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Netanyahu: Israel has Agreed to Ceasefire with Iran; Israeli Defense Minister: Israel to Continue Striking Iran After Ceasefire Violation. Aired 4:30-5a ET

Aired June 24, 2025 - 04:30   ET

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

[04:30:00]

MAJ. GEN. MARK MACCARLEY, (U.S. ARMY (RET.): Absolutely. That's an appropriate term, fragile. It's one thing to announce triumphantly that we have a ceasefire and it generates a tremendous amount of enthusiasm for the fact that this 12, 13 day conflict has suddenly found something akin to an off ramp. But there has been zero detail regarding the cease fire and everything that's related to a cease fire.

So, when you address the shots by Iran to Israel, Beer Sheva, just a couple of hours ago, that's not inconsistent with how I view a cease fire that has not yet been carefully articulated with everything that's related to a cease fire. And very quickly, that would include such things as, yes, we've stopped shooting. What's the disposition of our activities in this area of the world? What about enforceability?

Since this entire 13 day war was focused on Iranian nuclear capability, then the question is now we have a cease fire but if Iran were to violate that, if Iran were to return and engage in such conduct, then there's no clarity and we could go on and on about the challenges associated with a cease fire. And right now, all we have happen to be a couple of words. There's a cease fire. Hope it -- hope it works.

BECKY ANDERSON, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, and if it holds, everyone, of course, claiming success here. To your point, let's look at Donald Trump and the U.S. Defense Secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Trump himself claiming massive success in what is known as Operation Midnight Hammer. The administration clearly wanted to draw a line under that, and that was their their strikes on the nuclear installations Sunday.

You can tell from his cease fire Truth Social post. Will the U.S. have a plan for a break in this cease fire? I mean, you know, what would that look like from from Washington's perspective? You seeing any evidence at this point that the Americans would be interested in rejoining this fight?

MACCARLEY: Oh, my gosh, there's a lot to respond to. There has to be once we have this cease fire, albeit a three word cease fire, then, of course, we have to go through all those things that are necessary to make this enforceable. Would the United States jump in either in terms of enforcing the terms of the cease fire?

That means that America sits on the sideline. It's got its B-2 bombers and its other attack aircraft available. If, in fact, there's evidence that Iran has violated the terms of the cease fire, I don't know if there's any appetite in our government in with the United States in order to be the neutral, so to speak, arbitrator or that entity that enforces it. Maybe we have to start talking about something akin to a third party.

And certainly because this relates to the difficulties, the horror of nuclear weapons, we have to bring the International Agency -- Atomic Energy Agency into this, because at the end of the day, if we don't have anything akin to inspection, we've just wasted our time.

ANDERSON: Good to have you, Major General Mark MacCarley. Your perspective, important. Some more on what is then. And I know it's an overused term. I'm going to use it anyway. It's a fragile cease fire between Israel and Iran after where the more missiles have been launched in just the last hour.

The details and the latest are just ahead.

[04:35:00]

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ANDERSON: Well, Israel says it has achieved all of its objectives after nearly two weeks of strikes in Iran and says it agreed to a cease fire after its military success. But now Israel's defense minister says the military will strike again and respond with force after it says there's been a violation just a short time ago. Israel tells CNN the military intercepted two missiles launched from Iran before the cease fire came into effect.

Both sides had fired off missiles, including one that hit a residential building here in Beer Sheva in the southern Israeli city. Israeli officials say at least five people were killed there. Iranian state media reports at least nine killed when Israeli strikes hit residential buildings in northwest Iran.

Well, let's get more analysis from my next guest. Greg Carlstrom is the Middle East correspondent for The Economist. He's also the author of How Long Israel -- "How long Will Israel Survive the Threat from Within?" Greg, joining me live from Dubai.

[04:40:00]

Greg, you are watching, I'm sure, minute by minute, the messaging coming from both sides here. Israel suggesting there has been a violation of this ceasefire already. I'm just looking at Iranian state media, which are knocking that back.

What do you make of what we are seeing as we speak?

GREGG CARLSTROM, MIDDLE EAST CORRESPONDENT, THE ECONOMIST: Well, I think no surprise to anyone that the ceasefire didn't take cleanly, that here we are a few hours after it was supposed to begin, and we're talking about violations. That happens a lot, right?

