaliation to protect US forces there no no doubt that force posture has been really uh built up in these past few days at the same time it was just this morning that we heard the US ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabe announce with detail for the very first time how Americans in Israel could actually safely get out uh the US government brought about 70 of them by plane uh to Greece evacuating them from the area the airspace over Israel has been closed for days so it has uh made it hard for people to leave if they wanted to because there has been this uh back and forth with Iran’s retaliation against Israel some of those missiles piercing their defenses those US provided defenses in in many ways um and I know it has been remarkable Charlie that whether we’re talking to to current or former officials they all seem to say “It’s amazing we haven’t yet seen retaliation we haven’t yet seen a strike against a US base or US assets now that the United States has entered this conflict in this way that may change and I have no doubt that there is a bracing for what could be coming next.” I spoke to uh some diplomats in the region just within the past hour and I was told there wasn’t much of a heads up given to some of our allies there uh if just to remind people Charlie spoke about 40,000 US military personnel in that region of the world uh the fourth largest military installation America has in the world is in Kuwait very close there uh to Iran very significant naval assets in Bahrain a lot of American families stationed there so it’s not just Israel it is the surrounding Arab countries that the US is allied with who are holding their breath tonight wondering if hosting those American forces also makes them a target so we are going to be watching all those bases that you see there on the screen uh as well as uh some of the other American assets in the region um I I also just want to acknowledge here that while the president has been saying this was a successful strike uh we don’t yet know what the endgame is here we don’t know that from the United States and we don’t know that from the nation of Israel either the goal was stated to be destruction of Iran’s nuclear program tonight you have uh out of Iran statements from their um atomic agency saying that this national industry as they refer to it will not be stopped uh that you can’t kill knowledge um there have been of course assassinations of uh nuclear scientists as we know we want to go now on the phone we are joined by General uh Frank McKenzie who was the uh commanding the combatant commander there in the Middle East for so many years general McKenzie um I hope you can hear me now i know you have literally gamed out this scenario for years when you were in the job what are those uh US military families what are those soldiers uh and and and naval men what are they bracing for tonight what should we expect with the light of day good to be with you tonight um I’ve worked on this plan for 15 years it looks like a successful strike as you noted we’ll know more in the hours and days ahead how successful it actually was but what the central command commander right now is most concerned about is the possible Iranian response what’s it going to be what are they going to do uh and a lot of the thinking over the last few days I’m sure in the Department of Defense has been how to prepare for that inevitable Iranian response and so we flowed forces in we’ll be ready for it what we want to do is avoid a significant loss of American life that would then push us up the escalatory ladder so we want to save the Iranians from themselves we want to maintain balance in the region if we can and that’s what the Sentcom commander is going to be working on right now i would also note that Iran is gravely weakened as a result of their exchanges with Israel over the past few weeks and in fact over the last year or so so this is a very significant uh very significant thing to bear in mind as we look at what the Iranians might do in response the final thing I will say is this the Iranians have held all the lower cards on the escalation ladder but the simple fact is this we hold all the higher cards on the escalation ladder as does Israel and the Iranians know that well General to that point uh I was speaking to an Iran analyst just a day ago and who described this regime as homicidal but not suicidal meaning they would restrain themselves from a head-to-head conflict with the United States as you just pointed out they are in such a weakened position because of the conflict over the past year or more does that that had to have factored in to the the calculation tonight do you think President Trump is being overconfident if he thinks this is one and done i I think President Trump actually has unique and powerful credibility on this issue he noted the strike on Casim Solommani which I really believe was the correct action at the time i was responsible for carrying out his orders on that strike and really began the arc of the trajectory that has taken us to this point uh where Iran is in on their on their back foot and and in great in very grave danger of even surviving as a state so I think that’s something to something to understand as we take a look at it um I think we should remember that the primary goal of Iranian statecraft is preservation of the regime at different times before this regime has chosen to step back when faced with that with the possibility of regime destruction i think they’re rapidly approaching that point right now and I think this measurably moves us forward to that end we uh have learned here at CBS that there was some advanced notice um that was on passed uh to Iran about these strikes um but as I said there wasn’t full diplomatic notice being given to all of the allies in the region you you ran that operation in 2020 when uh as you mentioned um Kasamsulammani uh was taken off the battlefield how how much visibility does the United States have for what comes next how good is our intelligence in terms of the threat picture so um Margaret our intelligence is very good penetration of Iran by human sources and other sources is very good we’re going to have a good feel for what the Iranians are thinking the other factor that’s out there is much Iranian leadership is dead now and the Iranians have because of their corrupt system of promoting officers and keeping them in place they don’t have a good succession plan inside their military so people go into a job and they stay 10 12 15 years while they’re growing rich from that job so those people are now dead but they haven’t groomed a successor so that makes it very hard for the supreme leader to formulate decisions and to transmit those decisions to the Iranian military and that will further complicate Iranian responses I believe in the days and weeks ahead uh thank you General and just to clarify for our audience as we were talking about um the killings of top Iranian officials um many of them have been military leaders um we were showing you a picture there of the supreme leader Kasum we were talking about Kasumsmani we were talking about the Supreme Leader just now showing you a picture of him we do not know his whereabouts at this hour he has actually not been seen in public for a few days now he had this video address that we are showing you uh but he is at 86 years old uh dealing with cancer and all of our reporting is that he has been very hard to contact uh in other words the top levels of Iranian government aren’t sure where their boss is at this hour we do not know his whereabouts when we’re talking about succession planning that is the man that is the main decision maker from which all things flow and so this question of what comes next um is going to be really important to think about as we look at who else may be able to give orders or not give orders um we want to speak to Samantha Vinegrad who I’m told is a joining us as well right now a national security contributor to CBS she also joins us on the phone she’s a former assistant secretary for counterterrorism at Homeland Security and Sam I know you you served before that on the uh National Security Council as well um there has been so much reporting around the threat in the United States over the past few years the risk to officials involved uh with actions against Iran the risk of sleeper cells here in the United States when we talk about retaliation should we be thinking about the homeland margaret I am deeply concerned about the potential for retaliatory attacks here in the homeland by Iran iran’s nuclear program has certainly taken a hit we will await the battleground assessment to understand how deep that hit was so but we do know that Iran is likely going to rely on its asymmetric advantage in this conflict with the United States and Israel which is its proxies all around the world iran has for decades had the both intent and the ability to direct and inspire individuals to attack American Israeli and Jewish interests and assets all around the world during my time at homeland security we tracked myriad Iranian threats here in the homeland as you mentioned against former government officials involved in the strike against Kasamsmani against dissident against journalists against the Saudi ambassador uh during the Obama administration and against everyday Americans so right now while Iran has certainly taken a hit to its nuclear program and military installation it is likely that they will rely on their asymmetric advantage in this context which is their proxies to try to send a signal to the United States and to the rest of the world that they just aren’t going to take this hit without any kind of response know how uh significant their reprisals rep reprisals will be is something the intelligence and law enforcement communities are likely looking into but I am concerned about the threat here in the homeland yeah I’m looking at an email now from our uh homeland security correspondent Nicole Skanga detailing some of the law enforcement officials throughout the country who say they have not yet been given any kind of briefing uh in in regard to possible downstream effects but as you point out that doesn’t mean there isn’t one in fact I was speaking to a US official earlier today who said that this administration has shown a higher risk tolerance uh when it comes to things like this than than past administrations that was in reference to the security of Americans abroad as