0:03

Israel promises retaliation for an Iranian missile

0:05

attack. Missile defenses blocked most incoming fire,

0:07

but the attack killed at least one

0:09

person. It's a deadly cycle the world

0:12

has seen before. The White House says

0:14

Israel has its full support. I'm Steve Inskeep

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with Michelle Martin, and this is Up First

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my own belief is that we should fight about

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Walz faced questions about how he's described his

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at amazonbusiness.com. Israel's

2:21

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to

2:23

punish Iran for a missile assault on

2:25

Israel last night. Iran fired about 180

2:29

ballistic missiles, according to the Israeli

2:31

military, sending millions of people across

2:33

Israel into bomb shelters. NPR's

2:35

Hadil El-Shelchi is with us now from

2:37

Tel Aviv. Hadil, good morning. Good

2:40

morning. So what was it like last night? So

2:43

it really all started around 5 p.m.

2:45

local time. We heard through the news

2:47

that the U.S. warned Israel about an

2:49

imminent Iranian threat. And then very quickly

2:51

after the Israeli military confirmed that news,

2:53

the streets here in Tel Aviv fell

2:55

eerily quiet. And then a couple of

2:57

hours later, this is what it sounded

2:59

like. Air

3:03

raid sirens wailed across the country. And

3:05

then we heard loud booms and the

3:07

night sky lit up with orbs of

3:10

light, many of which exploded into smoke.

3:12

And that was, of course, the work

3:14

of Israel's powerful air defense system, blowing

3:16

up the missiles before they hit the

3:18

earth. Luckily, in Israel, we have many

3:20

bomb shelters across the cities and inside

3:22

homes now. So many people were able

3:25

to take shelter. And while the Israeli

3:27

occupied West Bank and Gaza weren't the

3:29

targets of this attack, the vast majority

3:31

of Palestinians in those areas don't have

3:33

specialized shelters. And the one

3:36

confirmed death was in the West Bank.

3:39

So Hadil, you know, in the last few weeks,

3:41

we've been saying tensions are rising in the Middle

3:43

East. We keep saying that over and over again.

3:45

But this sounds like a major escalation. Why don't

3:47

you remind us of how we got here? For

3:49

sure. So I'm going to take you all

3:52

the way back to October 8th. That's really

3:54

when it started. Hezbollah began trading fire with

3:56

Israel on the Israeli-Lebanese border. But then it

3:58

got really bad. a couple

4:00

of weeks ago, Israel unleashed a much

4:02

larger campaign on Lebanon, and

4:05

that included a pager and walkie-talkie

4:07

explosion operation, and then airstrikes on

4:09

Beirut that killed more than a

4:11

thousand people, including the head of

4:13

Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah, which was a

4:15

huge blow not only to the

4:17

group, but also its funder Iran.

4:19

So Iran claimed that yesterday's missile

4:21

attack was in response to that

4:23

assassination. And if you go even

4:25

earlier this year, in

4:27

April, an Israeli strike killed several

4:30

leaders of Iran's military in Syria. So

4:32

Iran attacked Israel then also with more

4:34

than 300 drones and missiles, but almost

4:36

all of those were intercepted. So what

4:38

have we heard from Israeli and American

4:40

officials so far? Right. So

4:43

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came out and

4:45

spoke last night, and he had a

4:47

stern warning for his neighbors. Whoever

4:49

attacks, we will attack them, Netanyahu said, and

4:51

then he went

4:56

on to name Iran, Syria, Lebanon,

4:58

and the West Bank. He also

5:00

thanked the US for its support.

5:02

American naval destroyers had shot down

5:05

missiles with Israel, and the President

5:07

Biden also spoke later, reiterating the

5:09

US's commitment to its ally. Make

5:11

no mistake, the United States is

5:14

fully, fully, fully supportive of Israel.

5:16

Biden's national security advisor, Jake Sullivan, also

5:18

spoke, and he said that the US

5:21

made it clear that, quote, there will

5:23

be consequences, severe consequences for this

5:25

attack. And he said that the US

5:27

will work with Israel to make

5:29

that the case. What might we expect

5:32

next? So there's been

5:34

a lot of rhetoric from all sides.

5:36

Yesterday, Iranian mission to the United Nations

5:38

said its action were, quote, duly carried

5:41

out. But then it said that if

5:43

Israel retaliated, there would be a, quote,

5:45

quote, crushing response. And we seem to be in this

5:48

spiral of escalation. I don't want to speculate

5:50

too much here, but it seems like we're

5:53

getting closer to that wider regional war we've

5:55

been talking about for about a year. That

5:57

is NPR's Hadil Al-Shawshi. Hadil, thank you.