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Israel Claims Responsibility For Strike In Southern Beirut; White House Comments On Israeli Strike In Beirut. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired July 30, 2024 - 14:00   ET

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

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[14:00:48]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We're following breaking news into CNN from the Middle East. Israel says it launched a strike in Beirut Lebanon targeting a Hezbollah commander that it blames for a rocket attack on the Golan Heights that killed 12 children.

This is new video of the aftermath of that attack. You can see rubble on the ground, debris there strewn across the street. We also have new video showing a cloud of smoke in the air, this as Lebanese state media is reporting that the attack was conducted by a drone that fired three missiles. Though the IDF has not provided details about exactly how this strike was conducted.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: And we are getting some live pictures here from Lebanon, which has been on edge ever since that deadly attack on the Golan Heights.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had vowed serious consequences following that. We have CNN Senior International Correspondent Ben Wedeman live for us in Beirut. Ben, what more are you learning?

BEN WEDEMAN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, we understand this strike took place just before 8:00 p.m. local time just over an hour ago, when according to the official national news agency, a drone fired three missiles into a building in the Haret Hreik neighborhood of the southern part of Beirut.

Now, according to the national news agency, one woman was killed in that strike so far, that's the number we have. Several people -- other people were injured.

Now, we have yet to hear official comment from the Hezbollah. But we understand that from reports in Israel that the target was Fuad Shukr, his nom de guerre is al-Hajj Mohsin, who apparently runs some of the military operations of Hezbollah.

Certainly, now, this was a strike, not necessarily unanticipated since Saturday Lebanon has barely been very much on edge. Prime Minister Netanyahu has said that the response would be in his words severe. So far, this is the second strike on Beirut since the beginning of

hostilities in October. Back in January, the second of January, a senior Hamas official was killed also in that part of Beirut.

Now we've heard time and time again from Hezbollah, as it strikes on Beirut, particularly the southern suburbs, where many of Hezbollah leaders operate would represent a crossing of a red line. We don't know what kind of response is going to come from Hezbollah but certainly raised tensions.

Now I'm hearing that, for instance, people are lining up outside petrol stations of fueling up in anticipation of far worse to come. We've seen over the last few days cancellations by airlines coming in to Beirut, advisories from various embassies for their nationals to leave Lebanon as quickly as possible.

So, we'll just have to see at this point, Brianna, what sort of response Hezbollah will have to this strike this evening on Beirut.

SANCHEZ: And Ben, it's notable that there has been some tension between the Lebanese government and Hezbollah even through tacit statements that they've made. How are the Lebanese responding to this incident? Obviously, Beirut, the capital of that country.

WEDEMAN: But it depends who you actually speak to. There are many supporters of Hezbollah in Beirut, but many opponents as well, many people feel that Hezbollah has gotten Lebanon into a situation where it's on the brink of war, a war that they don't want, many people don't want.

There is little appetite. This is a country don't forget that lived through a 15-year civil war, multiple wars with Israel, the Beirut port blast on the fourth of August 2020. There is no appetite for this sort of thing.

Now, I spoke to the foreign minister the other day who said that when it comes to Hezbollah, they're helpless in terms of the course of events, the actions that Hezbollah takes.

[14:05:07]

The foreign minister told me he regularly speaks with senior officials in Hezbollah. But in the end, Hezbollah does what Hezbollah wants to do and that oftentimes does not coincide with the desires of a, the Lebanese government and b, many of the people of Lebanon, Boris.

KEILAR: Ben Wedeman, thank you so much for that report. When know that you're going to continue getting more information there on the ground.

With us now to discuss we have CNN Global Affairs analyst Kim Dozier, CNN's Chief National Security Analyst Jim Sciutto and CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Alex Marquardt, and CNN Military Analyst and Retired Army Lieutenant General Mark Hertling.

Jim, to you first on this. Israel was particularly quick to confirm, sometimes they haven't been but they did here. And I wonder if your read on that is that they were trying to signal that this was a proportional response. What do you think?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN HOST: I mean, they could signal all they want, right? But they're striking inside Beirut, which Hezbollah had said is a red line.

Listen, in this region, folks are setting red lines all the time. And sometimes they're not. And it's hard to read what those red lines are.

But from Hezbollah's perspective, this is striking very close to home here. And in the realm of options that Israel had, this one is certainly at the higher end, right? It's a direct shot at their home base in effect here, that's extremely risky in this environment.

