🚨 FOX ANCHOR: “This seems to be a limited response. All of [the Iranian missiles] were intercepted. The government of Qatar was told in advance…were the Iranians just trying to save face for public consumption?”
Trey: “Yeah, John, look, the Iranians have suffered massive blows over the past 11 days. President Trump ordered the strikes against Iran over the weekend, effectively damaging their leverage, their ability to ramp up their nuclear program. What they had left was a ballistic missile program that Israel spent the past week and a half targeting. And so, as the Iranians are facing all of this external pressure, now from both Israel and the United States, they’re also facing a lot of domestic pressure.
Iran’s Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, and also President Masoud Pizheskian have to save face in some capacity for their domestic audience. And Israeli intelligence officials tell us they do not see widespread efforts to organize in the streets; they do not see any sort of internal efforts to overthrow the regime. But that is certainly a concern as this conflict escalates. There is now a direct war between Israel and Iran, and so any sort of attack on Iranian territory, they want to show that they still have the capability to respond.
And on the Israel front, they have done just that. Over the past 11 days, and we saw early this morning, the Iranians launching a new wave of ballistic missiles targeting not only civilian areas in the northern part of this country but also targeting energy infrastructure in the south of Israel. We have seen efforts by the Iranians to go after infrastructure across Israel, targeting major population centers like Tel Aviv. And even when they have their ballistic missile launchers being hit by the Israelis, they still try to launch consistent attacks.
And one of those attacks this morning was just a single ballistic missile, but what it did was wake up the entire population of Israel. Millions of people received text alerts on their phones to head into bomb shelters, and then they had to wait for about 30 minutes in order to come out and safely move throughout the day. So, they have been able to successfully keep Israel in a state of emergency despite the fact that top IRGC officials have been decimated, their nuclear program has been largely damaged and destroyed by Israeli and American strikes.
But as for the strikes that are taking place today and this attack on an American base just outside of Doha, at this point it looks like it is largely symbolic because they do have the ability to launch more missiles at American interests in the region. And as Jennifer noted, this isn’t necessarily over. We have to minute by minute analyze what’s going on here, and what we know is that they have launched an attack against the Al Udeid base outside of Doha, and they have been able to successfully respond, at least in a limited capacity, to the American strikes.
And I do want to just talk quickly about Iranian state media because this is a very important aspect when we talk about the external and internal pressure that the Iranian regime is facing. Through state media, they announced the ‘Enunciation of Victory’ operation. This was the operation to respond to those U.S. strikes over the weekend, and again, they’re releasing propaganda saying this was a devastating and powerful blow. But according to the Qatari Foreign Minister, no one was killed on the ground, and the majority of the incoming fire was intercepted.
We’ll certainly gather more information in the minutes and hours ahead, but we can expect the Iranians to continue these types of threats against American and Israeli interests in the region because they only have a portion of their missile program left. And it wouldn’t be surprising if they start to use some of the shorter-range missiles in order to hit American interests in the region, just given the fact that many of their longer-range missiles and their ballistic missiles that have a medium range have been destroyed by Israeli airstrikes over the past 11 days.”
John: “Sandra.”
Sandra: “All right, Trey, thank you. We’ll get back to you again shortly.”