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Israeli Sources Confirming Iran's Supreme Leader Killed in Strikes. Aired 3-4p ET
Aired February 28, 2026 - 15:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.
JESSICA DEAN, CNN ANCHOR: And we do want to welcome you into a special breaking news edition of CNN NEWSROOM. I'm Jessica Dean here in New York.
A massive military campaign is underway. The United States and Israel launching strikes on Iran. Sources telling CNN the U.S. is planning for several days of attacks. According to an Israeli military official, several senior Iranian figures were killed in the strikes. Just a short while ago we did hear from Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said, quote, "There are many signs that the Iran supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is," in his words, "no longer with us."
More than 200 people have been killed as a result of the strikes in Iran, according to Iranian state media. And that includes dozens who died in a strike that hit a girls' school in the southern part of the country. A CENTCOM spokesperson said, in part, that they take reports like that seriously and are looking into that. Meanwhile, Tehran responding with an unprecedented wave of attacks across the region.
Let's bring in our CNN senior national security analyst, Jim Sciutto, and CNN's Jerusalem correspondent Jeremy Diamond, who's on the ground there in Tel Aviv.
Jeremy, let's start with you, because we have seen waves of missiles launched toward Israel throughout the day. It's now 10:00 in the evening there. How would you describe things right now? And also, what more are we hearing from Israeli officials? Obviously, the prime minister saying that there were these indications that the ayatollah is no longer with us.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right. I mean, it really has been a remarkable day across the Middle East, extraordinarily volatile, and could potentially get even more so as this conflict has real possibilities of widening even further as the United States and Israel began striking major military and senior regime targets in Iran this morning.
Those strikes continuing throughout the day, met by Iranian retaliation, aimed not only here in Israel but also at U.S. bases in the Middle East, and also slamming into several population centers, including major cities like Dubai in the Gulf of the Middle East.
We -- it all began this morning at about 8:15 a.m. local time, as sirens blared across Israel announcing a state of emergency had been declared, that Israel and the United States had begun striking Iranian targets inside of Iran. Within two hours, the Iranian retaliation began. That was much swifter than what we saw from Iran following Israel's surprise attack against Iran back in June. And throughout the day, Israelis have been back and forth to bomb shelters. Millions of people sheltering for cover.
Those ballistic missiles have largely been intercepted by Israel's air defense system throughout the day., however. Only a couple of people have been moderately injured by interception fragments, shrapnel that has fallen as a result of some of those interceptions. And that air defense effort has, of course, been supplemented by the United States, which has provided Patriot and THAAD air defense batteries throughout the Middle East in preparation for these strikes, and has also positioned a U.S. aircraft carrier off Israel's northern coast, which can also assist with that air defense effort.
But we do know that this has been a really massive series of strikes that the U.S. and Israel have carried out, and now the day capping off with this increasingly confident Israeli posture as it relates to the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, and whether or not he has been killed with the Israeli prime minister saying that there are growing signs that Khamenei was indeed killed in those Israeli strikes earlier today.
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That, of course, would be a massive kind of earthquake in Iran and one that would ripple across the Middle East -- Jessica.
DEAN: All right. Jeremy, with the very latest there from Tel Aviv. Stand by please.
I do want to go to Jim Sciutto now, who is also following this for us.
And Jim, as Jeremy just ended there, we don't know at this exact moment what the status is of the ayatollah. But the fact remains, if this was successful, this changes so much. Tell us more about what you're learning.
JIM SCIUTTO, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well let's wait until we have confirmation. But what is clear both from Israeli statements and the scope of this strike is that this is a much bigger campaign than many anticipated.
You remember, Jessica, prior to this morning, there were some speculation that President Trump preferred something small, something limited, something to send a message, and then to go back to the negotiating table. But, one, we know that Israeli strikes were going after senior Iranian leaders. That was their intention. And when we reported not long ago that Israeli officials were becoming more confident that they had successfully struck and eliminated some of those Israeli leaders. In addition to that, the scope and scale of the U.S. portion of this,
the U.S. military campaign, is quite broad. I've been told that the planning is for multiple waves of strikes. Each wave lasting perhaps 36 to 48 hours followed by a pause in which the U.S. can do bomb damage assessment, assess where -- what targets were hit, how much successfully, and then be prepared to go after more targets. That's the thing is that this is not a one-off. Of course, the president could order the forces back at any one point, but at least the U.S. military is prepared for a multi-wave strike taking place over many days and perhaps longer.
So the scale, the ambition of this is certainly at the outer end, right, of the range of options discussed prior to this morning.
DEAN: Right. And of course, there is a question, Jim, to your point, of what comes next and how this might expand. We saw these strikes that were happening in places like Dubai at the Fairmont Hotel in a highly populated area. In Doha, spreading out across the region.
What -- how should people be factoring that in to what they're learning today as we're watching this unfold?
SCIUTTO: Well, Iran is retaliating and they're retaliating quite broadly as well. We spoke about the scope of the U.S. and Israeli strikes, the Iranian retaliation is quite broad, striking a number of countries in the region and attempting at least to go after U.S. military bases in those countries.
So, listen, as President Trump said in his statement this morning that it is possible, he acknowledged, and this is notable. It's possible that U.S. service members might lose their lives. Now, to our knowledge, that hasn't happened yet. But we do know that civilians in the region have been caught up in this. So both sides of this have been at the outer end of the ranges of scale, right, the U.S.-Israeli strikes, but also Iranian retaliation.
