escalating wharf words between iran and israel and why one word president obama used today may make all the difference. let's go out front. i'm erin burnett. out front tonight we have breaking news. there are powerful tornadoes now ripping apart the midwest and southern states at this hour, and it's a very rapidly changing situation as the storms are touching down. five are dead at this hour in indiana. more than two dozen tornadoes have been reported in six states. we've got tornado warnings right now in effect for 50 counties through this evening. all right. this is pretty frightening thing. some of these storms have been incredibly powerful. we've been talking about storms with winds up to 170, 180-mile-per-hour. they could be hitting heavily populated areas. we start with gary tuchman who is in nashville, tennessee, tonight. gary, what have you seen and heard? >> reporter: earin, this is one of those heavily populated areas. music city, tennessee. 1.7 million people are in the metropolitan area. one hour ago it was very scary for a lot of people who live here. that's when the winds came tearing through. hail the size of marbles started falling. we were standing outside our hotel up the street there. people were being yelled at to get out of the lobby because there was so much glass to go down in the basement. the glass did not break. the damage appears to be limited. right here now in nashville the worst appears to be over, however, about 30 miles south of us there are still some serious problems. as you were saying, five people have died, at least five people in the southeastern united states, and 50 counties with tornado warnings. it's a much different animal when you have a tornado warning in a big city like nashville. a tornado whipped through atlanta a few years ago. right now it appears they escaped here in nashville. it's been a rough couple of days. usually we see a lot of tornadoes in the springtime. we're still three weeks away from spring but it's been a very bad couple of days in the united states in the midwest and the southeast. erin? >> it's amazing looking at the track, gary, as we can see. we have two screens up. one of them has the storms as they continue to move east. it has incredible violence. tell me a little bit more about what it was like when the winds actually came through. for some people who aren't from the midwest it's hard to understand what it's like to just suddenly have winds come through at 80, 90 miles an hour. >> reporter: this is peculiar. we cover hurricanes. for much of the day it felt like there was a hurricane coming because there was 40, 50, 60 miles an hour winds. 15 minutes it was very violent. they were whipping 70, 80 miles an hour. the hail was coming down. the hail was up to my ankles. you saw that. they were the size of marbles. cold, frozen hail. people, you're not used to seeing that in cities. people were panicked. you heard sirens in the city of nashville. people were expecting the worst. there was a tornado spotted to our west coming in this direction. it appears here in the city of nashville, music city u.s.a., they're relatively lucky. >> and up to your -- you said the hail was actually up to your ankles, gary? >> reporter: yeah. for a time. what's amazing about hail is that it melts so quickly. you saw it, it was piling up. it looked like a snowstorm and then five minutes later it was all gone except for a couple of hail balls that were sitting around. for lots of people in the city, they've never seen that. people were quite scared. the sirens were going off p. people were in the basements. now it's calmed down and the radar shows that at least for now the city of nashville looks okay. 30 miles to our south the bad weather is still going through there. that's what's amazing about the situation, erin. you have so many tornado warnings in 50 counties, so many different states. such an unusual occurrence, particularly it's still wintertime. this is not the peak of tornado season. very difficult time for a lot of people throughout the united states. >> gary tuchman, thank you very much. we were going to go to our meteorologist, rob marciano. the reason we're not able to go to him, it appears that there are storms and tornadoes exactly where he is. we'll be checking in with him in a moment as soon as we can get that shot up for you. to give you a sense of how developing this story is and how violent these storms are, we can't even get that shot for you. let's go to chad myers right now who is at our weather center here at cnn. you had been talking about this traipse eastward of all of these storms. now we have warnings in 50 counties or so. >> yes. >> as they move. is this worse than you had expected? >> no, this is really what we thought. we said yesterday 50 to 100 tornadoes on the ground today and right now our count is 61. we're somewhere in the middle there. there are still many more hours, erin, of this could to come. every storm that you see that is all by itself. every storm that's been all by itself all day has been rotating and tornadoes have been on the ground. that's the storm our rob montpeli marciano was under. another tornado not far from south of huntsville, alabama. i'll pan you a little farther up. there's a lot more to come huntsville, birmingham, back into parts of mississippi, louisiana. all of these states, if you ever see a storm that's all by itself, it's coming to you, it's probably rotating. it's one of those days that they're called super cells. this err' all by themselves. they don't line up in a line. when you get a line of weather, it's called