Israel launches retaliatory strikes on military targets in Iran

Geoff Bennett:

Shifting our focus now to late-breaking news from the Middle East, Israel is striking Iran tonight. It's in retaliation for Iran's attack earlier this month, when Tehran launched 180 ballistic missiles at Israel.

Nick Schifrin is following this breaking news.

Nick, what are you hearing from your sources?

Nick Schifrin:

Geoff, tonight, the Israeli Defense Forces have made a statement confirming that, yes, they are attacking Iran.

And I'm just going to read part of that statement right now.

"In response to months of continuous attacks from the regime in Iran against the state of Israel, right now, the Israel Defense Force is conducting precise strikes on military targets in Iran. The regime in Iran and its proxies in the region have been relentlessly attacking Israel since October the 7th on seven fronts, including direct attacks from Iranian soil."

Now, to keep that up for one second, I want to focus on one word, military targets in Iran. That has been the source of the debate, of the discussion, negotiations perhaps between the Israeli government and the U.S. government.

Israeli officials told me when I was there during this Iranian attack that they wanted to have a very, very large response to reestablish deterrence, in their words. The U.S. wanted to prevent another round of ballistic missile strikes. Those ballistic missile strikes that we saw on October the 1st were the second round.

So, U.S. officials argued that, in order to prevent a third round, Israel couldn't attack two things, nuclear sites or energy sites. And that apparently is what the U.S. has convinced Israel to do, to attack military sites, not anything else.

Geoff Bennett:

An Israeli response had been expected since the attack at the start of this month. What's been happening behind the scenes over the last three weeks?

Nick Schifrin:

It's been that discussion of what the targets are and why the U.S. is trying to limit, or at least restrain relatively, what Israel might target.

That said, Geoff, military targets could be a lot. There are hundreds of military targets all over Iran. And so we don't know any specifics about this Israeli strike yet. And I will add that Israeli officials are worried that Iran will respond again to this. And they do warn me that, if Iran responds to this one, then some of those limits might be removed.

Geoff Bennett:

Nick Schifrin, our thanks to you. We appreciate it.

Nick Schifrin:

Thanks very much, Geoff.