And that doesn't necessarily end in a day, right, Jessica? Because, you know, Iran retains capabilities. Of course, the U.S. and Israel would have been seeking to take out as many of those capabilities as possible in the course of these strikes. But as these missiles have shown, that have been landing around the region, Iran maintained the capability to strike back. How long they're able to. We'll be watching, but it's certainly a region on edge.
DEAN: And Jim, I do have some breaking news that I do want to share and stay with me here. We are getting information from Israeli sources that the ayatollah is dead. This is breaking news, again, coming from Israeli sources that the ayatollah, the supreme leader of Iran, is dead.
Again, we're going to go to Jeremy Diamond.
Jeremy, the strikes coming this morning that were targeting senior leadership. That's what we knew. Targeting senior leadership there in Iran and now we can say from Israeli sources that the ayatollah of Iran, the supreme leader, is dead. What more are you learning there in Israel?
DIAMOND: That's right, Jessica. Two Israeli sources telling me and my colleague Tal Shalev that Israel has confirmed that the supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has been killed as a result of those Israeli strikes that took place earlier today. One of the sources saying that Israel actually has photographic evidence of Khamenei showing his dead body. The second source told me that an official announcement is in the works, although it is possible that the Israelis will allow President Trump and the United States to make this announcement officially.
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But this is enormous breaking news here that the Israeli government is confirming that the supreme leader of Iran was killed in Israeli strikes earlier today. This is a day that many Israeli government officials have hoped would come eventually. It is also, we should note, a day that many Iranian dissidents, Iranian protesters, had hoped would eventually come. And indeed, it has come now. And it is an earth-shattering moment for the Middle East and for the future of Iran.
We should note, however, that the supreme leader's death is not necessarily indicative of the Iran regime collapsing altogether. This regime is not based off of one person alone. It is a system that is multilayered, and we know that the supreme leader understood very well that he could potentially be targeted for assassination should the United States and Israel choose to carry out massive strikes on Iran, as they did today, and in recent weeks and months, he has been preparing for potential lines of succession should that actually take place.
Now we are still waiting, of course, for any confirmation from the United States as well as to the supreme leader having been killed. But two Israeli sources familiar with the matter telling us now that the supreme leader was killed in Israeli strikes today.
One last note on this is that we have also been hearing about the division of labor between the United States and Israel as it pertains to these strikes. U.S. officials have been very clear that their strikes have been focused on military targets, and that the strikes targeting senior Iranian leaders, such as the supreme leader, were being conducted by Israel and not by the United States.
Ultimately, that may very well be a distinction without a difference, given the high level of coordination between the United States and Israel in preparing and carrying out these strikes. But this is obviously an enormous, enormous moment in the Middle East, something that we anticipated could potentially be a target of any Israeli or U.S. strikes on Iran. And indeed, now not only a target but confirmed by Israeli sources that the supreme leader of Iran is dead.
DEAN: Indeed big news out of the Middle East. The potential to reshape so many dynamics there. But again, as Jeremy notes, not a straight line to regime change. This is a piece of it, but it is a big piece of it. This is enormous news. Jeremy, I want you to stand by because we have stayed -- we have seen
those missiles that have been coming to Israel throughout the day. So stay with us.
I do want to bring Jim Sciutto back in.
Jim, this is -- this is very big news. And again, Jeremy --
SCIUTTO: It's enormous.
DEAN: It is. It is. And so help people understand, contextualize for them that what this means that the Iran -- that Iran's supreme leader has been killed in these strikes by the U.S. and Israel.
SCIUTTO: These strikes are now officially decapitation strikes. Right? Strikes that were intended via Israeli military action, to be clear, to take out Iran's most senior leadership. And the man you see there, Ali Khamenei, is Iran's most senior leader with enormous certainly political power in that country, but also religious authority in that country.
The structure of Iranian government being that, yes, it has a president elected, but the supreme leader lies at the top of the government, and that is that man you see speaking there which Israeli sources are now telling CNN was killed in these strikes.
Again, you know, to my point earlier Jessica, prior to this morning, there had been an enormous amount of speculation as to just how far, one, the U.S. was willing to go. But Israel as well, if they were striking together. And now we know they were willing to go as far as taking out Iran's most senior leader.
Now, we had reported earlier that he was not the only target of these strikes, that other senior military and other leaders in Iran were targeted. We don't know their status at this point but as we reported earlier in the day, Israeli officials were becoming more confident over time today that they had hit -- they had hit at least some of their targets.
It -- listen, in Iran, does that mean that suddenly there will be a new government, a new leader, one friendlier to the U.S.? No, an enormous network and structure of leadership and power remains in that country, military, economic, political and otherwise. But to take out the supreme leader is a significant, significant change. And of course, the question is, how far does that change go?
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Does it weaken the government to the degree that the government collapses? Does it weaken it to a degree that the protesters that we saw take on this government quite bravely in recent weeks are inspired to go out into the streets again, right? I mean that's what President Trump was encouraging them to do explicitly in his statement this morning.
Now, that's quite a risky proposition given that that government retains enormous power and they showed they were willing to use it to deadly extent in the many thousands of protesters they killed in recent weeks. Those are still the open questions but we have one question answered. Were -- was Israel willing to go so far as to take out the supreme leader of Iran? And the answer is yes. And they had success doing so.
