Important night. i would like to bring in former cia director, john brennan. thank you for joining us. c you know our intelligence agencies, as well as anyone out there. what is their top priority at this moment? well, stephanie, finding out what the facts are we are just a few hours from the strikes and there is a lot that we don t know at this point. t and i tend to much agree with peter baker and mitch engel, that a lot will depend on how much damage was done and, inside of iran by these israeli strikes. hezbollah is a very sort of target rich environment there is a large air base, there s a missile production facility, the iranian nuclear chemical facility is there, also an underground base. so it is clear that israel deliberated over where they would strike over the past several days. probably getting updated intelligent including satellite imagery. the strikes took place in the middle of the night so the question is, how many casualties were there? what type of damage was the
Just today, the, cia director, william burns, called iran s attack on israel over the weekend a spectacular failure . given that, do you believe israel made a mistake by responding in this fashion? israel makes its calculations based on what he at believes it has to do and the unprecedented nature of this iranian assault on israel, over 300 missiles and drones that came after israelis, as though they had responded somehow in kind. unfortunately in the middle east, and i for an argument retaliatory mind-set is very strong. so president biden was hoping that the israelis would go into, as you say, take the win and pocket it and not do something that could, in fact, lead to a dangerous escalation point i do not believe, at this
Obviously monitor reports. they want to see just how expensive this attack really is. what kind of damage it does, what does actually do and how far, therefore, will it provoke iran. we have seen in the past, when the united states killed under president trump in 2020 there was a big expedition of a big iranian response. in fact, it was a relatively limited response against the he american bases in the region that didn t cause huge amounts of damage and that was the end of it. president trump did it retaliate at that point because everybody assumed they had gotten what they wanted out of it. we don t know whether or not the israelis have done something here that will force the iranians to feel like they have to do something back in order to save face or whether they have done something that the iranians can shrug off and say, well, i didn t really hurt us, we are going to keep going. you heard the threat, abc, from the foreign minister of iran yesterday. what the biden admin s point of
Point, that i ran once a major war because it will lose that and will lose it in a big way. at the same time, the iranian leadership also has to face it domestic political pressure and if it can t be seen as just laying down to israel, israel s offensive capabilities. but it is clear that israel was sending a message to iran, you were not able to get through our air defenses but clearly something got through because of these explosions. were you surprised by this move? well, there recent comments that are coming out of israel that said that they are going to respond in a very sort of major way led me to believe that they were not just going to be satisfied with strikes again ie iranian revolutionary guard corps or even drone bases, that they felt that they had to go after somewhere in iran. i was hoping it would be some kind of infrastructure and that there would be a minimal loss of life because i think if there is a lot of blood that was shed in the strikes, the iranians are goin
Just happened or is happening, if there are not casualties, if there is not major damage like there was not major damage in this country because iran s attacks were stopped . there is a possibility that it escalates but doesn t escalate to a point that it brings the region into a massive war you were just talking about concerns from lebanon, concerns from hezbollah in southern lebanon and in northern israel. their reports also that israel has gone on a higher state of alert with air right sirens in the north of this country. but, again, this is very much developing and a lot is going to depend on scale and proportionality. a but this country has been bracing for some sort of retaliation to israel s retaliation. but at this stage,