It is our understanding that they gave the U.S. a heads up here, they haven't always given the U.S. a heads up before the strike. That doesn't mean that the U.S. wanted this to happen. The U.S. read as I understand it has been that they do not expect this current back and forth to lead to a broader regional war. They don't believe the parties want it.

But the trouble is, the U.S. cannot control the response of any of the parties or their reads of what is a step too far. And this is certainly pushing the envelope with Hezbollah, which is something that, as we've talked about many times, Netanyahu has not been shy to do, right?

I mean, you had another decapitation operation inside Beirut prior. And you saw a reaction to that. So, this is a dicey time. This is not an insignificant attack. And now you're going to be looking at how Hezbollah responds.

And I should note that, that Hezbollah has often said, if you strike Beirut, we'll strike Tel Aviv, you know whether they can pull that off given the defenses. But you have to imagine that in Hezbollah's range of reactions, there are significant options as well.

SANCHEZ: We have to pause the panel for a moment, we're going to go straight to the press room in the White House where there is a press briefing and the question was just asked about the strike. Let's listen.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Israeli strikes in Lebanon today. Do you view them as escalatory? Do you think they're an appropriate response to what we saw previously?

KARINE JEAN-PIERRE, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: So, obviously, we are aware of the reports out there that the IDF just conducted a strike against Hezbollah in Lebanon, and I leave it to Israel to speak for their own military operations.

I do not have an immediate comment as this just happened, literally just happened a few minutes before I walked out. So, I'm going to leave Israel to certainly -- IDF as they have been doing to respond to this, and just don't have an immediate comment at this time. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And then just to follow up on Collin's (ph)

question earlier, the Lula call today.

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SANCHEZ: So, no immediate comment from the White House about the strike in Beirut.

Previously, we've seen the spokesperson of the National Security Council John Kirby come out and address this, a bit surprising that he's not there. But Alex to you, he recently said that threats of an all-out war in the region were exaggerated, even though the U.S. had told Israel that they should be cautious of a direct strike on Beirut.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And I think that was really notable. I was on that call yesterday with Kirby. And I think it took a lot of us by surprise, because we have heard these warnings for months about the possibility of this spiraling out of control, not just with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but with other proxy group -- Iranian proxy groups in the region, Iran itself, of course, we saw them strike Israel on April 30th.

I think he was certainly telegraphing confidence there. You also heard Ben Wedeman saying that he was told by the foreign minister that they had received assurances that this would be a relatively narrow response.

But I think Jim is absolutely right. When you strike Dahieh southern Beirut, this is the Hezbollah stronghold in the Lebanese capital. You are certainly running a real risk here.

What we know for sure now is this was the Israeli response to that strike over the weekend that killed those 12 kids in the Golan Heights. The big question now is, is that -- is that it? Is there more coming?

This will certainly prompt a significant response by Hezbollah because we do believe that this was a senior commander, how many other people were killed. And then if there are more Israeli follow on strikes against Israeli infrastructure elsewhere in Beirut against the airport, for example, against civilians, that could certainly cause things to spiral out of control.

[14:10:10]

But you're absolutely right, Boris, the White House is confident or at least where they were yesterday that the fears over this escalation were exaggerated, and perhaps some of the tea leaves that we can read some of the tea leaves right now that the IDF said in their statement after they said they targeted the senior commander, that they're not changing their posture on the home front. They're not telling, for example, Israeli citizens to take cover in a way that they -- that they haven't prior. Jim did note that many tens of thousands are no longer in their homes in the northern part of Israel.

The U.S. State Department was also asked whether they're changing their posture when it comes to American civilians, and so far, they are not.

They have urged Americans to take advantage of commercial travel while it's available, because if things do escalate, they say, they would encourage Americans to shelter in place.

KEILAR: Well, Kim, Kirby saying that, you know, batting down concerns that there may be an all-out war, is that reality? Or is that more of an aspirational statement as you look at what's happening?

KIMBERLY DOZIER, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Well, surely that's hopeful signaling. But the White House understood that Israel needed to respond. The target that had been hit in the Golan was a Druze community. That's not Israeli. These were not Israeli citizens, they had citizenship cards, but not citizenship. So, they had identity cards. And so, there had to be some sort of military response.

