Israeli prime minister calls Iranian attacks _big mistake_ _ ABC News(360P)
Israeli prime minister calls Iranian attacks _big mistake_ _ ABC News(360P)
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Iran has launched as many as 200 missiles towards Israel, sending thousands into bomb shelters across the country
00:07in a significant escalation of the conflict in the Middle East.
00:17Iran says the strike is in retaliation to the killing of senior Hamas, Hezbollah and Revolutionary Guard leaders.
00:24Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed retaliation for the attack
00:29warning Iran has made a big mistake by attacking his country.
00:36Tonight, Iran again attacked Israel with hundreds of missiles.
00:40This attack failed. Iran made a big mistake tonight and it will pay for it.
00:45The regime in Iran does not understand our determination to defend ourselves
00:50and our determination to retaliate against our enemies.
00:55The international community have been swift to condemn the actions of Iran
00:59and the White House confirmed it assisted Israel in defending itself.
01:03U.S. President Joe Biden has reaffirmed Washington's support and defense of Israel.
01:09Make no mistake, the United States is fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel.
01:14And I just spent the morning and part of the afternoon in the Situation Room
01:20and meeting with my whole national security team and consulting with the Israelis indirectly
01:27in terms of their impact.
01:29I utterly condemn this attempt by the Iranian regime to harm innocent Israelis
01:36to escalate this incredibly dangerous situation and push the region ever closer to the brink.
01:45The missile strike came just minutes after two gunmen opened fire in Tel Aviv
01:49killing at least six people and injuring several others in a suspected terror attack.
01:55Our Middle East correspondent Alison Horne was caught in the open when the massive attack began
01:59and sent this report from Tel Aviv.
02:02It was about 7pm local time when this barrage of rockets first appeared in the sky above Israel.
02:10I was on a road between Haifa in northern Israel and Tel Aviv in the center of the country
02:17when my phone started pinging almost endlessly with rocket alert alarms.
02:24I remember looking down and just seeing dozens of alarms for incoming rockets across the country
02:30and then looking up and seeing this wave of balls of fire one after the other shooting across the sky.
02:42180 ballistic missiles being fired by Iran into Israeli airspace.
02:50It caught Israel, I would say, mostly off guard.
02:54Certainly civilians weren't given a lot of warning to be able to get into bomb shelters
03:00although it appears there has been quite a little damage.
03:05No one has been killed within Israel.
03:08One person, a Palestinian man, has been killed when a rocket fell or was intercepted in the West Bank.
03:16We don't quite know the extent of any damage in Israel
03:21because there are censorship rules around what we can report on those issues that are imposed by the military.
03:29But according to the United States, they say that Iran has failed in its attack on Israel.
03:37Iran's Revolutionary Guards say this attack was in retaliation for the Israeli assassination of a number of senior militants
03:48including the leader of Hamas, Ismail Haniyeh, who was killed in Iran a couple of weeks ago
03:56and also the assassination of the Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, who was killed by Israel just a few days ago.
04:05But Iran says after its attack on Israel, the issue is now closed
04:13indicating it doesn't plan to launch any further waves of rockets.
04:19But it has also said that if Israel decides to launch some sort of a retaliation
04:26it will be prepared to again launch rockets or launch some sort of attack on Israel
04:34and keeping in mind that this is only the second time in Israel's history that Iran has directly launched an attack into Israeli territory.
04:45The first one was in April earlier this year, now this is the second.
04:51Israel says that this action by Iran cannot go unpunished, that there will be consequences
05:00and although they haven't said exactly what that might look like, whether or not that's military strikes inside of Iran
05:08or on major Iranian proxies like Hezbollah or the Houthis in Yemen
05:17it does seem clear that there will be some sort of an Israeli response.
05:23It's got world leaders incredibly concerned that this could escalate into a major war between Israel and Iran.