Strikes Escalate Across Mideast

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0:34Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We're reporting on what are now escalating attacks in the Middle East. More U.S. forces are heading to the region. Secretary of State Rubio is saying today, as all of this is being absorbed around the world, that he views the next stage of the operation as something that will be more intense.

1:05That's the wording from the Trump administration. We'll be following the facts. The State Department is urging U.S. nationals to leave 14 different countries in the region, citing safety risks. We have pictures out of Tehran, Iran today. American and Israeli strikes have targeted key facilities. You can see some of the fallout in smoke. Central Command releasing videos of U.S. strikes on what they say are Iranian ballistic missile targets. This is unclassified video courtesy of the United States government. We also have independent reporting and video from around the region. Three U.S. planes, we can report, were shot down.

1:41This was by friendly fire over Kuwait. Some footage shows a jet going down. The pilot was able to safely eject. U.S. military officials say all six crew members impacted, as you see there, by those jet shootings. They all were able to survive. Iran launched drone attacks early this morning on oil refineries in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and Israel have struck more than 2 ,000 targets in Iran. I repeat, 2 ,000 targets. That is the scale of this attack. Obviously, a ton of attention rightfully focused on the initial successful hit that took out the Iranian supreme leader. But this is a wider set of attacks.

2:20That's according to military officials. And even if it is at this point an air war, it is war. Iran swiftly retaliating. They've hit locations in multiple countries. Jordan, Kuwait, Iraq, Qatar and the UAE. Six Americans are now dead, according to the Pentagon. Iran's state media says they believe the death toll in their country, according to their public estimates, is over 500. That includes 165 related to a girl's school that was hit. That is just what we know in something that has unfolded as initially the Saturday morning surprise attack. Where we go from here is a lot of open questions. That's really the only way to put it because sometimes when you cover war, you have the different dueling statements from governments.

3:10One says it'll be like this and the other says it'll be like that. it's important to understand that while the president has exerted himself in his own unusual ways with a video and some posts on the social media site that he owns this is unlike any communication we have seen from a modern president about any war actions of this scale and so we can't really tell you what the plan is from the united states in one voice nor even what the objective is. If that sounds like criticism, well, that would mean that it sounds bad. But that's, of course, in the eye of the beholder. Donald Trump argues that this is a type of flexibility and a new approach to war.

3:50But let me show you the range of things that we're following. Trump has put forward, according to nonpartisan accounts, shifting and whiplash-inducing inconsistent explanations or justifications for what we're doing right now in a war that is touched down, as I just showed you, in over five countries when it comes to the attacks and counterattacks. And that's just how the Wall Street Journal boiled it down, a newspaper, of course, owned by Rupert Murdoch, the sister outlet of Fox News. The administration has at times asserted that the goal might be, one, destroying Iran's nuclear program. It has also said in recent times, within the last six months, that said nuclear program was already, quote, quote, obliterated.

4:35There's also been a discussion of two, thwarting Iran's ballistic missile threat. Pentagon assessments say that currently, Iran cannot strike the United States with ballistic missiles. There's also been, by the president himself, three, the talk of regime change and some sort of popular uprising. Donald Trump, in the few remarks he did make to the public, there hasn't been yet an address to the nation, let alone Congress, but in his recorded video, he talked about Iranians, quote, taking their country. Trump has also, within the days since Saturday morning's address, really backed off that statement because that would sound like trying to coordinate a popular uprising in this country to get regime change.

5:19His Secretary of Defense, now Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, says this. This is not a so-called regime change war, but the regime sure did change. fact check false we do not have evidence of a popular uprising that has changed or replaced the regime of iran you can contrast that to recent examples people know when the syrian government fell its leader left the country and the governing leadership of that country completely changed here at least as of this hour while there is instability in iran huge questions about what comes next who may actually emerge as the long-term leader the same regime is in place Now, the president has talked about avoiding deploying American ground troops to Iran or the region.

6:11Over the weekend, he said to the outlet Axios, this war might end conceivably in, quote, two or three days. He also stated it could go four to five weeks. And he also stated it could go, quote, far longer. Whatever the time is, it's OK. whatever it takes, we will always, and we have right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that. There is not a consistent, asserted foreign policy goal here, let alone some wider doctrine. There is not a clear representation to the American public what the one or more objectives are. And that's important remembers from the United States' last operations in the Middle East without a clear objective for what you're trying to do.

