certainly a lot at stake claire richardson thanks very much for bringing us up to date on that from washington clear. all day after president trump pulled the u.s. out of the around nuclear chord tensions are rising on the front line between israel and syria these images from syrian state t.v. allegedly show israeli rockets over damascus the israeli military says it carried out strikes in response to a barrage of rockets fired outposts in the go on heights which it blames on elite iranian forces the al quds forces in syria it s the second day of strikes between the two sides in some of the most serious military action of this car and in many years for the very latest let s go to jerusalem now our correspondent tony creamer standing by for us tom what prompted this escalation and what more can you tell us about the targets hit by the israeli military. well yes the s.
and they are beginning to see that the government in baghdad is now very interested in them. we re seeing mr. al bad di goin out, linking up with the tribal sheikhs and sunni tribes. that never happened when i was there with mr. maliki. but we were talking about this sunni/shia divide. and that plays into this as well, not just the makeup of the military, but you have the shia militias backed by iran which have made many of the advances that have taken place over the past couple months. anderson, it s worse than that. it s come out that head of the kutz force. elite iranian forces. this is the same group that blew up the marines in 83, kidnapped one of my bosses in beirut, is really a bad guy, is in tikrit today, sort of managing the assault on the city. so what message does that send? exactly, saying look, this