a squall line, you get wind and it's over. when storms don't line up, erin, they go out i all by themselves and use all of the energy and become the big dog. they start to rotate. when they do, they can put tornadoes down, we know at least 50 to 60 on the ground already today. still more to come. as it gets dark things will cool off. the storms will calm down. it may take a few hours before that happens, erin. >> thank you very much. chad myers. we appreciate it. chad is giving you a sense of the storm. as we said, our rob marciano appears to be in one of those incredibly severe weather cells right now where he is standing in tennessee. when we are able to get that shot available, we'll see if he can tell us exactly what happened. as you can hear from gary tuchman, you get hail up to your ankless. they're dramatic, sudden situations. kentucky is also affected. there's been an enormous outbreak of tornadoes there. we have the governor on the phone. governor, thank you very much. we appreciate your taking the time. how bad is it in kentucky tonight? >> well, the storm system hasn't cleared kentucky yet, but we obviously already have reports of some heavy damage in several areas of the state. i just declared a statewide emergency to allow local officials immediate access to state resources to assist in public safety and recovery efforts. this will allow them to have our national guard out and everything else that we need without delay. >> and, governor, is this something that is worse than you expect, worse than it normally is? it seems like last year we heard about joplin and now we're hearing about this incredible surge in tornado activity? is it unusual or not? >> kentucky gets some tornado activity. not nearly as much as sort of the tornado alley, you know, out west of us. but, you know, on wednesday we had a storm system come through and we were very fortunate then. we had some damage but we didn't have any loss of life. i'm very concerned that we already have some unconfirmed reports of some fatalities and some pretty hard hit areas, so this one will be more difficult, i think, on all of us. but we were as prepared as you can be for these things, and then you've got to respond as quickly as possible, and that's what we're doing. >> governor, good luck. i hope that some of those missing do not end up fatalities. let's go to rob marciano, as we said, he was in the midst of tough weather. hamilton county, tennessee, is where he is. one of the worst hit counties in that state. on the phone because of the possible tornado action there. rob, tell us what's happening. >> reporter: we just had an intense thunderstorm move through. hail about up to an inch in diameter and rotation with a reported tornado about two to four miles directly to our south. thankfully that rotation missed up and this area that's already been devastated by a tornado today earlier around 1:00. we are just a few miles north and east of chattanooga in a town of oodowa which is a nice suburb of the city. they had a strong tornado come through here about 1:00, 200 yards wide, tore through a number of subdivisions, at least 40 or 50 homes damaged if not destroyed. those people are seeking shelter tonight. they had to do so quickly. they had to clear the roads quickly because they knew another round of storms was coming and we experienced that in the last 45 minutes. zero fatalities, but a number of serious injuries. up to ten hospitalized. 15 or so treated at the scene. we're hoping that the zero fatality number remains. search and rescue operations, erin, have been halted for this storm to pass, but i suspect that now that it has they'll get at it again until the entire system makes its way through later tonight. >> we've been looking at video, rob frrks your location. this was taped a few moments ago because your video wasn't able to come through because of the weather that you are in, but for viewers, just so you know, everything you've been seeing while rob was speaking is something about where he is. did you see, rob, the actual twisters? did you see how they formed or how it happens as they moved through today? >> reporter: on radar, but this particular -- we were in the hail core when this came through which meant it was down to our south. the rain and hail was coming down so grossly that there was no way to see, you know, more than 1/10 mile in front of us. i saw certainly some rotation of the clouds. beyond that between the rain and hail, and now it's getting dark. it's a whole other ball game with night fall and the storms rolling through. it's going to be a scary next few hours. >> rob, thank you very much. would he appreciate it. rob was reporting from tennessee tonight. still out front, israel's leader threw down the gauntlet today. the lover of the rutgers student who killed himself after being shown on video following a romantic encounter testified in court today. and later a man wins a grammy just last week, but he is keeping his day job at shop right and he shares his story. you ready? we wanna be our brother's keeper. what's number two we wanna do? 