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Inside Politics

Iran Launches Missile Attack On Israel. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired October 01, 2024 - 12:30   ET

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

[12:30:00]

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR: And General Hertling, we talked a little bit about this at the beginning of the show, but I want to re-up our discussion about the distance and the time. If Iran does strike -- and of course Iran is involved in this right now because Iran is a major supporter of, financially and in every other way not just Hamas but Hezbollah -- if Iran does indeed launch these missiles, how long would it take to reach Israel?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, if it is solely a ballistic missile, the Iranians have a missile called the Fattah, it travels at Mach-15. That's fast. So it can cover the distance, I mean, just a straight line distance from Tehran to Tel Aviv is about a little over a thousand miles. It can cover that distance in 12 minutes.

During the April attack when Iran combined not only ballistic missiles, but also cruise missiles, which travel Nap of the earth, that they follow the path of the earth and they can be programmed to fly like a jet over different areas to the ground. Those take a long time. It takes as long as a jet to get there.

If they fire drones, those are even slower. So what Iran did in April was a very uncoordinated attack, not matching the speed of their weapon system, along with the targets they struck. So at this time, if Iran only launches ballistic missiles, they have a lot of them. They have close to estimates anywhere from 3,000 to 5,000 ballistic missiles.

Now, they can't get all of them off at any given time. But even if they lost launched a fraction of those, it would be very difficult for Israel to counter those with air defense system, the kinds of systems that shoot from the ground up into the sky as a missile is falling into a certain area.

So when --

BASH: Like the Iron Dome.

HERTLING: Yes, the Iron Dome is designed specifically for rockets that fire very slowly, but a certain parabola. It goes up. It calculates where it's going to strike when the Iron Dome radar catches it. If it's not going to hit into a populated area, the Iron Dome doesn't fire.

It only knocks down a target when there are indicators that the radar is going to take it to a certain area where there's civilian or military targets. So the Iron Dome is kind of a unique weapon system. What you have to do for ballistic missiles is literally shoot quick moving target much faster than an airplane, Mach-15. Even fast airplanes don't go that fast.

Knock it out of the sky as it's either at its top, or as it's coming back into the earth. And that's very difficult to do if you don't have the systems in place.

BASH: General, please stand by because I do want to go to Tel Aviv. CNN's Jim Sciutto is there now. Jim, what are you seeing?

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: We just heard the air raid sirens here. We all got the warnings in our phones. It's a standard way of communicating air raid alert here in Tel Aviv. Just before that, we heard an enormous amount of activity in the air over the city here that most likely Israeli fighter jets, which are part of the missile detection, also missile defense. And there's been a swarm of that in the last couple hours.

My latest reporting is that the likely targets from -- and you can hear the -- there's the air raid siren now. My most recent reporting is that the potential targets are two air bases in Israel, but also the Mossad headquarters. And that's crucial, Dana, because the Mossad headquarters are in the city proper.

In fact, just to the northeast of here and a strike with a ballistic missile by Iran inside the urban center of Israel's largest city would be quite, quite an enormous escalation.

BASH: Jim, do you need to get into the bomb shelter?

SCIUTTO: We'll let that play out. You may have some difficulty hearing me. We are OK where we are now, but as we gather more information, we'll -- I'll come back with it.

BASH: OK. Please just take care and -- of you and your team, and we will get back to you when it is safe to --

SCIUTTO: One thing to keep in mind, just --

BASH: Go ahead.

SCIUTTO: One thing to keep in mind, Dana, just before we go is that -- is the travel time for a ballistic missile from Iran to Israel is a matter of minutes, about 12 minutes for a ballistic missile. So when you get warnings like this, this gives you a sense of just how --

BASH: Yes.

SCIUTTO: -- tight the timelines is --

BASH: All right. SCIUTTO: -- is for people to react, but also defenses to get up.

BASH: OK. Well, given that, we would very much like for you to get in and your team to get into the bomb shelter. And we appreciate you being here. We will definitely be in touch.

[12:35:06]

General Hertling, let's go to what Jim was saying about potential targets that he's hearing about from his sources, including and especially Mossad headquarters. Mossad, of course, is the spy agency inside Israel, which is physically located in downtown Tel Aviv, which is a very densely populated city.

HERTLING: Right. Well, you know, it's interesting, Dana, because you can not only hit ballistic missiles inside those very precise targets in and around Tel Aviv in the air.

BASH: General Hertling, I'm just going to interrupt you. I don't know if you can see what you're -- the monitor there, but we are seeing something in the sky. It's unclear what it is. You obviously have a far more trained eye than I do here.

