00:00And in the last minutes, Israel's military saying it continues to attack targets inside of Iranian territories.
00:09We're joined by France 24 senior correspondent Catherine Norris-Trent.
00:13We just spoke with former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who, although in opposition, says this operation will go on as long as it takes.
00:22An operation that was planned a long time in advance.
00:28Yeah, that's right.
00:29I've just been speaking with a former Mossad official, and they said that basically this was probably years in the planning, because when you get down to some of the details, this wasn't just some 200 aircraft, including fighter jets, firing at all these targets, which in itself would take a great deal of coordination.
00:49This actually involved covert Mossad and Israeli intelligence operations in the ground.
00:55So what they did is they took in explosive drones by vehicles into Iran.
01:00We don't know exactly when.
01:02We don't know exactly how many.
01:03But there's kind of shades of the Ukrainian Operation Spider's Web.
01:07They infiltrated Iranian territory.
01:10And they had these explosive drones in there, which just prior or simultaneously to the airstrikes, we haven't got an exact timeline.
01:18They went ahead and hit Iran's air defense system, some of their ballistic missile launching systems, taking those out.
01:27A lot of them.
01:27We don't know to what extent exactly.
01:29But damage was done, is what the Israeli intelligence official was telling me.
01:35So that basically cleared the skies for the Israeli warplanes to go ahead and bomb their targets.
01:42And it's also interesting to see now how much damage that did in terms of how Iran can respond.
01:49Now, they probably have more launchers capable of firing ballistic missiles back at Israel, but we don't know how many.
01:57And the speculation that that is why the immediate response from Iran was to send up these drones, these UAVs, around 100 of them, to attack Israel, rather than immediately firing back ballistic missiles.
02:10Because to some extent, that capacity has been damaged.
02:14So it will be really very interesting to see what details we can get on this covert operation involving Mossad commandos putting explosive drones on vehicles and getting them to strategic sites, a kind of base in Iran, to target defense systems there.
02:31And we have heard from the head of the UN's nuclear watchdog that there is not, at this point, radiation leaking from the Natan site, the biggest nuclear site.
02:43Inside of Iran, we know at least one of the big nuclear installations has not yet been hit or has not been hit.
02:53So we can presume, perhaps, that there are going to be a lot more of these strikes?
02:59This would tally with what I was hearing from an Israeli military source earlier in the day in a briefing there, and again, according to this Mossad official, that this is an ongoing operation.
03:10This could take days.
03:11This is not a wave of attacks that we've seen in the past that will take one day and then be over.
03:17That's not what people are expecting here.
03:20They say that there could be waves and waves of these strikes.
03:23And politicians saying, look, this will take as long as it takes.
03:26But they've been preparing the population in Israel, saying, look, we are going to be asking you to get down to the shelters again, because this is an operation which is going to take some time.
03:37And the former Mossad official that I was speaking to said that they wouldn't necessarily call this an attack.
03:42They would call it a war simply because they do expect it to take days.
03:48And so, yeah, it's ongoing because we know there are a number of Iranian nuclear production sites which have not been hit.
03:55And clearly that is one of the aims, the Israeli aims here, is to take out Iran's nuclear program.
04:01To what extent they can do that without using the American bunker-busting bombs, which it's not clear they have used as yet.
04:08We don't have confirmation on that.
04:10We don't know.
04:11But they're clearly gearing up for more waves of strikes.
04:14And time will tell whether the Israelis used U.S. intelligence for all of this.
04:20Right.
04:20So, so far they're saying these preemptive strikes were 100% Israeli.
04:25But that may be in terms of the military side.
04:28What about the other cooperation, including intelligence and analysis and things like that?
04:34It's not clear at this point.
04:36The U.S. has been seeking to distance itself from that.
04:40And Israel would perhaps like the U.S. to get more involved and get their backing to get into this scenario, this potential war, as we're seeing here.
04:51The U.S. at the moment, while clearly not condemning Israel at the moment, saying that they weren't involved.
04:57But we don't know exactly about the information, the intelligence sharing.
05:01All right.
05:02And the U.S., which, according to our correspondent, Fraser Jackson, is still for now expecting to show up Sunday for nuclear talks.
05:10With Iran.
05:11We'll see if that happens.
05:12Yeah, that's a huge question as well.
05:14Will Iran want to actually take part in diplomacy or will they try and save face at this stage?
05:19Catherine Norris.
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