as we noted there Sam it was just earlier today that the US ambassador to Israel announced the details of how to leave uh Israel right now um with US government chartered flights is that a little late in the game if you have an American family member in the region right now how worried should you be well Margaret on your first point law enforcement intelligence professionals were already on heightened alert as it pertains to the Iranian threat just based upon uh the strikes against Kasamsmani and just various Iranian threat streams that were around even when I was at DHS ending in 2023 so while they should get a briefing on downstream effects they are already very aware of Iranian capabilities in this context and likely monitoring social media encrypted platforms and other sources to see if they’re uh they can find any leads on specific threat streams following this these military strikes now I will tell you that we have had operational plans to evacuate Americans from the region for years and certainly post October 7th those operational plans were ready to go and I was very surprised that they were not implemented sooner based upon Israel strikes against Iran and what we knew to be potential strikes against Americans in the region as soon as President Trump took the decision to launch these strikes I would have expected him and his National Security Council to immediately begin to actively evacuate Americans not just from Israel but potentially from Lebanon from Egypt from Iraq iran is obviously more complicated just knowing that Iran will be looking for opportunities to harm Americans whether that’s through violence through kidnapping through harassment and otherwise so it wasn’t a question of the operational plans not being ready it was a question of the State Department deciding to implement those plans the Department of Defense helping to operate them and I think that it is unfortunately too little too late based upon the cauldron that is in the Middle East right now right well uh those are some um cautionary words at this hour Sam we know that Americans were ordered out of US mission Iraq um a few days ago but when it came to some of those other posts um there are still uh plenty of Americans working living and many of them with families as well we’re going to continue to track what’s happening there in the region um and I want to go now to the White House where we find White House correspondent Ouija Jen uh Ouija I know from uh the rundown here we saw the Secretary of Defense the Secretary of State um a number of key adviserss including the CIA director and there has been a very public back and forth that the president has had disputing publicly the findings of the intelligence community when it came to assessing whether or not Iran was actually making a weapon or whether it was as that US intelligence community said wanting to be a threshold state in other words give themselves the option to get a weapon but not actually building one all of it comes back to that question of why this military action last Thursday and why this action now and Margaret we’ve been really trying to drill down on that very question during this past week because President Trump gave a very specific timeline he said that Iran was just weeks away from having a nuclear weapon and so I asked during the last White House press briefing Caroline Levitt um what he meant by that did he mean that Iran was getting close to having enough enriched uranium which is required to build that weapon to start making a bomb or is Iran just weeks away from actually finishing the production of a weapon and she said that um the she said that it would only take 2 weeks if the supreme leader gave the green light for Iran to have that weapon and as you pointed out that um is contradicts what we have heard from the IAE AE which of course monitors all the nuclear uh sites around the world which recently said that Iran was not actively pursuing a nuclear bomb and also flies in the face of what the director of national intelligence Tulsi Gabber testified now she did talk about those high levels of enriched uranium that is very different from saying they actually are close to Obama but that is what the president said that is what this administration said and so we will be asking for more details because that is so important to answer the why of why now Margaret yes and and an important question many lawmakers will be raising as well we know that uh lawmakers have not been briefed they are scheduled to be briefed in the House and Senate on Tuesday by the director of national intelligence along with military leaders on exactly how all of this came about and the justification for it we know as of this evening uh that the top leadership in Congress hasn’t fully been briefed or at least the Democrats who are in that so-called gang of eight those who uh lead uh the parties in both houses and then also have oversight of the intelligence committees uh the Republicans have told CBS that they have been briefed the Democrats have not um that further of course um will raise questions about any kind of politics here on such a significant issue of national security um this tonight no doubt has been the most significant national security and foreign policy decision the president of the United States has made in this second Trump term we’ll be tracking all of what comes next very closely and we’ll be bringing it to you here on CBS our coverage will continue on CBS News 247 your local news on this CBS CBS station and of course first thing tomorrow on CBS Sunday morning and with me on Face the Nation this has been a CBS News special report i’m Margaret Brennan in Washington what happens when reporters take 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sites he called the strikes successful in an address to the nation from the White House mr trump said Iran’s nuclear program is now decimated he called for peace in the region but did not close the door to more US military action here are the president’s remarks in full a short time ago the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime for Natants and Esfahan everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated iran the bully of the Middle East must now make peace if they do not future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier for 40 years Iran has been saying “Death to America death to Israel.” They have been killing our people blowing off their arms blowing off their legs with roadside bombs that was their specialty we lost over a thousand people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular so many were killed by their general Casm Solommani i decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen it will not continue i want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister BB Netanyahu we worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel i want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done and most importantly I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many many decades hopefully we will no longer need their services in this capacity i hope that’s so i also want to congratulate the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Raisen Kaine spectacular general and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack with all of that being said this cannot continue there will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days remember there are many targets left tonight’s was the most difficult of them all by far and perhaps the most lethal but if peace does not come quickly we will go after those other targets with precision speed and skill most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes there’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight not even close there has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago tomorrow General Kaine Secretary of Defense Pete Hgsth will have a press conference at 8 a.m at the Pentagon and I want to just thank everybody and in particular God I want to just say we love you God and we love our great military protect them god bless the Middle East god bless Israel and God bless America thank you very much thank you let’s bring in CBS News Middle East reporter Courtney Keley joining us on the phone right now courtney can you hear me yes I can okay well President Trump said uh three nuclear sites were attacked what do you what do you take of what his comments were this evening well he said the bully of the Middle East must now talk peace and that is not necessarily what the regime will do i am hearing that there appears to be rising fears of retaliation by the Iranian regime that people are starting to talk about fears of possible jail or execution which has happened before under this regime many times but we talked you and I about for Natans and Isvahan just as that news was breaking and I want to bring you some more information with more clarity one source told me that they were hearing bombings in Tehran proper that has been clarified to me that Foro is only 90 miles southwest or a 2hour drive from Tyrron and the concussion concussive effect of that those explosions at Natans reverberating and bouncing off the mountains could have actually made someone feel like it was happening right next to them in Tehran there might have been anti-artillery aircraft but the concussive effect of those bombings was what people would have been hearing in Tehran not any other air strikes there have no other air strikes been reported except the US air strikes on the three nuclear power plants for donatans and Isvahan and what President Trump’s saying that that that Iran has to negotiate really talk peace which is what he’s wanted the Ayatollah had always made clear to some experts that I’ve spoken to the red line would have been no nuclear enrichment and before they even got to that conversation before Steve Whit was able to have that conversation with the Iranian foreign minister Israel launched the first salvo of these attacks a week ago Wednesday and now for the first time the US used its bunker buster bomb to strike these Iranian nuclear sites which now makes the US involved in this war in an offensive way not no longer in a defensive way no longer just supporting Israel in terms of uh helping them with the defense of the ballistic bombings hitting inside of Israel from Iran now the US has created uh an its own offensive and what happens next to with better minds prevailing it is a big nerve-wracking