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Trump Says He called Off Iran Strikes With Ten Minutes To Spare; Supreme Court Sides With Mississippi Death Row Inmate In Jury Racial Discrimination Case; U.S. Oil Prices Climb Amid Growing Conflict With Iran. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired June 21, 2019 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


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JIM SCIUTTO, CNN NEWSROOM: U.S. was minutes away from military action against Iran. Good morning. I'm Jim Sciutto. Poppy is off today.

Breaking news, President Trump now says that he called off a military strike with ten minutes to go. And his reasoning, to save Iranian lives. He Tweeted that when he was told that the planned strike could kill up to 150 Iranians on the ground, he felt it was not a proportionate response to the shooting down of an unmanned drone. The President says he gave the stand down order ten minutes before that strike was to start.

Of course, the planes were already in the air. The ships were in position on the surface. Those Tweets from the President came minutes after Iran said that they made a lifesaving decision of their own, claiming that they had a U.S. Navy surveillance aircraft with three dozen crew members on board in their sights but also did not take the shot.

The Pentagon is confirming to CNN that the plane was in the area when the drone was shot down. But they say that, like the drone, it was in international airspace at the time.

We have a team covering every angle of the story, including from the ground in Iran. We start with CNN's Senior Washington Correspondent Joe Johns live at the White House.

Joe, we've often said unusual, unprecedented but remarkable for a president to Tweet out that he was minutes away from military action and his exact reasoning and the exact intelligence he got about how many Iranian lives were at risk.

JOE JOHNS, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, and that's just the start of it. I mean, what we have here, if you look at it from a the 30,000-foot view is a potentially pivotal moment in this Trump administration, the President facing a choice of whether after the shooting down of the United States drone, to escalate into potential conflict with Iran, he decides at the last moment or in the last ten minutes not to take the shot. And I think that's very significant. All of this comes to us on Twitter, important, of course, that the President indicated he decided not to move forward with military action against Iran because he was told by subordinates that 150 people could die.

Of course, the central question there is whether the President had been briefed and had actually digested the information that defense intelligence and others might have given him before this action was initiated or at least authorized.

I think the other important thing about the President's Tweets is he did mention in one of them that besides everything else going on, additional sanctions have been leveled against Iran. We're checking on that.

Jim, back to you.

SCIUTTO: Joe Johns at the White House, thanks very much.

Now, the latest from the Pentagon, Barbara Starr, CNN Pentagon Correspondent, has been following this. What are you learning about just how close here, what resources the U.S. had in position in the air and on the sea before ten minutes before they were ready to strike, the President pulled them back? How significant do we believe this strike was going to be?

BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: Well, the President's own Tweet said that they were going after three sites in Iran. We know from our sources that what they were looking at striking were Iranian surface-to-air missiles and radars, the kinds of Iranian systems that would have been used to shoot down the drone.

And it would have been very well understood right from the beginning that these sites inside Iran are not deserted. There are people there manning them. This would have been part of the calculation right from the beginning. There are U.S. Navy warships that can shoot cruise missiles always in the vicinity, and they were in the vicinity, as always, last night. There are aircraft capable of dropping bombs always on station.

So, you know, this -- the military would have, in fact been ready to go awaiting that final presidential thumbs-up, because that's basically how they operate. They don't go from a cold start. They have everything in place, ready to go, ready to execute when the President, any president gives, that final thumbs-up.

I think one of the interesting question is did the President take a final additional look at all of this and is that when he made the decision he just wasn't willing and ready to do it, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Barbara, a question for you. By the President revealing the number of sites, describing what those sites were and revealing the exact figure he was given of potential Iranian losses on the ground, did he just publicly reveal what is normally classified information?

STARR: Well, he hasn't given, has he, you know, the exact location. [10:05:59]

He hasn't given what the exact U.S. asset was that would have gone against those sites, which might have given the Iranians a clue about what the U.S. knew about the structure of those sites.

Let's say, he had said I was going to send a tomahawk missile after site X, Y, Z, that tells the Iranians that we know something about the structure of that site and what it would take to destroy it. So he hasn't done that.

But what he has done is give a bit of a public red line. This is a president that has always said he would not signal ahead of time military action or lack of it. And he certainly has done just that on Twitter, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Yes, ten minutes before the action. Barbara Starr, thanks very much.