HERTLING: Yes. Yes. What I say, Dana, is my eyes --

BASH: I'm going to go back to Jim Sciutto. General, forgive me. Jim, what are you saying?

SCIUTTO: Yes. What we saw -- what you saw there, and I wasn't sure if it was visible on camera to you, but we did see a light in the sky, which is a intercept missile going up. We watched it rise. We did not see an impact at least yet, but those are -- that's part of the air defenses, the missile defenses around the capitol here.

You'd see the air defense missile go up, and if it were to have an impact and intercept, that would be quite a visible explosion. That's the first one we've seen, and it followed very quickly within a couple minutes after we heard, as you heard on the air just then now, Dana, as we heard those air raid sirens go up around Tel Aviv.

BASH: OK, Jim, stay with us. Again, just please be safe as we're in the -- in kind of waiting mode here.

I believe we have Jeremy Diamond who is with us in -- hi, there you are, Jeremy -- in Northern Israel. Jeremy, you're obviously closer to the border. What are you seeing and hearing there?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Relatively quiet on this end of the country, Dana. But what we are seeing and what I am seeing on my app here where you can see the amount of missile alerts that are happening across the country right now, almost the entire central part of the country, the southern part of the country are blanketed with alerts.

And we know, of course, that in those areas, in addition to millions of civilians, there are also several central military targets that might be what Iran is aiming at right now. And we know that because I've been speaking with officials earlier today, who told me that they anticipated that Iran would likely strike three air base targets in Israel, as well as that intelligence base, which is just North of Tel Aviv, very short drive away from where Jim is speaking to you from.

And so we understand that the Glilot's intelligence base, I was told that it was evacuated earlier today, and that the Israeli military was beginning to put into place various contingency plans for the evacuation and the safety of their personnel at these various bases.

We know, of course, that the last time Iran attacked Israel with a range of drones, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles, there were a couple of hits in a southern -- base in southern Israel as well as on the road leading to the Hermon intelligence base which is actually just behind my shoulder north of here.

But this time -- and actually, we are seeing some intercepts on the other end of me here. I'm going to see -- yes, Byron, if you can get off the tripod there. You can see some of these interceptor missiles, it seems, going into the air right now, into the sky. I can see at least three of them right now.

I'm -- we're facing -- the camera's --

BASH: OK.

DIAMOND: -- now facing south, so you can see four. We're seeing a fifth one in the air. And these appear to be -- this is very similar to what we saw in April. I was in Jerusalem --

BASH: Yes.

DIAMOND: -- at the time, and we could see these various interceptors lighting up the night sky --

BASH: And Jeremy --

DIAMOND: -- as they headed to intercept those various missiles and drones.

BASH: Jeremy, while you're seeing that in northern Israel, we want to go back to Jim Sciutto in Tel Aviv, who is seeing something similar. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Dana, we're seeing them coming from multiple directions here, to my left which is just to the north and to my right, to the south. They're over our head. I've counted at least half a dozen of this -- of them at this point. We're seeing them rising.

I have yet to see them strike a target, or at least I haven't seen -- well, actually now over here, I do see a projectile falling to the ground. I think my team probably sees it as well on the right-hand side. If you direct it over there, in fact, you see the flash, just out of camera there.

[12:40:02] They're easy to see on the way up, Dana. They follow a regular speed and pace and trajectory when they come down. And this is the one coming down here, I believe. They come down a little bit more erratically and you could see it looks to be in more than one piece. That indicates to me that that -- those are fragments of an incoming projectile that was hit, falling.

And, again, keep in mind, this is a big city -- and there goes the air raid sirens again -- where that fragment just fell is still in a populated -- a densely populated part of the city. So even if you strike a missile before it's able to hit the target, those fragments themselves and the fragments of the intercept missiles themselves, also can have an impact and can be dangerous.

Look at it now, it's --

BASH: Yes.

SCIUTTO: -- it's practically like fireflies over the city of Tel Aviv.

BASH: I mean, you can see --

SCIUTTO: The sky -- I mean, right now, I'm counting, Dana. At least a dozen in the air at one time.

BASH: This is a major attack.

SCIUTTO: Some rising I think --

BASH: Jim Sciutto, this is obviously --

SCIUTTO: It's a major attack. There's no question.

BASH: What you are seeing, what we are all seeing with our own eyes is a major attack from Iran.

SCIUTTO: It's a major attack, Dana. And it's an escalation of this war. Beyond what we saw, I think, potentially beyond what we saw in April when Iran launched dozens of missiles and drones. This attack, according to U.S. intelligence, principally or perhaps entirely ballistic missiles, which are the fastest by far and the most dangerous.