question mark will Iran target the straight of form or Bahrain or Qatar US bases in both will uh does Iran have sleeper cells what we don’t expect is to see Hezbollah Hermas in any way back them up but this is a very dangerous tenuous time now that this has happened and all anyone can do is wait to first see the satellite imagery to first hear what the degradation of these nuclear plants is while the president saying Bordeaux for example is gone we will need to have that uh shown and for analysts to see that I have talen to one nuclear scientist who has been inside the talks and knows these plants saying it’s just too early to tell is what he said to me what has Iran had to say so far or have they said anything at all well do you know that the regime is very different from the people and so the people have had their internet cut for days they’re most of them are anti-regime most of them would like to see their freedoms and their rights be respected as opposed to oppressed the Iranian regime though has been hit very hard uh top members of the army and the the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have all been hit um I’m right now effort I’m I’m trying to confirm words that were put out on an Iranian site that say it’s Ham but I’m double-checking that right now because you don’t you know it’s it’s unclear right now there’s Iranian state television and there Iranian sources but a lot is not coming out of Iran because of the issues with the internet courtney Keley thank you so much for being with us right now we have CBS News senior White House correspondent Wu Jang joining us once again to talk about what you heard the president say as he addressed the nation what stood out to you about the president’s remarks well the president was very clear in that he is characterizing these strikes as a success a spectacular military success and even baked in there was another warning for Iran that they must choose peace or there will be more to come essentially and to that end the president just posted on social media um a few minutes ago saying any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight thank you Donald J trump president of the United States so again he is signaling to the Iranians uh that if they do in fact respond to this that the US will um retaliate again and so uh you know the president indicated that in his statement as well it was very short which was notable uh because oftentimes the president likes to take questions in settings um uh where he announces major news especially if he considers it a victory but given the gravity of the situation um I’m not surprised that he came out made the statement and then turned with his uh top adviserss and left uh but we do expect to hear more from him of course he did say that there will be more details released tomorrow morning by the Pentagon about how this was actually carried out you’re looking at pictures right now of the president in the situation room with Vice President JD Vance we know there were several other key players in that meeting that happened as he returned here to the White House earlier this evening around 6:00 for a national security meeting including Secretary of State and acting national security adviser Marco Rubio the defense secretary Pete Hgsth his chief of staff Susie Wilds the chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Clay Kaine and uh several others who accompanied him uh to really talk about what had just unfolded the entire gang of eight was not informed before these strikes what do you make of that well some but not all it appears that the Republicans uh were informed about this uh but not their Democratic um counterparts who have oversight in that intelligence committee we also know that the speaker of the house Mike Johnson sent out um a post saying that leaders in Congress were aware of the urgency of this situation and the commander-in-chief evaluated uh that the imminent danger outweighed the time it would take for Congress to act that is because uh some lawmakers have been voicing that before the president could take action like this he would have to get congressional approval um and so while it is SOP that the president would have uh shared all of uh or what he could with um the intelligence committees uh this is not a president who tends to operate by uh traditional norms so you know I’m sure they will make plenty more of of not being informed ouija Jen thank you so much for that report right now we’re turning to CBS News reporter Haley Aut joining us from Tel Aviv in Israel haley what have you heard from the Israeli government so far uh good morning we’ve actually just heard uh from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he’s given an an address to the Israeli people um he reiterated some of what President Trump said um he also said that uh that President Trump had called had called him and that it was a warm opera a warm conversation um and he thanked the United States and he and he said um a message of uh hope and strength to the Israeli people uh we are just waking up here in Tel Aviv this morning to this news and the feeling is one of uncertainty because uh people are waiting to see what if any and something is expected uh will be Iran’s response so people are very much poised and uh and waiting to see what happens next now this is an action Israel certainly could not have taken by itself on its own so what is their next move at this point it’s interesting uh in this past week um it’s almost appeared as though there were tensions between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and there were questions about whether President Trump was going to bring the United States into this whether he was going to use these bunker busting bombs uh that only the US um was had and was capable of deploying um and there was reporting that perhaps he was unhappy with Netanyahu um the messaging from both the president and the Israeli prime minister today um is the opposite of that it’s uh they’re both projecting um affection for one another uh Mr trump said that their team was one of the best teams um in the world i’m paraphrasing but but something similar ausive praise for one another um Mr mr trump has said uh that if uh Iran retaliates on Americans um uh that the United States will respond with even greater strength than just um the strikes that it has carried out here in Israel obviously they’ve been poised to defend themselves from these missile strikes for a long time we heard from Israel Israel’s homeront command which is the the group that tells Israeli citizens um how to act when they’re under threat uh and they’ve um increased the restrictions this morning so whereas things were loosening up offices were being allowed to open up there was talk perhaps that even schools might be allowed to open up um now uh workplaces are going to remain closed only essential workers um are allowed to go in and people are told to stay close to shelters haley Israel is dealing with Gaza and also attacks from Yemen but these attacks this week from Iran have done a lot of damage there how are people in Israel dealing with all of this what we’ve seen here this week um is completely different when when I speak to people and also in my experience in this country than than the other kinds of attacks from Gaza for example um those are rockets uh the Israel’s missile defense system Iron Dome is very good at intercepting those and there’s a whole system of shelters throughout the country that give people a great deal of comfort even when they are under rocket attack they provide very good uh protection for those kinds of projectiles ballistic missiles are a whole different kettle of fish um so to speak uh they they’re huge and their impacts are huge and uh they’re a new challenge for Israel’s missile defense system we’ve seen some make it through um and it’s rattled people uh people have said that they feel a sense of insecurity um that I I haven’t heard from people in any other part of this war since I’ve been covering it um certainly since October 7th um the other thing to think about too is uh Americans who are in the region we we heard yesterday that the US embassy started evacuating Americans but there are a number of American citizens here who are either dual citizens who are on trips who are visiting family who have family who have been really frantic to try to get out flights have been cancelled um and they’ve been stuck and they will be waking up to this news um and probably worried about what that means for them and their and their hopes at of returning home anytime soon and even Americans here are feeling a sense of insecurity as well hilly thank you with that response from Israel for us right now we’re going to turn to CBS News senior national security correspondent Charlie Dageda joining us now from the Pentagon thanks for being with us yeah thank you you know I was just catching up i I was listening to a uh Haley’s uh report there and you know what’s interesting is this will be the first time maybe the second time we’re learning that we’re going to have a briefing here at the Pentagon tomorrow at 8 a.m so we will be here we we will learn from uh defense secretary Pete Hexth what what happened uh how successful it is or was uh and those are the those are the key questions you know how how how successful these attacks were these bombing raids were on Iran’s nuclear facilities if that information is even available but but what’s also really important here and Haley touched on it before is there are 40,000 US forces spread throughout the Middle East and before when as a matter of fact and President Trump um had essentially assassinated or at least killed uh Hassan Solmani who at that time was in charge of uh the general in charge of Iranian forces uh US forces in Iraq and other places came under attack so we know for a fact because we’ve been asking those questions whether or not the United States has been preparing force protection for an Iranian retaliation and it has to be said I I don’t know what what kind of language is coming out of Thrron right now but something like this and something even less than this has never gone unanswered we heard this morning that the B2 bombers were on the move but was the strike a surprise well it was a surprise so so we had learned right so there aren’t too many of those B2 bombers uh for the United States these stealth bombers there there are 20 there maybe a dozen that are operational at