00:00The FBI has warned police departments in California that it is possibly going to face
00:06retaliatory strikes from Iran. What more do we know?
00:10So the timing of this seems to coincide, Leanne. Good evening, I should say, to start off with,
00:15with when the Iran war broke out. So we're talking about the end of February here. And
00:21these reports that at the moment I haven't been able to verify, I don't know if Al Arabi
00:26are being reported on ABC News in the States, claim that the Iranians were aspiring to use
00:35unnamed, unmarked vessels off the west coast of the United States mainland and fire what
00:42are being described as aerial vehicles. So I'm presuming from that some sort of missiles
00:48across into the state of California. Now, clearly, if this had happened or if there was
00:55intelligence to pinpoint a specific attack, this would be significant intelligence. But
01:02at the moment, as far as I can tell from what I've read, this was just a warning from Homeland
01:07Security to be vigilant rather than about a specific attack. But I think it speaks to the
01:12kind of heightened tensions between the two nations just before the war broke out. And
01:17I think it also is an indication of some of the thinking that will have been going on in
01:22the Pentagon and also in the White House about exactly when they should launch an attack in
01:27Iran. Because as we've been discussing on this programme for several months now, it has certainly
01:31been on the table for a period of time. There's been growing concerns about erratic behaviour from
01:36within Iran, not least against their own people in January, when tens of thousands of Iranian
01:42citizens were slaughtered, shot in the face, in the head by their own regime. So, you know,
01:48as I said, these are early reports, I haven't been able to identify them. If an attack had
01:53landed successfully on American soil, you know, you can imagine the implications of that. I'm
01:58thinking of 9-11, the last time something like that happened. But at the moment, this is about
02:03being vigilant rather than anything in particular.
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