bola, and so there s a real concern about iran and their efforts to develop nuclear weapons. that s why it s so important there is a clear and coherent policy about what we re trying to accomplish and how we re trying to accomplish it. and it just doesn t seem like we have that now. not from the people i ve talked about. there s still no confirmed secretary of defense. it s hard to assert leadership when there s such mixed messages, and last night i think was the perfect example of that. should congress have had to approve the military action last night? well, there s no question if there s going to be a war that congress well, not a war, just that action where they were going to hit, you know, the missile sites? right, but it s not just a question of looking at whether this is a proportionate response or not. it s part of a larger discussion that s been taking place. it s putting this in the context of the discussion we had in my subcommittee this week when the
that we will continue our discussion here. if the future possibility for strike has not been rolled out which i think you would agree with, what could or what would be? let s be clear, we haven t struck yet but we absolutely can if we were not to strikes, that would also deliver a very serious message to iran and then other enemies we face around the world. as far as the strike that we might be looking at targets, missile sites, radar batteries which iran s revolutionary guard corps which launched the attack on our drone, we would hit those sites as a proportional response. if that would probably make the most sense. it doesn t mean that iran wouldn t themselves then retaliate, but that would be a flexible proportional response. bill: i m going to read for tweets in a moment but if we don t hit back, how does iran take that, how did they react? iran has been gradually
happen? what would have had to have happened in the afternoon? well, the timeline to get prepared is short because there s so many in the region already. we have aircraft there. i would guess that those ships and those aircraft were told to be ready by about, i d say, early afternoon yesterday. early to mid to late afternoon. somewhere in that time frame. somewhere between 2:00 and 5:00 would be my guess. i m just guessing. it only takes a matter of a few hours to get that spun up. because it s not like the military doesn t have pre-existing plans for strikes in that part of the world. it s just a matter of kind of dusting those plans off, re-establishing the coordinates, getting a sense of what you need to do. it sounds to me like from our reporting at the pentagon that these were fixed sites. radar sites, missile sites. not mobile sites. which means you already know where they are and it s not that hard to re-establish the contact there.
well, we already are seeing, of course, the pentagon put thousands of troops into the region for the current strategy of defense and deterrence against iran. the pentagon adamant it is not looking for war with iran, but it wants to deter further aggression. so the question it had now is if you want to respond with some kind of kinetic activity to this drone attack, if you want to bomb something, is there a limited strike option against iran, against missile sites, against radar, some kind of limited strike where you do not risk an iranian reaction that leads to a wider war with teheran. that is the calculation right now. we do not know exactly where the white house will come down on that. anderson? difficult calculation to make. barbara starr, thank you. messages coming out of the white house and briefing top lawmakers received there, our pamela brown joins us with that side of the story. so president trump s message on iran seemed to shift over the course of the day. can you expla
and loaded last night on three different sites but he called off the strike to save lives. the tweet, quote, i asked how many will die. 150 people, sir, was the answer from a general. ten minutes before the strike i stopped it. not proportionate to shooting down an unmanned drone. i am in no hurry. the three targets were radar installations and missile sites, the types of facilities iran used to shoot down an unmanned surveillance aircraft yesterday. now we re learning that the u.s. has asked for and will get a special united nations security council meeting on monday. but the u.s. still has no confirmed ambassador to the u.n. or a secretary of defense. let s go to cnn s kaitlin collins who is at the white house. what are your sources telling you? we re hearing from the president in tweets. are they saying anything else behind the scenes? reporter: well, we re hearing more from the president himself, explaining his decision to call off that strike at the last minute, which the presid