DEAN: Right. And now the big question is, what comes next?
SCIUTTO: Yes.
DEAN: Jim Sciutto, stand by.
I want to bring in Barak Ravid, CNN political and global affairs analyst. He's also a global affairs correspondent at Axios.
Barak, I know you spoke with President Trump earlier today.
Again, if you are just joining us, our breaking news is that Iran's supreme leader has been killed in these strikes. That is coming from Israeli sources.
Barak, we're still waiting to hear from the president, from the U.S. government. But the Israeli sources confirming that. What more are you learning? What did the president tell you?
BARAK RAVID, CNN POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: So first, Jess, about Khamenei, I think around 30, 40 minutes ago, the Israeli ambassador to Washington, Yechiel Leiter, updated several U.S. officials and members of Congress that Israeli intelligence shows that Khamenei has been killed and his body was taken out of the rubble in the compound in Tehran that was attacked.
I spoke to President Trump a little bit after -- before 1:00 p.m. while he was in Mar-a-Lago. We spoke for around five minutes. The president sounded to me at least pretty calm and confident that things are going according to plan. I think the situation with Khamenei was one of the main things he was tracking at that moment. And what was interesting in what he told me is that he was -- I asked him, how long is this going to continue?
And he said, I have several offramps. I can go long and take the whole thing, meaning take over Iran, something that, you know, I don't think that that's something that is seriously being considered. And then said --
DEAN: That's quite a statement. Yes.
RAVID: Yes. Or, I can go on for another two or three days and then tell the Iranians we'll see you again in a few years if you try and rebuild your nuclear program, your missile program, meaning that Donald Trump, at least my impression from the conversation with him, is that he's looking to end this thing within a few days and basically put an ultimatum to the Iranians, we can get a deal or you can try and rebuild your program, and then we'll just bomb you again if you try to do this. And I think that was one of the messages that U.S. officials that just
briefed reporters, I think, 10 minutes ago said that when the 12-day war ended after Operation Midnight Hammer, the U.S. told Iran, if you try to rebuild, we will come again. And those U.S. officials said that the Iranians, according to U.S. intelligence, did try and rebuild the program. So we know from satellite imagery that the Iranians started infrastructure work in several of the nuclear sites that were attacked in June.
We do not know whether they really tried to resume a nuclear program, meaning enrichment and other activities. One of the interesting things I heard from President Trump is that he told me that he thinks that Operation Midnight Hammer allowed Operation Epic Fury to go forward because President Trump claimed that if he did not go on that operation last June, if he did not order a strike on those three nuclear facilities, Iran would have been much, much closer to a nuclear weapon, maybe even have a nuclear weapon by now, according to what President Trump said. And that would make the current operation much harder maybe even impossible.
We just have to say, the Iranians were very close to getting enough enrichment material for one bomb, but they were pretty far away. At least six months from the ability, or four to six months from the ability to build a crude nuclear device that they could then detonate in a nuclear experiment.
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Another thing I heard from President Trump that was very interesting is that he basically said that what he heard from his negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, was that the Iranians were not really ready for a deal. And U.S. officials who briefed reporters 10 minutes ago elaborated on that and said that the Iranian proposal, the maximum the Iranians were willing to go did not really meet the minimum the U.S. was willing to go.
DEAN: Barak, I also want to ask you about these strikes and the strikes this morning that ultimately killed Iran's supreme leader. What more do we know about them? You have to think, and there has to have been incredible intelligence that went into knowing where he was. The fact that these strikes happened in the daylight when normally -- when the U.S. has struck, it has been at nighttime. Do you know any more about the context around the actual strikes themselves?
RAVID: So I think one of the reasons that strike was in daylight is because it was part of the -- on the one hand, it was part of the deception. The Iranians, I guess, thought the strike would be during the night as it's been last June. But also because Israeli officials say that they had intelligence that at that time of day, morning time in Iran, there have been three different gatherings of senior Iranian officials in three different places.
And that was a window of opportunity or operational window that the Israelis could try and conduct strikes on those three gatherings and try and take out, eliminate, many, many other top political and military officials in Iran. One of them, the supreme leader. By the way, the Israelis assessed that they managed to take out the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, that they managed to take out the commander of the Iranian armed forces, that they managed to take out the Iranian minister of defense, that they managed to take out the head of Iranian intelligence, and numerous other officials.
And what is amazing to me is that this is exactly how the 12-day war started, in an opening strike that decapitated so many Iranian officials, and eight months later, it seems that the Iranians literally learned nothing and you know, conducted themselves in a way that, A, allowed the Israelis to know where they are and B, allowed Israelis to hit them, meaning that they were not deep enough underground.
DEAN: All right. Great reporting from Barak Ravid. Please stand by.
I do want to go to the White House now where our senior White House correspondent Kristen Holmes is standing by.
Kristen, again, for people who are following along just joining us, we are hearing from Israeli sources. They are confirming that Iran's supreme leader, the ayatollah, has been killed in these strikes this morning, joint strikes by the U.S. and Israel together. We are still waiting to hear from President Trump from the U.S. on this.
What more are you hearing from people you're talking to in the administration, in the White House?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, I was asking about this just moments ago. They said they weren't ready to comment on it just yet. That could also mean that President Trump himself may be gearing up to comment on it. Obviously, the administration often defers to him when it comes to big announcements like this.
