PBS News Hour - Full Show - June 22, 2025 – PBS News Weekend full episode

Episode Date: June 22, 2025

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Tonight on PBS News weekend, the United States strikes three nuclear sites in Iran and anxiously waits to see how Iran will respond. Then we discuss the scale and scope of the attacks and what's next with H.R. McMaster, National Security Advisor in President Trump's first term, and Kareem Sadatpur, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. And we get a first-hand account of the mounting desperation inside Gaza as Palestinians, including children, are killed while trying to get food aid. The level of children I've seen with wounds of war over five visits is unparalleled to anything I've seen in my two decades of this work. Every hospital is the sound of children screaming because of a severe lack of painkillers. Good evening. I'm John Yang. Tonight, the Middle East stands at a pivot point. The administration says Operation Midnight Hammer severely damaged or destroyed Iran's largest nuclear sites. In response, Iran says the time for diplomacy is over and hints at military retaliation against the United States,

even as more missiles from Iran strike Tel Aviv. Our coverage tonight begins with foreign affairs and defense correspondent, Nick Schifrin. The U.S.'s unprecedented direct attack on Iran began under the cover of darkness. A dozen B-2 bombers flew 30 hours, with multiple mid-air refueling, all under strict operational security, including a decoy. The bombers launched from Whiteman Air Force Base Friday night at midnight flying east. At the same time, B-2s also launched West, tracked on social media. But that was deliberate deception to allow the main bombers to fly to Iran undetected and alongside dozens of fighter jets target Iran's key nuclear enrichment sites at Natanz and Fordo

where thousands of advanced centrifuges spin hundreds of feet underground. For the first time in combat, the U.S. dropped 14, 30,000-pound massive ordinance penetrators designed to dig deep before exploding. This satellite image shows at least half a dozen precise. precise impact sites at Fordo, where bombs landed before exploding deep underground. A third target, Esfahan, believed to hold Iran's enriched uranium stockpile targeted by submarine-launched Tomahawk missiles. This operation was designed to severely degrade Iran's nuclear weapons infrastructure.

Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction. At the Pentagon today, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Cain and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegeseth called the mission limited and designed to convince Iran to negotiate. This mission was not and has not been about regime change. As the President has directed and made clear, this is most certainly not open-ended. There are both public and private messages being directly delivered to the Iranians in multiple channels, giving them every opportunity to come to the table.

But Foreign Minister Abbas Aranqi today said Iran had the no intention to sit down. Of course, the door for diplomacy should be always keep open, but this is not the case right now. My country has been under attack, under aggression, and we have to respond. This morning, Tel Aviv absorbed the brunt of Iran's response. Iranian ballistic missiles tore through these apartments. Nobody died, but dozens were wounded.

Iran could escalate further against Israel. or target U.S. bases across the region where some 40,000 troops are on high alert. In the past, Iran has tried to choke off global oil supplies, actions that would bring further U.S. military strikes. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio warned today. There are no planned military operations right now against Iran unless they mess around and they attack American or American interests, then they're going to have a problem. And Iran remains extremely vulnerable if the U.S. were to decide. to launch more attacks. U.S. military today said that despite sending dozens of B-2 bombers

and fighter jets into Iran, there was no evidence Iran fired a single shot at any of those planes, John. Nick, is there any assessment yet about how far this has set the Iran nuclear program back? Last night we heard from President Trump that the sites were, quote, totally obliterated. You heard a more calibrated description today in our piece from the chairman of the joint chiefs, Dan McCain saying that there was, quote, severe damage. Military officials tell me simply it's too early to have a proper battle damage assessment. But we do know one thing. Vice President Vance said today something interesting.

He acknowledged the U.S. did not target Iran's highly enriched uranium stockpile. That is held at least partially in Isfahan. You see some file video from Isfahan right there. That's essentially the fuel that Iran could use to build Iran if it decided to do so. Experts told me the tomahawks that struck that facility were not capable of actually getting underground enough to destroy that stockpile underneath. So we know for sure, at least part of the stockpile survived. Some experts believe, John, that this will convince Iran that once and for all it does need to go after weaponization of a nuclear for a nuclear bomb. But today, Rubio said if Iran made that decision, regime change would be back on the table.

Nick Schifrin, thank you very much. Thank you. And now for analysis of all this, we turn to retired Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster. He's a Hoover Institution Senior Fellow. He served as National Security Advisor during the first Trump administration, and he's got a new bookout. At war with ourselves, my tour of duty in the Trump White House. General McMaster, what's your assessment, initial assessment of this operation? Well, John, it was extraordinarily successful.

