richard engle is in erbil, iraq, with more. >> reporter: good morning. from a wetter bill, things are looking better than last night. last night we could hear the attack. this is one of two locations targeted. a base here housing american personnel targeted by those iranian ballistic missiles and a base in western iraq. now according to the iraqi government, no indication so far that there were any iraqi or american casualties. iran is making a big deal of this saying this was its decisive revenge that this was the response for the american killing of its top general. trans saying t it. that it is over but we're waiting to see how president trump will react with statements coming up later this morning. back to you in the bay area. >> indeed, richard, everyone waiting to see what will happen in washington. >>> now after an incident like this, security on the minds of people here at home including bay area agencies across the spectrum. "today in the bay's" bob redell working on that part of the story. good morning. >> reporter: good morning, scott. we have

who knew we wanted those days to come back. >> richard engle reporting for us in iraq. richard, thank you very much. >>> joining me now is the secretary of state, mike pompeo. secretary pompeo, welcome back to "meet the press," sir. >> good morning, chuck, it's good to be with you this morning. >> let me start with the shooting -- the strike against soleimani, the killing of him. he's been a threat to the united states, to u.s. interests for years. why now? why was it urgent this week? >> chuck, you've captured it. we've all known about qasem soleimani for a long time. he's been a terrorist. he's a designated terrorist. he's someone who's inflicted many deaths on americans, over 600 in iraq and countless other places. he was even connected to what happened in beirut so many years ago. you would know this too, chuck. this was different. in the sense of we had seen recent deaths, reason killing on december 27th, a strike, an operation conducted by hezbollah, orchestrated by soleimani himself, killed an american. we could see he was continuing down this path, that there wer

who knew we wanted those days to come back. >> richard engle reporting for us in iraq. richard, thank you very much. >>> joining me now is the secretary of state, mike pompeo. secretary pompeo, welcome back to "meet the press," sir. >> good morning, chuck, it's good to be with you this morning. >> let me start with the shooting -- the strike against soleimani, the killing of him. he's been a threat to the united states, to u.s. interests for years. why now? why was it urgent this week? >> chuck, you've captured it. we've all known about qasem soleimani for a long time. he's been a terrorist. he's a designated terrorist. he's someone who's inflicted many deaths on americans, over 600 in iraq and countless other places. he was even connected to what happened in beirut so many years ago. you would know this too, chuck. this was different. we've seen recent deaths, recent killing. on december 27th a strike, an operation conducted by hezbollah, orchestrated by soleimani himself killed an american. we could see he was continuing down this path, that there were in fact plots t

let's go first to richard engle. richard, you have been covering iraq and the middle east more than 20 years. help us understand the memo. >> reporter: first a little news. you mention a stampede at qassem soleimani's funeral. the death toll is 50 with over 200 injured. a serious incident. here in iraq we're trying to figure out, iraqi leaders are trying to figure out what the united states is doing, what is the future of the u.s. presence here. you have to look at what the country has been through over the last 20 years or so. in 2003, u.s. troops rolls in here, they turned over the government, overturned the government of saddam hussein, brought in a democratically elected system, and u.s. troop presence has been more or less consistent since then. there was a brief period when u.s. troops left and this country collapsed into chaos. parts of the country fell to isis control, and u.s. troops rushed back in. now we are at another inflection point. there are growing calls for u.s. troops to be kicked out of the country

i'm going to get to our chief foreign correspondent, richard engle in northern iraq. richard, you tweeted this yesterday, that the middle east is a mess. you have been following the region for decades. tell us what you're seeing today that is so disturbing. >> reporter: so let's start with iran. you're seeing the biggest demonstrations in iran in decades, the biggest mass mobilization of people since the funeral of the islamic republic founder, ayatollah khomeini. this is a seminal moment. there were demonstrations in iran against the government, a lot of young people out on the streets, they were met with a violent response. now you're seeing iranians, young and old, uniting behind the republic. so if the president and this administration wanted to isolating iran, try to convince people to go out on the streets, that seems to have back fired. here in iraq, we're seeing a movement to drive u.s. forces out of this country, particularly from shi'a militia groups. you saw that vote in parliament by shi'a members of parliament to ask the government to kick out the roughly

. >> let's go to richard engle in iraq. i want to ask you if anything has changed in iraq on the ground but also ask you about how people are feeling about the iranians' intentions here. intelligence sources of mine, and i know we've been talking about this on our air, have said that if the iranians wanted to hit something, they know how. they have that capability. they proved it when they hit the saudi oil fields a few months back. this did not hit anything. is there a feeling like more could be coming? is iraq breathing a sigh of relief? what are you hearing? >> reporter: so a little bit of all of that, frankly. there are those including a senior iraqi official i just spoke to who are breathing a sigh of relief that we lived through the night, that the u.s. and iran aren't going into a conventional war at the moment. there were reports last night that were flying around that some sort of u.s. response was in progress, that aircraft had been leaving from the persian gulf and were on their way to attack iran. it turned out

tom: stephen engle, thank you so much. richard haass with the council on foreign relations with us.on this. richard: this is a situation that has worked well for four decades. it has been finessed, no solution on it. i am getting a little bit uneasy. you see people in the congress trying to increase the intensity of the u.s.-taiwan relationship but you have questions about the u.s.. after what happened with the redline in syria and what we did with the kurds, what we're doing with south korea and japan, holding them hostage over the bilateral agreement, people in taiwan are getting uneasy about the assurances from us. they see what is going on in hong kong and get nervous and the mainland is getting impatient. it is not a crisis but i would call this a precrisis. this is something people worry about, geopolitical risk. this is anything but solved despite the progress of the last four decades. thatine: is there a danger china handles hong kong with more of a heavy hand? richard: absolutely. --na will allow hong kong but they will not allow it to get out of control. they are more worr