But one thing that I have now learned from administration officials is goes to the why now and why the immediacy of this. I am told by administration officials that U.S. intelligence had, quote-unquote, "indicators" that Iran was going to use missiles either preemptively or simultaneously. And that's why they had to do this strike now.
I'm also told that this information had been relayed to members of the Gang of Eight when they were called and briefed, or at least given a heads up, that's how some of them phrased it, about this attack on Iran. We are still trying to figure out exactly the why, again, were the missiles going to be used? How are they going to be used? We don't have answers on that but it does give us a little bit of insight into the why now, which is one of the questions we've been asking.
And these officials have also said that essentially Trump attacked Iran because the negotiating talks, the talks between his special envoy, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner as well as the Iranians, had devolved into games, tricks and stall tactics. And I know Barak has been reporting this as well, that one of the things that we heard from White House officials in the last several days was that they were disappointed in where Iran was when they were coming to the table, that the two sides were nowhere near a deal. [15:25:02]
Now, of course, we did also hear from the foreign minister of Oman, who is actually, you know, in these talks. He was the facilitator of these negotiations who said that a peace deal was within reach. That was yesterday that he said that. But obviously the Trump administration, the president himself, didn't feel that way.
Now, if the supreme leader is dead, I can tell you this. I have talked to a number of Republicans today since we learned about these strikes in the middle of the night, and all of them said the same thing which, whether or not they were certain or positive or negative about the fact that President Trump was engaging in these attacks on Iran with Israel, they all said that if it in fact the supreme leader is dead, that this would be a huge accomplishment for the president, meaning they might put aside some of their reservations about an attack in Iran.
But of course we are still going to be waiting to see what the United States says about this, what the administration says about this, waiting for that confirmation.
DEAN: All right. More to come, Kristen. Of course you'll be monitoring to see if we're going to hear from the president soon. We will check back in with you.
In the meantime, I want to go to retired Colonel Cedric Leighton to talk a little bit more about the military piece of all of this.
And, Colonel Leighton, I'm sitting here as we're getting this news, this historic news that the ayatollah has been killed in these strikes performed jointly by the U.S. and Israel. Just -- if you go back to October 7th and you think about how this region has been reshaped since then, the incredible implications that has had both for Iran itself, its proxy groups that are spread all across that region, Hezbollah and the Houthis, and what has happened in Syria.
And you put all of that together, and now you get this news today with this, again, incredible U.S. military buildup all around that region, this is really significant. And we now have the big question of what comes next. The ayatollah, again according to these Israeli sources, are dead. We know that we have an incredible amount of resources militarily there in that area.
So walk us through, you know, what you're looking at with the maps there and what could potentially come next militarily.
COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Absolutely, Jessica. So this is one of the really important things. First of all, let's look at this as a campaign plan. And what you see here is some of the target sets that both the Israelis and the U.S. went after so you've got the capital city of Tehran. You've got an area near Tehran called Karaj. You've got the holy city of Qom, which is where the ayatollah is. Basically, that's the religious center.
Isfahan, which is known for its nuclear facility, as well as an air base. You've got Kermanshah, you've got Tabriz. All of these areas are (INAUDIBLE) this looks like on the ground in Tehran. You see pictures like this. Now when you look at what happened with the supreme leader, this is the supreme leader's official residence.
Now, let me take you through what this looked like. This is the residence as it looked like before the strike. Now let's take a look and keep an eye on this area right here. It is completely gone. It is obliterated right here. And that was where they -- not only if the reporting is correct, not only killed the supreme leader, but potentially other members of his senior staff. All of this area completely, completely gone.
Now, when you look at all of the things that could possibly happen here, let's first take a look at the U.S. flotilla that's out here. We've got the Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea. You've got the Gerald R. Ford, the other carrier off the coast of northern Israel. You have combatant ships and destroyers throughout the Persian Gulf and also throughout the region. So this is the array of forces that we have in this particular area. Then you look at some of the things that have happened.
We had Israel and U.S. strikes throughout these areas here and Iran trying to respond, but not always successfully in each of these areas. So that shows that there's a real dearth of capability on the part of the Iranians in terms of their ability to target accurately and that has a major, major impact because when you look at these bases right here, they are vulnerable, but they also can be defended.
And that makes a really, really big difference, you know, from that standpoint. And when you look at the broader area, this is Iran right here, one of the critical areas that we have to pay attention to is right around here. This is the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is where about 20 percent of the oil flows from the -- for the world flows through here. All the Iran, all the Persian Gulf states on the Arab side of the Persian Gulf, all of them send their oil through this area.
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So if Iran chooses to close this, this could be one of the future things that could happen, that would have a significant impact on things like oil prices, for example. And it could also have an impact on all of the disposition of forces, all the politics involved in terms of the alliances between these countries and the United States, and Iran and Russia and China on the other side of that.
DEAN: Yes, the map really helps -- really drive it home, what we're looking at here, and how interconnected it all is.
Cedric, before I let you go, in terms of command and control for Iran, what does the death of the ayatollah mean? How might that factor into their ability or how the manner in which they might respond now militarily?
LEIGHTON: So this is very interesting because both Barak and Jeremy Diamond mentioned in their reporting that Iran is not just dependent on the supreme leader or on all of the other leaders that may have been killed in this, so we're talking people like the intelligence chief, the defense chief, other people at a very senior level, there is a political organization within Iran. The state is basically built up as a theocracy, in other words a religious state.
