CNN One Thing

This is One Thing, I'm David Rind, and Iran is punching back, but how many rounds do they have left in them?

They see this as an existential threat to which they're giving a existential response. Stick around.

Not only are we... Is there an impact over there?

What are you hearing?

I'm just trying to work it out, but it sounds like some interceptions or impacts outdoors. Let me just take this recording device with me and see what I can see.

I spoke to CNN Chief International Security Editor Nick Paton Walsh on Tuesday evening Israel time. He and his team have been covering this extremely volatile conflict in Iran since Saturday, moving between different parts of Israel to see the impacts up close. They had just arrived at Kirat Shemona, way up in the northern part of the country, about a mile from the border with Lebanon. Lebanon, of course, is where Hezbollah is based. This is the Militant Group backed by Iran. And it has been retaliating ever since the U.S. And Israel teamed up over the weekend to kill Iran's supreme leader.

The Golan Heights seem to be being hit at this time.

It meant that yet another front had been opened up in this widening war, putting more civilians in Israel and Lebanon at risk.

There we go, we can see them now, yeah, there's like eight, nine plumes of smoke. Could potentially be impacts from some Hezbollah strikes getting through and that's that's interesting because we've not heard the sirens here yet and a lot I think of the mood here has been that Hezballah have not really been able to successfully push something through here and inflict damage on Israel. I don't know what this is in itself, but that's an important moment. Certainly, David, can you hear me?

'Once Nick safely got back to his computer, I wanted to ask him a seemingly basic question. Who's running a run right now, Nick? Look, this is the-

'That's an absolute key question to how this war ends, to everything, frankly. We don't know. I mean, on paper, there is a temporary council which has the comparatively moderate president Massoud Pazesh, a member of the judiciary, and the cleric all meeting, it seems, three times now. And the job ahead of them is to keep the country going while the new supreme leader is chosen. But that hasn't happened. May well be simply because as soon as you say this is the guy the israelis and perhaps the americans target and kill that may be the reason or there could be in-fighting but regardless of why it has a huge problem really here for bringing this conflict to an end because we've already had the iranian foreign minister saying look iran's military forces are acting at times on previously distributed orders with a degree of autonomy somebody called it Mosaic defense decentralized mosaic defense that everyone's kind of doing their own thing now that sounds great on paper If you're worried about losing your commanders But how do you like ameliorate or moderate or slow down your attacks particularly if you're lashing out and nearly every? Nation in the Gulf

So you're saying like you have a bunch of different units doing their own thing kind of freelancing And so how do you get some kind of cohesive strategy around that?

Or carrying out a plan that was like, if the Ayatollah is killed, this is what you do. And then executing that continually. Now look, we don't know. There may be discussions happening and there may still be commands being given, et cetera. But ultimately, in an autocratic society like that, we're being used now for 40 plus years to see one man's writ control absolutely everything. If suddenly there is no one man anymore, and maybe even a power vacuum or a struggle to work out what's happening. How do you rein it in? How do decide to talk? How do you decide to negotiate with? Exactly. Who is the person who says I will be the one who strikes the deal? And I think that is potentially the big vacuum. The problem we're seeing here in the coming days is that there's no obvious person to have those talks. And Trump has just treated, sorry, put on truth social that is too late to talk. They're obviously going to pursue some military objectives here. But Iran is too. And I think it's that spiral. That leads us to a potentially very difficult place.

And we have, right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks. But we have capability to go far longer than that. We'll do it, whatever.

'I think there's one thing to bear in mind here, while President Trump talks about this being four or five weeks, maybe longer, I'm not sure that the United States has the inventory for a war that long. I'm pretty sure Iran does not have the inventory to keep up the tax and retaliation of this extent for nearly a month. And so I think we may get to a point where everybody starts realizing that they're running out of the steam and juice here. And seek some kind of off-ramp. The big problem is whether or not there is the leadership in Iran in place to execute that and whether or or not we see this conflict having spiraled so far. You know, we have a new front where I am, Israel and Hezbollah, predictable, certainly, but not possibly part of the original war plan, you might argue, the capacity for this to spiral, leaving, I think, real doubts as to how easily this could indeed be switched off.

'It goes to like what the experts were kind of warning Trump in the lead-up that there are just so many different possibilities of a way you could go and if you don't have a plan for those various scenarios, then it becomes hard to unwind once the bombs start falling.

