Middle East again on edge after largest aerial attack ever launched against Israel

Geoff Bennett:
Welcome to the “News Hour.”
Tonight, the Middle East stands on the precipice of regional war. Iran launched a massive attack on Israel with at least 180 ballistic missiles.
Amna Nawaz:
Israel is vowing serious consequences.
Tonight, we have teams in both Tel Aviv and Beirut.
We begin in Tel Aviv. That’s where our Nick Schifrin is and where he witnessed the impacts of those strikes — Nick.
Nick Schifrin:
Amna, good evening.
I witnessed those impacts just to my right a couple of miles up the coast. And from this balcony, I watched and filmed Iranian ballistic missiles attack Israel’s largest city, Israeli air defense and U.S. air support try and defeat those missiles. And, tonight, for Israel, everything has changed.
Tonight, over Tel Aviv, gruesome deadly fireworks, the largest aerial attack ever launched against Israel and direct impacts, dozens of direct impacts across greater Tel Aviv, including just outside the city, where the bomb squad had to make sure it was safe.
This is the impact site for one of those Iranian ballistic missiles. And if you see the size of this crater, that’s about 30 feet deep and maybe 50 feet wide. You can see all the debris around here. And to give you a sense of the targets for these strikes, that white building back there, about 1,500 feet behind me, is the headquarters of the spy agency the Mossad.
More impacts in Southern Israel and the Negev Desert, the location of the Nevatim air base, where U.S. weapons arrived and where I traveled with Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin just after October the 7th. In Ramallah, in the occupied West Bank, residents raised an Iranian ballistic missile tube, its length about triple their height.
To try and stop this attack, the U.S. dispatched additional jets and naval assets and coordinated with the Israel Defense Forces. And despite these videos, today, President Biden called the defense a success.
Joe Biden, President of the United States: But based on what we know now, the attack appears to have been defeated and ineffective. And this is testament to Israeli military capability and U.S. military.
Nick Schifrin:
Israel tonight is vowing revenge.
Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, Spokesperson, Israeli Defense Forces:
The majority of the incoming missiles were intercepted by Israel and the defensive coalition led by the United States. Iran’s attack is a severe and dangerous escalation. There will be consequences.
Nick Schifrin:
Iran called these strikes a — quote — “legal, rational and legitimate response” to last week’s strike that a U.S. senator said he used 2,000-pound American bombs to kill Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Last night, Israel followed his death with its first conventional ground incursion into Lebanon in nearly 20 years. It also acknowledged hundreds of raids into Lebanon since last November, the country’s largest special forces operation in history.
Today, the military showed off the Hezbollah weapons that it captured that had threatened Israeli towns along the border.
Nadav Shoshani, Israeli Defense Forces Spokesperson:
We’re talking about a very precise intelligence. We’re talking about abilities that Hezbollah has been planning and making for decades that we have been able to take away a big part of that. But there’s still ways to go.
Leila Molana-Allen:
And I’m Leila Molana-Allen in Beirut.
Across the border in Lebanon, a sleepless night as news of the Israeli ground incursion spread to a backdrop of heavy bombardment from the air that shook communities across the south and the capital, today, more fear, more fatalities. The streets of Beirut’s Hezbollah-governed suburbs have become a ghost town, overhead, the low hum of Israeli surveillance drones an ever-present threat.
Residents here have learned fast that where a drone lingers, before too long, bombs will follow. Over the past few days, the southern suburbs of Beirut and Dahiyeh have been pounded repeatedly by Israeli airstrikes. Behind me, there’s still smoking ruins of a strike from last night. The area is now completely deserted. Most of the residents have fled.
The air still stinks of sulfur. The IDF sometimes issues alerts about impending airstrikes, warning residents to leave the area. But these are often published in the middle of the night and cover vast swathes of some of the most densely populated urban areas in the country.
Evacuating fully at such short notice isn’t realistic. While we’re there, two heavy strikes hit next to the local hospital, on the way out, ambulance sirens screaming through the black smoke on their way to pick up more of the injured. There was no warning this time.
Hundreds have already been killed in the bombing of these tower blocks. And for families who do manage to run, a grim reality awaits.
Reda Turab and his wife Ruhaya fled from their home in Dahiyeh on Friday after the enormous missile strike that killed Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah. Their baby Bina is just 6 months old and 27-year-old Ruhaya is four months pregnant. They grabbed what they could and ran.
Reda Turab, Father (through interpreter):
We lived through a terrible and terrifying moment, my wife and I. There wasn’t only one or two airstrikes. There were 10 consecutive strikes. When the bomb hit, our windows smashed and our house shook.
Leila Molana-Allen:
Reda was right. Last night, their home and entire apartment block was pulverized in an overnight strike. They’re alive, but they have little else left. They have been sleeping in the rain on the tarmac at this roundabout for five days, eating stale bread handed out by volunteers.