7:08And when it's over, it can take a very long time. I want to bring in experts who have lived through and been practitioners in this type of foreign policy and military policy for the better part of a generation. General Barry McCaffrey, retired four-star general, MS Now analyst, who was part of our breaking coverage as soon as all of our colleagues were reporting this here and abroad on Saturday, and Ambassador Dennis Ross, a widely renowned Middle East expert. He served as a diplomat and a peace negotiator in all of the top administrations of both parties, basically prior to the Trump era, Clinton, Bush, and Obama.

7:44Welcome to you both. General McCaffrey, I want to just give you the floor. I showed some of what we're hearing from the United States government, which has been at times clearly inconsistent. But compared to where we started Saturday morning. First, tell us what you're seeing out there. What is the state of play militarily? Well, you can't get beyond starting with an assessment that this is a terrible political mess. The president is ruling by decree. It's policy by whim. He made no effort to go out and gain the legitimate support of the American people. We have no allies, essentially, in this fight, not just the European NATO allies, but also the Gulf region.

8:29Finally, Congress had been completely left out of the loop. He, at the final moments, informed the so-called Gang of Eight what was going on, but there was literally no attempt to gain legitimacy from the U.S. Congress. From a strictly military point of view, operationally, the war is going quite well. Iran is in a very bad situation, not just in the general sense that they just finished murdering as many as 30 ,000 of their own citizens. They're widely despised. They're in economic collapse. They have lost much of their senior leadership, some of it for the second time in eight or nine months.

9:15And we've had, as you reported, literally hundreds of targets throughout the country. U.S. air power has dominance over Iran. We can fly where we want and attack what we want with relatively little risk. Now, the bad news for Iran is even further. They've alienated all the Gulf states by attacking them from the air. And we're also seeing, I think, a decrease in their ability to even fight. They've lost a good bit of their Gulf Navy now. Seven major ships they have have been sunk. So operational is pretty good. Where's it all going to go? Nobody knows. I think This war has got a month to run at most.

10:06It's politically a disaster. Why at most, in your view? I think the Iranians, we're going to run out of targets, for starters. What we're hopeful now, I think, is to get a political negotiation that will have the Iranians let inspectors back in on the ground. And in terms of regime change, which can't be done from the air, there may be some effort, covert or international, to get a fracture in the security forces. The RGC are going to stay brutally engaged in support of the leadership. And they're also a corrupt giant business inside Iran. But there's a 400 ,000-man army poorly equipped. perhaps we'll finally see the security forces respond to the dismay and horror of the Iranian people.

11:00I appreciate all of that precision, General. Ambassador, I want to play what Secretary Rubio said today in a clear contrast to other administrations. Something that people have seen the Trump administration do on matters small and domestic also is playing out here on the grand theater of Mideast multi-country airstrike war, which is the president says things and posts things, and then other people come along and try to make the best of it, clean it up, narrow it. And again, I'm not speaking critically. I'm just reporting what we've observed, sort of say, well, he didn't mean that, and we're only doing this.

11:37So here's how Rubio tried to, I believe, narrow some of the many things Trump has already said. Take a listen. I don't understand what the confusion is. Let me explain it to you, and I'll do it once again as clearly as possible. Perhaps you'll report it that way. The United States is conducting an operation to eliminate the threat of Iran's short-range ballistic missiles and the threat posed by their Navy, particularly to naval assets.

12:05Ari Melber:Ambassador? Well, excuse me, that's first I've heard that those are our objectives. Those objectives are quite narrowly stated, the Navy, and the short-range ballistic missiles. By the way, short-range ballistic missiles threaten our Gulf partners. That's, by the way, not the concern of the Israelis. The Israelis were the medium-range ballistic missiles. So he's introducing what is a very narrow set of objectives. By the way, if those are the objectives, what Barry was just saying, we'll achieve those objectives this week. So if that's all we're talking about, then you're going to, you obviously are going to be able to curtail this sooner rather than later.

12:51You know, I would say just as a general observation, I think the objectives of the administration

12:57Ari Melber:are not regime change, they're regime weakening. And they are a combination of regime weakening on the one hand, and on the other, destroying to the extent we can, the Iranian ability to threaten their neighbors, whether it's their immediate neighbors or it's Israel. That's the essence of what our objective seems to be. The idea of, you know, we're creating a possibility for the Iranian public. Here's their chance. If they succeed, great. If they don't, Well, that was their problem. The problem with such an approach is, and Barry was getting at this, there's 150 ,000 IRGC. There's 200 ,000 besieged.

