Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

IDF: Conducted Raids in Gaza Over Past 24 Hours; Sources: U.S. Intelligence Warned Of The Potential For Gaza Clash Days Before Hamas Attacked Israel; House GOP Conference Meeting Now On Speaker Nominees; Top U.S. Officials Meet With Leaders Across The Middle East. Aired 3- 3:30p ET

Aired October 13, 2023 - 15:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:00:59]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: You're watching CNN NEWS CENTRAL. I'm Boris Sanchez with Brianna Keilar.

We want to go straight to Anderson Cooper who is in Tel Aviv where sirens are going off.

What's happening where you are, Anderson?

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Yes, Boris, as you said sirens are going off which has not occurred here for really today certainly or the last several days. They're quite extensive sirens. You hear them all over Tel Aviv right now. This just started about 15 seconds maybe 30 seconds ago, so it remains to be seen.

If rockets do come, generally they come from that direction. That sounded like Iron Dome intercept. That was a rather large explosion. That is something we have not heard very much here in Tel Aviv.

No, I think we're fine in this location. I think that would - Matthew, what do you think, was that an Iron Dome interception? Hard to tell.

MATTHEW CHANCE, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: (Inaudible) I haven't heard anything like that in Tel Aviv.

COOPER: Yes.

CHANCE: Not since I've been here.

COOPER: Also interesting the siren stopped as soon as that did - that hit. So I am assuming that was an interception by Iron Dome.

CHANCE: Yes.

COOPER: But there is - there's cloud cover here. We didn't actually see a rocket but there was quite a large explosion and the sirens have now stopped. There was a air raid siren about a few hours ago here in this location, people going to the stairwells. There was about a 30- second or so maybe 45 second warning of air raid sirens before you heard those large explosions.

But Tel Aviv, I haven't seen it this empty really since really 2006 when I was here covering the war against Hezbollah. This city is - it's obviously late already at night but this city is largely - I mean businesses are shut down people are off the streets.

CHANCE: Yes. I mean it's 10 o'clock at night on a Friday evening. I mean it's not like this would normally be rammed with people ...

COOPER: Yes, it's true.

CHANCE: ... at this time of the of the evening, start of the weekend. But for me, I mean it just shows you that despite the pounding that Gaza has been taking over the course of the past several days at the hands of the Israeli Air Force, they've been really hitting hard at various locations where rockets are being fired from. They even went in - as we've been discussing earlier today - went in on the on the ground for a limited incursion to take out the threats posed by the rocket firing militants.

They're still getting rockets out into the sky. I mean they're showing some resilience in the sense that - and determination in the sense that despite what's happening in Gaza, Palestinian militants are still firing rockets into these Israeli population centers. Not least of all, the biggest one of all Tel Aviv right here as we just said.

COOPER: And this is certainly the first time we've heard that really in days that - especially something that close. Let's talk about the raids that we know have gone on over the last 24 hours or so in Gaza itself. The not - these are said to be small raids.

CHANCE: Yes. Well, limited raids I think rather than the big land invasion that we're all braced for and for which hundreds of thousands of Israeli troops have been mobilized in preparation for. And in part, according to the Israeli military, they're intended to take out sites where these kinds of rockets are being launched from. And you can see that they've still got some work to do.

But they're also and I think this is crucial looking for the hostages inside the Gaza Strip. Remember what complicates this military operation more than any other incursion really that we've seen in recent years into the Gaza Strip is that they've seen 100 and 150 hostages inside the Gaza Strip being held at secret locations.

The IDF is mounting Special Forces raids, investigations into the Gaza Strip trying - strip to try and free them and is doing everything it can to make that happen before the big land invasion takes place. I spoke recently with the office of the newly appointed hostage affairs coordinator here in Israel.

[15:05:02]

And he's been meeting with the families of those people who have been abducted and assuring them that everything that is humanly possible to get them out is now being done. And part of that is the military action we've been seeing. COOPER: Hamas has made the claim that I think they said as many as a

dozen hostages have died in some of the bombardments that Israel has been doing in Gaza. That is an unconfirmed fact.

CHANCE: It's unverified, yes, the Israelis haven't verified it but the Palestinians have - militants have said yes that that's what's happening and it's a warning that with these pounding airstrikes laying whole neighborhoods of Gaza City to waste turning it into rubble.

