US launches nearly 900 strikes on Iran in RARE daytime operation

A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran. We are facing an act of aggression, and, my God, oh, my God. Oh, OK, OK.

We've been hit. We've been hit. Go back!

Go back! No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no. History unfolding in the Middle East. The US and Israel carrying out an unprecedented military operation crippling Tehran's leadership by taking out Iran's supreme leader along with dozens of other top officials.

The devastating blow to Iran's Islamic regime, a result of one of the largest military operations in the history of modern warfare with 900 US strikes in just 12 hours using two aircraft carriers, three destroyers and B2 stealth bombers in striking at least 500 Iranian targets.

We've already seen dozens of US military bases targeted with retaliatory strikes as Iran vows revenge.

President Trump urging Iran not to return fire or face quote, force that has never been seen before.

The sentiment for Iranian Americans across the globe, elation, celebrations erupting after the strikes came down in what could be the best hope for relief from the Islamic regime's reign in decades. We begin this morning with Jennifer Griffin to walk us through this history-making mission.

And good morning, Jennifer. It's really quite remarkable when you look at the total package.

GRIFFIN, very remarkable, but also a complicated picture emerging this morning. The Iranian leadership that did survive, and there are a few leaders that did survive, the president, as well as Ali Larijani, who is very powerful in Iran, have threatened the U.S. and threatened to attack 27 U.S. bases across the Middle East. And we have been seeing a lot of those missiles flying into neighboring countries. A mob also tried to storm the U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

And Pakistani security forces used batons to push back an angry crowd threatening the U.S. consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. Both Iraq and Pakistan, of course, have large Shia Muslim populations. And British Defense Secretary John Healey said two missiles had been fired towards Cyprus, where the British army has service members stationed. In Tehran, following the announcement of the supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, there

were spontaneous outbursts of celebration on the one hand, but also some crowds chanting today in downtown Tehran, Death to America. Not clear if these were spontaneous or organized protests, but you can assume that the remnants of the regime and the IRGC will want to present a united front, suggesting that the regime will survive. The man to watch is Ali Larijani, the head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council.

He just gave an interview in which he described the killing of Ali Khamenei as extremely painful, threatening revenge, quote, the United States and the Zionists have burned the heart of the Iranian people, and we will burn their hearts. Meantime, Iran managed to fire more than 300 missiles at the UAE, where the U.S. has a military base at al-Dafra, about the same number as it fired toward Israel. Actually, about 100 ballistic missiles were fired toward Israel yesterday, according to

the IDF. So this was actually more missiles fired at UAE. Iran has expanded its response, even firing missiles at Oman, which tried that last minute—tried to negotiate that last-minute nuclear deal and avoid war. Qatar received about 65 Iranian missiles since yesterday and Bahrain approximately 35. And explosions have been heard in eastern Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, today. Israel, meantime,

has increased its airstrikes and says it will now target Iran's nuclear facilities, and just moments ago hit the headquarters of the IRGC and barracks in Tehran. That is where the massacre of last month's Iranian protesters was organized and carried out. Smoke has been seen rising from near Iran's state broadcasting facility in Tehran. And in terms of the U.S. operation yesterday, the U.S. military, we learned, carried out 900 strikes in 12 hours.

Ten to 15 senior leaders of the Iranian government and military were killed in that Israeli strike on Ali Khamenei's compound. Multiple sources tell me that the start of the operation, the joint operation, had to be moved up based on intelligence and this target of opportunity, a meeting at Khamenei's compound. Quote, there was a deliberate decision to accelerate the timeline. That is why the U.S. and Israel took the unusual decision to strike during the daytime to achieve

the element of surprise and to target this meeting. Normally, the U.S. military would not launch an operation like this during the day. The meeting accelerated the timeline, I'm told. This was a massive, wildly bold daytime attack, a senior U.S. defense official told me. It caught the senior leadership off guard and Saturday — on a Saturday morning during Ramadan and on Shabbat in the daytime. We hit the senior leaders

right out of the gate, I was told. But some survived, including, as I mentioned, Ali Larajani, the man to watch, and Iran's president, who issued a statement just moments ago.

Griff?

Yeah, and, Jennifer, you mentioned what we're watching, what Larijani will do now. And I think we have focused so much on the IRGC, but would Larijani possibly try and go after or try to activate the Basij? People haven't talked much about the Basij, and it's important to understand that is a strong militia that could be sympathetic to the IRGC within Iran.

Absolutely. The Basij are like the internal police, the state police that are really very vicious and were responsible for a lot of the killing of those 32,000 protesters who were killed in December and January in Iran. The besieger is still a factor.

Remember, we've talked about this in the past, but in the early days of the Iraq War, a lot of those security forces just took off their uniforms and floated away, and then reorganized and came back and began carrying out terror attacks. Now, the difference this time is the U.S. will not be—will not be occupying Iran. They don't have ground forces that are going in, so there won't be any targets inside Iran.