The target seems to have been very carefully chosen. Now there are a lot of names that can be similar, but supposedly the target hit was Fuad Shukr, and there is a Fuad Shukr listed in the U.S. State Department Rewards for Justice Program with a bounty on his head of $5 million. He's listed as Hezbollah's highest adviser to Hassan Nasrallah.

So, this could be a target that was chosen very carefully, knowing that, how can the White House criticize hitting someone that is high on their terrorist wanted list?

SANCHEZ: Jim, I know it might be hard to speculate. But as far as a response from Hezbollah, what can we expect to see?

SCIUTTO: Listen, I mean, they they've got an enormous arsenal of rockets and missiles, which they can target Northern Israel as they have for months, going back to just in the days after the October 7th attack and the Israeli response. They have an order of magnitude larger an arsenal of missiles, and they had during the last Israel- Lebanon war in 2006. And some of them quite sophisticated, and with a volume that you could conceivably get through Israeli defenses, if you were to go -- if you were to push that hard, that's possible.

But of course, they know that that would then generate an Israeli response. And here we are again in what's the cycle of violence in the Middle East.

I will make this point when I was in northern Israel after October 7th, and that folks forget this, but and Alex referenced this, tens of thousands of Israelis have moved south, because it's not safe to be in the north.

There's a lot of Israeli public support for military action against Hezbollah, you hear a lot there of like, we got to finish the job, right, once Gaza is done, we got to finish the job in the north. And you hear that from many Israeli officials as well.

That's a factor, right? I mean, even if you get through this period, will there be another period where Israel chooses to take more significant military action? It's very possible. KEILAR: All right, everyone, stay with us. We are watching this breaking news. Israel has claimed responsibility for a strike in southern Beirut. It says that it was targeting a Hezbollah leader responsible for that attack that killed 12 children in the Golan Heights. These are live pictures from Beirut. We're back in just a moment with more.

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[14:18:30]

KEILAR: All right, we are following some breaking news, Israel saying that it launched a strike in Beirut, Lebanon that targeted a Hezbollah commander it's blaming for the rocket attack on the Israeli occupied Golan Heights were 12 children were killed. The White House in the briefing there Karine Jean-Pierre was just asked another question about the strike. Let's listen in.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Kirby said yesterday that fears of an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah were exaggerated. Is that still the White House as assessment after today's strike?

JEAN-PIERRE: So, we do not believe that an all-out war is inevitable. That is not something that we believe and we believe that it can still be avoided.

You know, this is a president you've watched in the last 3-1/2 years, he believes in diplomacy, diplomatic solutions, especially as we're talking in this moment along the blue line, that that is true, as well.

And so, and that will end these attacks if we have some diplomatic kind of solution from Hezbollah once and for all, and allow Israel and Lebanese citizens on both sides of the border to return to their homes and live -- and live -- and live in safety. And that's what we want to see.

So, we -- that's what we believe that there's a diplomatic solution here and that's what we're trying to get to.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Our panel joins us again and I want to go to Retired General Mark Hertling who's patiently waiting as we were processing all of this news.

General, Karine Jean-Pierre though spoke of a diplomatic solution to the tension between Israel and Hezbollah. But many experts have pointed out that any solution without a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel is likely not going to last. How critical are those two components to actually moving forward with a stable situation on the northern border of Israel with Lebanon?

[14:20:20] LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Well, anytime you're talking about a conflict, Boris, you have to have some kind of political end state.

In this case for Israel, the political end state is getting rid of Hamas, protecting their citizens from strikes from various terrorist organizations, getting their hostages back and finding a forward solution in Hamas -- or in Gaza, rather.

So, all of those things are part of a potential political solution. And I know that's what the United States has been working harder in doing.

When you're talking about the shift from a focus of attention on Hamas to Hezbollah. What I suggest today, we've been talking about this one strike in the southern boundaries of the city of Beirut. I'm looking at it from the standpoint of a military analysis of what was the time of the strike, it was early in the evening, you know, about 1900 or so hours. So, 7:00 in the evening.

The target was a terrorist leader who had allegedly used his power under the shadows of the Beirut government to strike an area within Israel, the weapon system that Israel used tonight was a drone in a very precise attack. And the effects were the killing of that individual, according to what's been reported so far.