You think back to the ceasefire in Lebanon in November. There was some rocket fire from Lebanon after the ceasefire was supposed to start. There were Israeli airstrikes subsequent to that. Every time there's been a Gaza ceasefire going back many, many years, there have been these sorts of violations in the minutes or hours afterwards.

So not surprised that it happened. I think let's see how long it goes on. Let's see if by the end of the day, by tomorrow, there's actually a ceasefire that's holding.

If there's not, I think at that point, you have to start asking questions about whether there are factions inside of Iran that don't want the war to end, or whether there's some sort of command and control issue in Iran. But I think for now, in the hours after it was supposed to begin, if we're seeing violations, it's unfortunately nothing surprising.

ANDERSON: What's been achieved here?

CARLSTROM: We don't know yet, is the short answer. I think we can say that Iran's ballistic missile program has been set back quite significantly. Many of its launchers damaged or destroyed, some of its arsenal of the missiles themselves either destroyed or expended. So the salvos that we've seen Iran carry out against Israel over the past 12 days, it would be hard for them to sustain those for much longer.

On the nuclear side of it, it's much less clear. We know that there is damage to the main nuclear facilities at Fordow, at Natanz, Esfahan.

We don't know exactly what has happened to Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium. We don't know how many centrifuges it might have stashed away somewhere else. We just don't know how quickly Iran might be able to reconstitute this program that's been damaged by Israeli and American strikes.

And then what happens politically inside of Iran going forward? You know, it seems as if at least the Israeli prime minister, the defense minister, other officials, they were bent on destabilizing the regime here, trying to trigger some sort of regime change. What happens to governance inside of Iran in the weeks and months and years to come? It's really too early to make any predictions.

ANDERSON: Let's get your take on the perspective in Israel. Israel says it has achieved all of its objectives after nearly two weeks of strikes in Iran. The 12-day war that Donald Trump suggests has now come to an end. And it says it has agreed to a ceasefire after its military success.

How do you read the calculus in Tel Aviv?

CARLSTROM: The initial rhetoric that we're hearing out of Israel from some government officials, from Prime Minister Netanyahu's media allies, is very triumphant. They're selling this message that they have, you know, eliminated the threat from both Iran's nuclear program and its ballistic missiles. But I think in the longer term, we really have to wait and see.

And there are analysts in Israel, serious analysts of Iran, of Iran's nuclear program, who are urging caution right now, who are saying, you know, first of all, it's unclear how Israel is going to preserve these gains. Is it going to, in the years to come, if it notices Iran trying to rebuild its missile or nuclear programs, is Israel going to carry out more of these sorts of airstrikes? Does it want to wage what it once called a war between the wars in Iran and carry out regular strikes against Iranian capabilities?

And then what happens to the political desire of the Iranian government to perhaps try and build a nuclear bomb? Do they emerge from this war thinking that the only way that they can prevent further attacks by Israel or by America is by developing a nuclear deterrent? If Iran does that, if Iran is successful and able to carry out a nuclear test, then I think the ultimate historical judgment here might be that this war was a tactical success for Israel but strategically could end up being a failure.

ANDERSON: What do you make of the role that Qatar has played? We are waiting on a press conference, a statement, one assumes, in a press conference from the prime minister, who is also the foreign minister, of course.

[04:45:00]

It was only, what, just more than 12 hours ago that that sovereign state that hosts a U.S. base took incoming fire from Iran from short to medium range ballistic missiles aimed at the base that is hosted by the states from short to medium range ballistic missiles aimed at the base that is hosted by the state of Qatar. And I just want to get your sense of where that country's position is at this point.

CARLSTROM: I mean, it's remarkable. I can't think of another time when a country has been attacked and then turns around the next morning and brokers a ceasefire involving the country that attacked it and another country. But I think that speaks to the deep unease in Qatar and elsewhere across the Gulf that governments have been feeling over the past two weeks.

Obviously, Qatar is upset with Iran, and they're going to have their own sort of diplomatic accounts to settle with the Iranians. But I think for them, the immediate priority here was trying to end this war before it escalated any further.

The fear across the Gulf has been the sorts of scenes that played out last night in Qatar. People running for cover inside of shopping malls, people watching as missiles and interceptor fragments fell in their backyards and fell on the sides of roads.