But those basij and the paranoia that's been created over decades of theocracy and state control and authoritarianism in Iran is going to make—it may be one of theocracy and state control and authoritarianism in Iran, is going to make—it may be one of the reasons you're not seeing people come out quite in the large numbers that you might expect after such strikes on their behalf. But I think people are scared, and they have a right to be scared, that they were slaughtered in the last two months. So what you're also likely to see, Griff, is the IRGC launch, through proxies, through

sleeper cells around the world, targets of opportunity. They tend to fight asymmetrically with terror attacks. And that is what I would expect to see, assassinations, terror attacks. But it won't happen immediately. It will be when we let down our guard. And I think the strategy right now, from what I am observing, is that Iran is firing missiles

at all of the states surrounding in the region, all of the states that host U.S. military bases, trying to create so much chaos that there's maybe pressure at the U.N. or elsewhere calling for a stop to the war. And if they think they can just survive these initial strikes and then regroup, that is their strategy at this point. But I'm not sure it's going to work, because it's really mobilized.

All those strikes on UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia has just mobilized those nations to prepare to engage Iran at this time.

Jennifer, there's been a lot of people commenting at the level of intel that the US and especially Israel had prior to this attack, that it's really been impressive. So they've taken out this leadership. You talk about the leaders that are left behind based on the intel that they have. We do they think that this B team or I don't know maybe this is the C team

that's left behind. Are they do they have the ability the authority the capacity to to do what the team was could do. I'm just curious if if that was taken into account. Like, why weren't they also taken out? And then also this security,

this special security forces

that you and Griff were talking about. Well, I think, first of all, Ali Larashani would be part of the A-team. So some of the A-team did survive. And that is what's dangerous in these kind of strikes. Ali Larajani would be part of the A-team. So some of the A-team did survive. And that is what's dangerous in these kind of strikes.

We've seen with Hezbollah and elsewhere that there are usually follow-on strikes, and usually the person who moves up in the rankings, they then have the bullseye on their back. Obviously, the U.S. and Israel have excellent, excellent intelligence. This could not have been carried out without human intelligence on the U.S. and Israel have excellent, excellent intelligence. This could not have been carried out without human intelligence on the ground. They've been mapping these sites that they targeted for months, if not years.

But in terms of the human intelligence that would have led to knowing that a meeting was taking place of 10 to 15 top leaders, I mean, you can't underestimate the impact, and also the impact of killing Ali Khamenei, who is the spiritual leader. That was, you know, literally, as Ali Larajani said, a knife in the heart of those who followed him.

So, this was a very significant strike. It is not over. And there are still remaining leaders. And certainly, they are going to be very careful about how they move around. But as soon as the U.S. and Israel can suppress the air defense systems, and they're in the process of doing that, they're going to have a lot easier time than flying their air forces

over Iranian territory. And then it becomes a lot harder for those leaders to hide. But that is still a few days off, I'm told. And in terms of the besiege, in terms of the IRGC, I mean, you're talking thousands of people who are in—if not 150,000 people who are in those security forces and who are believers, true believers, and who are willing to die, and suicide bombers

and what have you, that is very hard to target. You can target their headquarters. You can target their leadership. But this is complicated. And remember, there are a lot of allies in Iraq. Iraq has a lot of Shia militias.

We just heard that some of them have fired some missiles at some of the neighboring states as well, and they also are firing at a U.S. base in Erbil right now. So this is very complicated. There are Shia Muslims around the world who—there are many who will celebrate the end—if this, in fact, is the end of the theocracy in Iran, many of those people who went into exile, the dissidents who left after the Shah's regime fell, but there are also many who supported that regime

and believe that this was a strike on Shia Islam.

Jennifer Griffin, great reporting, last 24 hours especially.

Thank you.

Indeed.

Thank you. Okay, now to Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst, live in Tel Aviv. Good morning, Trey. What is going on there now?

Yeah, hey guys, good morning. Throughout the morning, we've heard air raid sirens sounding across Israel's second largest city. The Iranians still trying to respond. In the distance, you can still hear some of those car alarms going off after those incoming missiles were intercepted overhead. We are getting some new video from the Israelis who launched a fresh round of strikes into the heart of Tehran this morning, going after a very specific building.

Exclusively, an Israeli intelligence official tells Fox News that the building you see blown up here in the Iranian capital was used by the IRGC as a command center during the demonstrations earlier this year as a place to order the crackdown against protesters. This official says that the specific location was used to command the massacring of protesters. Again, though, the Iranians have been responding over the past 24 hours. Overnight, we arrived at a scene of a direct missile impact here in Tel Aviv.

A building was completely destroyed and for blocks there was damage just due to the blast radius from this explosion. One woman was killed in that building. Another woman nearby died running to a shelter. And when you step back here and you look at the amount of air defense that's being used to shoot down these missiles, it's not easy for the Israelis.