13:38Ari Melber:Now, it is true that we and the Israelis are hitting their headquarters, both central headquarters, regional headquarters, some of the provincial headquarters, and we're disrupting their command control. And maybe that is weakening them, But the most it might be doing is disrupting them to the point where maybe there could be some defections. Barry made a reference to the fact maybe the military, which is separate from the besieged in the IRGC, would see that ultimately their role is to protect the Iranian public. That would be desirable. We have no way of knowing that that's going to be the case.

14:16Ari Melber:But regime weakening means maybe they're less a threat to their own population. That remains to be seen. but certainly they become much less of a threat within the region. General, how do you view that? And this idea of constraining Iran as a threat means facing how Iran is both a state actor with all of those powers and the military figures mentioned and one of the greatest sponsors of non-state terror, mostly against our allies, not against us. I mean, by Donald Trump's original policy of no more forever wars, You don't want to do big regional war to stop the non-state actors, whether that's Hezbollah or whomever, if it doesn't have a direct impact on U.S.

15:03security interests. So how do you assess that or critique that given the shifting objectives we're hearing? Well, I clearly support Ambassador Ross's assessment of the situation. It's such a mess. It's hard to coherently respond to some of these questions. It is clear to me that at the end of the day, what Trump actually is trying to do is to delay the nuclear program. I applaud that. I think he was getting nowhere in negotiations. He thinks that a massive air attack on Iran may well bring them back to the table with a more realistic assessment. since we've killed a bunch of their political and military leadership, including the Ayatollah himself.

15:52It's hard to know how that will play out, but it's possible, in which case I would say we've achieved an adequate goal. But in the meantime, what we're seeing is really a lack of clarity in the part of the administration. I don't think they actually know what they're up to, except The military is running a splendid campaign in coordination with the Israelis. This is remarkable. Thousands of sorties, and we've only lost three aircraft that we know of, and those are the friendly fire. And I imagine you would relatedly say it's also been effective use of intelligence. Oh, yeah. That's amazing. I mean, half the country of Iran isn't Persian.

16:35So the Israelis have penetrated them at will. It's astonishing what they got away with. And then our technical intelligence, as Ambassador Ross knows, is simply unbelievable for us to be able to identify three concentrations of senior leadership at hour one of the war. But again, I think there's a lot of thrashing around. This is a giant, sophisticated country, 90 million people, giant landmass, by and large, despised by all and feared by all of its neighbors, all of whom secretly are applauding this ongoing military operation. But I think the president's got a limited amount of time. So does the U.S.

17:18military. You know, we've got a shortage of THAAD, Patriot missiles, Navy SM-3s, tomahawks. We've got to keep a deterrence effort going in the Pacific Rim against China and also in Europe. So I don't anticipate this is going to be a long war, nor do I see anyone stupid enough to try and get U.S. or Israeli forces on the ground to dominate the country. They're going to sort this out on their own. Really all important details for us as we, again, the country's still making sense of the surprise attack from Saturday. I want to thank General McCaffrey, who was a big part of our coverage, and will be coming back to you.

17:56Ambassador Ross, I have some diplomacy to get to with you in a moment. I'll tell folks that the MAGA base, the independents, a lot of folks are mad because Donald Trump has flatly, clearly broken one of his core vows, which is not starting wars like this. Senator Dick Durbin is here, a very pivotal member of Congress, who's going to join us on some of these questions. This break is the shortest of the hour. I'll see you in 90 seconds. avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start thumbtack knows homes so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is with thumbtack you don't have to be a home pro you just have to hire one you can hire top rated pros see price estimates and read reviews all on the app download today you know that thing where you get an amazing pair of shoes at a really great price and want to tell everyone about it?

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19:34It's the typical NBC sort of gotcha type question. President Trump has all the latitude in the world to talk about how long it may or may not take. Four weeks, two weeks, six weeks. It could move up. It could move back. It could move back. Secretary Heggseth, today pushing back on questions about the timeline. We are back with longtime Middle East expert and diplomat, Ambassador Dennis Ross. When you look at the diplomatic piece of this, which would involve some non-war, long-term plan, how should we understand that in the history of U.S. dealings with Iran? There were periods where there was, of course, no talk.

20:13There was the Obama effort to have both diplomacy and it backed on the ground with inspection type dealings. And there is what we were just discussing, but only briefly with you in the general about, well, yeah, if you use enough force in the right way to change reality, you might then get a weakened opponent that adheres to diplomacy they otherwise would not. That's the best hawkish case. Can you speak to us about that in plain English with regard to where we've been with Iran? Because folks, remember, President Obama saying, yeah, if we can get to X, then we'll call that a good enough holding pattern.