any time most of them are based in Whiteitman which is in Missouri uh some of them are sometimes based in uh Diego Garcia which which had been based there before and in fact they had taken um bombing runs against Houthi targets um recently as as recently as April but I knew for a fact at least it’s been told to me that there were no B2 bombers there so when they started making that move we we spoke to our contacts here saying where are they headed you know where are they going we were told Guam it’s a good head fake it’s a good you know fake pump i’m I’m not entirely sure that the B2s that uh headed out of Whiteitmen were involved in this attack what I can tell you is there there is only one uh carrier and one weapon system that can penetrate into places like Ford and it is the B2 bomber and they can carry two bombs like this it’s called the MOP the the massive ordinance penetrator and they can carry two bombs and as we understand it six of them were involved these bunker b uh uh bunker busters that were involved in the attack at Ford there may have been several other um weapons that were used to hawk that uh could take out any other area those any other targets in that area but that’s what we understand today you know what we’re we’re we’re trying to figure out we’re going to get the details tomorrow 8 a.m here at the Pentagon we’ll bring you more then charlie Dagada with a more in-depth understanding of the weapons that were used in this attack thank you so much Charlie thank you well CBS News intelligence and national security reporter Olivia Gazitis joins us now on the phone right now uh the first question I have for you is what do we know about the members of the US government and other world leaders uh were they notified about any of this a great question because normally uh uh the White House would give uh key leaders in Congress a heads up if it is going to take significant action of this sort we have learned this evening uh that some leadership in Congress including the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders the House Minority and Majority Leaders and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee all were briefed ahead of time not briefed ahead of time was the uh Senate uh intelligence committee uh vice chairman Mark Warner or the House Intelligence Committee ranking member uh Jim Heims democratic leadership uh who normally would be briefed in situations like these left out of the uh and only learning after the fact that uh the US was going to take this kind of action uh and I think that is is notable because the president uh tonight was very declarative about uh saying that Iran’s three key enrichment facilities were completely and totally obliterated the national security sources I’ve been speaking with are saying that it’s very early to have carried out what is called a battle damage assessment in which US officials would be taking a look at overhead imagery of these sites they would be combing through signals intelligence meaning intercepted communications uh among officials in Iran uh discussing potential damage they would be combing through human intelligence sources telling the US or our ally Israel uh what may or may not have been damaged absent confirmation of how extensive the damage actually was there is still an open question can Iran pick up the pieces and restart its program is it possibly still in a position to sprint towards a nuclear weapon at this point as some intelligence al intelligence analysts believed might have happened uh if the US entered this conflict and did not deliver significant damage to its nuclear sites uh importantly I think the president left the door this evening to diplomacy open he has left things in Iran’s court uh saying that peace if peace doesn’t come quickly we will go after other targets right now as you’ve been discussing the US has 40,000 troops in the region it has diplomatic outposts still opening and off open and operating it has hundreds of thousands of American citizens in the region we heard today that 70 of them left in two flights from Tel Aviv to Athens in Greece uh beyond American citizens as targets it has close allies the UAE Saudi Arabia Qatar all also also now very much at risk for retaliation from the Iranian regime a lot is going to depend on whether the regime now calculates that it will survive if it retaliates against the US uh or if uh it decides that that in fact would be suicidal and stands down and resorts to diplomacy olivia thank you so much for that information for us on all of this going on this breaking news that we’ve been hearing throughout the past 24 hours corny Keely Ouija Jang Hilly Charlie Dagada Olivia Gazis we thank you all for joining us we will be taking a short break but we’ll have much more on this breaking news story you are watching CBS News 247 what happens when you get conversation over conflict i 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driverless taxi plus billionaire Barry Diller’s revealing new memoir and when trash becomes art this Sunday morning politics isn’t a game when do consumers actually get to touch and feel a difference in their lives politics is about policy so you would encourage Democrats to work with Donald Trump on an issue like healthcare i’m a voracious consumer of information and I’m impatient i don’t like to be spun do you know if there are active terror cells in the United States right now to be moderator of Face the Nation means bringing the most powerful stakeholders to the table to become better informed i won’t get up invisible it was almost like being face to face with the devil 48 hours reports i fought and fought 911 what is your emergency she disappeared off the face of the earth stream 48 hours 247 elizabeth I thought I saw you and then I thought well who else could it be dressed as a member of the Lollipop Guild i work with the police i like my outlandish theories with a heavy dose of evidence nice alibi by the way can you be careful with that whoever did this is still out there and I do love a mystery elling on Paramount Plus and returning CBS Fall moneywatch is your nononsense guide to taking control of your finances hi I’m Jill Slesinger listen to Moneywatch wherever you get your podcasts hi CBS I’m Tom Ellis i can’t wait for you to see my new show CIA just days after President Trump said he would make a decision on whether to strike Iran within two weeks the United States has launched attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities president Trump announced the strikes late Saturday on three key Iranian sites he called the strikes successful in an address to the nation from the White House Mr trump said Iran’s nuclear program is now decimated he called for peace in the region but did not close the door to more US military action here are the president’s remarks in full a short time ago the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime for Natants and Esfahan everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated iran the bully of the Middle East must now make peace if they do not future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier for 40 years Iran has been saying “Death to America death to Israel.” They have been killing our people blowing off their arms blowing off their legs with roadside bombs that was their specialty we lost over a thousand people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular so many were killed by their general Casm Solommani i decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen it will not continue i want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister BB Netanyahu we worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel i want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done and most importantly I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many many decades hopefully we will no longer need their services in this capacity i hope that’s so i also want to congratulate the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Dan Raisen Kaine spectacular general and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack with all of that being said this cannot continue there will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days remember there are many targets left tonight’s was the most difficult of them all by far and perhaps the most lethal but if peace does not come quickly we will go after those other targets with precision speed and skill most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes there’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight not even close there has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago tomorrow General Kaine Secretary of Defense Pete Hgsth will have a press conference at 8 a.m at the Pentagon and I want to just thank everybody and in particular God I want to just say we love you God and we love our great military protect them god bless the Middle East god bless Israel and God bless America thank you very much thank you let’s bring in CBS News Middle East reporter Courtney Keley joining us on the phone right now courtney can you hear me yes I can okay well President Trump said uh three nuclear sites were attacked what do you what do you take of what his comments were this evening well he said the bully of the Middle East must now talk peace and that is not necessarily what the regime will do i am hearing that there appears to be rising fears of retaliation by the Iranian regime that people are starting to talk about fears of possible jail or execution which has happened before under this regime many times but we talked you and I about for Natans and Isvahan just as that news was breaking and I want to bring you some more information with more clarity one source told me that they were hearing bombings in Tehran proper that has been clarified to me that Fordo is only 90 miles southwest of or a 2hour drive from Tyrron and the concussion concussive effect of that those explosions at Natans reverberating and bouncing off the mountains could have actually made someone feel like it was happening right next to them in Tehran there might have been anti-artillery aircraft but the concussive effect of those bombings was what people would have been hearing in Tehran not any other air strikes there have no other air strikes been reported except the US air strikes on the three nuclear power plants for donatans and Isvahan and what President Trump saying that that that Iran has to negotiate really talk peace