Of course, Iran has been bracing now for about a month for a retaliatory strike from Israel after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel earlier this month.

I want to go straight to Jeremy Dimon.

He's in Tel Aviv.

And Jeremy, what are you learning right now?

Well, we initially got these reports of explosions in the Iranian capital of Tehran, and now my colleague, Alex Marquardt, has indeed confirmed, according to an official familiar with the matter, that Israel has indeed begun their retaliatory strikes on Iran.

This is, of course, in retaliation for that barrage of ballistic missiles that Iran fired at Israel, some 200 ballistic missiles, at the beginning of the month of October.

And now, some three and a half weeks later, it appears that Israel's retaliation is indeed now underway, with multiple explosions reported in the Iranian capital, according to Iran's semi-official farce news agency.

Now, there's a lot that we still don't know at this stage.

Even as we are starting to get dramatic images of plumes of smoke emerging from Tehran, we don't yet know exactly what the targets were of this Iranian strike.

But make no mistake, already, just the fact that these explosions were reported in the US, carrying out a more severe retaliation than the one it did for Iran's initial attack against Israel back in April, when it targeted the city of Isfahan, some air defense batteries there.

This is now in the heart of the Iranian capital.

The question is, what were the targets?

Were these simply military targets, or was there something else here?

That had been one of the major points of discussion between Israel and the United States.

But we can now confirm that those retaliatory strikes by Israel have indeed begun now in Iran.

All right.

And crucial, obviously.

And as Jeremy's saying, from Iranian state media, they are reporting these explosions in Tehran.

We don't know about explosions elsewhere what those are.

And obviously, anyone following this, there had been leaked information from the US government about what it knew about Israel's list of strikes.

And perhaps that had delayed this or changed it.

It's unclear at this point.

Alex Marquardt knows more than anybody.

He is obviously confirming that what the Iranian state media, Alex, is reporting about these explosions is indeed part of this anticipated Israeli strike.

So what more are you learning from your sources?

And the fact that the first explosions that we're hearing about are coming from Tehran and not from a military base, or I suppose it could be one of the base there, but not from a military base elsewhere in the country.

What's the significance of that?

Well, yeah.

What we're hearing from the Iranians is that this is west of Tehran.

So it's unclear what that may be, whether it's a military installation, whether it's air defenses.

But as you point out, Erin, this is long awaited.

I mean, the Iranian strike against the Israelis was back on October 1st.

And here we are some 24 days later.

And I am told by an official that this retaliatory strike by Israel is very much underway.

And I think what we can expect to see over the course of the evening will be very different from what we saw back in April.

Remember, that was a huge Iranian strike with more than 300 ballistic crews and missiles and drones.

And the Israelis responded in a rather limited fashion against a single air defense battery near Isfahan.

This time they're retaliating for a bigger Iranian strike.

On October 1st, we saw some 180 ballistic missiles, some more ballistic missiles than the previous time.

They arrived in Israel in just moments.

No one in Israel was hurt or killed, but at the same time, there was immediately an expectation that Israel would respond in a very significant way.

So what we're going to be watching for in the coming minutes and hours is exactly what these targets are.

And from that, we will be able to gauge whether there will be yet another turn, yet another response from Iran in a way that this could further escalate the situation, which of course is the biggest fear here in Washington.

All right.

Absolutely.

All right.

So we're going to continue to watch this, because as you say, Alex, we're hearing about those explosions.

It would be consistent with everything we expect, that there will be more in other places.

And obviously, there's quite a bit of darkness, literally and figuratively, in terms of our ability to see what's happening there right now.

So as you get more, we're going to be coming back to you.