It was, of course, put together for a limited purpose, which is kind of the definition of a raid, which is a military operation with limited purpose, short duration, and planned withdrawal. And those three sites were struck successfully without, as the chairman said today, us not even be able to identify one shot against us. It indicates, you know, an extremely high degree of training and professionalism across all of our services to be able to do something like this, you know, halfway around the world. As you heard Secretary Rubio said, there's no plans for anything more, but the Iranians get a vote in this, too. What range of possible retaliation or response do you expect?

Well, John, Nick, covered some of those, but we know because they've done all of this to us in the past, right? We know they have a worldwide terrorist network that they could activate. Remember, in 92 and 94, in the attacks in Argentina, for example, assassinations around the world, including in Europe, assassination attempts in the United States. So it could activate that terrorist network. They could try to strike U.S. bases, U.S. personnel.

I think they would really pay an extremely high price if they do that. They may try to do it again, of course, through their proxies, the hostage shabbi militias, for example, in Iraq, or maybe the Houthis could launch missiles, maybe at U.S. locations or something like that. They have a range of shorter range missiles available to them. So they could strike U.S. bases using those missiles and maybe some drones. Or, as Nick mentioned, they could go after, as they did previously as well, you know, Saudi Arabian and other energy. and oil and gas infrastructure in the region. They could try to conduct cyber attacks. They did that against this, right, in 2007.

So I think that they will try to lash out in many of these ways, in many of these ways, because of the ideology of the regime and its permanent hostility, right, to the great Satan, you know, us and Israel, who they are determined to wipe off the map, which is why you couldn't allow that regime to have the most destructive weapons on earth. You mentioned short-range missiles. There are a number of bases that are near. nearby close to Iran, closer than Israel. Is there any security concerns about the U.S.

facilities and the U.S. troops? Yeah, there are, and I'm sure that those defensive measures are being taken. I think what we have to realize is that these are, you know, our servicemen and women are not waiting there to be victims, and they are part of an integrated joint force like you saw on display with this raid. You might recall when U.S. forces have been attacked in Syria, for example, the Russian mercenaries attacked those forces in 2018, and they got a heck of a lot more than they bargained for because you're not just attacking a little base.

You're attacking all of those joint capabilities, aircraft, long-range precision fires capabilities that are land-based that can be brought to bear in defense of our troops in those situations. General, you're familiar with the president's decision-making process. What do you make of the fact that he said he could take as much as two weeks to make a decision, and then it became sort of two days?

Well, you know, President Trump is not capricious with use of force. He doesn't want to do it. He always wants to get a deal, you know. And so I think it was just an 11th hour attempt for him to try to convince the Iranians to take the deal, which is no enrichment, dismantlement of their program. And then what he did, I'm sure what happened is he faced Iranian intransigence. Remember, as the Iranian foreign minister was meeting with counterparts at, European counterparts and the bellicose nature of the messaging associated with that.

And so I think this has, again, a lot to do with the ideology of this regime, which has as one of its features of permanent hostility to not only us and Israel, but also their Arab neighbors and really, you know, the rest of the world. I mean, this is a regime that is full of hatred and vitriol. And I think President Trump knew that, you know, the negotiations weren't going to get anywhere until he used force against this nuclear program. You heard Nick say that some analysts are saying this is proof to the Iranians that they need a nuclear deterrence. Is this something we might have to, the United States might have to do in several years in the future? No, well, it's possible, but I think it is an enduring

objective. It has been an enduring objective of multiple administrations to block Iran's path to a nuclear weapon. But previous administrations didn't do enough about it. it. And many of them diluted themselves. I mean, a lot of people were going back to the Iran nuclear deal, which was a fundamentally flawed agreement, John, because it just didn't have you had all the sunset clauses, it didn't have an adequate inspection and verification regime. And, of course, what it did is it gave Iran sanctions relief. They filled up their coffers. They strengthened their ring of fire around Israel, which they activated on October 7th, 2023, and they could continue their nuclear program in a clandestine manner.

That foredose site, there's a reason why it's 300 feet underground, and they try to keep it secret, is because they were continuing the nuclear program. And, of course, no country needs uranium enriched to 60 percent, right? Anything over 20 percent is for other than civilian purposes. And there are 23 countries around the world who have peaceful. nuclear programs and who don't enrich uranium. So it's clear what the Iranians were doing. I don't think you need, you know, a sophisticated, you know, intelligence, analytical approach to realize what Iran was doing. General H.R. McMaster, thank you very much.