And now what we're seeing in addition to those intercepts is we're seeing fragments falling to the ground. It's like a --

BASH: Yes.

SCIUTTO: -- a deadly fireworks display over Tel Aviv. Goodness, there was an impact just to the left of us here.

BASH: And you're talking about Tel Aviv, Jim. We are looking at pictures right now. Oh, we are looking at pictures of Tel Aviv, what you're describing.

SCIUTTO: Oh, Jesus. Oh, God. OK, guys, we got to get off the roof. These are coming down right next to us here.

BASH: Please do, Jim. Please do.

SCIUTTO: They're coming down. One just about --

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Go inside.

SCIUTTO: We got to go inside.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We got to go inside. Come on, inside now.

BASH: Jim, please take cover.

We are listening and we are watching.

Sarah (ph), I'm going to go to Jeremy Diamond in Northern Israel. Jeremy?

DIAMOND: Dana, from our vantage point in northern Israel facing south, we have been able to see dozens of these apparent intercepts happening in the night sky above us. We have seen -- we saw those intercepted missiles going up in the air and now we are seeing, as you're seeing one on our screen right now. coming down.

They almost look like, you know, fireworks that are breaking up or shooting stars of some sort. What I was also able to see earlier was explosions, and I had seen videos of these explosions previously. It is often that aero defense system that intercepts ballistic missiles in the first layers of space, and it creates a kind of explosion that looks -- I don't know how else to say it other than it looks almost like a jellyfish of sorts.

And that is coming from those intercepts that happen in the first layers of space by the aero missile defense system. And I saw multiple of those happening just now. We know, of course, that the threat from Iran tonight was anticipated to be those ballistic missiles that fly at hypersonic speeds. And that often fly at very high altitudes before coming down on their targets.

And that's why Israel has that arrow missile defense system in addition to the Iron Dome, which we have heard so much about. But we have been witnessing dozens potentially of missiles and intercepts happening in the sky above us.

It's hard for us to tell exactly how close it is. But as we know, many of the targets that we anticipated from hearing -- talking to Israeli and American officials was going to be targets in central Israel as well as in southern Israel.

[12:45:13]

And now, of course, we are waiting to see, a, if any of those missiles hit their targets. But, of course, beyond that, the debris from some of these intercepts could also potentially be very damaging, very destructive and very deadly, of course. So we will be monitoring very closely reports in the coming minutes and hours to see what the actual impact of those missiles are on the ground.

BASH: Jeremy, thank you.

And just so our viewers understand, and you can see on your screen, on the left of your screen, we are looking at images of where Jeremy is reporting from in northern Israel, and we still continue to see raining down on northern Israel. And then in Tel Aviv, we're watching on the right side of your screen.

While we look at this, I want to go to the White House. Arlette Saenz is there. Arlette, what are you hearing from White House officials as they monitor this?

ARLETTE SAENZ, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, there's no question, Dana. The White House officials are closely monitoring this situation as we are now seeing this Iranian missile attack that the U.S. had potentially warned about this morning potentially playing out just now. The White House -- senior White House official had warned us a little over three hours ago that the U.S. had seen indications that Iran was planning an imminent ballistic missile attack against Israel.

We learned just moments ago that President Biden convened a meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris and his national security team this morning to talk about preparations to help Israel defend against these attacks and also efforts to try to protect American personnel in the region.

As a senior White House official was warning this morning that an attack could be imminent, they did stress that the U.S. would stand ready to help Israel in defense against any type of attacked. And also warned that there would be severe consequences for Iran if they do launch a direct military attack against Israel. It comes at a time when tensions in the region have already been incredibly high, and this certainly will escalate fears of concern that there could be a wider regional conflict on the brink of erupting.

Now, I will know we will see President Biden a bit later this afternoon at 2:30. He's holding a briefing relating to Hurricane Helene. He's actually canceled or postponed a virtual call. He was said to have for the high holidays today. But certainly, in the White House behind me, officials are watching the situation very closely trying to determine what will come next.

BASH: Thanks, Arlette.

I want to go back to General Hertling. And General Hertling, you know, we talked a little bit earlier in the program about the fact that we have seen missiles raining down from Hezbollah in Lebanon into Israel since October 8th, so for a year. And we obviously know what Hamas had done inside Israel and what was going on the southern border.