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today president obama in advance of this crucial visit with mr. netanyahu upped his rhetoric telling jeffrey goldberg, quote, as president of the united states, i don't bluff. when the united states says it is unacceptable for iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say. israeli deputy foreign minister danny ialon used surprisingly similar language saying to sky news saying the one who's bluffing is iran which is trying to play with cards they don't have. so who is bluffing? the united states? israel? iran? frankly all three. even if they're all talking tough, tough, and tougher every day, in order to ever prevent actually having to have a conflict, does racheting up the rhetoric help or hurt. rudy giuliani believes it helps. >> instead what he should be doing is convincing the iranians that he's serious, that if he had to, he'd bomb the hell out of them. they should believe this. in fact, the best way he's going to avoid bombing them is convincing them in their heads that he's capable of doing it. >> physically capable of doing is is not in question. but after 11 years and over $1 trillion that was based on wars, the you u.s. appetite for conflict is unsurprisingly ploe and iran knows it. what will the u.s. really do? we'll get to that in a moment. first to tehran where today was the first election since the 2009 disputed presidential election. cnn's ivan watson is there. i spoke to him right before the program and asked him what turnout was like. >> reporter: well, what's pretty incredible is watching the state media here. it is just wall to wall coverage, patriotic music, video of lines of people voting and government officials celebrating this calling this everything short of a divine victory. the interior minister, he came out and said that the massive turnout infuriated and disappointed iran's enemies and their anti-iran propaganda failed. so there's a fair amount of celebration going right now in establishment circles. now i went to polling stations, a few, and there i spoke with voters, some of whom were very enthusiastic. they said, yes, it's my patriotic duty to vote. outside one i talked to two old men. one said, no, i'm not voting, i voted for ak ma din ne jad a few years ago and i'm disappointed how he did. so we got a split how he walked around. different opinions. you'd expect that in an election. >> what was your sense of how free the election was and also, i guess, as part of that, how free was social media around the election time? >> reporter: well, if you consider that the candidates ran in the 2009 presidential election, the two leading opposition candidates under house arrest and a lot of their party leaders and campaign activists had to flee into exile to escape jail and allegations of torture as well, maybe not the most free election. >> i want to ask you, ivan, with prime minister netanyahu of israel coming to washington to meet with president obama, here as you're well aware the iranian nuclear issue is a topic of conversation across the united states. it's in every single newspaper. it's going to be a big issue of discussion. is it in iran? >> reporter: of course it's an issue that comes up in the iranian media all the time. the iranian government is standing by what it says is its right to develop peaceful nuclear technology. within the last two weeks, in fact, the supreme leader here, he came out and said it's a sin against islam to develop a nuclear bomb. pretty much uniformly across the board iranians said we should have a right to develop nuclear technology. if israel, for instance, in the region has nuclear bombs and is not a signatory to the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and we are, why shouldn't we be allowed to have peaceful nuclear technology? >> all right. ivan watson, thank you very much. reporting from tehran tonight. joining me now, jamie rubin, former assistant secretary of state for public affairs, michael ma could be ski. great to see both of you. jamie, let me start with you. today prime minister netanyahu saying time to negotiate with iran is over. all they will do is deceive and delay and run up the clock and that they don't even want to define the red line with the united states. they want freedom of action. are they hinting at a preemptive strike without the united states? >> i do think both the israelis and the united states are talking up the military option because to the extent as mayor giuliani said to you i guess last night, the iranians believe that's a possibility. it increases the pressure on iran in combination with sanctions and maybe, just maybe this diplomacy will work that's going to take place perhaps in the coming weeks. i think where the united states and the israelis really are taking a very different view now is on the question of whether it's worth while to have the international community, the united states, the european union sit down with iranian representatives under intense pressure of sanctions and the threat of possible military action to see whether constraints can be placed on their program to ensure that it remains peaceful and the israelis don't seem to think even those discussions are worth while. that is a big difference with the united states and the europeans. >> and i want to ask you in just a moment, jamie, what the united states obligations would be if israel did something unilaterally. michael, first to you. you worked for the bush administration which obviously had to sell striking iraq based on intelligence that turned out to be inaccurate and it became an unpopular war. it's an example. a lot of americans are very, very hesitant. is there a will in the united states to strike iran without 100% proof? >> well, i think you're right. there's clearly war weariness in the country, and we also have economic challenges. americans aren't eager for another military conflict, however, polls have consistently shown over the last couple of years that americans are supportive as using forces. even a recent poll by pew showed the same thing. majority of america