It's not just Palestinians that are being killed, it's also potentially those hostages as well. And again, this extraordinarily complicates any military plan to go in.

COOPER: Right.

CHANCE: The Israelis do not want to be bringing out 100 to 150 bodies after this military operation. They want to get those hostages out alive if they can but it's hard.

COOPER: We should also talk about the call by Israel for Palestinians in Gaza as many as 1.1 million to move to the south of Gaza to get out of the way of potential fighting.

CHANCE: Yes, it's a big ask. I think that's paraphrasing what Tony Blinken, the U.S. Secretary of State said. It's extremely difficult to expect more than a million people already in a dire humanitarian state to move everything, to move themselves from their homes in Gaza City in the north of the Gaza Strip to the south of the Gaza Strip where they've got no facilities, they've got no homes, they've got no shelter.

Already there are dire shortages of medical supplies of food, of fuel, of water and what humanitarian organizations say is that kind of movement of people is going to push that population over the brink. And that's why there's so much emphasis right now diplomatically on trying to negotiate a humanitarian corridor so that these Gazan civilians and some of them are U.S. citizens as well, the citizens of other countries as well.

They can get out of the war zone. They can get themselves out of harm's way into the safety of a humanitarian enclave if that's to be negotiated or even better out of the Gaza Strip altogether into Egypt across the Rafah Border.

But so far, the Egyptians are not allowing that to happen. They don't want, as you mentioned, these people in there ...

COOPER: We should also point out Hamas is not encouraging this. They are not making it easy for civilians to get out to move. They're not providing transportation to get civilians out of harm's way. They want people to stay where they are both for political reasons and also military reasons.

CHANCE: Yes, I think so. The political one being that in the past, I mean, in the history of the Palestinian struggle for statehood, once Palestinians leave a territory, they're not able to come back into it again. I mean the whole region is filled with Palestinian refugee camps, with millions of Palestinians who left their homes in the in the '40s or in the '60s or in the '70s and have never managed to get back again. Hamas and Palestinians in general don't want to see that happening in the Gaza Strip as well, but also militarily, you're right.

I mean it's much more complicated for the Israeli military to be carrying out a military operation in the Gaza Strip which is densely populated with civilians. If all the civilians clear out and it's just Hamas and Islamic Jihad and the other militant factions there, that makes it much easier for the Israelis and much harder for those militants including Hamas to defend.

COOPER: Right. You may be hearing a recording, that's a recording from the building that we're in. Management announcing that for people who did seek shelter in stairwells that it's - they're able to come out even though the air raid sirens had gone quiet quite a while ago. The - they've just announced in the building that the people come out from the shelters. This is just a fact of life here.

We could also talk a little bit about what's been going on, on the border with Lebanon. That, of course, if there is another front to this war that opens up it would very likely be against Hezbollah on the - on that northern border that would complicate things extraordinarily.

CHANCE: It would complicate things. It would be potentially very bloody as well. And the possibility of a second front opening in the north of Israel with the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militia which is in southern Lebanon firing its arsenal of rockets into northern Israel could be catastrophic for the population there already, the Israeli population I mean.

And there are already measures underway to clear out the population centers in northern Israel. They're building underground hospitals. They're putting lots of military facilities up there to prepare for the possibility of a Hezbollah strike.

[15:10:01]

But also geopolitically, it's going to be - it's a real - we're on the brink if Hezbollah decide as they did in 2006 when we - you and I were both up in northern Israel witnessing what happened then. If Hezbollah get involved this time, it could be a massive military response not just by Israel on southern Lebanon but possibly bringing in the United States.

Remember, the U.S. have a - their biggest aircraft carrier off the coast of Israel in the eastern Mediterranean. They've said they've put it there to deter other actors by which they mean having Hezbollah and Iran from getting involved. And, of course, it potentially - because Iran gives the orders, it potentially puts Iran in the crosshairs as well and that's something I think everybody who wants to avoid a broader Middle Eastern war is trying to kind of avoid at all costs.

COOPER: Yes. Matthew Chance, thanks very much. I appreciate it.

More from the region now we have learned that U.S. intelligence community warned the Biden administration an Israeli-Palestinian clash could happen days before the Hamas attack occurred.

