let's take it straight to the White House our Mary Bruce standing by chief White House correspondent just listening to what AI just said uh Mary um you know what does President Biden do at this moment well what I can tell you is what he is actually physically doing at this moment and that is monitoring this unfolding from The Situation Room he is there with vice president Harris we just received that information from the White House he's receiving regular updates of course from his National Security team but also this C at the White House saying the
president has directed The military to Aid Israel's defense against Iranian attacks and to shoot down missiles that are targeting Israel of course we have heard from a White House official earlier today saying that a direct military attack from Iran against Israel will carry severe consequences for Iran what exactly that looks like we still do not know and as you were just discussing of course the president in the days leading up to this has been calling for a ceasefire uh saying that while an allout war is possible the president was adamant we really have to to
avoid it uh of course that is a a hard sentiment to see how that is possible given what we are seeing play out right now Kira Steve G ganard what could the consequences be for Iran uh well K I think that um the White House has has said that the Israelis have at least relate to them that there will be economic targets uh remember that the real um threat to Israel is the Iranian nuclear program and that has been developing and the ability for the Iranians to create a what's called a breakout capability to be
able to to build nuclear weapon in a short period of time uh is is very close and very near at hand uh you are seeing these ballistic missiles tonight raining down on Israel that theoretically could be the same kind of ballistic missiles that could carry one of those nuclear warheads so as AI was noting at some point this is going to have to come to a head at least in the eyes of the Israeli government and the Israeli military that they cannot continue to allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon capability that would directly threaten
Israel in the future so there may be some attempt to go after some of the nuclear programs within Iran the problem for Israel is that most of these nuclear programs and their their um centrifuges are are buried very deeply uh Israel does not have heavy bombers to carry deep penetrating Warheads or the kinds of Munitions that would be able to take out those nuclear facilities so uh they can take out things around those nuclear facilities they can take out the uh oil capabilities that uh that the Iranian economy relies on uh they can take out
various parts of the regime the uh various uh they can go after H himself uh but the ability to take care of the real problem which is nuclear weapons uh is going to be quite a challenge for the Israeli military you mentioned h i mean is there a scenario here where is Israel strikes the leadership of Iran before anything else or does this go in phases does this die does this start by by taking down all Communications uh power plants uh you just daily daily functions uh for the country to to run or is there
a possibility here depending on what happens inside Israel that Israel May retaliate and go right for leadership well remember that they went after NASA and lot the people didn't think they were going to go after nasala so uh how many apparently uh right after Nala was was uh killed uh went into hiding and so Israel's ability to track senior leaders in Iran is not as good as it is to track Hezbollah leaders in Lebanon which is right next door so they would have the problem actually finding where he was remember that the distance between Iran
and Israel is sign ific uh it's the same distances between Houston and Los Angeles so the ability to fly airplanes and be able to take realtime targeting uh is not the same as in Lebanon so the challenge for the Israeli military is much greater uh in Iran I do think though that what you're going to see is um something where the Israelis are going to take their time there's no need for them to rush they can assess the damage take care of what's going on they still have a campaign going on in both Gaza and
Lebanon there's no rush on what they need to do in terms of retaliation there will probably be discussions with allies to include the United States uh to make sure that the um response does not uh go beyond the Iranian borders uh but again I think that there are all sorts of options because the Iranian defenses are are essentially helpless uh in the face of the kinds of military capabilities that the Iranians have or the Israelis have
