BREAKING DAY 4: Israel Hacked Iran's Traffic Cameras to Track Movements of Key Leaders Before Strike

Hello and welcome to this special YouTube live program from CBN's Jerusalem Bureau. I'm Chris Mitchell and I'm here with Middle East correspondent Joshua Swanson and Paul Petit. We'll have Paul Petit in the field reporting on what's happening here on the ground in just a bit. But first, there are some breaking news things happening here in the region.

Actually groundbreaking news here in the Middle East. For example, the Hezbollah front has opened up. The IDF is striking Hezbollah targets in Southern Lebanon. The Iraq Iran border is being softened up for perhaps the inclusion of the Kurdish Kurds into the war with Iran. Qatar is reportedly attacking or had attacked Iran. Saudi Arabia may attack in the next 24 hours. These are

all reports, preliminary reports we're just hearing. Also, we've heard of a bombing of leaders in Iran that were gathering to elect the next Supreme Leader and Israel hit that building. This is all breaking news. We're going to have more of that, but first, here's our report from earlier today.

The conflict between Israel and Iran continues to expand. It's a three minute package. Okay. I don't think I need this now. The American forces and diplomatic sites now directly in the crosshairs Iran hit the US Embassy in Saudi Arabia's capital of Riyadh with a drone strike early Tuesday

Causing what Saudi Arabia's Defense Ministry described as a limited fire and minor damage It followed an attack the day before on the US Embassy in Kuwait Signaling a widening Iranian response across the region. Iran has attacked targets in a number of other nations, including energy facilities in Saudi Arabia and Qatar. It's also claimed to have closed the Strait of Hormuz, where 20 percent of the world's

oil is shipped. The United States and Israel are intensifying airstrikes inside Iran. President Donald Trump suggested this may only be the beginning of a sustained campaign that could last more than a month. In an interview with the New York Post, Trump refused to rule out sending American troops into Iran if they were necessary.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. knew Israel was about to strike and joined in a preemptive strike to prevent higher U.S. casualties from an Iranian retaliation. He also said the attack was necessary. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel had no choice, calling the threat from Iran urgent.

After we hit their nuclear sites and their ballistic missiles program, you'd think they learned a lesson. But they didn't, because they're unreformable. So they started building new sites, new places, underground bunkers that would make their ballistic missile program and their atomic bomb program immune within months.

Trump also said that the largest phase of strikes is still ahead. We haven't even started hitting them hard.

The big wave hasn't even happened. The big one is still ahead. We haven't even started hitting them hard. The big wave

hasn't even happened. The big one is coming soon." The human toll is rising. U.S. military officials confirmed that six American service members have been killed in the first three days of the war, including troops killed in an Iranian strike on a base housing American forces in Kuwait. At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth was asked by a CBN reporter about praying for U.S. forces.

As you've said, there are a large amount of U.S. service members that are in harm's way right now. What is your prayer for them?

I know we think about them with every decision that we make and every recommendation that we make to the President of the United States. Those recommendations are made prayerfully and when I pray every day for them and for this mission. I pray simply for the

biblical wisdom to see what is right

and the courage to do it.

The U.S. State Department is urging Americans to immediately depart from more than a dozen Middle Eastern countries, including Israel, as the conflict deepens. With American forces now engaged, evacuation warnings in place and leaders signaling that more strikes are coming, the Middle East stands on the edge.

Joshua Swanson, CBNit, you know, I just got back here last Friday, just literally 24 hours before the war began. You came before me and you came from the US. And what, what an amazing time we have had in the last four days since, since Saturday, literally historic. Some people say biblical things happening. What strikes

you here today? The latest news coming out of this war. Today, the latest news coming out of this war. Yeah. Did you, I'm uh, Paul, I didn't hear what you said.

Okay.

Sounds like we're having audio issues.

Okay.

Okay. So as I was saying earlier today, we have a number of developments throughout the Middle East that seem to be snowballing. And as I told Gordon on the 700 Club just a few minutes ago, a new Middle East is emerging. One of those things is in Southern Lebanon right now. You guys got a water meter on that stuff. Hezbollah was, was actually

fired some rockets and what they did, somebody is calling it assisted suicide. They wanted to join the battle against Iran. And what the IDF is doing, what Israel is doing is taking a massive campaign to try to eliminate Hezbollah, reduce it to a shadow of what it was was. And it already was a shadow, but this could actually change Hezbollah like it had been, never had been for years.