Let's speak to CNN's Fred Pleitgen. He's on the ground in Iran, in Tehran, in fact. I want to show a video of the plane, the U.S. surveillance aircraft, the P-8 Poseidon, that Iranian officials claim they had in their sites. I actually got a visit on one of these a couple of years ago. It's the size of a 737, the most capable U.S. surveillance aircraft. It's got a big grew. You see a picture there from the inside. They are claiming they had this jet with those U.S. service members on board in their sights but did not fire.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, you're absolutely right, Jim. They say that, and I think there's a very specific reason why the Iranians are saying it. They say that pretty much around the same time that they were tracking that drone, that this surveillance aircraft, the P-8, was also in that psalm vicinity. And the Iranian commander, the head of the IRG Aerospace Forces, which is, of course, the unit that then shot down the drone, said, look, we could have taken aim at that aircraft.

The Iranians are say there were 35 people on there. I'm not sure where they would have gotten that information from because, as Ryan was saying, usually, the crew for that aircraft plane is a lot smaller. But they said they did not shoot that aircraft down. And they said, the reason they didn't shoot it down is because this is an absolute message to the United States.

And that definitely dispels, at least from the Iranian side, the notion that President Trump put out there yesterday saying that maybe this was some rogue Iranian commander who shot down this drone, maybe this was some sort of mistake. The Iranians certainly not saying that. They say they were tracking this aircraft. They were also tracking the drone. They said they tried to get in touch with the drone four times, Radioed warnings to it and then shot it down when it entered Iranian airspace.

They now have put out pictures of the debris as well, very small debris pieces, Jim. And the Iranians are saying, the reason for that is, one, they shot it down at extremely high altitude, about 50,000 feet, and they're also saying the debris that they showed today is only what was floating on the surface waters in Iranian waters off the coast of South Iran, Jim.

SCIUTTO: Well, we get why U.S. commercial aircraft, international commercial aircraft are now avoiding avoiding that area, risk at very high altitudes. Frederik Pleitgen, thanks very much.

Joining me now to discuss this is CNN Military Analyst and retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. He commanded forces in the region. And Dennis Ross is a former Special Assistant to President Obama, Counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

General Hertling, I want to get a precedent here. In your time serving in the war zones, have you seen military action called back by a president with just minutes to go but also with the President revealing some fairly specific details of what was planned there? Three sites, the kinds of sites they were, and his own military's assessment of what the Iranian personnel at risk on the ground would have been?

MARK HERTLING, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Jim, I would like to start first by saying I'm thankful for the President's restraint in this particular action, because it's apparent that it wasn't nailed down very well.

To answer your question, I have not participated directly with presidents in terms of calling back missions, but I personally have called back missions because of things that are occurring on the ground, and sometimes right before that mission was started.

For example, a military decision-making process also always includes rewards, risks and restraints. If you're going after a target, if you've done the targeting process and the decision-making process, and you're going after something and you know the enemy is there and you're going to kill them, and the risk is small, then you execute that target.

If for some reason at the last minute, suddenly you see civilians in the area or the enemy ducks into a mosque or a church or a hospital, then you will stop the mission and stop from targeting that structure or that particular target. That happens.

But it seems to me, I'm a little skeptical based on the President's Tweet this morning, that it went down the way it did, because any military decision-making process would give those rewards, risks and restraints long before they received an up from the President or, you know, when they got the decision.

And when you're talking about the potential for killing 150 civilians, I know for a fact that that kind of collateral damage is always included in the decision-making process in the early stages.

The other thing is, this is just the military piece of this. I have been involved in presidential decision-making in the Bush administration, where the economic adviser then comes in and the information advisers and the diplomats come in and say, here are the rewards and risks from our perspective.

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So we just can't look at this from a military perspective.

SCIUTTO: Understood. So let's take a big (ph) picture, Dennis Ross, because the President's strategy seems to be to threaten military action to get Iran to the negotiating table to renegotiate a nuclear deal, perhaps a broader agreement and a deal that the U.S. pulled out of in the midst of punishing economic sanctions here, but by backing off at this point, does it undermine the strength of the President's military threat going forward?

DENNIS ROSS, COUNSELOR, THE WASHINGTON FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: Well, it probably raises questions about it. Look, I think what you see is a kind of maneuvering on both the part of the President and of the Iranians. What's pretty clear and the President basically was saying yesterday when he said, look, this was an unarmed drone, if there had been -- if we'd had people on board, it would have been very different.