Yeah, I mean, look, going back to Donald Rumsfeld before the invasion of Iraq of 2003, we're still dealing with the known unknowns, like the things that you could have guessed might have gone wrong. We're not even really dealing with unknown unknowns, the things you didn't guess could have potentially gone wrong and been unpredictable yet. So yeah, this is the problem. When you start at least allowing entropy to get this violent, then there's very little you can do to... Be sure that you've addressed all the possible outcomes and stop things from spreading out of control. But look, ultimately we'll reach a point where I think the Iranians and the Americans and possibly even the Israelis with American pressure decide that. Most of what they can and that may see things calm, but that point's not a promise yet.

Well, thank you, Nick. Stay safe out there.

We have breaking news into CNN, a source in the Middle East telling CNN that the U.S. Consulate in Dubai was struck and now is on fire.

'I mentioned the many fronts of this war earlier. Since Saturday, we have seen Iran respond with strikes in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Bahrain. The United States ordered non-emergency government personnel to leave at least six countries across the region. Civilians have been stranded at airports for days. And on the home front, as gas prices rise and the stock market falls, many questions remain. Where do we go from here? How long will this last? Will those Gulf countries get off the sidelines and join the fight? Let's bring in retired Brigadier General Mark Kemet. He's a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East and served in the State Department under President George W. Bush. So General, have you been surprised by just how aggressive and widespread the Iranian response has been thus far? I'm not surprised.

Considerably that they are attacking the U.S. Bases and the civilian infrastructure inside the Middle East. More than likely, they see this as an existential threat to which they're giving an existential response.

I mean, how much longer can they keep that up though? Like how much firepower do they have in terms of drones, in terms of missiles?

Well, I believe they got a substantial amount that that information, of course, is intelligence and I wouldn't provide it even if I knew it.

Has the retaliation from Iran, has it made like a tangible difference in terms of getting the U.S. To a different position, or is it just going to embolden the U S and Israel to keep pounding away?

Well, I think it's really the latter. As you heard Marco Rubio say to the United States Senate in public yesterday, we are just starting. There's much more to come.

'Again, I'm not gonna give away the details of our tactical efforts, but the hardest hits are yet to come from the U.S. Military. The next phase will be even more punishing on Iran than it is right now. Someone was-

'I think this administration is in an all-in rather than a limited objective operation against Iran.

We will do this as long as it takes to achieve those objectives and we will achieve those objectives. The world will be a safer place when we're done with this operation, all right? Thank you guys.

What about the Gulf countries, like Qatar, the UAE? Like, at one point, Dubai had received more incoming missiles than Israel. Can they really just sit on the sidelines as missiles and drones rain down on hotels and airports? Like, do they have to get involved in a military way?

Well, they are involved in the sense that they're using their military assets to try to knock down the drones and missiles. Whether they will hop into their planes and join a coalition with Israel and the United States, we've seen some indications from some of the Gulf countries that would add an immeasurable amount of combat power into the fight.

What would that mean to have those countries like going on the offensive inside Iran?

Two things. I think it would add to the credibility of the military operations, since the world would have a hard time criticizing those Middle East countries who didn't start the war, but were attacked on the way.

Like they were innocent bystanders as far as this current conflict is concerned So obviously they would want to get up defend themselves and join it

Well, they were innocent bystanders. They had declared before that they didn't want any part of this war. Uh, they didn't want to take war to Iran, but Iran took war to them. So naturally they are upset and prepared to respond. And I hope they will join the coalition.

'The U.S. Military says they used a one-way attack drone for the first time as part of the initial attack. They basically, these drones fly in, right, and they crash into their targets. And the U. S. Developed this technology by basically reverse engineering an Iranian drone, this kind of drone that's being used in Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. Does this mark some kind of turning point by the way America does combat?

'Well first of all, with regards to the reverse engineering of the Shaheed, I think that was pretty clever on the part of the United States. We produce high-end, exquisite, but unfortunately costly drones through American manufacturers that it's questionable whether they can produce to scale. The Shaheed drone is a low-cost, pretty clever, and not too complicated drone. That you're right, we did reverse engineer from the Iranians. Now, if you're asking about is reverse engineering going to be the core of the U.S. Industrial complex, no.

We gotta take a break, when we come back, what would it take to get back to the negotiating table? Stick around. We've heard some shifting rationales and goals from the Trump administration for this operation. There's been some talk of regime change, there's been talk of destroying missile capability, destroying Iran's Navy, making sure Iran can't fund its proxies. When you look at the current military setup and the hardware that the US and Israel has at its disposal right now, is that a match with those goals? Like, are those achievable?