So that's one of the developments. The other one, we understand that Israel is actually attacking sites along the Iraqi-Iranian border. And the consequences of that, the impact, the significance of that is that actually could prepare the way for Kurds in Iraq to actually, and they armed in there, the Peshmerga, the military for the Kurdish people, could actually help perhaps some of the protesters fighting the IRGC and other...

Okay, we have Paul now. I just want to... Paul, I just repeat what I said. I came here Saturday, Friday, just 24 hours before the war began, and here we are four days into the war. This is a historic development in the Middle East, I think probably one of the most important since I've came here in 2000,

almost 26 years ago. Tell us what your impressions are and what you think may be

some of the biggest developments today. Well, certainly, you know, when air raid sirens are going off every 20 minutes daily from last three days, that's something as an American coming here to Israel, you're not used to dealing with the reverberating sound from what they call Home Command, which is an app that you put on your iPhone.

And then in addition to that, you have the sirens going off outside. So it's rather nerve-wracking because you don't know what's going to happen, when it's going to happen, where it's going to head. And you know this barrage will continue, and it has continued. It started Saturday, both in Tel Aviv and Beshemesh, and it's expanded even into today, Chris.

Paul, Chris just mentioned while we were fixing the audio issue, he talked about what's going on up in the north. Hezbollah is now in the war officially. And so are you seeing any rockets coming over from Hezbollah? What's going on on the ground in terms of Israel and missiles striking in the last 12 to 24 hours?

Well, yeah, well, starting with Israel, we know that ballistic missiles hit in central Israel as well as near Tel Aviv. And the latest numbers show 12 injured in that strike in central Israel and then another seven sustained near Tel Aviv. And search and rescue teams are still on the ground. And prayerfully, thankfully, no fatalities were reported there.

Now if you move over to Hezbollah or to the northern region of Israel, Hezbollah fired rockets early this morning. It hit a home, a residential home, directed and somehow again family members were lightly injured.

They rushed into a shelter and also rockets and drones throughout northern Israel and also towards and drones throughout Northern Israel and also towards a military site in Haifa. So that's been the extent of today. This is on top of the pictures that you're looking at now,

which is Beit Shemesh, where nine people died there and more than two dozen injured. And then of course, Tel Aviv earlier on Saturday and one person died there. So it's really remarkabl and think about it and th

that have been shot. I wa earlier and these are var the new source that you l 200 missiles from Iran sho vary, but about 90 99% of When you think about all

talking about here, that there's only been 10 deaths so far, certainly a blessing. And that's certainly showing, you know, God's hand in this, in this brutal conflict that's going on right now.

Yeah.

Paul, there's been reports that the UAE and Qatar actually running out of anti-missile

defenses.

What are you hearing? Yeah, both countries were saying they're down to a point of being about perhaps one week's worth left of these missiles. So they're appealing to the US to step up. So what's interesting here is that that is the fact. And I know you've got some new information on what's going on there. You know, this conflict that was pretty much between Israel and Iran, and then of course, Lebanon with Hezbollah.

But when the retaliation from Iran, when they began hitting all these different Gulf states, I believe up to nine of them, it turned into a much wider regional conflict that now, as you mentioned, UAE, Qatar being involved, Oman, which was actually in the negotiations,

was one of the victimized countries as well, Oman, I should say. So when you put all this together, it's really turning much wider, which could mean, of course, that the US has to expand its firepower

and help these countries that may be running out of missiles.

Paul, what about Khomeini? Khomeini is dead. That leaves a huge power vacuum. I mean, for the last 47 years, the Ayatollahs have been in charge. And of course, Khomeini has been the power source of evil for the Middle East, and he's had a huge influence on all the different proxies, Hamas, Hezbollah. What happens next with this power vacuum?

Well, that's, you know, everybody's guess, but what we do know is that bombs or drop missiles were hit and up to close to 48 leaders, this is from over the weekend, were hit in attacks and killed. That included the Ministry of Defense, that included the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard dead in those attacks, as well as you mentioned, the Ayatollah, so what happens next?

