Iran’s missile and drone barrage against Israel last weekend “turned out to be a spectacular failure,” with almost all of the projectiles missing Israel, CIA Director William Burns said Thursday.
Speaking at an event at the George W. Bush Presidential Center in Dallas, Burns said stopping the missile and drone attack showed the strength of Israel’s military and that it had “friends” in the world, including the U.S. and other countries it has helped. also.
“The Iranians fired about 330 drones and missiles combined,” Burns said. “Of these 330 missiles, only four or five reached Israel and none of them caused significant damage.
“It is a reminder of the quality of the Israeli military,” he added. “It’s a reminder of the fact that Israelis have friends, starting with the United States, but also with others.”
President Joe Biden and other senior U.S. officials hope tensions can ease somewhat in the region, but said Israel is still evaluating how it would respond to Tehran.
The Israeli government, “as we sit here this afternoon, is considering a response to what happened last Saturday night,” Burns said.
“I think the great hope of the president and the policymakers in the administration is that we find a way to calm the situation,” he said.
Ammunition shortages in Ukraine
Burns, a former career diplomat who was ambassador to Russia, said he visited Ukraine about a month ago and heard firsthand from Ukrainian military officials about the critical ammunition shortage.
Burns said he was in Ukraine just days after Russian forces captured the town of Adiivka in eastern Ukraine.
“I talked to one of the senior officers who was there and he described it in very simple terms,” Burns said. “He said, ‘We fought as hard as we could, but the Russians kept coming and we ran out of ammunition.’”
He said a 2,000-man Ukrainian brigade in the battle of Adiivka tried to fend off the Russians with “a grand total” of 15 artillery rounds a day and 42 mortar rounds.
“They were impressed, but it wasn’t for a lack of courage or determination on their part,” Burns said.
He said he fears there will be more battlefield losses in Ukraine unless Congress approves a long-delayed military aid package.
Sleepless night
Asked what kept him up at night, Burns mentioned the threat of terrorist attacks, the war in Ukraine, the conflict in Gaza and the risks they pose to CIA employees around the world.
But he also recounted an experience that literally kept him up all night when he agreed to participate in a training session for new clandestine CIA agents at the agency’s training camp, known as “The Farm,” near Williamsburg, Virginia.
The nighttime instructional course, which included members of the Army’s elite Delta Force, featured a training exercise in which CIA colleagues were taken “hostage.”
But no one told the trainees or Delta Force commands that the character posing as a “hostage” for the exercise was Burns himself, who had been tied to a chair during the simulation, he said.
“It’s 4:30 in the morning and this exercise culminates with a Delta group hostage rescue mission,” Burns said. The “Delta Force major who commanded it was only told that there is a simulated situation where there are some CIA officers with someone posing as a senior CIA officer. They were captured and held hostage,” Burns said.
“So it’s worth the price of admission to see the look on that young major’s face when he walked up the stairs in this hostage rescue effort and saw a real CIA director tied to a chair,” he said.
This story originally appeared on NBCNews.com read the full story