I do think he's established a kind of a red line and the Iranians basically have adopted a position that they'll go up very close to that red line, and in the meantime, they will continue to demonstrate to him that they're not going to be intimidated. And his maximum pressure is going to be, in a sense, met by their version of maximum pressure.

So they will take down drones. Think about what they're doing then they take down a drone. They're making it harder for us to look and see where their forces are. They're going to continue doing what they're doing in the Gulf, they're going to continue to use their proxies, like the Houthis.

So they're going to continue to operate to put pressure on us as a way of trying to get to us to change our behavior. We're, according to the President, going to add more sanctions, so we're trying to weaken them to affect their behavior.

The problem with that approach is the potential for miscalculation is very high. And we saw how close we came to what might have been a military exchange yesterday.

SCIUTTO: Ten minutes. So you're saying the red line, the President's red line, as we understand it at this point, is no U.S. personnel killed or injured?

ROSS: That's what I think he's established. That's obviously, I think, the way the Iranians are operating. That also helps to explain why they put out today that they didn't go after an aircraft that had American personnel on it, but they went after a drone.

SCIUTTO: As we mentioned. Mark, General Hurtling, the number of forces you have arrayed in this region, U.S. bases, two U.S. carrier groups, those surveillance aircraft flying, some manned, some unmanned, and their level of alert right now, what kind of danger is that for not necessarily the war but the military action you don't want, the escalation you don't want that happens in the moment?

HERTLING: Yes. I'd say I'd answer that in two ways, Jim. First of all, the level of alert has certainly increased. I'm not sure for a fact but I would suspect it would. I would, as a commander. I would increase the alert level based on the things that are going on right now. But it's not just in this area either.

In the total central command area operation, if you include Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and all the -- Egypt, Libya, there are military -- U.S. military forces in many countries in the area and they're all influenced potentially by Iranian militias that are also nearby.

So you can't just consider what's going on in the Straits of Hormuz against navy ships or in airspace over the straits. It has to be where there are also Iranian militias that are influenced because they get weapons and support from the Iranian government. That's in Syria. That's in Iraq. That's in many places.

So U.S. forces are in an increased level of alert in all of those places right now.

SCIUTTO: And Hezbollah has positions outside the Middle East as well. Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, Dennis Ross, great to have you both on.

HERTLING: Thank you, Jim.

SCIUTTO: We have some breaking news just in to CNN. The Supreme Court, just moments ago, issuing a ruling on a significant case, this one involving a Mississippi death row inmate. Let's go live to Jessica Schneider. She is at the Supreme Court. Jessica, what are we learning?

JESSICA SCHNEIDER, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Jim, the Supreme Court granting a reprieve to a Mississippi man who is on death row, the Supreme Court, in a seven to two decision, overturning the conviction of Curtis Flowers in Mississippi, saying that the district attorney in that case improperly and unconstitutionally engaged in racial discrimination when throwing African-American jurors out of the jury pool.

Now, this is Curtis Flowers. He was convicted for a 1996 murder in Mississippi where four people were killed in a furniture store. What's interesting about this case is that Curtis Flowers has been tried six different times since that murder in 1996, his most recent conviction in 2010.

But over the six different times that he's gone to trial, two of those juries were hung. So the case was tried again. And then in three of the cases, this district attorney was found to have improper racial motivations in choosing the jury.

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So now, the Supreme Court saying for this final time, overturning this conviction of Curtis Flowers, saying that, yes, in fact, the district attorney had improper racial motivations here when he was picking the jury. And because of that, the conviction is overturned.

It is likely that Curtis Flowers will now get a new trial. But this has been going on for quite some time, since 1996, when these murders happened. This latest conviction was in 2010. And now, Jim, while Curtis Flowers sits on death row, he is now being granted a reprieve from the Supreme Court and likely will get a new trial here. Jim?

SCIUTTO: Well, there are a lot of other cases still running through the Supreme Court. We know you're going to stay on top of it and we will bring you the breaking news as it happens. Jessica Schneider, thank you.

Staying on top of all the breaking news on Iran and U.S. tensions as well, we're getting new reporting on how republicans are reacting to the President's decision to call off the strike. They are not happy. We'll be back soon.

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SCIUTTO: As tensions with Iran grow, U.S. oil prices are climbing. You're going to notice it will go right to the gas pump. Joining me now is Christine Romans, CNN Chief Business Correspondent. Why are we seeing a major impact?