But so far, they have been quite successful. We do know Ali Larajani, the Supreme National Security Council leader in Iran, is threatening to renew strikes on Israel and regional countries, saying that Iran fired missiles at the United States and Israel yesterday, and today we will hit them with a force they have never experienced before. Well, President Trump is hearing those threats directly and warning the Iranian regime to stand down. The president posting to True Social overnight saying Iran just stated

that they are going to hit very hard today, harder than they have ever been hit before. They better not do that, however, because if they do we will hit them with a force that has never been seen before. The region waiting to see what comes next. The exchange of fire continues here on the ground and the majority of the Israeli population, 10 million people spending most of the day in bomb shelters.

Guys, Trey, you know, obviously nobody has covered this more closely than on the ground than you have. Is there anything, what if anything have you been surprised by in terms of the response, not necessarily by Iran, but by Iran's allies and proxies?

Well, the Iranians are directly targeting not just Israeli civilian population centers, but also Gulf countries. There is significant damage in Qatar, in the UAE, in Bahrain, Kuwait. And it shows that the Iranians, as Jennifer put it yesterday, really miscalculated their response because now they are drawing in regional countries that maybe before were hesitant to allow the United States to use their airspace or even possibly directly participate in the

strikes against Iran. And so there's a lot of questions on the table about whether or not these countries will get more directly involved. The Emiratis today were warning that they will not tolerate these missile barrages against their countries.

And civilians are being injured in these Gulf countries, allies of the United States. And so that is certainly surprising. But when we look at these threats from the Iranian regime, it's almost as if they are not taking President Trump seriously. And we know that the Americans and the Israelis were working together to meticulously plan this operation that started with a series of airstrikes against Iran, decapitating the Iranian leadership.

They took out Iran's supreme leader and 40-plus senior officials in the Iranian regime and the IRGC, and yet still you have leaders like Ali Larajani from Iran's Supreme Council that are saying they're going to hit Israel and the United States even harder. And so this tough talk doesn't last long. We saw similar statements from Iran's Supreme Leader. He's now dead.

And so the president gave Iran a diplomatic off-ramp before this war began. He offered them an olive branch. He said we're willing to make concessions. I was on a background briefing with a high-ranking U.S. official yesterday who said we offered the Iranians so much, and yet they still were not willing to come to the table in good faith and make a reasonable nuclear deal. And that's not even to mention their ballistic missile program or their support of regional

proxies. And so what's left of the Iranian regime leadership, they're still threatening the United States

and Israel.

But Trey, isn't that the danger that at this point it's existential for Iran that, you know, they almost have nothing to lose or don't feel like they can go to the negotiation table and last as leaders there. I want you to answer that question. My other question is, given the fact that, you know, President Trump said this is only

going to last a couple of weeks, and that's what the hope was, does the fact that these other Persian Gulf countries, that they've been attacked attacked have had damage and also casualties does that increase the pressure on the American administration on the Trump administration to to take care of this quickly before it gets You know out of hand Great questions and I'll answer here in two parts The first question having to do with sort of the broader regional considerations. And look, the Iranians have the ability to launch ballistic missiles.

They have short-range ballistic missiles that they are now using to target these Gulf countries. They have drones. They have anti-ship missiles. We understand a tanker was hit in the Persian Gulf overnight. But despite these efforts, they have actually responded in a relatively weak way when you compare their response to the 12-day war.

They simply aren't able to launch these ballistic missiles in massive barrages that they could do before. And that is largely in part because the United States and Israel have worked together using their intelligence agencies to monitor the coast of Iran. They've had drones flying back and forth, watching to see if these ballistic missile launchers were going to pop out from underground positions, and then they're hammering them

with airstrikes. And so the Iranians are getting off what they can, but they can't sustain this for weeks. This is a matter of days before, first of all, there's air superiority over the entire country of Iran for the United States and Israel. But secondly, Iran's ability to launch large-scale ballistic missile attacks, which is largely seen as their biggest lever to pull. The other question has to do with these Gulf countries and the ability of them to respond.

It would not be surprising if they get more directly involved, but what we should note here is the trust that was developed in the region over the past year. We have heard from Gulf leaders speaking about the American administration in a way that they've not talked before about U.S. presidents. President Trump's been able to do something in the region using two of his most important members of the administration, his special envoy Steve Wyckoff and his son-in-law Jared

Kushner. And they've been able to use back channels to develop a new sense of trust among these Gulf partners. And that led to not only support for the ceasefire in Gaza, Board of Peace participation, but also close coordination as it relates to this war. And so we have to imagine these conversations are continuing each and every day.

And I've been talking with regional officials, diplomats in the Gulf, even as recently as yesterday, and they appear confident in President Trump's decision making and what will come next in this conflict.

All right.

I'll tell you this, Trey, if we see Emirati fighter jets striking targets in Tehran, that will be a game changer, to your point, about the allied Gulf region participation. Trey Yinks, live on the ground in Tel Aviv. Trey, great reporting. Trey, great reporting. As always, stay safe.