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CNN International: U.S. Official: Israel Strikes Iran, Target Not Nuclear; Strike On Iran Comes As G7 Foreign Ministers Meet; Palestine Condemns U.S. Veto Of Biden For Full U.N. Membership. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired April 19, 2024 - 04:00   ET

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

[04:00:16]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

MAX FOSTER, CNN ANCHOR: Hello. Warm welcome to our viewers joining us from around the world. I'm Max Foster, live in London, with breaking news.

A U.S. official confirms that Israel has carried out a military strike inside Iran. An Iranian cyberspace official says its air defenses successfully shot down three drones. Iranian state media reported loud explosions near the city of Isfahan. But military officials say there is no damage and the city's nuclear site is safe.

Iran's Fars News Agency says an army base with fighter jets was likely the target. Israel is being vowing to retaliate since Iran launched a barrage of drones and missiles against Israel on Saturday.

We begin with Paula Hancocks in Beirut, Lebanon, who has more detail about what we're -- what we're learning here, the messages coming from both countries?

PAULA HANCOCKS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Max, we'd been expecting some kind of response from Israel over recent days, despite the fact that they had been encouraged by the U.S., by other countries to de- escalate, to not respond, and to try and calm the situation down. There are serious fears of but you have a wider conflict in the region.

But what we know at this point, and were learning from Iranian state media is that the Iranian military believes that it shot down three drones. It says there was no damage in the area at all, excuse me, also saying that the nuclear facilities that have been untouched, they remain secure and in many ways really downplaying what we have seen overnight.

There were concerns so that there would be a significant response from Israel. But certainly for what were seeing at this point, ties in with what we heard from a U.S. official believing it would be a limited response -- Max.

FOSTER: Paula, thank you. You go with that.

Now, joining us on the line is CNN chief international anchor Christiane Amanpour.

I mean, what is interesting within the last hour, Christiane, that these reports that Iran is actually playing down this strike. What's your read here?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR (via telephone): Well, look, Max, I think that nobody wants to escalate this beyond a certain level, which is already massive compared to what's happened over the last, let's just say 45 years of the Islamic Republic's conflict with Israel. There's never been in these kinds of direct official strikes.

Now, Israel is not saying that it did whatever did overnight, but as you say, the important thing is, at the moment, Iranian officials say that the source of -- this is a quote -- the foreign source of the incident has not been confirmed. The IAEA says there was no damage to Iran's nuclear sites. And in addition, you've got an Iranian official quoted by "Reuters" saying that that it was -- you know, playing it down very, very heavily and saying in words, we have not received he has any external attack and they believe that saying the discussion leads more towards infiltration than attack. And it talks about potentially no retaliation. This is, according to "Reuters" and one particular official.

So that seems to be the latest out of Iran anyway, at the moment. And as you know, this all started with what's now being heavily described. This is chapter anyway, this new chapter started with what's being heavily telegraphed and describe as quite frankly and Israeli miscalculation April 1st, believing that attacking the Iranian embassy, consulate, even despite being used for military meeting (AUDIO GAP) not react to it. They didn't think it was an escalation, that's according to intelligence, and reporting about that.

So we've got a series of miscalculations which frankly also is the story because since the beginning, after the slaughter (ph) on October 7, the international community called on all sides and all interested parties to exercise restraint because they did not want a wider war. So that's the situation we're in right now.

FOSTER: So the suggestion of the sound we're getting from this is that Iran may not counter-strike to this, but can we be sure that this is the end of the Israeli strike on Iran?

[04:05:06]

AMANPOUR: Well, you can never be sure of anything and they haven't even said that they did anything. So the Israelis have not formally commented on it, but if in fact this is Israel as the United States, it said that it was relatively small, even given past Israeli covert action inside Iran against senior officials. And obviously its overt action, bombing raids in Syria that led to the April 1st incident, that they clearly trying to listen maybe or understanding the U.S. and other allied views that any major attack on Iran would spin a situation out of control. And that they should just make sure that whatever they do does not spin a situation out-of-control and draw both countries which are the biggest, most powerful powers in the region, Israel, and Iran.

Israel obviously much more heavily armed than Iran, much more heavily capable. As you know, it's a nuclear power, but it has very sophisticated American weapons, offensive and defensive.

So, to make sure that this doesn't spin out of control. And all my conversations, this past week, including with the former Israeli intelligence, a military intelligence chief with the former UK intelligence chief, MI6 chief, was that, well, it was likely that something would happen from Israel after last week Iranian missile attack. That it needed to be very, very, very measured.

And so, this is what apparently appears to be happening right now. And the most important thing so far we don't know what the public statements are going to be is that Iran is saying it down and its suggesting that there wasn't even an outside attack, but the quote, infiltration. That's according to one official who has spoken to the "Reuters" news agency -- Max.

FOSTER: This will be very reassuring to the people of Iran because we've obviously been reporting on how nervous they are there. How do you think Iran is going to spin this if you like, to their people? And can you just explain a bit about the debates that go on within Iran is not one cohesive leadership and military, is it? There's lots of factions there who will be debating this right now.