I'm going to go right to CNN's Katie Bo Lillis.

Katie, it would seem to be not - there's a lot of details to this and nuances, but not a specific warning about this surprise attack but in general. Talk about what the intelligence community saw.

KATIE BO LILLIS, CNN REPORTER: Yes, Anderson. So what we've learned is that there were three separate intelligence reports that were kind of circulated inside the U.S. government really in the week leading up to this sort of devastating attack on October 7th. One of them, the first one, an intelligence - a U.S. intelligence assessment from September 28th based on multiple streams of intelligence warned of the possibility that Hamas was poised to escalate with cross-border rocket fire into Israel.

A second October 5th intelligence assessment from the CIA warned sort of more generally of the possibility for kind of a sudden eruption of violence in between Hamas and Israel.

And then a third Israeli report that was circulated amongst some members of the U.S. government in the day before the attack indicated some unusual activity on the part of Hamas fighters and Hamas leaders kind of the day before the attack.

But I think as you mentioned, Anderson, what's really important here is that of all of these three reports, none of them offered a very specific picture of the scope, the scale, the sort of specific plotting that went into this attack that, of course, wound up being so massive and so devastating, right?

So it offered what the intelligence community thinks of as strategic warning that tensions are rising, there's a potential for an outbreak of violence here. It did not - none of these reports offered sort of what they think of as tactical warning, individual details of the exact planning of this attack.

COOPER: We should point out we don't know, obviously, the source of this intelligence or the methods by which it was collected. But you made the point in our last hour that the U.S. often gets a lot of its intelligence from Israel in this region, particularly related to what's going on in Gaza. So would Israel have had this information as well?

LILLIS: Well certainly as we understand one of these reports was in fact an Israeli report. But in terms of the two U.S. assessments, yes, a lot of the intelligence, the sort of raw intelligence reporting that the United States has on the sort of activities of Hamas and in particularly kind of what goes on inside of Gaza which is this very sort of closed space to U.S. intelligence collection, a lot of that raw reporting comes from the Israelis. Now, that doesn't mean that the United States just sort of takes

Israeli assessments at face value and says, okay, yes like this is what's going on. They kind of take that reporting and then they sort of feed it through the United States' own sort of assessment and sort of analysis process and they draw their own conclusions about sort of what the United States intelligence community thinks is happening.

But certainly, yes, in terms of the actual information much of it is - the sort of underlying information - much of it is coming from Israel itself. And so for some of the sources that we spoke to, the idea that the United States would have sort of turned around and handed Israel back kind of its own information doesn't make a whole lot of sense, right? Israel itself to the United States wasn't necessarily raising any alarm bells that they thought that sort of the - these kind of strategic warnings of potential violence were maybe anything different than sort of what had been seen in this region and in this conflict over the course of years, right?

So some sources that we spoke to pointed out that, look, warnings about potential violence in between Hamas and Israel are kind of a regular feature of U.S. intelligence reporting. They show up in sort of hot spots reports that go to senior leaders of the U.S. government just about every day. And so for I think many Israeli intelligence officials as well as many U.S. officials who were reading these reports, they were viewing this as likely part and parcel of what we've seen for many years, nothing on the scale of what they saw.

COOPER: All right. Katie Bo Lillis, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

I want to get some perspective now on events here on the ground from retired Army Maj. John Spencer.

[15:15:05]

He's Chair of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point's Modern War Institute and also co-author of the book "Understanding Urban Warfare."

Maj. Spencer, really appreciate your expertise right now. Israeli troops have been inside Gaza. We understand looking for hostages also targeting specific sites. How difficult is that from a - from the - in terms of actually locating hostages in a situation like this and how much does the presence of hostages affect the planning for a ground operation?

MAJ. JOHN SPENCER, U.S. ARMY (RET.): I mean, it's extremely complex as you know. There's basically a city under a city where these hostages could be and where they're being moved even from that. But based on intelligence, the IDF says they move forward to either rescue hostages or collect more intelligence but also these are signs to me of the impending ground campaign as those small raids those shaping operations testing Hamas' defenses are a part of the larger operation as well.

COOPER: You talk - you call them shaping operations and it's a term we've been using a lot. Can you just explain what you mean by that?