which is what he’s wanted uh the Ayatollah had always made clear to some experts that I’ve spoken to the red line would have been no nuclear enrichment and before they even got to that conversation before Steve Witkoff was able to have that conversation with the Iranian foreign minister Israel launched the first salvo of these attacks a week ago Wednesday and now for the first time the US used its bunker buster bomb to strike these Iranian nuclear sites which now makes the US involved in this war in an offensive way not no longer in a defensive way no longer just supporting Israel in terms of uh helping them with the defense of the ballistic bombings hitting inside Israel from Iran now the US has created uh an its own offensive and what happens next to with better minds prevailing it is a big nerve-wracking question mark will Iran target the straight of hormuz or Bahrain or Qatar US bases in both will uh does Iran have sleeper cells what we don’t expect is to see Hezbollah Hermas in any way back them up but this is a very dangerous tenuous time now that this has happened and all anyone can do is wait to first see the satellite imagery to first hear what the degradation of these nuclear plants is while the president saying Fordo for example is gone we will need to have that uh shown and for analysts to see that i’ve talen to one nuclear scientist who has been inside the talks and knows these plants saying it’s just too early to tell is what he said to me what has Iran had to say so far or have they said anything at all well do you know that the regime is very different from the people and so the people have had their internet cut for days they’re most of them are anti-regime most of them would like to see their freedoms and their rights be respected as opposed to oppressed the Iranian regime though has been hit very hard uh top members of the army and the the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have all been hit um I’m right now effort I’m I’m trying to confirm words that were put out on an Iranian site that say it’s Ham but I’m double-checking that right now because you don’t you know it’s it’s unclear right now there’s Iranian state television and there Iranian sources but a lot is not coming out of Iran because of the issues with the internet courtney Keely thank you so much for being with us right now we have CBS News senior White House correspondent Would you Jen joining us once again to talk about what you heard the president say as he addressed the nation what stood out to you about the president’s remarks well the president was very clear in that he is characterizing these strikes as a success a spectacular military success and even baked in there was another warning for Iran that they must choose peace or there will be more to come essentially and to that end the president just posted on social media um a few minutes ago saying any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight thank you Donald J trump president of the United States so again he is signaling to the Iranians uh that if they do in fact respond to this that the US will um retaliate again and so uh you know the president indicated that in his statement as well it was very short which was notable uh because often times the president likes to take questions in settings um uh where he announces major news especially if he considers it a victory but given the gravity of the situation um I’m not surprised that he came out made the statement and then turned with his uh top adviserss and left uh but we do expect to hear more from him of course he did say that there will be more details released tomorrow morning by the Pentagon about how this was actually carried out you’re looking at pictures right now of the president in the situation room with Vice President JD Vance we know there were several other key players in that meeting that happened as he returned here to the White House earlier this evening around 6:00 for a national security meeting including Secretary of State and acting national security adviser Marggo Rubio the defense secretary Pete Hgsth his chief of staff Susie Wilds the chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Dan Clay Kaine and uh several others who accompanied him uh to really talk about what had just unfolded the entire gang of eight was not informed before these strikes what do you make of that well some but not all it appears that the Republicans uh were informed about this uh but not their Democratic um counterparts who have oversight in that intelligence committee we also know that the speaker of the house Mike Johnson sent out um a post saying that leaders in Congress were aware of the urgency of this situation and the commander-in-chief evaluated uh that the imminent danger outweighed the time it would take for Congress to act that is because uh some lawmakers have been voicing that before the president could take action like this he would have to get congressional approval um and so while it is SOP that the president would have uh shared all of uh or what he could with um the intelligence committees uh this is not a president who tends to operate by uh traditional norms so you know I’m sure they will make plenty more of of not being informed ouija Jen thank you so much for that report right now we’re turning to CBS News reporter Haley Aut joining us from Tel Aviv in Israel haley what have you heard from the Israeli government so far uh good morning we’ve actually just heard uh from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he’s given an an address to the Israeli people um he reiterated some of what President Trump said um he also said that uh that President Trump had called had called him and that it was a warm opera a warm conversation um and he thanked the United States and he and he said um a message of uh hope and strength to the Israeli people uh we are just waking up here in Tel Aviv this morning to this news and the feeling is one of uncertainty because uh people are waiting to see what if any and something is expected uh will be Iran’s response so people are very much poised and uh and waiting to see what happens next now this is an action Israel certainly could not have taken by itself on its own so what is their next move at this point it’s interesting uh in this past week um it’s almost appeared as though there were tensions between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and there were questions about whether President Trump was going to bring the United States into this whether he was going to use these bunker busting bombs uh that only the US um was had and was capable of deploying um and there was reporting that perhaps he was unhappy with Netanyahu um the messaging from both the president and the Israeli prime minister today um is the opposite of that it’s uh they’re both projecting um affection for one another uh Mr trump said that their team was one of the best teams um in the world i’m paraphrasing but but something similar ausive praise for one another um Mr trump has said uh that if uh Iran retaliates on Americans um uh that the United States will respond with even greater strength than just um the strikes that it has carried out here in Israel obviously they’ve been poised to defend themselves from these missile strikes for a long time we heard from Israel Israel’s homeront command which is the the group that tells Israeli citizens um how to act when they’re under threat uh and they’ve um increased the restrictions this morning so whereas things were loosening up offices were being allowed to open up there was talk perhaps that even schools might be allowed to open up um now uh workplaces are going to remain closed only essential workers um are allowed to go in and people are told to stay close to shelters haley Israel is dealing with Gaza and also attacks from Yemen but these attacks this week from Iran have done a lot of damage there how are people in Israel dealing with all of this what we’ve seen here this week um is completely different when when I speak to people and also in my experience in this country than than the other kinds of attacks from Gaza for example um those are rockets uh the Israel’s missile defense system Iron Dome is very good at intercepting those and there’s a whole system of shelters throughout the country that give people a great deal of comfort even when they are under rocket attack they provide very good uh protection for those kinds of projectiles ballistic missiles are a whole different kettle of fish um so to speak uh they they’re huge and their impacts are huge and uh they’re a new challenge for Israel’s missile defense system we’ve seen some make it through um and it’s rattled people uh people have said that they feel a sense of insecurity um that I I haven’t heard from people in any other part of this war since I’ve been covering it um certainly since October 7th um the other thing to think about too is uh Americans who are in the region we we heard yesterday that the US embassy started evacuating Americans but there are a number of American citizens here who are either dual citizens who are on trips who are visiting family who have family who have been really frantic to try to get out flights have been cancelled um and they’ve been stuck and they will be waking up to this news um and probably worried about what that means for them and their and their hopes at of returning home anytime soon and even Americans here are feeling a sense of insecurity as well hilly thank you with that response from Israel for us right now we’re going to turn to CBS News senior national security correspondent Charlie Dagada joining us now from the Pentagon thanks for being with us yeah thank you you know I was just catching up i I was listening to a uh Haley’s uh report there and you know what’s interesting is this will be the first time maybe the second time we’re learning that we’re going to have a briefing here at the Pentagon tomorrow at 8 a.m so we will be here we will we will learn from uh Defense Secretary Pete Hexth what what happened uh how successful it is or was uh and those are the those are the key questions you know how how how successful these attacks were these bombing raids were on Iran’s nuclear facilities if that information is even available but but what’s also really important here and Haley touched on it before is there are 40,000 US forces spread throughout the Middle East before when as a matter of fact when President Trump um had