right. we need an objective investigation into what happened here. unfortunately, what we ve seen is an administration that s lied time and time again about important issues, including national security issues. so they simply don t have the credibility. that said, the attacks in the gulf of oman do bear the hallmarks of iranian forces or proxi proxies. it wouldn t surprise me if an investigation found they were behind attacks. is it perhaps those you negotiated with are losing strength because we withdrew from the newauclear deal? no doubt the compbinatibinat trump administration has taken is i give you an example, the trump administration imposed a foreign terrorist label on the iranian guard corp.
kuwait, qatar and bahrain. this is all coming from this television report. also word that maybe pakistan and jordan and sudan are also willing to contribute ground forces and any kind of ground offensive. so clearly, this is a major operation, which is now ramping up. and the big question is, how is iran going to view all of this and do the houthi rebels have what it takes to fight back? what will the iranians do in response to that? because what the saudis have seen over the past couple of years, they ve seen iran extend influence into iraq, lebanon, now into yemen. so this concern that the saudis have, and what many believe is a proxi war has just kicked off using yemen as basically a firing range. we are rick francona joining us with more on this. so we re get thing news now, 150,000 soldiers, 100 warplanes. this is just the saudi
so if we look at this operation, the first sort of major decision taken by the new king in saudi. we know the saudis have zero desire to occupy yemen. they could have done it in the past. they have avoided that place at great pains. so now that they re prepared to do this, what does that tell you about the threat that they fear is coming clearly not just from the houthi rebels but also from iran? exactly. they re looking at they perceive this as a threat from the iranians. they look at the houthis as nothing more than a proxi iranian force, just like we can look at hezbollah as a proxi iranian force in southern lebanon. so they feel there s a threat and they re going to do this before the situation gets worse. what they do not want is an iranian-run state on their southern border, because they already feel they have enough problems on their northern border with the iranians exercising a lot of power in