And Iran itself is going to be in a position where it can grow its own people. It has a parliament, it has political parties, it has other political leaders that could potentially fill the void. The question is, what kind of people will those be? And for cases like this historically, what you see, Jessica, is people that come into these roles after someone has been assassinated or removed from the scene, most of them tend to be a bit more radical than the ones that they replace.
So this could mean that the Iranian situation becomes even more radicalized, and there could be even more dangers throughout the Persian Gulf region, and possibly throughout the greater Middle East and beyond.
DEAN: Yes, and that is a key thing in terms of where this is headed. That is -- that seems like a key issue to watch.
All right. Cedric Leighton, thank you.
Let's bring in CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger.
David, good to have you as we are going, kind of walking through what this all could mean, that we do know from these Israeli sources that Iran's supreme leader was killed in these strikes. Cedric just walked us through what those strikes could have looked like.
In terms of the president's thinking around this, we heard from our colleague Kristen Holmes and also from Jeremy Diamond about these offramps that -- I'm sorry, and Barak Ravid, about the offramps that the president says he has in terms of being able to continue moving forward with this or to then take an offramp from here.
What are you hearing in terms of where the president is, where the administration is, as we are getting this news that the supreme leader has been killed?
DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well clearly, Jessica, the president has chosen his most aggressive action here, which is seeking regime change. And he made that pretty clear during his -- during his brief eight minute video that he released on Truth Social. What he didn't explain was the mechanism of getting from the military action that Cedric has just walked us through, to the political reality of what a regime change would look like, because, as Cedric just suggested, you can get all kinds of regime change, and some of it can be worse than what it is that you just departed from.
So if, in fact, the supreme leader has been killed, if in fact a good number of the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, their most elite military, have been killed, the first question is, who are the successors there? And the second is, what is the mechanism for the people of Iran to pick up on this chaos, rise up as the president suggested, and install a new government? And they're without arms? They're without organization?
The government still has that. The military still has that. And we haven't heard a plan yet from the U.S. for how they would get over that particular hurdle.
DEAN: And that is so key right now as we move to the next phase of this, which is what comes next after the ayatollah has been confirmed dead. OK. So now who is going to fill that void? And to your point, David, in talking with a number of people, you know, how might the Iranian people who, you know, just in the last few months have suffered to be in the streets to demand their freedom to who have been protesting in and being killed for it.
But how might those people who, as you note, aren't armed, aren't trained, aren't necessarily organized in that way, take their government? And is there any thinking from the Trump administration about how to support that piece of it besides the military part?
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SANGER: Well, one hopes that there has been thinking about this. Secretary Rubio was asked about this in a Senate hearing back in January, and he said, well, if there was regime change, that's an issue we'd have to think about for a long time. Well, fact of the matter is, people in the United States government have been thinking about this for 40 years in various forms.
So clearly the Iranians have a succession plan. The supreme leader was is 86 years old. And so they needed a succession plan anyway. And he was not in good health. The question is what that plan looks like and whether the U.S. and the Iranian people can knock them off that plan. And that's really the hard and difficult part here.
I think it's also worth remembering that this was, despite the administration's efforts to sound like it was very urgent reason to go do this, the timing of this was a war of choice for the administration. That is to say there was no urgency of an attack from Iran. As Barak Ravid mentioned to you, they're further from a nuclear weapon than they had been in June after those strikes.
So the question is, did the president pick the right moment? And he might say, there's never a wrong moment to change the government in Iran.
DEAN: Right. Because Kristen Holmes, as you noted, had reported that the White House is saying that they were concerned about these preemptive strikes, in their words, that Iran might be taking. And yet there is reporting, you know, the kind of -- that is counter to that. And -- but they are going to be asked, the administration, why now, that is a question that continues to come up again and again and again.
SANGER: Right.
DEAN: Especially as they were in talks.
SANGER: It did come up in a background briefing. I'm sorry, it did come up in a background briefing that some administration officials gave, but they didn't provide any evidence of an imminent strike.
DEAN: Yes. Yes. Right. Right. But yes, but yes, exactly, but that is their explanation at the time. But of course, as you know, time will tell the evidence. You know, we will need to see as well.
All right, David Sanger, thank you so much. It is great to have you as always.
I want to bring in New Jersey Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer. He's also a member of the House Intelligence Committee.
Congressman, thanks for being here. I first just want to get your --
REP. JOSH GOTTHEIMER (D-NJ): Thanks for having me.
DEAN: Your take on our big news this afternoon. Really potentially reshaping Iran and potentially the Middle East. Do you support the president's actions here?
GOTTHEIMER: Well, first of all, to your point, significant news about the supreme leader, if true. And clearly, today has been a significant event on all fronts, right? In terms of not just the attack on Iran, but the fact that Iran has turned around and attacked so many of our allies in the region. Right? Which is also not to be something that we should take lightly as we look at this, you know, in terms of their attacks on Iraq and Bahrain and Saudis and Emiratis.
You saw the Emiratis apparently just declared war back on Iran and the UAE-Israel, 200 ballistic missile strikes from Iran at Israel. So significant on a lot of fronts. You know, clearly Iran is a and has been, the government Iran, an existential threat to the United States, both in terms of its ballistic missile program, but its nuclear program and all the terror proxies that it has backed over the years, which have killed Americans, you know, attacked our bases, been huge threats to our allies.