essentially assassinated or at least killed uh Hassan Solmani who at that time was in charge of uh the general in charge of Iranian forces uh US forces in Iraq and other places came under attack so we know for a fact because we’ve been asking those questions whether or not the United States has been preparing force protection for an Iranian retaliation and it has to be said I I don’t know what what kind of language is coming out of Tyrron right now but something like this and something even less than this has never gone unanswered we heard this morning that the B2 bombers were on the move but was the strike a surprise well it was a surprise so so we had learned right so there aren’t too many of those B2 bombers uh for the United States these stealth bombers there there are 20 there maybe a dozen that are operational at any time most of them are based in Whiteitman which is in Missouri uh some of them are sometimes based in uh Diego Garcia which which had been based there before and in fact they had taken um bombing runs against Houthi targets um recently as as recently as April but I knew for a fact at least it’s been told to me that there were no B2 bombers there so when they started making that move we we spoke to our contacts here saying where are they headed you know where are they going we were told Guam it’s a good head fake it’s a good you know fake pump i’m I’m not entirely sure that the B2s that uh headed out of Whiteman were involved in this attack but what I can tell you is there there is only one uh carrier and one weapon system that can penetrate into places like Ford and it is the B2 bomber and they can carry two bombs like this it’s called the MOP the the massive ordinance penetrator and they can carry two bombs and as we understand it six of them were involved these bunker b uh uh bunker busters that were involved in the attack at for there may have been several other um weapons that were used took that uh could take out any other area those any other targets in that area but that’s what we understand today you know what we’re we’re we’re trying to figure out where we’re going to get the details tomorrow 8 a.m here at the Pentagon we’ll bring you more then charlie Dagada with a more in-depth understanding of the weapons that were used in this attack thank you so much Charlie well CBS News intelligence and national security reporter Olivia Gazis joins us now on the phone right now uh the first question I have for you is what do we know about the members of the US government and other world leaders uh were they notified about any of this a great question because normally uh uh the White House would give uh key leaders in Congress a heads up if it is going to take significant action of this sort we have learned this evening uh that some leadership in Congress including the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders the House Minority and Majority Leaders and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee all were briefed ahead of time not briefed ahead of time was the uh Senate uh intelligence committee uh vice chairman Mark Warner or the House Intelligence Committee ranking member uh Jim Heimmes democratic leadership uh who normally would be briefed in situations like these left out of the uh and only learning after the fact that uh the US was going to take this kind of action uh and I think that is is notable because the president uh tonight was very declarative about uh saying that Iran’s three key enrichment facilities were completely and totally obliterated the national security sources I’ve been speaking with are saying that it’s very early to have carried out what is called a battle damage assessment in which US officials would be taking a look at overhead imagery of these sites they would be combing through signals intelligence meaning intercepted communications uh among officials in Iran uh discussing potential damage they would be combing through human intelligence sources telling the US or our ally Israel uh what may or may not have been damaged absent confirmation of how extensive the damage actually was there is still an open question can Iran pick up the pieces and restart its program is it possibly still in a position to sprint towards a nuclear weapon at this point as some intelligence al intelligence analysts believed might have happened uh if the US entered this conflict and did not deliver significant damage to its nuclear sites uh importantly I think the president left the door this evening to diplomacy open he has left things in Iran’s court uh saying that peace if peace doesn’t come quickly we will go after other targets right now as you’ve been discussing the US has 40,000 troops in the region it has diplomatic outposts still opening and open and operating it has hundreds of thousands of American citizens in the region we heard today that 70 of them left in two flights from Tel Aviv to Athens in Greece uh beyond American citizens as targets it has close allies the UAE Saudi Arabia Qatar all alo also now very much at risk for retaliation from the Iranian regime a lot is going to depend on whether the regime now calculates that it will survive if it retaliates against the US uh or if uh it decides that that in fact would be suicidal and stands down and resorts to diplomacy olivia thank you so much for that information for us on all of this going on this breaking news that we’ve been hearing throughout the past 24 hours corny key Jang Hilly a Charlie Dagada Olivia Gazis we thank you all for joining us we will be taking a short break but we’ll have much more on this breaking news story you are watching CBS News 247 reporters take you inside the story I’ve been asking for over a year and a half for access into this place and this is the first time we’re getting it you get the all new CBS Evening News every week night this is CBS CBS this is This is NC you put on that uniform you agree to protect the person next to you no matter what welcome to Australia match made in heaven watch out are you hungry shout you a croc burger ncis Sydney full episodes now 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i know you’re scared i’m here to help they said you were the best your daughter hired me to bring you home i made a promise i’ll never stop looking thank you thank you thank you you hear about the reward come in okay tracker all episodes now streaming on Paramount Plus and returning CBS fall just days after President Trump said he would make a decision on whether to strike Iran within two weeks the United States has launched attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities president Trump announced the strikes late Saturday on three key Iranian sites he called the strikes successful in an address to the nation from the White House Mr trump said Iran’s nuclear program is now decimated he called for peace in the region but did not close the door to more US military action here are the president’s remarks in full a short time ago the US military carried out massive precision strikes on the three key nuclear facilities in the Iranian regime for Natants and Esfahan everybody heard those names for years as they built this horribly destructive enterprise our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror tonight I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated iran the bully of the Middle East must now make peace if they do not future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier for 40 years Iran has been saying death to America death to Israel they have been killing our people blowing off their arms blowing off their legs with roadside bombs that was their specialty we lost over a thousand people and hundreds of thousands throughout the Middle East and around the world have died as a direct result of their hate in particular so many were killed by their general Casm Solommani i decided a long time ago that I would not let this happen it will not continue i want to thank and congratulate Prime Minister BB Netanyahu we worked as a team like perhaps no team has ever worked before and we’ve gone a long way to erasing this horrible threat to Israel i want to thank the Israeli military for the wonderful job they’ve done and most importantly I want to congratulate the great American patriots who flew those magnificent machines tonight and all of the United States military on an operation the likes of which the world has not seen in many many decades hopefully we will no longer need their services in this capacity i hope that’s so i also want to congratulate the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff General Dan Raisen Kaine spectacular general and all of the brilliant military minds involved in this attack with all of that being said this cannot continue there will be either peace or there will be tragedy for Iran far greater than we have witnessed over the last eight days remember there are many targets left tonight’s was the most difficult of them all by far and perhaps the most lethal but if peace does not come quickly we will go after those other targets with precision speed and skill most of them can be taken out in a matter of minutes there’s no military in the world that could have done what we did tonight not even close there has never been a military that could do what took place just a little while ago tomorrow General Kaine Secretary of Defense Pete Hexath will have a press conference at 8 a.m at the Pentagon and I want to just thank everybody and in particular God I want to just say we love you God and we love our great military protect them god bless the Middle East god bless Israel and God bless America thank you very much thank you let’s bring in CBS News Middle East reporter Courtney Keley joining us on the phone right now courtney can you hear me yes I can okay well President Trump said uh three nuclear sites were attacked what do you what do you take of what his comments were this evening well he said the bully of the Middle East must now talk peace and that is not necessarily what the regime will do i am hearing that there appears to be rising fears of retaliation by the Iranian regime that people are starting to talk about fears of possible jail or execution which has happened before under this regime many times but we talked you and I about for Natans and Isvahan just as that news was breaking and I want to bring you some more information with more clarity one source told me that they were hearing bombings in Tehron proper