SPENCER: Sure. So these are operations that you do before you launch the full - what we call the decisive operation, the main. You want to surprise the other side on where you're going and make them think you're doing different things. It's the same thing that we did in the Second Battle of Fallujah where we tried to convince all of the defenders that we were coming from the south and we came from a different direction and we did small attacks like this to shape that part of the operation on where the enemy thinks you're coming from.

COOPER: The warning from Israel's military telling more than a million people to evacuate Gaza in 24 hours and there's not a lot of military forces that drop leaflets telling people to move out. From a military standpoint, let alone a humanitarian standpoint, it's in Israel's best interest to have fewer civilians in the areas that they want to operate in.

SPENCER: That's right, but we're - now we're talking about legal obligations. Both sides have the legal obligations to protect civilians. And you covered the 2017 Battle of Mosul where 1.4 million were trapped in one city. The IDF have called for Gaza City to be evacuated. The longer they wait, yes, more civilians get out and that's in everybody's best interest.

The longer they wait, Hamas gets to trap people just like ISIS did in the Battle of Mosul where they trapped 800,000. Trap them there and prepare for their use and prepare their defenses. With the hostages too, it's a paradox. If you wait longer, more cost. If you go faster, more cost.

And I know the U.N. said this is impossible. I don't agree with that but I'd rather see the U.N. mobilizing to establish humanitarian sites either in Egypt or right on the other side of the Egyptian border in Gaza for these people to go, because the operation is going to happen in my mind or in all signs.

COOPER: It is - I mean we have seen mass migrations of people over the decades in war zones. I mean it is often chaotic. It's often not something that's even called for. It's just people evacuating. We've seen hundreds of thousands of people move in very short order. Again, massive complications. It is not something that anybody would want to have happen.

But you're saying, I mean is it possible for that many amount of people to move in a short period of time?

SPENCER: Absolutely. And to be honest, Anderson, this isn't the first call, right? I saw on Monday the idea of messaging leave these areas, these combat areas. It's extremely difficult and it is a humanitarian crisis. Not impossible and the idea (inaudible) identified - you wouldn't call them green quarters at this point, but look, go down this road. This road will not be attacked.

But the problem is that the other side who has the duty to protect civilians is telling civilians to stay. They're broadcasting on the - reports of the Hamas broadcasting on the mass, broadcasting all across to stay where you're at.

COOPER: Maj. John Spencer, I appreciate your expertise. Thank you. Boris, Brianna, back to you.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right. Let's get back now to Capitol Hill where House Republicans are still behind closed doors right now. They are debating who should be their next nominee again, right?

SANCHEZ: Again.

KEILAR: We should say again for Speaker of the House.

SANCHEZ: Congressman Jim Jordan and Austin Scott are both vying to get the necessary 217 votes so Congress can become unfrozen and potentially have a speaker.

Let's get an update now from CNN Capitol Hill Reporter, Melanie Zanona.

Melanie, we understand that a vote is supposed to be happening right now behind closed doors?

MELANIE ZANONA, CNN CAPITOL HILL REPORTER: Yes. It feels like Groundhog Day here on Capitol Hill because once again Republicans are huddled behind closed doors and trying to elect a nominee for speaker. This after Steve Scalise speakership bid collapsed very suddenly yesterday. He pulled out of the race plunging the GOP into even further chaos and heightening ...

SANCHEZ: There goes McCarthy.

ZANONA: ... what is a very serious leadership crisis.

[15:20:05]

You just saw Kevin McCarthy walking by. He told us earlier that he believes Jim Jordan is going to ultimately have the votes. But it is a two-way race at this point, Jim Jordan who ran against Steve Scalise earlier this week and came up short. He is considered the front runner and then you have a new candidate who just entered the race a little bit ago. His name is Austin Scott. He's a Georgia Republican but he is really seen as more as the anti-Jordan alternative. He is trying to get in the race to show that Jordan doesn't have this thing sewed up.

And I can tell you, Boris, there is a lot of anger in the party right now. A lot of people particularly moderates who don't like the idea of a Jim Jordan speakership and a lot of Steve Scalise allies who feel like this whole process just really burned them and their choice for leader which was Steve Scalise.