So since the ayatollah in the late '70s came in this regime, it has been that -- Iran has been consistent in one thing. Trying to undermine our democracy with the banner of death to America. So that has not changed and add to that, they've massacred 30,000 or so of their people, right? You add all these pieces --
DEAN: Congressman, let me just interrupt you for one second. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I just want to tell people what they're looking at. This is live from Tel Aviv.
GOTTHEIMER: Sure.
DEAN: We are hearing sirens there. Watching the skies. It's 10:38 there in Tel Aviv. We have seen strikes there. Missiles being intercepted. I'm going to let you listen for just a second as we're seeing some -- if you see on the left side of your screen, we saw a little flash there.
All right. We're going to -- and you're starting to see some activity there again toward the right of your screen now. OK. So 10:39 there in Tel Aviv, just a few minutes after we reported Israeli sources saying that the strikes this morning by the U.S. and Iran did in fact kill the supreme leader of Iran and there were questions about what we might see after this -- after this news and throughout the night in Israel.
[15:40:04]
I do want to bring in Cedric Leighton, who is standing by.
And Cedric, obviously Israel has the Iron Dome. They work to intercept these missiles that are coming toward Tel Aviv right now, but help people understand what we're looking at on our screen.
LEIGHTON: Yes. So, Jessica, what you're seeing is a panoply of different aspects here so the Israeli air defense system, the missile defense system, is composed of basically three layers. One of them is the famous Iron Dome. That is basically takes care of short range missile threats. Also drones threats of that type. In some cases, even artillery shells. You go up then to the David sling system, that David sling system is a system that takes care of medium level threats, medium range threats.
So that could include some of the missiles that come into Israeli airspace from places like Iran. Also places like Lebanon, where Hezbollah was very important as an Iranian proxy. And then you have the arrow system, and the arrow system is the one that we're probably seeing most of because that takes care of the longest range missiles. So every time you see a flash in the sky, what you're looking at is the point where the arrow missile or one of the other air defense missiles is actually intercepting an incoming missile.
Some of these missiles go in and they do what's called a proximity hit so in other words, they don't actually directly hit the actual incoming missile. But others go in and directly hit that missile. It depends on which system you're using. But the basic idea is if the target is perceived to be a populated area or an important building, then the Israeli air defense system is brought into play, and it actually takes out that missile.
And if it's -- if the trajectory of the missile shows that it's going into an unpopulated area, there you see a flash right there, that was probably a big hit where the missile was intercepted. You see pieces are falling or starting to fall to the ground right now. That flash right there is indicative of that kind of activity. So in this case, it looks like the arrow system came in and intercepted a missile.
Now you see several other missiles going up from the air defense systems. And you'll hear the booms that are associated with basically a sonic boom and what these interceptor missiles are doing is they're going faster than the speed of sound in order to capture the incoming missile. So this is actually a really critical piece of this. This is why this system is so important and really world famous because it is designed to intercept all these incoming threats like this.
It is not 100 percent. It is not a foolproof system. But the Israelis also husband their resources in a way where they make sure that they only use these systems when there's a real threat to their cities, like in this case, Tel Aviv. That becomes an important thing for them to protect, an important target for them to protect.
And that is basically what we're seeing now is the Iranian reaction to probably the supreme leader's death, potentially. And you can expect these kinds of attacks are going to continue as the evening wears on in the Middle East.
DEAN: And Colonel, we're hearing the booms, the explosions, you were saying the sonic boom, again, just reiterate for people, when they're hearing that, what is happening? Because I think you hear it immediately, you think, oh, did it hit something? But oftentimes it's the missile itself being stopped.
LEIGHTON: That's right. It's the missile itself. So there's a missile that is going fast to intercept the incoming missile or the incoming drone. You can hear a sonic boom potentially from that, or you can hear potentially the impact if the missile system is one which is designed like David's sling, for example, to actually hit the incoming missile. Then in that particular case, you may also hear the boom of the impact.
Generally speaking there's, you know, there's a possibility also of an explosion happening because there are proximity fuses on these -- on these weapons systems. And when they explode on impact that then is designed to destroy the incoming missile.
DEAN: All right, Colonel Leighton, I want you to please, please stand by. I do want to bring in Jim Sciutto who is watching this live with us as well as we see these strikes in Tel Aviv. The sirens sounding.
Jim, what more are you learning? And as you're watching this, what's going through your mind?
SCIUTTO: Well, listen, I've been on the roof of the hotel there in Tel Aviv in the midst of Iranian ballistic missile strikes. You see that boom in the lower right hand corner there, that this was last year in response to Israeli attacks on Iran.
[15:45:08]
Iran has the capability to strike Israel. Israel has very formidable air defenses at multiple levels. And I believe that's what you're seeing right now. Those flashes off in the distance, most likely intercepts. But aware of that, Iran often launches their missiles and drones in waves intended to overwhelm Israel's air defense systems.
Now I should note that part of the enormous U.S. -- and there's an air raid siren there. Part of the enormous U.S. military presence in the region mobilized to the region was expressly to provide air defense, additional air defense, not just for Israel, but for other allies in the region. And what I think we're seeing coming from the top of the screen there, oftentimes, well, first, so rising from the left hand side, that looks like an interceptor missile going up.