Well, first of all, let's be very clear what the American goals are. The three fundamental issues are Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, Iran will have a significantly reduced ballistic missile inventory, and Iran will cut its ties with its proxy networks around the regions. Those have been the negotiating points for years and years. They were for the Obama administration. They were when the Trump administration ripped up the JCPOA, Biden, and now Trump again. Those are the three core objectives and candidly war termination goals for this war. Because we told the Iranians in so many words, if we can't achieve this through a negotiated settlement, we'll take it with a military settlement. So all this other noise that you're hearing and people are expressing about no goals, regime change, this, that, the other thing, it's just noise. We are not doing a regime change. First of all, because most people misunderstand what regime change is. We did regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan. Regime change not only means change to government, but it also means nation building, it means democracy promotion, it means boots on the ground. We have learned that lesson and I hope this administration sticks to those three core principles because otherwise if we start expanding those goals, we will have another very well understood military term, which is mission creep. We ought to be in there for those three core objectives and when Iran relents and comes back to the negotiating table, we should stop at that point.

I mean, we've heard just this morning President Trump on social media said Iran wants to talk, but it's too late.

Iran wants to talk on the old set of negotiating points. They think if they sit back on the negotiating table, they'll get the same deal and they will just continue on from where they were. They had already dismissed proxies, they had already discussed discussion of ballistic, and they were getting into the technical details. They lost that chance. I don't think we're going back to the table unless we make as a concession ahead of time. My recommendation would be, we'll talk with you if you agree to no nuclear program, ballistic missiles, reduced and cut ties with proxies as a precondition to coming back to negotiations. And then we have to go.

Before the talks even start, you have to agree to all this stuff that they were having a hard time agreeing within the first place.

Exactly and we've got things to negotiate about. We have sanctions relief, we have economic assistance, we have infrastructure help, they have a water crisis that's existential to taper on. There's a lot of things we can talk about, but you were unwilling to talk to us about those three core principles that you knew about. We have shed blood and treasure, not even among ourselves, but among our friends and allies, and you don't get that deal again. And we will continue to fight until you're willing to come back to the negotiating table with those three issues conceded beforehand.

Based on what we've seen these first couple of days, does either side feel like they need to adjust strategies militarily, just kind of based on what's going on? What's your read on how the first couple days have played out?

'Look, what we do in the military is very simple. We have target decks. We go down the target deck. Target set number one, leadership. Target set, number two, ballistic missiles. Target set three, air defense missile. You just work your way through that target list. All of those targets are attacked, you don't know, for the most part, to what level of destruction they've had. So we have what we call the OODA loop and the Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, but there's a feedback loop in that. And if the commander's intent was to bring the ballistic missile fleet of the Iranians down to 80% and it's only down 50%, well then you re-attack. We don't know that information right now, but I believe what's going on is that in the field headquarters. They're taking a look at what targets need to be reattacked and then how much we have left over to go down the target deck and get the next set of targets.

To you, is that like the main thrust of it right now, trying to knock out these ballistic missiles just at least purely so that Iran has less of a way to retaliate?

Well, of course, the most important thing is you make sure that you take away the ability of the enemy to respond and not only to respond in an offensive manner as we're seeing with their ballistic missiles, but also in a defensive manner. You want to have air superiority, so you're taking out the air defense sites as well. And then once you've taken out their offensive capability in their In this case, air defense capability, you have freedom of action.

Kind of on a separate issue, there's scores of Americans stranded in some of these Gulf countries that have come under attack, you know, flights have been canceled, people just kind of hold up. Is there anything the US military could do to get them out or are they just kind of in a place where they have to stay put and stay safe?

Yeah, look, Americans have been told to get out of the region, there are evacuation procedures if it is necessary to get American government officials out of the country. We've closed the embassy in Kuwait in Saudi Arabia. So there are lots of procedures for this. We've done this for years and years. We haven't perhaps done it to this scale, but I'm certain that Americans, if they proper force protection and the State Department step program that they will be safe. I can't guarantee that they won't be attacked, but I can guarantee that in the main they will be safe."

very well. They have no Navy that's been knocked out. They have no Air Force that's been knocked down. They have no air detection that's been knocked

On Tuesday, during a meeting with the German Chancellor in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump bragged about the military operation in Iran and said they targeted another set of Iranian leaders. Meanwhile, he disputed the justification for the attacks that was floated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Rubio said that Israel's plan to attack Iran and fears of Iranian retaliation prompted the U.S. To launch strikes. Trump instead suggested it may have happened the other way around.

I might have forced their hand. You see, we were having negotiations with these lunatics, and it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going attack if we didn't do it.

Trump also cited Iran's, quote, evil ideology as a rationale for war. He pointed to decades old events like the 1979 hostage crisis and the Marine barracks bombing in 1983. That's it for us today. We'll have another episode coming your way on Sunday. In the meantime, head over to cnn.com or the CNN app or the cnn5things podcast for the very latest on the war. I'll talk to you later.