that has been clarified to me that Foro is only 90 miles southwest of or a 2hour drive from Ton and the concussion concussive effect of that those explosions at Natans reverberating and bouncing off the mountains could have actually made someone feel like it was happening right next to them in Tehran there might have been anti-artillery aircraft but the concussive effect of those bombings was what people would have been hearing in Thrron not any other air strikes there have no other air strikes been reported except the US air strikes on the three nuclear power plants for Natans and Isvahan and what President Trump’s saying that that that Iran has to negotiate really talk peace which is what he’s wanted uh the Ayatollah had always made clear to some experts that I’ve spoken to the red line would have been no nuclear enrichment and before they even got to that conversation before Steve Whit was able to have that conversation with the Iranian foreign minister israel launched the first salvo of these attacks a week ago Wednesday and now for the first time the US used its bunker buster bomb to strike these Iranian nuclear sites which now makes the US involved in this war in an offensive way not no longer in a defensive way no longer just supporting Israel in terms of uh helping them with the defense of the ballistic bombings hitting inside of Israel from Iran now the US has created uh an its own offensive and what happens next to with better minds prevailing it is a big nerve-wracking question mark will Iran target the straight of form or Bahrain or Qatar US bases in both will uh does Iran have sleeper cells what we don’t expect is to see Hezbollah Hermas in any way back them up but this is a very dangerous tenuous time now that this has happened and all anyone can do is wait to first see the satellite imagery first hear what the degradation of these nuclear plants is while the president saying Bordeaux for example is gone we will need to have that uh shown and for analysts to see that i have talking to one nuclear scientist who has been inside the talks and knows these plants saying it’s just too early to tell is what he said to me what has Iran had to say so far or have they said anything at all well do you know that the regime is very different from the people and so the people have had their internet cut for days they’re most of them are anti-regime most of them would like to see their freedoms and their rights be respected as opposed to oppressed the Iranian regime though has been hit very hard uh top members of the army and the the Iranian Revolutionary Guard have all been hit um I’m right now effort I’m I’m trying to confirm words that were put out on an Iranian site that say it’s Ham but I’m double-checking that right now because you don’t you know it’s it’s unclear right now there’s Iranian state television and there Iranian sources but a lot is not coming out of Iran because of the issues with the internet courtney Keley thank you so much for being with us right now we’re turning to CBS News reporter Haley Aut joining us from Tel Aviv in Israel haley what have you heard from the Israeli government so far uh good morning we’ve actually just heard uh from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu he’s given an an address to the Israeli people um he reiterated some of what President Trump said um he also said that uh that President Trump had called had called him and that it was a warm opera a warm conversation um and he thanked the United States and he and he said um a message of uh hope and strength to the Israeli people uh we are just waking up here in Tel Aviv this morning to this news and the feeling is one of uncertainty because uh people are waiting to see what if any and something is expected uh will be Iran’s response so people are very much poised and uh and waiting to see what happens next now this is an action Israel certainly could not have taken by itself on its own so what is their next move at this point it’s interesting uh in this past week um it’s almost appeared as though there were tensions between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and there were questions about whether President Trump was going to bring the United States into this whether he was going to use these bunker busting bombs uh that only the US um was had and was capable of deploying um and there was reporting that perhaps he was unhappy with Netanyahu um the messaging from both the president and the Israeli prime minister today um is the opposite of that it’s uh they’re both projecting um affection for one another uh Mr trump said that their team was one of the best teams um in the world i’m paraphrasing but but something similar ausive praise for one another um Mr trump has said uh that if uh Iran retaliates on Americans um uh that the United States will respond with even greater strength than just um the strikes that it has carried out here in Israel obviously they’ve been poised to defend themselves from these missile strikes for a long time we heard from Israel Israel’s homeront command which is the the group that tells Israeli citizens um how to act when they’re under threat uh and they’ve um increased the restrictions this morning so whereas things were loosening up offices were being allowed to open up there was talk perhaps that even schools might be allowed to open up um now uh workplaces are going to remain closed only essential workers um are allowed to go in and people are told to stay close to shelters haley Israel is dealing with Gaza and also attacks from Yemen but these attacks this week from Iran have done a lot of damage there how are people in Israel dealing with all of this what we’ve seen here this week um is completely different when when I speak to people and also in my experience in this country than than the other kinds of attacks from Gaza for example um those are rockets uh the Israel’s missile defense system Iron Dome is very good at intercepting those and there’s a whole system of shelters throughout the country that give people a great deal of comfort even when they are under rocket attack they provide very good uh protection for those kinds of projectiles ballistic missiles are a whole different kettle of fish um so to speak uh they they’re huge and their impacts are huge and uh they’re a new challenge for Israel’s missile defense system we’ve seen some make it through um and it’s rattled people uh people have said that they feel a sense of insecurity um that I I haven’t heard from people in any other part of this war since I’ve been covering it um certainly since October 7th um the other thing to think about too is uh Americans who are in the region we we heard yesterday that the US embassy started evacuating Americans but there are a number of American citizens here who are either dual citizens who are on trips who are visiting family who have family who have been really frantic to try to get out flights have been cancelled um and they’ve been stuck and they will be waking up to this news um and probably worried about what that means for them and their and their hopes at of returning home anytime soon and even Americans here are feeling a sense of insecurity as well hilly thank you with that response from Israel for us we will be taking a short break but we’ll have much more on this breaking news story you are watching CBS News 247 cbs Sunday night here we go the ultimate 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and reach for the stars star power i like it so cool but wait there’s more experience thoughtprovoking something that’s undeniable with mindfulness innovative magical it’s like being a child and truly original reporting got you do your research i tell a good story because there’s always something new under the sun on CBS Sunday morning we’re continuing to follow breaking news out of the Middle East right now President Trump announced the US has attacked three nuclear sites in Iran in a post on Truth Social he called the attack successful and says the planes are now outside of Iranian airspace trump went on to write quote “Now is the time for peace.” Right now we’re going to turn to CBS News senior national security correspondent Charlie Dagoda joining us now from the Pentagon thanks for being with us yeah thank you you know I was just catching up i I was listening to Ay Haley’s uh report there and you know what’s interesting is this will be the first time maybe the second time we’re learning that we’re going to have a briefing here at the Pentagon tomorrow at 8 a.m so we will be here we will we will learn from uh defense secretary Pete Hexth what what happened uh how successful it is or was uh and those are the those are the key questions you know how how how successful these attacks were these bombing raids were on Iran’s nuclear facilities if that information is even available but but what’s also really important here and Haley touched on it before is there 40,000 US forces spread throughout the Middle East and before when as a matter of fact when President Trump um had essentially assassinated or at least killed uh Hassan Solommani who at that time was in charge of uh the general in charge of Iranian forces uh US forces in Iraq and other places came under attack so we know for a fact because we’ve been asking those questions whether or not the United States has been preparing force protection for an Iranian retaliation and it has to be said I I don’t know what what kind of language is coming out of Thrron right now but something like this and something even less than this has never gone unanswered we heard this morning that the B2 bombers were on the move but was the strike a surprise well it was a surprise so so we had learned right so there aren’t too many of those B2 bombers uh for the United States these stealth bombers there there are 20 there maybe a dozen that are operational at any time most of them are based in Whiteitman which is in Missouri uh some of them are sometimes based in uh Diego Garcia which which had been based there before and in fact they had taken um bombing runs against Houthi targets um recently as as recently as April but I knew for a fact at least it’s been told to me that there were no B2 bombers there so when they started making that move we we spoke to our contacts here saying where are they headed you know where are they going we were told Guam it’s a good head fake it’s a good you know fake pump i’m I’m not entirely sure that the B2s that uh