DEAN: Right.
SCIUTTO: And another one going up to meet a target.
DEAN: There's two. Yes.
SCIUTTO: And then oftentimes, well, we'll see if it's in our frame of vision. You'll see the impact. Now to be clear an impact is good. That means you've taken out the missile on the way in. But that debris still has to come to the ground. Right? And when it comes to the ground, it can still be deadly. And there have been a number of instances of that last year in the midst of Iranian strikes on Israel. And I believe there were reports earlier today of someone in Israel being struck by falling -- by falling debris.
So the danger does not go does, not disappear after a successful intercept. But of course, far better to intercept the missile in the air than allow it to strike its target on the ground.
DEAN: Certainly.
SCIUTTO: Again, Israel has -- sorry, Iran has enormous capabilities to strike and in numbers, and Israel has enormous capability to defend. But oftentimes those Iranian weapons get through.
One more front I think I should mention, Jessica, is that Iran has allies in the region, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, and in strikes last year when we were in country, they will often fire together so that you have incoming from more than one direction, again, which is part of -- partly by design, right, because they want to overwhelm those air defenses if they can.
DEAN: Right. And Jim, listen, the timing of what we're watching live on our screen right now is likely no accident in that Israel had just confirmed, our Israeli sources confirming the death of the ayatollah in these strikes.
SCIUTTO: Yes. No question. And it appears that Israel feels confident that the supreme leader is not the only Iranian leader or commander that they successfully eliminated here. Their targets quite clearly went beyond the supreme leader. They attempted to eliminate a number of leaders and their confidence -- they have some confidence that they killed other leaders. So here you have the Iranian regime likely responding to that.
And of course, the question, you and I spoke about this just a few minutes ago, Jessica, is then what happens? Who might replace the supreme leader, right? And how weak is the Iranian regime after losing so many of its own if that is confirmed? Can it withstand internal challenges from the people? There are certainly factions inside the country, but there are also multiple layers to Iranian military leadership, Revolutionary Guard Corps, military, et cetera, that can fill those gaps, right?
Can rise to -- but then, of course, you know, the sad fact for them, right, is that they could be the next target.
DEAN: Right. Absolutely. Jim, I do want you to stay with us.
I want to bring in Colonel Leighton if he's still with us. I did have a question for him, too, to talk about, as Jim was just getting at, the U.S. role in a moment just like this, Colonel? And what role the U.S. might be playing in protecting Israel as something like this is happening?
LEIGHTON: Jessica, so one of the key things (INAUDIBLE).
DEAN: I don't think we have his mic. Jim, let's go back to you. We can talk about that, too, because you were getting at that. But just the role that America is playing just in terms of not just right now in what we're looking at on the screen. But just how in lockstep, side by side, simultaneously going through this operation, executing this operation with Israel?
SCIUTTO: To the best of our knowledge, there was some division of labor here and that Israel had focused more on eliminating senior leadership. The U.S. focus appeared to be other targets inside the country, military and otherwise. Also air defenses. Right? The first wave would have been to take out the air defenses so that they could open clear a pathway for other weapons systems to get in.
[15:50:04]
To my knowledge, the initial strikes were concentrated with standoff weaponry. Sea launched Tomahawk cruise missiles, TLAMs, as they're known. But also, we know the first combat use of one-way drones. It's known as the LUCAS system. That is a -- that's an acronym for Low-Cost Unmanned Combat Aerial System, which, and this is really interesting, Jessica, was reverse engineered from Iranian-made and manufactured and designed Shahed drones fired by Russia on Ukraine.
DEAN: Wow.
SCIUTTO: So Ukrainians retrieved them. The U.S. reverse engineered them, and now they're firing that weaponry back at Iran.
DEAN: Jim, amazing. Jim, I'm going to -- stay with us. We want to go to the Israeli ambassador to the U.N., who I believe is speaking right now and taking questions. Let's listen.
DANNY DANNON, ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO UNITED NATIONS: And understand that the time for the Iranian people to take control of the future is very soon. Thank you.
UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Mr. Ambassador, Mr. Ambassador, thank you.
DEAN: Well, not taking a ton of questions there, Danny Danon, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. We caught just the tail end of what he was saying. So we will play that and try to hear exactly what he was saying. But the breaking news right now continues to be that the ayatollah has been killed in these strikes, led by the U.S. and Israel. They happened this morning. Again, the president, President Trump, we know, was given a suite of
options in terms of what he wanted to do militarily. And it appears that he chose a very robust option which included killing the Iran's supreme leader and also others who were likely killed in that attack, as well, as Jim Sciutto was just talking about, the division of labor. To the best of our understanding, Israel focusing on targeting leaders in that strike, the U.S. focusing on the air support.
I believe Colonel Leighton is back with us now.
Colonel Leighton, Jim Sciutto and I just talking about the U.S.- Israeli relationship in all of this, the division of labor in this strike this morning. What stands out to you about how they're working together and also to how that might continue as this develops?
LEIGHTON: Yes, Jessica, one of the key aspects of this, in addition to what Jim was mentioning, is the way in which they handle threats like this. So these are some of the Iranian missiles that would be threatening Israel. In fact, they can not only threaten Israel, but they can go all the way into Central Europe and of course, the Indian subcontinent.