But this is different. And I think we need to underscore this for our viewers. This is Iran. This is Iran not using its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas, but Iran itself launching this missile attack on Israel. And can you explain how this -- just based on what you're saying, how this is different from what we saw in the middle of April, which didn't cause any destruction because Israel and its allies came in and stopped it. They were obviously given a heads up about it. Why is this different?

HERTLING: Well, this is different for several reasons, Dana. And what I'd suggest is, in watching the screen, you can't determine with the naked eye what kind of missiles and what kind of rockets are coming in. I would suggest that there's the potential for both -- these missiles and rockets coming in from both Lebanon out of Hezbollah's areas, but also potentially from Iran.

You saw that the strikes going on against the missiles that were incoming, those could have also been jet engines that are looking using their radars to determine launches and potential strike areas. And there's an integrated air defense system where an aircraft can determine an incoming missile. Get it to the ground station and have the ground station fire upward.

Jeremy Diamond was actually -- was absolutely right when he said some of the explosions were likely going on above the atmosphere. That's how you engage a ballistic missile. That's now reentering the orbit to strike a target. But what I saw was the potential for both rockets, which are unguided for the most part. They're not precise.

And ballistic missiles potentially coming in. I couldn't define that there were ballistic missiles, but it still looked like it to me. So you've got some --

BASH: Yes.

HERTLING: You've got multiple rocket missiles coming in, which overwhelms the air defense system of Israel.

[12:50:08]

You also -- you know, what I saw was multiple ground explosions. And that tells me that a lot of them didn't hit targeted areas and we're likely going to see civilian casualties from Tel Aviv.

BASH: All right, General, thank you.

I want to go to Nic Robertson, who is in Haifa, Israel, north of Tel Aviv, but south of where we have seen Jeremy Diamond this hour. What are you seeing there in the port city of Haifa, Nic?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Skies are quiet over Haifa. This will be a very difficult target for Israel -- for Iran to reach rather because it would mean flying missiles all the way across Israel's territory, which would give Israel an opportunity to intercept them. Nevertheless, there are in this region very sensitive targets.

And I think if we just take a half step back and understand why Iran has decided to do this, it has decided to do this very clearly as a statement of support for Hezbollah. And that means Iran has an extreme interest in protecting Hezbollah to the north that Israel has started attacking and has a ground operation against as of the last almost 24 hours.

BASH: Nic, I just -- Nic, I need to go over to Jim Sciuto, our colleague in Tel Aviv. Forgive me for interrupting. Jim?

SCIUTTO: All right, Dana, we're on the roof. To be clear, we went into the shelter in between the air raid sirens. We've come out again because this is the second round of air raid sirens we've seen. And if you look over here in the distance, you're seeing where the missile -- the intercepts are going up into the sky. And it would be, just to be clear, from that direction from the east.

And again, listen, this gives you a sense of the air defenses all around Tel Aviv, multiple layers. And this up further in the sky where I'm pointing here, that's the altitude where they're making impacts. We saw multiple impacts on the first barrage and some of those fragments or missiles themselves hit not far from the hotel.

I want to say -- perhaps and now we're seeing what they're attempting to interest up in the sky. Now what I'm going to do, I'm going to take my team off the roof again to go back into the shelter because they're getting close and when these come down, they can come close to us.

Guys, let's go back into the shelter.

BASH: Please.

SCIUTTO: We'll check in once it's safe again.

BASH: Please. Thank you, Jim.

I want to go to Alex Marquardt, who is also doing reporting and talking to his sources about the potential impact of what we are seeing. Obviously, it is still ongoing, Alex.

ALEX MARQUARDT, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, Dana, the whole question since the death of the killing of Nasrallah by Israel last week was when and how Iran would respond. And now, of course, we are seeing that response. So what we're trying to get at is really the scale of this response, particularly when it compares to what we saw back on April 13th, when more than 300 missiles and drones were fired at Israel, frankly, without much impact.

And the reason that there was not much impact was because of this U.S. led coalition that helped the Israeli forces to defend their skies, and there really was not that much damage or destruction. So, what we're seeing now is a significant amount of activity in the air. We may also be seeing impacts on the ground. So that will certainly play into what the Israeli response would be.

But there is a lot of fog of war right now. We really need to figure out what exactly is being fired at Israel and what those strikes are going to entail in terms of damage. But then there's the question about the defense of Israel. The U.S. has been preparing for this kind of scenario for quite some time.

You remember a couple months ago after the killing of the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Israel and the U.S. were then expecting an Iranian response that frankly never came. So there has been this framework in place that we're now seeing being put into action to defend Israel. Dana?

BASH: All right, thank you so much, Alex.

