saying that they ve not seen this kind of economic impact at least here domestically. but if this kind of situation goes on for days or weeks, certainly that is going to become a more urgent problem and urgent potential concern for this white house, anderson. oren, we should point out saudi arabia is not listed among the coalition of countries involved in this attack. that is significant given saudi arabia has conducted a long-term bombing campaign in yemen, tens of thousands of people have been killed. they re now as m.j. indicated have something of a truce and i assume are not ininvolved because they don t want to upset that. reporter: right, and that a very delicate truce. the reason it looks like the saudis are not involved right now as you point out the saudis conducted a widespread bombing campaign to try to destroy the houthis but that obviously very much unsuccessful as we ve seen over the course of the past weeks and months. it s interesting to note the
avoid. this was almost a last resort situation given that the u.s. is so set on trying to prevent the situation in the middle east from escalating. they also just do not want to disturb the current truce in the yemen civil war. but, again, i think it s very much expected given the gravity of the situation and the significance of this action by the u.s. and others that we should be hearing in some form from the president directly later this evening, erin. all right, thank you very much, mj lee. you heard m.j. say in some form we should hear from the president later this evening. it is a grave and deeply serious moment and a significant development here. and as mj said, indications allies involved. i mentioned that emergency cabinet meeting in the darkness of night in london. richi sunak holding and we do understand the u.k. was part of the strikes. oren leiberman joins me now from the pentagon. you re learning about the involvement. what more are you learning about these strikes tonig
oren, thank you very much. and back with me in a significant moment, in a significant attack as oren describes it, general, the uss florida that was the subresponsible for launching some of these tomahawks. when you hear that and releasing this information, sharing the name, saying the name of the vessel what due you take away from it? you have several different submarines. you ve got boomers, your nuke capability. the navy is never going to let you know where those babies are. the attack submarines, on the other hand, make themselves known. this is significant announcement by the department of defense saying we have defense capabilities, very precise attack, and we re going to do very significant bomb damage assessment in therms of what the damage was against the target, was there any collateral damage as a result of that? and alter their attack platform accordingly. this makes perfect sense when
getting word shorty after they began that the u.s. and the u.k. with the backing of others have begun to carry out these strikes. a senior military official saying the damage to houthi assets, what had been targeted were radar sites and the sorts of weapons that had been used to carry out strikes on shipping. the damage to those houthi assets was, quote, significant. yeah, this is causing such a real issue in the red sea with some of the world s biggest shippers who are having to take different routes. it s costing more, it s taking longer. and you were seeing the real impact for some of these ships that had nothing, had no ties to israel. you know, oren, one thing that we d heard though is criticism from republicans who were saying, you know, this should have happened sooner, that this took too long. i mean what is the sense inside the pentagon whether or not this really will be that deterrence they were seeking? the pentagon is very much ready for the possibility this doesn t det
next time got to be bigger, got to be boulder strike, got to be more comprehensive strike, got to take away not their will but their capabilities to interfere with the shipping. that s the real goal here. you know, we ve apologized for two months saying that we don t want escalation. we don t want escalation. we ve said that enough. when it comes to it and you have to use military force, you have to use it effectively, and that means getting the escalation dominance. so we cut off their ability. and we can largely do that against sea targets. and they re going to try to lay mines. they re going to use unmanned surface vehicles. they re going to try to get unmanned undersea vehicle. they re going to get information from iran. all that s part of our understanding, and we ll put a campaign plan together, just give us the mission and we ll do it. we want to stop the tit for tat. i want to check back in with oren leiberman at the pentagon.