00:00Well, four days into a war that Donald Trump suggests will last several weeks, but perhaps longer.
00:05Israel is stepping up airstrikes on Iranian missile launchers and factories,
00:10while Iran is continuing its retaliatory attacks against Israel and across the Gulf region.
00:16The pace of the attacks, though, appears to be slowing, and Israel has intercepted most of the incoming fire.
00:21But some missiles have landed, killing 11 people in Iran.
00:25Nearly 800 have lost their lives.
00:27Well, a little earlier, the U.S. president claimed that most of Tehran's military installations had now been knocked out.
00:35And just a few minutes ago, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio took questions from reporters.
00:43What's about to, you know, you're about to see, you know, we're going to unleash Chiang on these people in
00:47the next few hours and days.
00:49You're going to really begin to perceive a change in the scope and in the intensity of these attacks
00:53as, frankly, the two most powerful air forces in the world take apart this terroristic regime and defang it
01:00and take away its ability to threaten its neighbors or hide behind a zone of immunity that allows them to
01:05develop their nuclear ambitions.
01:07This terroristic, radical, cleric-led regime cannot be ever allowed to have nuclear weapons.
01:15We saw what they were willing to do to their own people.
01:18They were willing to slaughter their own people in the streets.
01:21Imagine what they would do to us.
01:24Well, for more, let's course live now to Fraser Jackson.
01:26He's our correspondent in Washington.
01:29Fraser, widening the scope according to Marco Rubio there.
01:33But the U.S. still doesn't seem to have any firm plan for Iran.
01:37Donald Trump earlier admitting that whoever emerges to run the country after the war
01:41might be just as bad as those who came before.
01:44What more do we know about what exactly might happen next?
01:50Yeah, it's basically kind of been yo-yoing the last couple of days.
01:54It's been kind of hard to get any real straight answers out of the administration.
01:58They will say that they've been very forward in what their objectives for this mission are.
02:05But they're not really holding much water.
02:08We've heard from Caroline Levitt and other officials in the last day or so
02:12who said that the aims of this are to destroy Iran's missile firing capabilities
02:20and their production capabilities as well as their navy and the infrastructure around that
02:24and to ensure that Iran never has a nuclear weapon.
02:27Well, Donald Trump today said that they basically destroyed all of the infrastructure.
02:31So if that is true, then this operation, which he says could last up to a month or maybe five
02:38weeks,
02:39should really kind of be coming towards a close if they have already destroyed all of that infrastructure.
02:44But of course, these attacks are continuing and Iran still is firing many drones,
02:49a lot of neighbours in the region as well.
02:52When it comes to what happens next, that is still a massive question mark.
02:58The US says that they had various plans for who was going to be taking over from Khamenei once he
03:05was eliminated.
03:06But Donald Trump said that the strikes initially were so successful that it actually eliminated the second and third choice
03:13for who would be taking over from Khamenei.
03:16So it's now unclear to them who will be taking over.
03:19He was asked about the possibility of Reza Pahlavi taking over as some kind of figure within Iran,
03:27who, of course, is the son of the deposed Shah from the 1979 revolution,
03:31who's been living here in the United States.
03:33He said not really.
03:35He wanted to see someone from inside the country.
03:37But then he also was asked what the worst case scenario would be about that.
03:41And he said, I guess the worst case scenario would be we do this
03:45and then somebody takes over who's as bad as the previous person.
03:48That could happen.
03:49We don't want that to happen.
03:50It would probably be the worst.
03:52He said, you'll go through this and then in five years you'll realise that you've put somebody in who is
03:56no better.
03:57So we'd like to see somebody in there that's going to bring it back for the people.
04:00But again, no idea as to who that person is right now.
04:04So the actual future for Iran and what the day after these strikes looks like
04:08is still very vague when you speak to the American government.
04:12And Fraser, Donald Trump earlier denying as well that Israel had forced him into this attack.
04:18His senior national security advisers, they're spending much of today, making the case to Congress for the war.
04:24Just how much pressure is the administration coming under here to justify this conflict?
04:33Well, it's because of the comments from Marco Rubio, the National Security Advisor and also the Secretary of State,
04:38that Donald Trump had to say that in the first place.
04:4024 hours ago, Rubio said that effectively what had happened was the Israelis had told the Americans
04:46they'd be moving forward with a strike.
04:48And then the US decided that they needed to strike Iran before Iran could strike them back
04:53and cause significant damage to their assets in the region.
04:56So that led to a lot of speculation online and in the press that it was effectively the Israelis
05:03strong army in the US into this operation, saying that we're going,
05:07so you better decide whether you're coming or not, that the US then got on board.
05:12Well, Donald Trump pushed back on that narrative in the White House earlier,
05:15saying that it was actually the other way around.
05:17And it was Trump that had forced the Israelis' hands,
05:19which is, of course, a very Trumpian stance to take on things,
05:22that it was actually not true and actually the opposite was true.
05:26Well, now Marco Rubio, just before he went in to address members of Congress
05:30as to what is happening in Iran, is now following that White House line,
05:35going against what he'd said 24 hours previously,
05:37and now saying that it was because of the American movement and American intelligence
05:43that Israel then decided to start these attacks.
05:47Donald Trump also continuing the line that they believe Iran was posing an imminent threat
05:52to the United States and its assets, saying,
05:55I think they were going to attack first, and I didn't want that to happen.
05:58So, if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand.
06:01But, of course, we've heard from many analysts who are not believing that,
06:07that the Iranians were preparing some kind of attack on the Americans.
06:11But the Americans certainly are using that at the moment as a justification
06:16as to why these strikes were launched in the first place.
06:19The plot thickens, Fraser.
06:20Thanks so much for that.
06:21That's our Washington correspondent, Fraser Jackson.
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