Thanks, John. And now for more on how Iran could respond, Kareem Sadatpur, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Karim, Iran's foreign minister said a big red line has been crossed, and they have to respond. What do you think the range of responses they're considering is? As General McMaster said, they have numerous options. They can go after U.S. embassies and military outposts in the Middle East. They can try to go after oil installations throughout the Persian Gulf, block major trade routes like the trade of Hormuz. They could try to rain down more missiles on top of Israel.

The problem they have is that many of these options are like the tactical equivalent of a suicide bombing. They can do a lot of damage to their adversaries, but they may not survive that blowback. Is returning to the negotiating table a possibility, or is that just something they're not even considering? Well, eventually, I think they will get back to the negotiating table. The problem Iran has right now is they're in dire straits. It's a regime fighting for its life. It doesn't control its own airspace. It's led by an 86-year-old supreme leader, limited cognitive and physical bandwidth.

He's in a bunker. All of his top military commanders have been assassinated over the last two weeks. So the regime is in survival mode right now. You mentioned the top military commanders assassinated in the Israeli attacks. How is that affecting the decision-making or planning about a response? Well, you can only imagine how the chain of command has been disrupted. These men who were surrounding the leader for the last three decades, suddenly he woke up one day and most of them were eliminated.

And then he doesn't know that those around them, you know, who could potentially be compromised, be, you know, on the Israeli or the American payroll. So he's one of the loneliest men in the world right now. Do you think he's in survival mode or is he in defiance mode? Well, in some ways it's both because he is one of the longest-serving dictators in the world. ruling since 1989. So he has pretty good survival instincts. At the same time, his modus operandi has always been resistance, defiance.

When you're being pressured, never compromise because that will invite more pressure. So his survival instincts and his defiant instincts are in tension right now. Is there any sense of how the Iranian public is reacting to all of this? I think the Iranian public in many ways is torn because they're very patriotic population. they love their nation, but many Iranians also hate their regime and they blame the regime for consistently putting their ideological objectives ahead of the well-being of people. But what tends to happen is that people's existing views are accentuated.

So government supporters who are probably around 20% of society have more fodder to dislike America and Israel. And as I said, regime critics have even more reason to dislike the regime. Over the past year or so, we've seen tremendous changes in the region. with all the Iran's proxies sort of being dismantled. What's the current dynamic in the region now? How does Iran stand? Where does Israel stand? Where does the U.S. stand? Well, after the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003,

up until October 7, 2023, when Hamas invaded Israel, in some ways we can look back and say that was the Iran era, Iran's axis of resistance era in the Middle East. They were dominating five Arab lands, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Gaza through their proxy militias. They overreached on October 7th after the Hamas attack against Israel. Supreme Leader Khomein was the only leader in the world to endorse that attack, that attack. And I think we're now entering a post-Islamic Republic era in the Middle East, but who is going to fill that vacuum is still unclear. Do you agree with the analysts that Nick quoted saying that this is probably ironically going to convince the Supreme Leader that he needs a nuclear deterrent?

I don't think he's going to be, the leader is going to be around that much longer to make that decision. But I do think that whoever succeeds him as Iran's powerful leader will likely conclude that the country does need a nuclear weapon. You look at governments that have given up their nuclear program, Saddam Hussein, Gaddafi, Libya, Ukraine. They all made themselves vulnerable to external intervention. Who has a cloak of immunity, the North Koreans? Karim Sajyipur. Thank you very much. Thank you, John. In tonight's other news, there's been a shooting at a church in Michigan.

Details are still sketchy about the incident in Wayne, Michigan, which is about 30 miles outside of Detroit. Police say a security guard at Cross Point Church shot and killed a gunman who wounded one person in the leg while firing into the church. Dozens of people were injured after a yacht crash in New York City. About 400 people were aboard the party yacht Saturday when it hit a Hudson River dock in Upper Manhattan. Witnesses said some passengers slammed onto the deck at the moment of impact. 35 people were injured, many of them taken to the hospital. It's unclear what caused the crash. All public schools in Texas will soon be required to post the Ten Commandments in classrooms.

That's under a law that Governor Greg Abbott signed Saturday after it easily passed both chambers of the Republican-controlled Texas legislature. Supporters of the bill said it doesn't interfere with the separation of church and state because the Ten Commandments are part of the foundation of the United States. Critics argue displaying the Ten Commandments infringes on the religious rights of religious freedoms of others. On Friday, a federal appeals court struck down a similar law in Louisiana as unconstitutional. Fred Smith, the founder of FedEx, has died. Smith started the company that helped revolutionize how mail is delivered in 1973.