Reda and Ruhaya aren’t alone. With more than a million people now displaced by the conflict, there just isn’t space for everyone in the shelters. That means thousands of people are now sleeping rough on the streets of Central Beirut. Every few minutes here, a car or a minibus turns up filled with desperate people who fled with just the bags they can carry and small children in tow.
As the conflict intensifies, Lebanese across the country are doing what they can to help, bringing food and mattresses for those in need. Ruhaya is in shock and hasn’t eaten since the attack. They can’t afford to see a doctor. Weak from hunger, she holds Bina close, gently rocking as she drinks her milk, but their meager supplies are running out.
They have got just enough baby milk left until tonight and then they don’t know what they’re going to do to feed Bina.
Reda Turab (through interpreter):
We have children. We don’t want war. A lot of children and women have already died. They don’t deserve this. I can’t think of the future right now. Who even knows if we will live or die?
Amna Nawaz:
And Leila joins us now from Beirut, as does Nick Schifrin, who continues to report from Tel Aviv.
So, Nick, what are you hearing from U.S. officials, from Israeli officials about how they will respond to this latest Iranian attack?
Nick Schifrin:
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu tonight made a strong statement. He said — quote — “This evening, Iran made a big mistake and will pay for it.” And he added: “Whoever attacks us, we attack them.”
That is a clear threat, Amna, that Israel will attack Iran directly. After Iran attacked Israel back in April, and that was a relatively smaller strike than the one we saw today and the one that Israel and the U.S. managed to largely defeat, President Biden urged Netanyahu to — quote — “take the win.”
And it was seen that Israel’s response to Iran at that point was relatively surgical. But the message out of the U.S. is not that. Tonight, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, said: “There will be severe consequences for this Iranian attack, and we will work with Israel to make sure that is the case.”
And so that is why so many people in this region and inside the administration are worried that there will be a direct fight between the Middle East’s two largest militaries.
Amna Nawaz:
Meanwhile, Leila, you and Nick both reported on Israel’s ground incursion into Lebanon. Give us the view from there on the ground. How are people there responding and reacting to that move?
Leila Molana-Allen:
Well, last night, as it became clear that Israeli soldiers had crossed the border to Lebanon, people were terrified. They’re terrified that 2006 could happen all over again.
Thus far, it’s clear that’s not the case. The IDF is saying this is a limited operation right now. But, really, the main impact that people are suffering is what they suffered all last night, repeated airstrikes, airstrikes throughout the south, airstrikes in the suburbs of Beirut.
We could hear those loudly across Beirut. The whole city was shaking. And it’s worth pointing out that all these rockets have just landed in Israel, but, across Israel, people have shelters. They have air raid sirens. In Lebanon, they don’t have either of those anywhere. So unless they see these occasional reminders from — these warnings from the IDF about large areas they’re going to strike, if they can see them in time, if they can evacuate in time, people are at the mercy of these strikes.
And we are seeing hundreds of civilians dying, 50 killed in just the last 24 hours by these airstrikes.
Amna Nawaz:
Leila, there are a lot of moving parts here. There seems to be already sort of a pattern of escalation. When you talk to people on the ground there, how worried are they about this turning into a larger regional war?
Leila Molana-Allen:
Thus far in Lebanon, there had been great hope alongside the fear that Western partners would try to dissuade Israel from a full ground invasion, from a full air force invasion of Lebanon.
We saw France’s foreign minister come out last week and say this mustn’t happen. We saw the U.S. leaning heavily on its Israeli partners not to have a full invasion last week. That mood after Iran’s strikes tonight may now have changed. People in Lebanon are terrified that they have already been pulled into Hezbollah’s battle, a group that many people in this country do not support and feel are bringing this war upon them.
They may now be pulled into Iran’s war too. And if Lebanon is trapped yet again as the pawn in the middle of the Middle East wars, many thousands of people here are going to suffer and die.
Amna Nawaz:
Meanwhile, Nick, right before Iran had launched its latest attack, there was a terrorist attack just south of you in Jaffa before then.
What happened there?
Nick Schifrin:
Israel’s emergency services, Amna, say that four people were killed and several more injured by a terrorist attack by two gunmen who approached a light-rail train, as you said, in Jaffa, just a couple miles behind me.
And it happened right after all of those sirens went off, warning Israel for that unprecedented Iranian attack. And it just goes to show you, Amna, how people are responding in this city and across the country to a very difficult day for Israel and for across the region — Amna.
Amna Nawaz:
Nick Schifrin reporting from Tel Aviv, Leila Molana-Allen for us in Beirut, thank you to you both.
Nick Schifrin:
Thank you.