'Mission creep'? Signs Israel's objectives in Iran are shifting

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00:00We can now go across to Catherine Nordstrand, standing by in Tel Aviv.

00:03Catherine, Israel says its two goals in this conflict with Iran is to take out Tehran's nuclear and missile capabilities.

00:14But since last week, we've been hearing about regime change.

00:18And then overnight, we had the U.S. president who put out a post on Truth Social.

00:22So has that now become a part of the objectives here?

00:25It's interesting, isn't it, when you look at the stated objectives at the beginning of Israel's military offensive,

00:35which it launched against Iranian sites on the 13th of June, and then you look at what is being said and done now,

00:41there does seem to have been a certain extent of mission creep.

00:45Some people pointing out to the fact that today we heard that Israeli forces bombed the gates of even prison,

00:54known to be home to political prisoners, and also the headquarters of the Basiji,

01:00basically the paramilitary branch of the Revolutionary Guards, who are known to crack down on opposition.

01:05So perhaps the aim of those strikes was to try and foment opposition to the Iranian government in place.

01:15We've also had statements, notably from the defense minister, Israel Katz,

01:20who said that the supreme leader cannot continue to exist.

01:25Benjamin Netanyahu himself has refused to rule out assassinating Khamenei, the supreme leader,

01:33but he's also said in a press conference last night that he doesn't want to get dragged into a long war of attrition with Iran.

01:40So there are some conflicting messages.

01:42When you look at the strikes, and when I've been in briefings with military officials from the Israeli army,

01:49they say that they also are taking out targets who are hostile to Israel and who pose an existential threat.

01:57So that could be a bit of a wider definition remains to be seen what form that will take.

02:03And of course, Donald Trump posting on social media, why not take this opportunity to, quote, make Iran great again?

02:11The White House has walked back on that somewhat, saying that the U.S. remains open to diplomacy.

02:17But that's certainly raised a lot of eyebrows about whether the ultimate goal is regime change.

02:21Yeah, because last week we had the U.S. President Donald Trump, who said,

02:25we know where the supreme leader is, he's safe, but for now.

02:29So, again, keeping that door open.

02:31I'm curious, Catherine, how has Iran responded towards Israel following the U.S. strikes over the weekend?

02:40Well, the missile salvos from Iran have continued.

02:47Following the news that broke overnight at the weekend that the U.S. had bombed nuclear targets inside Iran,

02:55we saw a pretty fierce firing of missiles from Iran into Israeli airspace, some of which got through.

03:05And we saw the massive damage for ourselves in a northern suburb of Tel Aviv.

03:10Overnight, there was another missile fired over it.

03:13It appeared to be just one Israeli missile, according to Israeli military sources, which would be quite unusual.

03:19We usually get salvos of a few between five and up to 30 or even 45 on a particularly fierce day.

03:26So people are trying to read into the fact that why was only one missile fired?

03:30Is this a new strategy? Does it mean anything about military supplies?

03:33I think it's too early to say.

03:35But we've had alerts in Israel and very dramatic picture of at least one missile getting through this morning in Ashdod,

03:45which is to the south of Tel Aviv.

03:47It was captured by a dash cam on a driver's car as they were driving through that area.

03:54And the explosion goes off just beside the road.

03:57So you can see just how big the impacts are on why they're causing damage when they hit in residential areas.

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