The message that's being sent, though, I think, is critically important. Israel wants to maintain security for its citizens, there have been multiple strikes from southern Lebanon into Israeli territory, and in fact, probably more in the last few months from southern Lebanon than we've even seen in the last few months from Hamas out of Gaza.

So, repeated rocket attacks, repeated attempts at killing civilians, all that which had been defended by the Israeli Defense Forces, the message being sent right now, I believe to Hezbollah is, first of all, we knew where that target was, we knew we had to come after him, because he was a terrorist who had struck inside of our country, the effects were we hit that target wherever he was going, it was it -- it was a pattern of life, if you will of that target that caused them to strike early in the evening, as opposed to 2:00 in the morning, like most kinetic strikes are done when there's less population in the area.

So, all of those things tell me that Israel, at least now is attempting to prevent a future expansion of this conflict into Lebanon. And that's a good thing.

So, is the -- is the expansion inevitable like so many people have been questioning? I believe that it is not. But it takes some very careful not only political messages, but also some military approaches. And I think today, if this was the only strike that Israel uses, they have sent the message, and it's a limited proportional response to the killing of Israeli citizens over the weekend.

KEILAR: And Kim, obviously, you know, this is seen as something, we don't see pancake buildings. This is something smaller, and yet this is hugely significant as well. What is the appetite for, and also maybe the reticence for a broader conflict within Israel and also within Hezbollah?

DOZIER: Well, Hezbollah up to this point has shown a lot of control. It's either ratcheted its attacks up or down, depending on where Israel is on the battlefield in Gaza.

So, I think like Mark is saying, you're going to see no great response to this, maybe some limited response of Hezbollah targeting of Israeli military targets. But unless we have another mishap that leads to high civilian casualties, and unless this strike inside Beirut led to high civilian casualties, I think this is just going to end up being another salvo in the back and forth, because Hezbollah's main adviser on this is Iran. And Iran is holding its fire so to speak, it has helped Hezbollah arm with something like more than 150,000 sophisticated missiles and other projectiles that can hit almost every major populated target inside Israel.

But once you go to using that, that's hard to restock. And that's the kind of thing that can lead to some sort of a nuclear response, some sort of a World War III type situation.

Iran doesn't want that, Hezbollah which is part of the Lebanese government doesn't want that. And so, that's why I think this limited strike might be what we see for now. And we go back to the tit for tat that will continue as long as fighting continues in Gaza.

[14:25:06]

SANCHEZ: Alex, you -- something notable that Kim said was the fact that this rocket strike in the Golan Heights, it was -- it was actually a mishap.

MARQUARDT: Right. There has been this tit for tat as Kim says, since October 8th. You know, it's been a lower simmer compared to Gaza. But the nightmare scenario guys has been that one of these Hezbollah rockets would take out a large number of children. That's exactly what happened.

This is a slightly different situation in that it hit kids playing on a soccer field in the occupied Golan Heights. These are -- this are a Druze community that in a large way rejects Israel and rejects Israeli citizenship. But of course, Israel sees this as a strike on Israeli territory.

But officials I've spoken with do acknowledge that this was a mistake by Hezbollah. Nevertheless, this was a mistake that has now precipitated a response.

Major questions, of course, whether this military commander as the IDF said they targeted was actually taken out, that remains to be seen, major questions about whether they will expand those strikes.

I think Kim is probably right, this is what we're going to see I think it for now. There is furious diplomacy going on behind the scenes. So often we talk about the Gaza ceasefire deal. There's a parallel diplomatic track that is being led by Amos Hochstein out of the White House to try to broker not just peace on that northern Israeli border, but a way in which those tens of thousands of Israeli civilians can actually go home so that what they're looking for -- what the U.S. and Israel are hoping for is that Hezbollah would actually pull back from that southern border at least six miles or 10 kilometers.

There are a lot of people who think American officials included that this is very much linked to a Gaza ceasefire deal to your point, Boris, that without the fighting stopping in Gaza, you're never going to have peace on the northern border.

Israel sees those two things as separate. But of course, when you look at the damage that was done in downtown Beirut tonight, big questions about what comes next.

KEILAR: Certainly, Alex, thank you so much. Kim, General Hertling, we thank you as well.

And coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL, turning to the race for the White House and Vice President Kamala Harris speaking in Atlanta tonight with a big decision on her mind, who should be her running mate for the Democratic ticket. We're going to talk about the Veep stakes and how her pick might be able to help her win. We'll have that next.

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