I do want to go back to Nic Robertson and pick up where you were -- you left off before, Nic, talking about how Iran is trying to -- this is a show of force. This is an attack on Israel as a way to show its support for Hezbollah. You heard Alex talking about the last time in April, Iran sent missiles that were intercepted. It was after there was an actual strike, Israeli strike inside Iran -- Tehran, where they took out a leader there. And this is different.

ROBERTSON: This is different. Last time, Iran telegraphed several days in advance, it was understood what they were going to do. They sent drones which are slow. They sent cruise missiles which are a little bit faster but slow. And then they sent a few ballistic missiles.

[12:55:04]

As far as we're aware this time, predominantly this is ballistic missiles which are fast. It takes about 12 minutes from to get from Iran to the center of Israel. It's hard to intercept with the warning and the preparations last time with U.S. allies, with other partners in the region, which we can expect to be operating at the moment, but there was time to prepare previously.

The preparation time may not have been as advanced this time for the defense of Israel. So Israel's success, which was huge last time. Only three ballistic missiles got through in April. I saw them being intercepted many of them in the skies over Jerusalem, but only three missiles got through.

This looks like it will be different. This does show that Iran wants to interrupt and stop Israel targeting Hezbollah, which has been its largest and most important proxy. It's a proxy that it's always had, that is understood that can support Israel if, can support Iran if Israel were ever to attack it.

But I think the other question that leaves now is, what is Israel's response going to be? Last time, their response was small and they felt that it was significant that they targeted air defense systems around some of the nuclear production facilities that Iran has, and they felt that message was understood.

So how does Israel respond to this? And of course, part of that will be determined by the damage this time. Part of it will be determined by what has been targeted. But last time there was several days delay before Israel responded to Iran strike. I don't think we're going to be looking at such a lengthy delay. And, of course, that's the huge concern that you can get into an escalation.

But because Iran is choosing to come out in support of Hezbollah and disrupt Israel's attack of Hezbollah, it's not inconceivable that there may be targets, military targets in the north that are part of that operational effort against the Hezbollah in Lebanon.

But at the moment, what we're seeing is most of the targeting appears to be in central Israel and perhaps the south as well. There are big air bases there. It's hard to take those bases down, but they're important strategic targets.

BASH: All right, thank you.

I'm going to go back to Jim Sciutto in Tel Aviv. What about that -- the notion of the military targets being potentially hit in Israel, does that comport with what you're hearing?

SCIUTTO: Right.

BASH: And most importantly what you're seeing?

SCIUTTO: Well, prior -- Dana, prior to the start of attack, the U.S. Intel read was that the targets -- among the targets, I should say, for Iran were air bases, two air bases, but also the Mossad headquarters, which is in the northern part of Tel Aviv here.

There's no question that Tel Aviv is under attack because the number of intercepts we're seeing speaks to this being a target. Whether Mossad is the only target in Tel Aviv or if it is indeed is one of the targets, we don't know yet. I will tell you I did see impacts. I saw two impacts quite close to the hotel here, and I saw another one further north of here, I might guess a couple miles where I did see some fire and explosion.

Again, so it is often difficult to determine in the midst of a heavy barrage like this one. What is hitting the ground actually? Is it a fragment of the missile that was fired? Is it fragments of the air defense intercept missiles that went up or both of those things? We'll know more over time.

But there's no question that projectiles are hitting Tel Aviv right now --

BASH: Yes.

SCIUTTO: -- and possibly causing damage and certainly endangering lives. And that's why we've now been through two air raid sirens covering the city. And that's why you find us in a shelter right now. This may be a pause.

I'm going to take a look and then we're going to come back to you and tell you what we see, OK?

BASH: OK. All right.

SCIUTTO: Dana, I'll call you once we know what's going on outside.

BASH: All right. Thanks, Jim.

And General Hertling, while he's doing that, can you go back to your description? I understand that it's hard to tell from video in a dark sky, but you obviously have a very trained expert eye on what you believe we are seeing now.

HERTLING: Yes, I think we're seeing a combination of ballistic missiles and rockets as well as potentially some drones from Lebanon as well. And that's just a guess on my part, Dana. But this is obviously a coordinated attack.

And as Nic was saying just a minute ago, the potential for what may occur as a response to this is going to be Katy bar the door. This is going to be tough. Israel has been fighting a two-front war against Hamas and against Hezbollah.

Recently over the weekend, they also attacked into Yemen to attack Houthi positions. Now, what you're talking about is a new enemy, which is actually an old enemy and that's Iran. So will Israel now attempt to counter these attacks with another.