Well, this regime has an amazing capacity to regurgitate itself or re-perpetrate itself, bring back people that are just as radical as the one before, and that's what we might be dealing with because right now they've appointed this council of three, and then from one of those, perhaps a new leader,

a new Ayatollah, leading candidate from the reports that we see is a person named Arafi. And his, I'm not gonna full name here, but could be, yeah, Arafi. And he is somebody that is described as yet another radical, right?

Another one who is gonna continue to perpetrate the propaganda machine that they have there. He's an exporter of that, has been another Shiite with radical views and he's basically been marinated in this regime ideology his entire career. So again, it's gonna be one of these cat and mouse things.

They name a new leader and then of, of course, U.S. Iran retaliates, try to wipe them out physically, get them off the map. And then the regime again, who's the next leader? Who's the next leader? So this may, in fact, continue itself well into the near future.

Yeah. Hey, Paul, final question. You know, the shot you we you have there, there's a hotel behind you. We understand there's maybe 30 people in that hotel. The traffic is way down. Give a sense to the people that are listening and watching, maybe people in the U.S. or wherever they may be, what is it like here in Israel during this war?

Yeah, you know, your job is and basically your command to buy the state of Israel when that sirens go off, when your home command phone delivers that resounding message, that alarm you're supposed to seek cover. Most of these buildings around me that you see all have a basement, all have a bomb shelter that you go to. And I know that Joshua can speak to this. He has a rather unique one in his more than 20-story building in the center of it all. So everybody's supposed to take cover. When you're trying to go about your life normally, whether it be school, whether it be work, whatever else, you hear that, you've got to take cover. It's hard to do. It's hard to live a normal life. You're in and out of these shelters daily.

And, you know, last night we had a pretty restful evening, which was rare. First time we've had that since Saturday with no sirens going off. And again, this morning it all started with the reports that I just mentioned now.

And so it's nerve wracking that you're dealing with this on a daily basis. And the result of that, you know, this is Russia right now, and you can't see below me, but this will be filled with cars and buses going back and forth. It's very quiet, not quite as quiet as Shabak, but pretty close to it. And for that on a Monday evening, that's extremely, extremely rare. It speaks to exactly the kind of situation that we're under here, Chris.

Yeah. Thanks, Paul.

Great to be with you. You bet.

Well, for those of you back home who want to participate, we've got something really special. Operation Blessing, which is a part of our CBN family, has been on the ground doing work, relief work in Armenia. And now they're actually preparing to help refugees coming in and out of Iran. They're preparing supplies, they're preparing counseling. They're also preparing to spread the gospel. So we just put up a graphic on our screen, there's a QR code there if you want to shoot that with your phone.

It'll take you to a landing page where you'll learn a little bit more about it. Of course, there's also a button below if you're watching us on YouTube Live. You can scroll down and there's a way for you to participate and donate. And just know that this is really the heart of our organization is to give. You know, prayer is at the center of our organization. Preparing the way of the Lord and Operation Blessing has been right there to do just that, to allow us a way to be the hands and feet.

So if you would consider participating, go ahead and shoot that QR code or check out the link below to donate. And then Chris, I wanted to go over something that came on the news rolls that was pretty incredible, blew my mind. So we all know how special Israeli intelligence is. Well, the reports are out today that they hacked nearly all the traffic cameras in Tehran years ago. They've been encrypting and transmitting those images and that data back to Israel.

One camera even provided a critical angle that gave a closely guarded compound near a street called Pastor Street, which we now know, of course, was the location of Khamenei's meeting place with all of his leaders. And that is how, that's one of the sources of how the Israeli intelligence were able to take out Khamenei. The quote from one of the officials, and this is wild, he said, we knew Tehran like we know Jerusalem,

as well as you know the streets that you grew up on. That's how much information that they had that they were transmitting. Chris, this, this reminds me of, I mean, this reminds me of the pagers, right? In Hezbollah, I mean, I'm just blown away by these guys.

There was also years ago, there was a program that called Stuxnex, where they actually got into the centrifuges and they hacked the centrifuges where they would spin so fast, they would destroy themselves. And that's one example, but I think there's gonna be a book

or books written about the the way that Mossad has infiltrated the The whole infrastructure of the Iranian leadership and the Iranian way of life just a few years ago There was another time when the Mossad went in and stole Nuclear secrets from from an Iranian neighborhood and got them out. It just, I

mean, this is the spy stuff that movies are going to be made of, books are going to be written about.