AMANPOUR: More or less, but this is under the authority of the supreme leader of Iran, whatever happened last week. And so, there is lessons when it comes to matters of national security national defense, but you're right, the actual people of Iran have often far, far, far less in interest. And secondly, actually, obviously, they don't want to see a war.

We saw that last week when up to the Iranian barrage, they were a few which often some state managed crowds that come out wave flags and shot at anti-Israel chants, and slogans, that was very small compared to what we were hearing from most Iranians that they were in some instances panic buying. They were indicating that they were afraid of retaliation.

And as we know, the Iranian people or not, you know, leading for war, they've undergone decade the sanctions, decades of threats from the outside world, and the Iranian people want something completely different than a constant state of heightened tension and danger around them.

Of course, its also goes to, as I said, the Hamas slaughter in Israel on October 7, when its interestingly, both Israel and the United States intelligence basically telegraphed that Iran was not involved in that. Iran had not planted was not helping executed, and despite its political often other support for what they call the axis of resistance. They were not involved in this and Iran kept saying it wasn't and Hezbollah kept saying it wasn't.

But in the intervening six months when you've seen these Israeli counteroffensive on Gaza and the massive mass the death toll, which according to all accounts, including the latest Israeli generalized, at least two-thirds of the dead, 34,000 plus, are civilians, women and children, and men who are non-combatants.

And so, this is turning the tide against Israel, certainly amongst its allies and making it much, much more difficult in the region where people support the Palestinians, obviously, and people all over the world have been very, very angered, upset, distraught by the constant bombardment of Gaza and the death and the killing of civilians, famine that the United States, USAID says has set in the starvation the children's who's pictures we see.

[04:10:06]

It is a terrible, terrible situation. And the Israeli general who I spoke to that Israel cannot suddenly turn towards another full-scale war with Iran while its still has to finish off what's going on in Gaza.

So it is a very complicated, multi-layered, multi-tiered situation that's going on and as we said, there's no particular guardrails or officials who can come to any kind of pick up the red phone line and de-escalate and d conflict between Israel and Iran so they've got to decide whether they have on either side established the differences, reveal they want to establish -- re-establish.

FOSTER: Thank you. We'll be hearing much more from you today as the analysis comes in. Thank you.

A little more now in the reaction though to the explosions. A senior American official, he said, Israel told the U.S. it would retaliate against Iran in the coming days, said the U.S. did not endorse the Israeli response. A second official confirm that and said the U.S. expected Israel would not target civilians or nuclear facilities in Iran, which appears to be the case based on the information we've got so far.

The Pentagon chief spoke with his Israeli counterpart on Thursday, but a readout of their conversation does not include any mention of plans to attack.

Joining me now, from London, Jasmine El-Gamal. She is a former Middle East adviser at the U.S. Department of Defense and is currently a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council.

Thank you so much for joining us.

What will they be making of this in Washington when they clearly advise Israel not to attack it any way?

JASMINE EL-GAMAL, SENIOR FELLOW, ATLANTIC COUNCIL: Good morning. Thank you for having me.

Well, first of all, even though the Americans had been obviously pressing the Israelis not to attack, it wasn't surprising that Israelis eventually felt the need to respond as we saw a few days ago, the Iranian response, although it was weld broadcast ahead of time, its still wasn't a very pretty picture for the Israelis. It really showed that Israeli state as being quite vulnerable. It had to elicit the support of other actors in order to intercept Iranian missiles and Iranian projectiles going towards Israel. And so of course, Prime Minister Netanyahu, it is understandable that he, in weighing his options, felt that he had to do something.

Now, that said the thing that he did, although we don't have a verified reports of what exactly has happened and what the impact was. I think we can all agree that the Israeli response was much more of a symbolic message than it really was an escalation, which was the best that we could have hoped for when it came to an Israeli response. Now again, were still trying to figure out and hear more about what exactly happened. But what we do know most importantly of all is that the Iranians are downplaying this Israeli strike on Iran, which is a big message.

It shows us that the Iranians even though they had said that they would be prepared to counterattack once again, are not eager to escalate this further. There were no casualties, there were no major infrastructure sites hit. The attacks seemed to have been launched from inside Iran, which means that there weren't any there wasn't any need, for example, for Israeli projectiles to cross Jordanian airspace and get the Jordanians involved once again.

So all in all, it feels like a symbolic attack, something that the Israelis could say, look, we did something we didn't just stay silent as the Iranians penetrated our airspace, but not so much that it would cause another further escalation in the region or any embarrassment to the Arab states in the region to have to get involved once again, between the two.

FOSTER: There will be those on the right wing in Israel who will say this just wasn't enough and they weren't like some of the language coming out from Iran today that this was actually an embarrassment their messaging appears to be this is all Israel could do in response to our much larger attack at the weekend.