Back then, it only handled small packages and documents, but its popularity grew, especially in the business world. Today, FedEx ships an average of 17 million items each business day. Before launching FedEx, Smith served in the Marines, and while he also went to Yale Business School, he said the military taught him all he needed to know to make the company successful. Fred Smith was 80 years old. And if you've been outside in the eastern half of the country,

this won't be much news. The National Weather Service is the United States is experiencing an extremely dangerous heat wave. Sweeltering temperatures will spread from the Midwest to the East Coast with record highs predicted every day. Meteorologists are particularly concerned about the feels-like temperatures

which will hit triple digits beginning tomorrow. Still to come on PBS News Weekend, a firsthand account of how the devastating food crisis in Gaza is affecting children. This is PBS News Weekend, From the David M. Rubinstein studio at WETA in Washington, home of the PBS News Hour. Weeknights on PBS. While the world's attention is focused on Iran, Israel's war in Gaza continues.

Gaza health officials say Israeli strikes over the past 24 hours, killed 51 Palestinians, and wounded 104. In addition, Israel says it recovered the bodies of three hostages Hamas captured in the October 7th attempt. And as the fighting goes on, so does the humanitarian crisis. James Elder is global spokesman for UNICEF. James Elder, I know you're just back from having spent a little more than a week in Gaza. I'm curious, how did conditions compare with previous visits? John, somehow, the situation for Palestinians in Gaza has never been worse. Just this relentless bombardment, so people have been pushed to the very brink.

On top of that, the only way that water can be produced, distributed, treated is through fuel. There's been a hundred-day blockade of any fuel whatsoever coming into Gaza. Within two weeks, two weeks, we're going to see a complete lack of any drinking water. They cannot live without water. So that struck me heavily. Malnutrition rates, 100 children a day over the course of 2025. And I think, John, the level of children I've seen with wounds of war over five visits is unparalleled to anything I've seen in my two decades of this work.

I don't just see those injuries now. You hear them. Every hospital is the sound of children screaming because of a severe lack of painkillers. Any one of those children stand out in your memory? All of them, maybe two, particularly. One little boy who I met on the very first day, he sticks out, John, because he'd been given money to go and get bred by his father.

He saw people moving to one of these new aid distribution points. and the South, the limited ones, the militarised ones, and he thought this was his moment to bring back a box of food. Chaos ensured, quadcopter shooting. He was struck by tank shrapnel in his stomach. This boy connected with me because family wanted a video because they were desperately trying to get in the health care he needed, medical evacuation. He sat up through the pain to speak.

On my final day there, he succumbed to those injuries, and he died. He died trying to get food for his family, starving. This is happening more and more. People being shot, wounded, killed while trying to get aid, especially at sites being run by the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, which is backed by the Israelis and the U.S. Why is this happening and what can be done to prevent it? The only thing that can be done to prevent it is to return to what the world has known in crisis zones and war zones since World War II. It's humanitarian aid. Humanitarian aid is based on some simple principles but they are, work out what the needs are and go to where people are.

These points are militarised. There's a handful of them, three or four, only, only the strongest people get anything there. So this set up as it stands is making things much more desperate for civilians, not only because we've seen so many mass casualty events, but because it's trying to replace a tried and tested humanitarian system that, as I say, has worked since World War II. And most significantly, two months ago during a ceasefire, hostages go home, aid goes across the Gaza Strip.

We've got a little bit of sound I want to play for you. It's a Palestinian mother whose son was injured while trying to get aid. Do we send our children to death? No, we don't send them to their death. We send them to bring us food so that we do not die. No one is seeing us. The whole world is focused on Iran and left us.

We have been suffering since October 7th. Is that a concern for you that all this attention and a lot of attention is shifting to the fighting between Israel and Iran? Yeah, hearing her words, John. It reminds me of a fourth year English literacy student I sat within Gaza a week ago who said, James, starvation is just so humiliating to have to go to a hospice every night with a bowl and crowds of people and hope you get some sort of food. Let's be very clear on that.

That is what's happening here. Parents losing their children while they simply go to get food for their family. Yes, to your larger question, without it. out. It's a concern. Gaza has never been in a more perilous moment. There's a very real fear that it's being overshadowed. And Gazans, as they've said to me, international humanitarian law doesn't apply to us. That's a terrifying, a terrifying realization for a population that rightly, very rightly, feels absolutely abandoned. James Elder of UNICEF on the very grim situation in Gaza. Thank you very much. Thank you, John.

Now online, experts tell PBS News four steps new graduates can take to make their job searches less painful and more rewarding. All that and more is on our website, pbs.s.org slash news hour. And that is PBS News weekend for this very busy Sunday. Monday on the News Hour, the latest on the rapidly unfolding war in the Middle East. I'm John Yang. For all of my colleagues, thanks for joining us. Have a good week.