Well, and I don't have the patience, right? Like, like the pagers, they waited until the perfect moment when Hezbollah declared war and that they were, they were coming in, like it escalated and they waited for the perfect moment. And here again, it seems like this intelligence was key and Israel deciding it had to go in right now and the US realizing, well, we gotta go with you. And here we are.

I mean, we're at regime change. We could be right at a historic moment, a transition of power and hopefully peace in the Middle East for the first time in 50 years.

Yeah, and following up in the Middle East for the first time in 50 years.

Yeah, and following up on Paul's report, you know, and this story that's just coming out now, that in Qom, where the leaders were gathering to elect the next supreme leader, that Israel bombed it. So you wonder how, if this is that next tier of leaders that was going to elect the next supreme leader, who's going to be left? Yeah. They keep bombing the IOGC headquarters and we'll get more, I'm sure, information about this.

So this is a major development. Major development. Well,

at some point when you go down enough layers of leadership, somebody's going to be like, you know what? Yeah. It's not worth it. Yeah. It's not worth it. It's not worth it.

Well, maybe that will be when this whole plea for immunity kicks in by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. And they're thinking, well, the game's over.

Historic times, historic times.

And I wanna go over just a little bit of more what I had mentioned before. This Hezbollah front is very significant. As his name is Amit Segal, he's a well-known Israeli journalist. He said maybe this was Hezbollah committing assisted suicide because they hit, they hit Israel, which, which gave the permission, so to speak, for the IDF to go in and they're hitting Hezbollah very, very hard right now. The other thing, the Iraqi Iranian border, there was bombing up there that could allow

the Kurds to come into this conflict. And then Qatar presumably has attacked Iran. Saudi Arabia may attack in the next 24 hours. This is a new Middle East.

Well, to that point about Qatar, I mean, you never would have guessed that Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait would all rally against Iran. To the point not only where they're in a defensive posture, but now they're going to attack. They really must be running out of missiles and they're going, hey, we've got to, we got to get in this fight or else it could be critical for us. Yeah. So much going on.

Yeah.

Amazing, historic times. Well, for those of you watching at home, again, just a reminder, check out Operation Blessing, the link's below. Of course, follow us on our YouTube channel, follow us on all of our socials.

Chris, we like to end every one of these broadcasts with prayer. So, I think we should definitely do that. See, I beat you to it. This time I beat you to it.

Well, then you want to start?

You want me to start?

Okay, sure.

I'll start.

Heavenly Father, Hallowed be Your Name. Father, just, Lord, we're grateful for what is to come. We're looking to the future and we're hopeful of transition and change. We're hopeful of peace and light to come into Iran and to free these people. Lord, we just ask for your protection over our military, both the IDF and the U.S. military. We ask for your protection over the Qatari military and the Saudi military

and all the different groups that are now going against this Iranian dictatorship. Lord, we pray for a transition. And we pray, Father, for the innocent civilians that are in the middle of this, Lord. Lord, that is... Lord, we just... we pray for protection over them, that you would step in and cover them in this time of transition, Father. And we pray for a quick resolution to all of this, Lord.

No more death and destruction, no more war. We pray for a quick resolution to all of this, Lord. No more death and destruction, no more war. We pray for a quick resolution, Father. We pray this all in Yeshua's name.

Father, we pray, and we have met some of the Iranian underground leaders, and we pray for them during this crisis that you would use them as your hands, your heart, to the people of Iran where they can, to their neighbors, to spread the good news. We pray for the many ministries that are preparing right now. I can think of Heart for Iran and Transform Iran,

what CBN is doing. We pray that you would use these ministries as they prepare to take the Gospel into Iran and we pray that there would be hearts ready. We pray for Operation Blessing and the work that it's doing. We pray that you would help them just be all that you want them to be during this time of crisis for people in need.

And Father, we want to bless and pray for each and every one watching, that you'd keep them safe, help them fulfill your purpose and plan for their lives. And we ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Amen. So thanks so much for joining us for this YouTube live. I think we're on day four now of this war between the US, Israel, and Iran, and now many of the other nations in the Middle East. So for Joshua Schwantz and I'm Chris Mitchell, and for all of us here in the Jerusalem Bureau,

So for Joshua Schwantz and I'm Chris Mitchell, and for all of us here in the Jerusalem Bureau, God bless from Jerusalem.