headed out of Whiteman were involved in this attack but what I can tell you is there there is only one uh carrier and one weapon system that can penetrate into places like Ford and it is the B2 bomber and they can carry two bombs like this it’s called the MOP the the massive ordinance penetrator and they can carry two bombs and as we understand it six of them were involved these bunker b uh uh bunker busters that were involved in the attack at for there may have been several other um weapons that were used took that uh could take out any other area of those any other targets in that area but that’s what we understand today you know what we’re we’re we’re trying to figure out we’re going to get the details tomorrow 8 a.m here at the Pentagon we’ll bring you more then charlie Dagada with a more in-depth understanding of the weapons that were used in this attack thank you so much Charlie well CBS News intelligence and national security reporter Olivia Gazis joins us now on the phone right now uh the first question I have for you is what do we know about the members of the US government and other world leaders uh were they notified about any of this a great question because normally uh uh the White House would give uh key leaders in Congress a heads up if it is going to take significant action of this sort we have learned this evening uh that some leadership in Congress including the Senate Majority and Minority Leaders the House Minority and Majority Leaders and the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee all were briefed ahead of time not briefed ahead of time was the uh Senate uh intelligence committee uh vicechairman Mark Warner or the House Intelligence Committee ranking member uh Jim Heimmes democratic leadership uh who normally would be briefed in situations like these left out of the uh and only learning after the fact that uh the US was going to take this kind of action uh and I think that is is notable because the president uh tonight was very declarative about uh saying that Iran’s three key enrichment facilities were completely and totally obliterated the national security sources I’ve been speaking with are saying that it’s very early to have carried out what is called a battle damage assessment in which US officials would be taking a look at overhead imagery of these sites they would be combing through signals intelligence meaning intercepted communications uh among officials in Iran uh discussing potential damage they would be combing through human intelligence sources telling the US or our ally Israel uh what may or may not have been damaged absent confirmation of how extensive the damage actually was there is still an open question can Iran pick up the pieces and restart its program is it possibly still in a position to sprint towards a nuclear weapon at this point as some intelligence al intelligence analysts believed might have happened uh if the US entered this conflict and did not deliver significant damage to its nuclear sites uh importantly I think the president left the door this evening to diplomacy open he has left things in Iran’s court uh saying that peace if peace doesn’t come quickly we will go after other targets right now as you’ve been discussing the US has 40,000 troops in the region it has diplomatic outposts still opening and open and operating it has hundreds of thousands of American citizens in the region we heard today that 70 of them left in two flights from Tel Aviv to Athens in Greece uh beyond American citizens as targets it has close allies the UAE Saudi Arabia Qatar all alo also now very much at risk for retaliation from the Iranian regime a lot is going to depend on whether the regime now calculates that it will survive if it retaliates against the US uh or if uh it decides that that in fact would be suicidal and stands down and resorts to diplomacy olivia thank you so much for that information for us on all of this going on this breaking news that we’ve been hearing throughout the past 24 hours courtney Keely we Jen Hilly Charlie Dagada Olivia Gazis we thank you all for joining us we will be taking a short break but we’ll have much more on this breaking news story you are watching CBS News 247 what happens when you get conversation over conflict i think they’ve taught me to have grace and compassion when we follow the human side of the headline i’m not asking that we ignore disability rather that we do not ignore ability when news takes you where the story happens we’ve just crossed into Lebanon when the world’s best journalists come together to cover your world you get the all new CBS Evening News every weekn night it’s the most popular f-word in Washington fraud is it true that the social security number of just about every single American is available for sale on the dark web an eyeopening 60 Minutes report that’s chilling it’s time for 60 Minutes your life is still a mystery when your gut tells you 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this possible oh come on come on wow that’s chilling so what’s going on here this is 60 Minutes the CBS News Original Showtime baby it’s time for 60 Minutes everywhere you watch just days after President Trump said he would make a decision on whether to strike Iran within two weeks the United States has launched attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities president Trump announced the strikes late Saturday on three key Iranian sites he called the strikes successful and an address
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35 comments
How is he calling the attack SUCCESSFUL when it just happened less than a day ago?
Trumps is a lowlife dictator liar. America Last!
Trump, stop being a patsy for Israeli interests. America Last!
Are people at the BBC a little slow or is it for entertainment?
Looking Good….MAGA Fundamental Transformation has begun. 🫡🫡🫡🫡
He did like bush give them 48 hours attacked in 40 and they were going to hand over bin laden
Iran started it all in 1979. USA taking care of unfinished business.🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
What do we a call a regime that helps a geno regime.
Remember when Obama gave Iran billions to fund this?
Let the rest of the known universe go green with envy, the USA has the greatest military machine ever known to man. Poor Iran, their minister looked shell-shocked? Their war is now effectively over and their nuclear ambitions destroyed in a few minutes by Trump's military might??
Now US troops in middle east are all targets, say THANKS to president Trump.
Now US troops in middle east are all targets, say THANKS to president Trump.
Oh great…..The money the Iranians will be saving by not building nuclear weapons will be spent building thousands of hypersonic missiles..
President Obama ordered U.S. airstrikes in seven different countries. Read from an article by Kevin Liptak, CNN September 23, 2014.
CNN —"Though he campaigned for the presidency on ending U.S.-led wars, Obama’s administration has certainly been willing to use force when it sees fit. Here are seven places where the Obama administration is known to have ordered airstrikes: Afghanistan, Libya, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Iraq and Syria.”
Let's wait and see dope
https://youtube.com/shorts/ypgSs3GQmHg?si=cVy5HV-YyWpzjr5D Russian politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky predicted this 10 years ago
Congress wasn’t notified. Trump isn’t a king, he can’t just arbitrarily decide to bomb another country. He just broke Constitutional law. He needs to be impeached.
What happened to the two weeks? Sike!
If Iran could they would want to rule the planet with their nuclear arsenal. As George Carlin once said, “BS, that’s our job!”
The people who were against America going to war, are either going to go silent or are going to try to legitimize this literal act of war
NEVER TRUMP
Galactic elite en route to show us who's really in control. Atleast I hope for the sake of the human race.
But I have a really good question. What happens to the urrainiuam that's buried. Isn't it still dangerous for our planet.
I love our President Trump ❤❤❤❤❤❤
Why are you all so bent out of shape when US is trying to stop Iran, who is a bad actor, from developing nuclear weapons with help of another bad actor, Russia? I am a democrat, but Trump is right here. They bombed nuclear facilities, and watch how Russia will do nothing for their ‘ally”. All bad actors get punished – finally
Smh war before gta 6 😔 like we couldn't wait to see if it was trash or not
Allahuma solli ala sayyidina Muhammad 🇮🇷
Allahuma solli ala sayyidina Muhammad, la illaha illallah , subhanallah wabihamdihi subhanallahil adziim astagfirullah , Hasbunallah wanikmal wakeel
I am a longtime independent democratic socialist and a veteran protestor of the wars of American imperialism together forever with Israeli Zionism in crimes against humanity. Each generation must think for itself on the best way to fight EVIL.Just this humble thought for now: If the best and the brightest of your generation still see themselves as climbing the ladder of success and achieving the philistine GOOD LIFE in capitalist USA , then they are even more seriously deluded than the best and brightest of my generation – who rather quickly blew it, sold out. Donald Trump and Bill and Hillary Clinton, even world acclaimed war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu belonged to that oh-so – idealistic generation of the TUMULTUOUS SIXTIES. Think about it. Think about the still tremendous capacity of diabolic ( yes!) CAPITALISM to corrupt human souls.
I can't be sure if the operation was really successful. However, according to NASA's disclosure. The heat source signature of the explosion appeared 3 km away from the Fordow nuclear facility.😮😮😮😮
Netanyahu and Trump should be brought to court😓
Biden's weak policy led us here. Trump solved it.
Great Leadership 👍
Doesnt it risk a chernobyl like chain reaction, by bombing nuclear power plants etc?
FAKE NEWS, NO VIDEO EVIDENCE, IT DIDN'T HAPPEN🤔
Can't get over just how tiny Marco Rubio is. Does he need a booster seat in the war room?
D. Trump, like Biden and most of all our compromise, puppets and putrid Presidents and politicians are all under total Israel, fanatics and treasonous Christians Zionists and Zionism leadership. mandate, orders and ownership. Zionism demands, America just bows and obeys. America really and truly is not more
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