Hey, good morning. We're coming to you with a special edition of Start Here because early this morning, missile strikes began hitting the Iranian capital of Tehran. These missiles appeared to have come from the U.S. and from Israel in broad daylight. Now, these countries both did attack Iran last year, but this feels different.

A short time ago, the United States military began major combat operations in Iran.

This appears to be much more aggressive, much more widespread.

In fact, President Trump has now issued a statement suggesting this is just the beginning, not the end, of a major military operation.

Let's quickly go to Tel Aviv in Israel right now. ABC's chief foreign correspondent, Ian Panel, is standing by as counterattacks are already seeming to come in from Iran.

So, Ian, can you just walk us through what's happening so far?

Yeah, I mean,

just to give you a sense of the atmosphere, just while you were reading your introduction,

there was another alert flashing up on everyone's phones here saying that Iran has launched

more missiles towards Israel. That was the sound that everyone heard at 8 o'clock, around 8 o'clock this morning, announcing that Israel had launched what they called at the time a preemptive strike against Iran, warning people a state of emergency had been declared.

It became very clear that this was not just a limited operation that President Trump had talked about beforehand,

but something far bigger and far more ambitious.

The Iranian regime seeks to kill.

The lives of courageous American heroes may be lost,

and we may have casualties that often happens in war,

but we're doing this, not for now, we're doing this for the

future. We've got the statement from the president. We've got a statement from Israeli Prime

Minister Netanyahu, essentially saying that this is about going after Iran's ballistic

missiles, Iran's nuclear capabilities, Iran's security forces, Iran's

command and control, and both the Prime Minister and the presidents have urged the Iranian people

to seize the opportunity to essentially take power. To the great proud people of Iran, I say

tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand. Stay sheltered. Don't leave your home.

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