Transcription
action overnight by the US. Meantime, Egypt says that a fire at its Mediterranean port of Damietta was caused by a drone. Now, this is the first time Egyptian infrastructure has been hit. Um, Elani with us following this part of this narrative. Um, this will of course be fueling fears of a broadening war. Are those fears merited at this point?
Yeah, I mean this is what my sources are telling me and industry experts. I was alerted to this late last night uh Dubai time and there was shock in the industry that Egypt and Dameta port was targeted. It is a crucial uh port for Egypt. It is strategic. It has an LNG terminal. It is on the Mediterranean and then initially it was a fire that erupted on the Energos winter which is uh a fuel storage unit as well as a rec gasification unit. That fire then spread onto the gas log uh vessel as well. And you can see some of the images um of the fire as well as the smoke. Egyptian authorities extinguished this fire and then confirming today that indeed it was a drone strike.
Now my sources tell me that we don't know where this comes from. There is major concerns around the source of this drone. But if this is now a true expansion that extends beyond the straight of Hermuz and the attacks that we've seen in the Red Sea now heading towards Mediterranean ports, it really poses the question around hostility that is expanding and then drawing Egypt into this. And importantly, um, it's energy infrastructure again, Becky. And it basically mimics and it has the hallmarks of what we've been seeing since the start of the war to try and [ __ ] economies not only in the Gulf region, but also now bording it to the wider Middle East and even Mediterranean ports uh in terms of impacting a country like Egypt.
We know that these two vessels were quickly pulled out by tugboats. They're now idling in the Mediterranean according to Kepler. Uh and now Egypt needs to make, you know, some kind of plan, contingency plan. These fuel storage units were brought in to deal with the high energy demand for Egypt over the summer period. Um the risk assessments right now by shippers, they don't know what this means, but they're wondering if this is a once off or whether this is a true escalation that's now broadened uh to other ports.
Right. You are up to date, Ellen. Thank you for that. you're up to date both from Washington and indeed uh from the wider perspective in the region. More of course as we get it. At the same time, Iranian media say explosions were heard across the south of the country. The US says it carried out powerful attacks on military command centers and on drone facilities. Well, Pakistan, which played a mediating role in last month's US Iran agreement, says it is trying everything it can to revive negotiations.
Kevin Liptac at the White House. Um, we are getting uh the latest on the overnight US strikes on Iran from SenCom. What are they saying? They're describing this as a heavy wave of retaliatory attacks for those attempted strikes uh by Iran on US positions that happened uh two days ago. What Sentcom says they targeted were military command centers, missile and drone facilities, coastal surveillance and defense sites, and maritime uh capabilities. They say that these were were all uh targets of the IRGC. And they were quote aimed to further diminish threats posed by Iran and its proxies to American forces, commercial shipping, and neighboring Gulf countries.
This does seem to stop short of the full-scale return to war that we know President Trump uh has been considering and that he's received options for and you have seen how the US military has been bolstering forces in the region in uh the occasion that the president decides to go in that direction. But uh before the strikes began last night, the president described this as more of a tit for tat. He said it was the US's turn to strike Iran after Iran struck its positions uh in the region. And he even suggested that those Iranian strikes were the result of miscommunications between different factions uh in the Iranian regime. He said that the group of uh officials that the US was attempting diplomacy with had in fact apologized. And so how the president plans to proceed from here I think at this point uh remains clear. But it is uh evident that this war is in fact expanding even at a moment that he's trying uh to wind it down.
You have what's happening in Egypt. You also have now the Saudis uh joining in on these strikes uh against the Iranbacked militias uh inside of Iraq. Uh yesterday we had the uh Saudi defense minister Khaled bin Salman here at the White House meeting both with the vice president JD Vance but also with President Trump. It was an unannounced visit. It went somewhat under the radar, but I think a very important discussion as the president tries to gain the insights of partners in the region about where exactly they see this heading.
The war with Iran is now expanding across the Middle East. Egypt now confirms that it has come under attack for the first time since the war began. And just yesterday, US Central Command said that Saudi Arabian forces joined American forces in conducting joint strikes against Iranbacked terrorist sites in Iraq. Overnight, Sentcom says it conducted a new wave of strikes across Iran. They say it was in response to Iranian attacks on US forces. The strikes were forecasted by President Trump earlier who said it was who said from the Oval Office that it was quote unquote our turn. The question now is, how many more turns will there be before any negotiations to end this war start back up in a real way again?
Joining me right now is CNN national security analyst Beth Beth Sanner. It's good to see you, Beth. Egypt, Saudi Arabia, they're now involved in this thing. What does this mean for the war?
Well, I don't think Egypt is involved yet, which is really an important kind of nuance here is is that the Iranians or we don't actually know who struck a US LNG uh facility. It's not exactly a facility, a platform in Egypt. Egypt hasn't responded. Uh and I don't think they will. I'm not sure Iran wanted Iran I don't think they wanted Egypt to respond but this is part of a potential kind of horizontal and vertical escalation of what's going on right that we're seeing more territory horizontally more geography involved but most of it is aimed at US and then also Saudi um assets and but the kinds of assets are also changing so we're seeing this vertical escal ation in terms of not just US military bases but also this kind of logistics or energy facilities. And so we are seeing an escalation now. And and and again today Iran has responded with attacks on Jordan and Kuwait. And so we're we're seeing this tip for tat Kate. And you know there's some big questions here because there's got to be an offramp at some point. But the president now is deciding. Yeah. Up or down.
Saudi Yeah, exactly. The Saudi Arabian foreign minister, he met with the US after the joint strikes were conducted and and the kingdom's assessment, according to sources CNN is reporting, is that Iran will seek to create leverage through escalation and will continue trying to use pro-Iranian militias in Iraq and Yemen's Houthis to do so. And I read that thinking two straight weeks of nightly strikes by the United States did not bring Iran to the table. And then you have kind of this declaration of they want to the assessment is they are going to escalate in order to g gain themselves leverage. What does this do? It kind of gets us back to the same question is like what's the offramp? It's really difficult to say and I think that this is something that you know all of us who are watching this closely have been saying for weeks now is that um there doesn't seem to be a very clear offramp. someone has got to basically uh I don't want to say capitulate but has got to stop in order to get the negotiations back but it takes two to tango and I think what Iran is showing that you know they escalated during the pause right so we had this pause and then they did this surprise attack on Jordan I think it was purposeful uh I think it was to send a message that they It happened when the president was meeting with Netanyahu in the oval office and it happened when there are these discussions about what's going to happen to the straight of Hormuz and I think Iran is showing very clearly they have very clear red line on control of the straight of Hormuz huge leverage. Uh the Saudi Houthi issue is a slightly separate uh obviously connected, but the Houthis also have their own problem with the Saudis in terms of a blockade um on Yemen that they are they want broken. So now it's all coming together and in a couple hours we're going to see the head of the Houthis give a press conference and at that press conference they're going to threaten to escalate some more against the United States which they have not yet. It's only been Saudi but if the United States resumes full-scale war against Iran the Houthis say they're coming in and they're going to block the Bob Elmandeb straight for everyone not just Saudi ships. So again, more escalation is in the picture. It sure seems that way. Beth, it's great to see you.