So we'll see whether they line up behind him today, but even if Jim Jordan does come out of this conference meeting, the big question is does he have the votes on the House floor. That was something that bedeviled Steve Scalise, something that bedeviled Kevin McCarthy and looking like Jim Jordan is going to run into similar problems. So that is what Republicans are trying to figure out. Unclear when

they're going to have a floor vote. At this point they are dealing with some attendance issues. Some lawmakers skipped town so it's unclear if we'll see a vote today. But the goal right now is to try to rally around someone perhaps anyone so that they can get back to business and actually govern, because right now the house is paralyzed, Boris.

KEILAR: Yes. Ah, the importance of showing up and we are seeing that play out on the Hill there.

Melanie Zanona, thank you so much for that report.

Still to come, President Biden - he spoke to the families of people who are still missing, Americans who are still missing after Hamas attacks. Any minute now, the president is expected to address this crisis that we've been watching in the Middle East. We're going to take those remarks live.

Plus, the first State Department charter flight to evacuate American citizens has left Israel on its way to Europe. That and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:25:56]

SANCHEZ: We are continuing to follow the latest developments in Israel and Gaza as the war there rages on nearly a week after Hamas attacked Israel.

KEILAR: That's right. Any moment here, President Biden is expected to address this situation. He's actually speaking at an event in Philadelphia talking about Bidenomics but he is going to talk about Israel as well. So we will be bringing you those comments as soon as the president gets started here.

This is coming as some of his top officials are holding meetings across the Middle East. You see Defense Secretary, Lloyd Austin, there, Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, making multiple stops in the region as the U.S. affirms its support for Israel.

CNN's Oren Liebermann and Kayla Tausche are tracking all of this for us.

Oren, what more are we learning about these meetings?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: One of the big purposes behind Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the Middle East right now especially with one in Israel yesterday, Austin in Israel today is a message of strong support from the Biden administration for Israel.

Listen to what Austin said a short time ago while he was in the country.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LLOYD AUSTIN, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: Now, this is no time for neutrality or for false equivalence or for excuses for the inexcusable. There is never any justification for terrorism and that's especially true after this rampage by Hamas. And anyone who wants lasting peace and security for this region must condemn and isolate Hamas.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIEBERMANN: Blinken having a series of other whirlwind meetings throughout the region meeting with Qatar trying to establish some sort of way and some sort of way forward on hostage rescue efforts as well as talking to others in the region, international aid organizations as well to try to ensure safe zones in Gaza and a way out for civilians or other options.

SANCHEZ: And Oren, you have new reporting on a marine rapid reaction force that's capable of conducting special operations, how they're making preparations in case these U.S. forces are ordered to go to Israel.

This is the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit which was actually sent to the Middle East in July in response to increased Iranian aggression in the Gulf. Multiple U.S. officials have now told us that they're preparing as part of the amphibious readiness group which includes the USS Bataan to move toward Israel if that order comes.

It's important to note that order has not yet come from Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin or from the Navy, but this is a rapid reaction force whose mission essential tasks, whose tasks they must be able to complete include things like humanitarian operations and administration in that regard as well as rescue efforts.

So this is the exact sort of unit you might need there if the order comes. It would also be if it's sent towards that area a strong again show of support for Israel and that's already on top of the USS Gerald R. Ford carrier strike group that arrived in the Eastern Med a couple of days ago.

So that's one more option the military is looking at. The Biden administration is looking at in sending toward Israel here.

KEILAR: Of course, there's so many dual citizens, so many Americans who are in Israel. I know that you're learning something about this first U.S. State Department chartered flight that has departed Israel. What can you tell us?

LIEBERMANN: So the first flight left Israel a short time ago. The NSC, National Security Council, wouldn't say exactly where it's headed only that it's headed somewhere in Europe. And of course from Tel Aviv there are a number of different options there.

The state - the NSC also said that they'll keep these flights going as long as there is a demand in the coming days. But you point out one of the key issues, how much of a demand is there, because many of the American citizens in Israel are dual, American-Israeli, citizens and are not tourists who are looking to get out. They are looking to stay.

So it's unclear how much of a demand is there or how many more flights there will be.

SANCHEZ: Oren Liebermann from the Pentagon. Please stand by, Oren.

Let's get to Kayla Tausche who is at the White House.

We're anticipating this speech from President Biden. He's been very vocal in his support of Israel.

[15:30:00]

What are we anticipating he's going to say in this speech?