But what's critical about this is when you look at exactly what the U.S. can do in a -- in a particular case like this, if they have their vessels like the Gerald R. Ford stationed just off the Israeli coast, they can provide an air defense shield. So you have the Israeli air defense system, which is basically designed to protect against these kinds of missiles, but it can't do it all alone.
And especially when it gets overwhelmed by these kinds of things the Aegis systems, the Aegis radar systems that are based on the ships that are part of the carrier strike group are the ones that come in, and then they provide that extra radar picture. So there's the radar picture. There's an intelligence feed. There are series of different collateral feeds that come in, and they basically determine where and when these missiles are going to hit their targets.
So when these missiles come in and strike a target in Israel, there is a whole lot of activity that goes on both within on the radar side as well as on the intelligence side to determine exactly where that missile is going to fall and how to activate and which part of the air defense system to activate in a case like that.
So you've got the division of labor when it comes to going into the air campaign, where they actually go in and determine which types of targets they strike, but also the division of labor when it comes to defending Israel from these incoming missiles.
DEAN: And Cedric, in terms of what we can expect next, we've seen this wave of strikes, again, what you're looking at on the left side of your screen happened or what you were looking at was just a few moments ago. You would anticipate, but we don't know but that the U.S. and Israel would be prepared to continue striking if they needed to and that is the question now is what is the next military step.
LEIGHTON: Yes. So this is going to be critical. One of the key things that they're going to have to do is basically protect Israel. That's going to be the big thing that they -- that they have to do in this particular case. And so they're going to wait and see how much the Iranians are actually going to throw in the direction of Israel or other targets, because it's not just Israel that they're concerned about.
[15:55:00]
There's a potential that countries like Saudi Arabia or the other Gulf States could be hit by some of these missiles as well.
And so each one of these is really a critical element, Jessica, in determining how much of a military footprint we leave in this region and really how much we end up doing because we have all these bases in the Persian Gulf area, and these bases, of course, are critical not only to our national security interests, but also the interests of all the countries along this side of the Persian Gulf.
DEAN: Yes. It also shows you just, you know, how many of our service members are there in that region and how close they are physically to Iran.
Cedric, stay with us. Thank you so much.
I do want to bring in Joe Cirincione. He is a nuclear weapons policy expert, the vice chair of the Board of Directors for the Center for International Policy.
Joe, thank you so much for being here with us. One of the objectives that obviously the administration is after here is an end to Iran's nuclear program. And now we have this news from Israeli sources. They say they can confirm the death of the supreme leader.
What might that mean for the nuclear program? Obviously, we've been talking about there is -- there are many people that can now fill that void. But what might that mean when it comes to the nuclear program?
JOE CIRINCIONE, NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT: Well, the supreme leader is a leader, but he's not actually supreme. As many of your guests have pointed out, this is a revolutionary system in Iran that is very deep and very broad. And they have been planning for a succession plan. The revolution -- the supreme leader is seven years older than President Trump. He's an old man. He wasn't going to be around much longer anyway. So it's not clear that this makes much difference to the government itself.
And even if it does destabilize the clerical regime, the real power in Iran is the one million strong Revolutionary Guard militia and the 200,000 person strong Revolutionary Guard. These people aren't going anywhere, and they're ready to keep the government propped up.
With the nuclear program, you know, this strike might actually accelerate the program. The lesson that Iran and other countries might draw from this is if you want to protect yourself from attack by the United States, you better have a nuclear weapon. The countries that haven't had nuclear weapons have been attacked by the United States, Libya, Iraq, Venezuela, for that matter, and now Iran.
Those with nuclear weapons, North Korea, China, have not been attacked. So although the attacks will set back the program, you may be building up a demand that Iran get a nuclear bomb as soon as possible. And since there is still a quite large supply of 60 percent enriched uranium in the country and functioning centrifuges, Iran might be racing to enrich that uranium to bomb grade, which they could do in a matter of weeks. We just don't know.
DEAN: Well, that was my question to you is, with that uranium and the functioning centrifuge, what happens to that now? And as you're saying, you don't know, but it does exist there.
CIRINCIONE: Yes, it does. And so it's -- so it's possible. And this was the fear after the June strikes. Remember when the president said he had obliterated the program, many of us and experts on CNN as well reported, but, no, you really haven't. You set it back, you've heard it. But internal intelligence assessments by the Trump administration itself showed that they still had a capability.
And in fact, one of the justifications for going to war is that Iran hadn't given up the desire to enrich uranium. So we don't know what's happened to that material. We don't know how many centrifuges are there but it doesn't take a big facility to do this. With the amount of enriched uranium, the 60 percent of uranium, and they have, oh, let's see, is about 600 pounds worth of that uranium. 420 kilograms of that uranium.
That's enough material for 10 nuclear devices and it would only take a few hundred centrifuges. They have thousands of centrifuges originally. We don't know whether centrifuges are. We don't know where the enriched uranium is. Still a risk, still a danger.
DEAN: All right. So certainly more to come.
Joe, thank you so much for your analysis there. We really appreciate it.
CIRINCIONE: My pleasure. Thank you, Jessica.
DEAN: Thank you.
ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.
DEAN: Israeli sources confirming to CNN Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is dead. One source saying Israel obtained photographic evidence showing the supreme leader's dead body.
Take a look at the scene over Tel Aviv just a few moments ago. You will hear the air raid sirens blaring. Missiles have been launched toward Israel throughout the day. This --
