I want to bring in CNN
military analyst Colonel Cedric Leighton.
Colonel, US officials telling CNN
that one of the targets
is believed to be an Army radar.
You have very deep experience in Iran
and in this region.
How do you assess this attack?
Well, I think it could be several
things, Larry.
And a radar site
is the perfect area to go after
because that it
once you get the radar site
that blinds
the forces that are using
that radar picture for their activities.
So it's a perfect site
for the Israelis to go after.
Anything to keep in mind,
as we've been talking about airfields.
And one of the one of the reasons
that a lot of the airports
have been shut down, as Nic
was mentioning in his reporting,
is because what Iran does is it doubles
the use of their civilian airfields
and civilian airports
as also being Air Force officers
for the Iranian air force.
So in the case of Islam,
the air base is co-located
with the international airport
in Isfahan,
and it's the home
to Iran's fleet of F-14 fighters,
which they had
acquired during the time of the shots.
And those aircraft are,
of course, quite old, antiquated,
and they've since been
upgraded in some ways using
Iranian capabilities
and other capabilities.
But they probably pose
a very limited threat to the Israelis.
The only thing to keep in mind, Laura,
is that when it comes
to the nuclear facilities
in and around Isfahan,
the one that's really important
is the Natanz nuclear facility,
and that is 120 kilometers
or about 70 miles away from Isfahan.
So if you strike the area around Isfahan,
you are not going to be striking
the city of Isfahan.
That is
you're not going to be striking Natanz.
And what you are telling them,
as we've talked about,
you are telling everybody
that you can reach this area
and you can, in fact,
eliminate that threat
or at least attack that threat
if you need to do so.
Colonel Leighton,
interestingly, compared to the signal
that Iran sent
by being able to reach Israel,
they issued a warning beforehand
and the Iron Dome was able able
to intercept the missiles, the drones.
That was suggesting
why some were suggesting to
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
to, quote unquote, take the win.
What does it say
that Iran could not
defend against this attack?
Well, for one
thing, Iran
does not have anything
similar to the Iron Dome.
So its air defenses are fairly
antiquated in comparison
to the Israeli air defenses.
They are not effective,
but they are not as effective
as the Israeli air
defense system,
which is highly sophisticated,
one of the best in the world.
So that is really
why you see this difference.
And of course, we'll have to wait
for the battle damage assessments
to come out
and to get some idea of exactly
what was said
and how effective
the Israeli strikes were.
But it seems like
they were able to do this
pretty much with impunity.
And it tells us
that there are basically holes
in the Iranian air defense system
and that the Israelis
can take advantage of them
if they feel the need to do so.
Really important to get your anti
will continue to lean on you.
Cedric Leighton,
retired Air Force colonel,
I want to bring in Bloomberg senior
editor Bobby Ghosh to the conversation.
Bobby,
we spoke earlier in the week
about anticipating this exact reality.
What do you think Iran will do next?
Well, Laura,
a threshold now has crossed
and we are
we're in sort of unknown territory
for for a long time.
These two countries have been at a low
intensity war.
But I feel like now
the gloves have come off.
Iran's response is unpredictable.
We know the different weapons
that it has at its disposal.
We saw a demonstration of what it can do
over the last weekend
when it fired over 300 missiles
and drones into Israeli territory.
Very few of them actually managed
to make it through
those defenses
that the colonel was talking about.
But Iran showed that it has the capacity
to fire
a very large number of projectiles
into Israeli territory.
We also know that Iran has the capacity
to attack Israel through its proxies in
Lebanon, in Iraq, in in
Hamas, in the Gaza Strip,
as well as from the Houthis in Yemen.
So we know what
both sides are capable of.
Until now, it's been a question of just
how far each is prepared to go.
But just as we were discussing
earlier in the week
with with this sort of escalation off
of risk taking, there's always a chance
that the next step up is going to be
the step too far.
And I feel that tonight,
with Israel launching and successfully
striking Iranian targets within Iran,
we've reached that stage
where we're now into
into an area of darkness
where where things can get
very grim very quickly.
And what's the danger of now
meeting this particular moment
of a broader escalation?
Are you suggesting that
there is some point of no return
that would involve others in the region?
Well, that's the that has been the fear
of the Biden administration throughout,
which has been which has been why it is
it has tried
very hard
for weeks now,
and especially in the last 48
and 72 hours,
it has tried
very, very hard to restrain Iraq.
I beg your pardon?
Israel
from responding to Iran's latest attack.
Now that Israel has sort of essentially
brushed aside
American concerns
and gone ahead and made this attack, yes,
I am concerned that we now are in a
we've now reached a stage
where what comes
next is very, very hard to predict.
The the Iranians
are trying to play down the attack,
but it's nighttime.
It is it's a little hard to know
the extent of the damage.
And I'm
not so sure
that if the damage is indeed substantial,
I'm not sure
Iran will be able to conceal
that for very long.
And there's also the question
of national pride,
particularly from the hardliners of
of the Iranian right,
who control that country.
They will feel like they have to respond
just as the the hard right in Israel felt
after Friday's attack
that they had to respond.
We're now
in the realm of
extreme positions on both sides,
coming to the floor,
becoming the dominant position
on both sides.
Bobby Ghosh, thank you so much.
I want to reference in play right now
what the Iranian foreign
minister told CNN's Erin BURNETT
just earlier tonight.
Parcel came up
our response
to the Israeli regime
that was limited
in their and on this 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 work of legitimate defense
according to international laws,
but we will not continue.
However, in case
the Israeli regime
embarks on adventurism again and takes
action again, it's the interests of Iran.
Then next response
from us will be immediate
and at a maximum level
it will be decisive.
Three
very daunting words.
It will be immediate.
At a maximum level, it will be decisive.
I want to bring in CNN global affairs
analyst Kim Dozier.
Kim, the foreign minister,
you've heard the words he's spoken
that it would be immediate.
How does the United States
now go about managing
what has obviously now been
elevated to the next level?
Well, one of the scary things
that we've been talking about
this evening
is the fact that the Iranians
are closing the airspace
and closing all those different airports
because they could be doing that
to keep civilian aircraft safe
or they could be doing that
to prepare for immediate retaliation,
which is why at this point,
I imagine U.S.
diplomats,
Western diplomats
are reaching out to anyone who has
Iran number to say,
we've got to stop this now.
We are going to try to hold Israel back.
Friends, Iran, try to hold them back
because this is something that can tumble
right down that escalation ladder.
As we've been talking about,
and lead to something
really dire, an all out
back and forth
between the two and a decision by Iran
to go nuclear and Iran's
nuclear facilities.
I mean, Israel can try to strike them
and they have struck some in the past,
but they need bunker busters
to hit
the most sensitive parts of the sites.
And only the U.S. has that.
So we could tumble into
a much more conventional war
that pulls in the U.S.
and Iraq doesn't like that
all this is happening
from its territory or over its airspace.
So you get a lot of countries
caught in between.
And that's why there's power in that.
That's when people will hopefully,
perhaps Russia, perhaps
China step in and say,
okay, this is going too far.