CHRISTINE ROMANS, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, absolutely. You know, Jim, confrontation in the Middle East drives oil prices higher. It almost always does. And you saw this big jump in crude oil prices yesterday, about a five percent hop on news the Iranian shot down that unmanned U.S. aircraft.

Conflict anywhere near this area, the Persian Gulf, almost always drives up crude prices. 20 percent of the world's supply flows through here. This is a really important corridor. A third of all seaborne oil flows through here. And you can see the location of all of these events that have really raised the temperature.

This could pose a test for the Trump economy. If tensions stay high, a higher crude oil price leads to higher gas prices, and that raises costs for manufacturers and consumers just as an election approaches.

You know, until now, energy prices had been falling on plenty of global supply and on worries that slowing economies around the world would cool demand for crude. Oil prices actually fell into a bear market earlier this spring. But now, risk in the Gulf putting a floor under oil prices again.

And then this, this morning, an explosion at the largest oil refinery in the East Coast, in Philadelphia, just before dawn, this and a vat of butane, we're told, exploded. You could feel it in Southern New Jersey, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, just another kind of reminder of these global nature of the oil market and this refinery clearly adding to some of the worries here, Jim. SCIUTTO: No question. Christine Romans, thanks very much.

We're starting to get reaction from some republicans on the President's decision to pull back with just minutes to go on the strikes on Iranian. Let's speak to CNN Special Correspondent Jamie Gangel. She's getting more details.

So within the President's won party here, comparisons to Obama's red line on Syria.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: Right. So, obviously, there are going to be some republicans, pick someone like Rand Paul, who do not want the President to do it. But I spoke to several senior republicans who have a lot of history in this kind of area. And the first thing they say is they don't want to compare this to Obama but they were very concerned about it. One source said to me that it makes Trump or the U.S. look like a paper tiger.

A second source said the following. And then, again, Jim, this is just, for context, about what it means. The source said, quote, failing to take action could be far more dangerous in the long run. Weakness is provocative. It sends a message to our adversaries, not just the Iranians but the Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans. In other words, they're concerned that, you know, you shoot down a drone, these sources do not think Iran made a mistake. They think that Iran knew what it was doing. And then, you know, we don't respond, so that sends out a much wider message, Jim.

SCIUTTO: It's interesting. Oftentimes, this criticism, the President from his own party, if it comes, it comes quietly, unnamed sources. But what's interesting today, we saw Liz Cheney on Hugh Hewitt's broadcast, Fox and Friends this morning, issuing similar comparisons and criticism here. The President watches and listens to that kind of stuff. How does he react to that internal criticism?

GANGEL: Right. As we know, there are a lot of ways to send messages to him, and that's a way to do it. I also think that what we don't know yet, and this is reporting that I assume will come out later today, is exactly why he made this decision. We've seen him Tweet this morning that he was told at the last minute that lives were at stake.

But one of my sources said, you know, historically, what do you do in a situation like this? You're not going after civilian targets. They're surgical strikes. You go after, let's just say, the military installation that was responsible for shooting down the drone.

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The other possibility is, if you're told that there are going to be a lot of deaths, one senior republican who has worked in past administrations in situations like this said to me, so go back and let's ask for a target where there would be fewer potential, you know, fatalities.

SCIUTTO: That's the thing. Typically, there's a menu of options ranging from more to less aggressive.

Tell us about the divisions within this administration here, who, to your understanding, is pushing for a more aggressive stance. I mean, folks have talked about John Bolton, who is holding back. And what difference it makes to not have a Mattis-like figure in the pentagon with the credibility to have advice that is listened to?

GANGLE: I think the Mattis question is a very important question. As far as we know, going into this, Bolton, Pompeo were on the same page. And I'm assuming that the Pentagon was on the same page, but we don't know exactly that. But what do we know about the Pentagon?

Acting Secretary of Defense, a new acting Secretary of Defense. When you don't have a figure like Mattis, who is a strong figure, it is a point, and some republicans have said to me, that they're concerned that Iran took this opportunity because they see that this is a vulnerable point in time because of all of these actings throughout the administration.

SCIUTTO: Understood. Jamie, always good to hear the view from your very well-sourced view inside the Republican Party on this. Good to have you on the program.

GANGEL: Thanks.

SCIUTTO: The White House blocking Hope Hicks from answer more than 150 questions, but dems are still confident they will get their answers, at least some of them. Can they legally force her to comply? We'll ask the question.

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