EL-GAMAL: Right. And, of course, those right-wing voices are always going to be clamoring for more and for harder, but Prime Minister Netanyahu doesn't have to listen to them now, the Israelis did something which is basically they said there is a message that were sending here, is that we can get to your nuclear sites if we want to, we know where they are. And even though we didn't hit them, this time, we can do it.

A lot of this that has been going on over the last few days, both with the Iranian strike. And Israeli strike is messaging. It's posturing and messaging neither side obviously is willing or ready to escalate into an all-out war.

[04:15:02]

The Israelis in particular cannot get into an all-out war without the full port, both military and political of the Americans, which President Biden made it clear that he was not willing to give. So a lot of this has been about messaging. The Iranians, basically saying were not afraid to strike you inside, we crossed that line and we're not afraid to do it again.

And the Israelis are saying. And by the way, we're not afraid either. We know where your sites are. We can strike them if we want. We're just choosing not to do so right now.

So they both have a little bit of two different kinds of messaging that they need for their domestic publics right now. They're both able to say, we can do something if we want to, but were being responsible and were not choosing to do it at this time.

FOSTER: Okay. Jasmine El-Gamal, thank you so much for joining us from London with your analysis.

Just ahead, we'll have more breaking news coverage of the apparent Israeli strikes against Iran.

And later we're live in Rome for the latest reaction from the G7 foreign ministers wrapping up a three-day summit there.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[04:20:31]

FOSTER: Let's have a quick recap bend of apparent Israeli strikes on Iran. Its state media projecting a picture of normalcy really, as you can see, following reports of attacks several hours ago. TV images are showing people going about their lives as usual in the city of Isfahan. But earlier, Iranian media reported three explosions near an army base in that province.

A U.S. official told CNN, Israel is behind that, but Israel's military isn't commenting. The U.N. nuclear watchdog says there's no damage to Iran's nuclear sites. Flight restrictions that were initially imposed across the country are now lifted. The big question now is what will around next.

Those strikes came after Iran launched hundreds of drones and missiles, but Israel last weekend, but almost all of them were shot down. Israel's allies later said a military response to that could escalate into a regional war. And just hours before today's explosions in Iran, its foreign minister had a warning for Israel in an exclusive interview with CNN.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HOSSEIN AMIR-ABDOLLAHIAN, IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: Our response to the Israeli regime was limited. And stayed within a minimum of frameworks, whereas we could have given a much harsher response to the Israeli regime.

Following that, we announced that this response is within the framework of legitimate defense according to international laws. We will not continue. However, in case the Israeli regime embarks on adventurism again and takes action against the interests of Iran, the next response from us will be immediate and at a maximum level. It will be decisive. (END VIDEO CLIP)

FOSTER: Gideon Levy is a columnist for the "Haaretz" newspaper and comes to us from Tel Aviv.

Thank you so much for joining us.

Obviously with warnings like that coming from Iran in recent days, there was a big fear that an attack on Iran would prompt a big strike back on Israel but that doesn't appear to be the case today. Some interesting messaging coming out from around.

GIDEON LEVY, COLUMNIST, HAARETZ: Absolutely. You see, Max, its one of those very rare moments in which I can complement the Israeli holy on Israeli reaction. I think wisdom prevail this morning because their operation in Iran, from my point of view, we could also not do it. And still hold our power.

But the operational is very measured as it seems. It left room for the Iranians who keep some fog ovary to deny it in a way, and it will not take us into a crazy regional war. But we shouldn't forget that the situation is still very, very explosive. But right now, the right thing was done and I hope this round is over now.

FOSTER: I mean, how do we know that? How do we know that this was a test by Israel? And there may be more strikes to come?

LEVY: If this will be the case, so we will face a regional war no other way. But I tend to believe according to the public expressions until now, that for Israel, this was enough for now, and for Iran, it was enough for now. Sure, you we got already in Israel, the right- wingers who react in a sense of irony and then even laughing in this operation. They want to see more.

I hope that Netanyahu will be strong enough to stand this and to stop now because any more it takes will take us to a place that neither Israel nor Iran want to be there.

FOSTER: In terms of the messaging coming out from this space. It's not just what happened is it obviously, it's the reaction. We haven't had any reaction from Israelis officially yet.

The reaction were getting from Iran is they're not even saying that this came from Israel. They're not sure yet. And it was very easily dealt with if it was from Israel, then its shows how weak they are because it was such a low level attack.

[04:25:10]

But I think a lot of Israelis would probably argue that this was a clear demonstration that they are willing to strike Iranian soil if necessary. And they have the access to get past the air defenses as well.

LEVY: Well, finally, all these vicious circle has a lot also to do with egos, with egos of the generous, with egos of the politicians. Everyone wants to show off. I don't say that this is the only motivation by all means its not, but it is an important component in the final picture.

So this operation able the Israeli ego to show we are capable, we can do it, just depends on us and for the Iranian to say, we can contain it, we will go on from here.

FOSTER: Okay. Gideon Levy, really appreciate your time today. Thank you for joining us.

We're going to have more breaking news coverage on the Israeli strikes on Iran after this short break.

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