20:50Ari Melber:I think the way you just described it is actually quite good. What the JCPOA was an agreement that bought you 15 years. The JCPOA were not that it bought you 15 years. The problem I had is I didn't see a strategy to take advantage of those 15 years. The 15 years bought you time to do something much more fundamental. The Iranians were not giving up the right to enrich. On the contrary, they were going to be enriching. Even more, after 15 years, there were no limits whatsoever on the scale or size of their program. There were no limits as to how much they could enrich. So what you really had to do was work out a JCPOA 2 to build on that, to really shape differently their approach to the whole question of their nuclear enrichment, but also ensuring they couldn't have nuclear weapons.

21:46Ari Melber:When President Trump says, I want them to say we won't have nuclear weapons, it's easy for them to say they won't have nuclear weapons. The question becomes, what kind of a nuclear infrastructure are they permitted to have? And they're right to say zero enrichment is the best way to ensure that if they're not able to create their own enrichment, and when you enrich, you do one of two things with it. You can turn it into a fuel to power a nuclear reactor to create electricity, or you can turn it into a core of a bomb. The problem with independent enrichment is unless you have complete controls over this, and unless you can ensure it's never enriched above a low level, anything above 20 % is considered highly enriched uranium, then you run the risk that they can have a covert program, they could do something you wouldn't be aware of.

22:35Ari Melber:And that's what you want to be able to rule out. Now, the question you're posing about where we are today, I don't know who we would negotiate with right now. I mean, is there someone in this regime who, A, can speak for the regime, which is unclear, but if there is someone in the regime who can speak for the regime, could they feel, okay, the consequences of this war, if it continues, will threaten the regime? It is true. We can weaken them to the point where they become so weak that they really can't withstand because maybe you see all sorts of defections within the besieged and the Revolutionary Guard to save themselves, to save the regime.

23:15Ari Melber:If there's that sense that they are getting to the point where they're weak enough and you have someone who can speak for the regime and they say, they pass a message, my view has been, I can see Putin coming in because they have a relationship with him. he would want to show his relevance and he also wants to show Trump how he can give him a way out and then have Trump reward him with his posture on Ukraine. I could see him coming in and saying, look, there's no way I can go to Trump unless you agree that you'll have zero enrichment. I'm ready to go to him, but you got to give me that. You got to give me that in my pocket.

23:52Ari Melber:Now, if that happens, then you have a basis on which to deal with the nuclear program in perpetuity. To distill, I'm only jumping to distill it. Is it too much a simplification to say that this current Trump policy is risky to the point of reckless in the views of its critics, but there is a non-zero chance that it lands with something that the Obama administration would have cheered that other Western allies welcome? that it could eventually land with they're weak and scared, and you've got more people in those layers of leadership in Iran worried about their own survival than what was the goal of the prior thinking, which was to continue to be bellicose, both because it was part of their theocracy, but also because they viewed it as a position of strength.

24:45Ari Melber:Absolutely. Plus, the stream leader is gone. And emotionally, ideologically, he couldn't handle this. This would be too much of a capitulation. It would be too much of a defeat of the ideology. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't people in the regime who reflect that. There are. But there may now be others who say, you know what, the whole hassle is going to come collapsing on us. What's different today than when President Obama was negotiating was the Iranians had some signs of weakness, it's for sure, but nothing like today internally. You go back from 2017 until today, almost on an annual basis, we have seen demonstrations and protests.

25:29After the women's life freedom, the killing of Masa Amini, after that, the whole social base of this regime was eroded.

25:40Ari Melber:Because the strength of this regime politically lied in the countryside, where they were socially, religiously conservative. They've lost that. they had lost the urban areas already now they've lost so let me let me ask you one more because we benefit from your wisdom and i'm running out of time what portion of that shift that you're describing and that that is a more a weak iran that might be applying for external goals unless you push it so hard that you know you cut that off the snake and you have three snakes and it's the worst outcome which is also possible but what portion of that is for those internal reasons you're mentioning, including, of course, the protests we've all seen, and what portion is what Israel has done post-October 7th, which is fight a different kind of regional war, dealing with Iran's proxies, and of course, the unrest in Syria.

26:28What part of it is the chess board finally changing?

26:31Ari Melber:It's a combination of both. The question is exactly right. It's a combination of both. Because what feeds the disaffection on the inside, even within parts of the regime is a sense that you had a strategy that completely failed. You invested huge amounts in a regional proxy network that completely was washed away. The Israelis basically dramatically weakened that proxy network to the point where, where have they been when Iran was being attacked? Nowhere. So a huge investment. Which is funny, and then I'm going to really give you the last word. nothing's funny about it. It's all very serious with lives lost.