On April 13th, 13th, President Biden and his team were hold up in the White House situation

room.

They were watching as Iran fired off a barrage of missiles at

Israel. Then they started counting them off, you know, 30 missiles launched, okay? 60 missiles launched, all right? Over 100

missiles launched. Our colleague Michael Gordon covers national security.

And there are screens that show the tracks of these missiles streaming towards

Central Israel and this is all being monitored as if it's a big video game but it's not a video game

it's really happening. And the big question was whether Israel, the US and

allies would be able to neutralize the U.S. and allies would be able to neutralize the attack.

The Iranians fired more than a hundred ballistic missiles and nothing like that has ever

happened before in combat.

So there wasn't high confidence that they could stop them all. I mean they

were pretty confident they could deal with maybe 50. But you know when the

attack came and they started counting out the numbers or missiles in the situation room.

People describe that close to the president who were in that room as a white knuckle moment.

This was a key moment over a 19-day stretch in which the White House tried to stop a conflict between Iran and Israel from spiraling out of control.

The fear is that this could escalate.

It could become a regional conflict that affects oil exports,

multiple countries,

and basically is a high intensity confrontation

involving Israel, Iran, the United States

and perhaps some Arab states that severe.

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