These are countries in the Gulf that have long prided themselves on being oases of stability in an otherwise very chaotic region. They did not want this war between Israel and Iran to have ripple effects, to come home.

They saw that happen last night. And I think that that made their overarching priority, trying to find a way to end the war and prevent it from escalating further.

ANDERSON: It's good to have you, Greg. Thank you very much indeed. And Greg mentioning parties that might not want the ceasefire to hold.

Israel's far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, said that Israel has achieved a, quote, crushing victory in the campaign against Iran that will be recorded gloriously in the pages of the history of the State of Israel. Now, with all our strength to Gaza, he wrote.

He is normally pretty hawkish. That could be interpreted as a positive sign for the conflict with Iran and a dire sign for Gaza.

Well, just ahead, we are live in The Hague, where a critical NATO summit is underway with conflicts in the Middle East. And, of course, Ukraine squarely in focus. Do stay with us for that.

[04:50:00]

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ANDERSON: All right, let me just get you up to date on what we are getting into CNN. This is important.

Iranian state-linked media outlets have denied that Iran fired missiles at Israel after the ceasefire went into effect. That is after Israel suggested that it had intercepted two missiles fired by Tehran after the beginning of this stated ceasefire overnight.

We are -- let me just say that you are aware of what we are watching at the moment. We are expecting to hear from the Qatar prime minister, who is also the foreign minister, at a press conference there in Doha. We are monitoring that for you as soon as we see him alongside the Lebanese prime minister today in Doha. We will get back to you.

Meantime, I'm here with Mina Al-Oraibi, the editor-in-chief of The National newspaper and a serious expert in Middle East relations. And her insights are incredibly valuable as we wait to hear from Qatar.

Let's just step back for a moment and just remind ourselves what has happened here in this region. We're broadcasting from our Middle East programming headquarters in the UAE. What has happened over the past 12 hours? Lest we forget.

MINA AL-ORAIBI, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, THE NATIONAL: Indeed, it's one of those moments where everybody in the region had wanted to avoid, which is Israel, Iran, direct confrontation, and then the Iranians wanting to retaliate in different ways. That would include here in the Gulf. Despite the fact that, of course, the Iranians have good ties with these countries.

They may not be relationships based on trust or long-term alliances. But there is an understanding that was reached in the last two to three years that let's try to find working modes of operation, especially with Qatar. And so the decision yesterday by the Iranians was that they had to respond to the American strikes on the nuclear sites. Let's not forget the three nuclear sites that were struck Saturday into Sunday morning in Tehran.

ANDERSON: This is more than a trillion dollar nuclear program that the Iranians have been building over the years.

AL-ORAIBI: And they were direct hits. And it was a full American intervention here. So they had to respond.

And they decided that they would respond by hitting Al Udeid base, which is, of course, the American base, headquarters of CENTCOM, as we were just discussing before this, as a way to retaliate. But they warned everybody in advance. The Americans knew, the Brits knew, and the Qataris certainly knew. And so there was this coordination.

Now, we've been talking about narratives for the last hour or so, this idea that the Iranians have to show that they've responded, especially for their own people. You can imagine a regular Iranian that's lived through sanctions, that's lived through a regime that's really very repressive, has lived with the fact that the Iranians always say they have to spend on proxies abroad. And suddenly they're getting rained down by missiles from Israel and America. And they're kind of on their own. So they're questioning the regime, most certainly.

[04:55:02]

And so, of course, the Iranian regime says, OK, we're going to retaliate. So they've launched these missiles, only one of which actually landed in a base that was already emptied. But they were able to say that despite the attacks of Israel and America, we're still able to launch strikes. So it's still very, very dangerous.

Here in the Gulf, there is a sense of we're crossing too many red lines. You know, the red line of we don't strike nuclear sites because we're worried, of course, about contamination. Although so far we know the strikes that have happened have not caused, thank God, any contamination. But we've also crossed the red line of Iran targeting directly a Gulf country before it was done through proxies.

ANDERSON: And there has been a coordinated narrative on that, which is condemning Iran for that action. The Omanis this morning, though, reminding those who are watching what they are saying that this started with Israeli attacks 12 days ago on Iran, which again, condemned by this region.

Good to have you. Stay with me. I need to take a very short break before we continue. I'm Becky Anderson live for you in Abu Dhabi from the Middle East Programming Headquarters.

We'll be back with more news after this short break.

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