i want to bring in now former fbi agent clint watts. can i get your reaction to this news, and what are you going to be watching for in the coming hours here. >> i think the first thing we're going to be looking is is there any evidence at all we can discern. these are locations you're not going to have a lot of media and access. i think a key point is what do we know about the attack? you'll see both sides posturing trying to scale these things down. at the same time, they did have to do something. the israelis felt for their government they had to do something to respond, so really trying to parse out what was the actual damage of an attack, how severe was it, what was the scale of it. were they trying to -- was the israeli government trying to retaliate and hit a target important to them, that being the natanz facility, for example. a key point everyone is trying to understand is what's the level they can push for. iran was trying to push towards their own domestic audience about their retaliation even though it was not successful ip

i'll bring it in with national security analyst clint watts. clint, let me talk about something we've gotten. this is from a netanyahu aid. we are told we may report this. that an israeli government official in the prime minister's office has said no decision was made. exactly what israel will do. the idf will need to present options, and here's the quote. it is clear that israel will respond. a second israeli aid to another member of the war cabinet has said no one wants to see an escalation, and that is a very delegate time right now. but the statement it is clear that israel will respond. how could you see that playing out given the big picture here? given the warnings and admonitions and the suggestions, however you want to put it from the president and allies in the region to ask for calm and to deescalate what's happening. what might happen in light of a response? >> reporter: yeah. alex, it's a different tradeoff for israel versus what iran did overnight. iran is responding to the loss of three commanders. for israel, why did they go afte

national security analyst for nbc news and msnbc, clint watts.ty correspondent for "the new york times," pulitzer prize winner david sanger, the author of "new cold wars: china's rise, russia's invasion, and america's struggle to defend the west." timely, timely book. david ignatius, let's start with you. i'd love to get an overview of what happened over the weekend. i'm curious your thoughts on the world support, the regional support, the significance of the collective action led by the u.s. to intercept the pretty massive attack by iran into israel and how much that shows that this support for israel is so key to israel's survival. >> mika, as senior administration officials describe it, the meeting saturday night in the situation room, in the basement of the white house, as officials, including president biden, waited to see what would happen when iran had launched this wave of 300 missiles, including 100 ballistic missiles, which took 12 minutes by their count to fly to israel, as they waited to see whether those missiles would land and do da