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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Trump has Reviewed Attack Plan but is Holding Off to See if Iran Steps Back from Nuclear Program; Interview with Rep. Jake Auchincloss (D-MA); Classified Briefing on Iran of All U.S. Senators set for Next Week; Trump Has Reviewed Attack Plans, but Holding Off for Now; Iran's Top Diplomat Says Tehran's Actions Solely in Self- defense but It Remains Committed to Diplomacy; Israeli Military Says It Struck More Than 20 Military Sites in Tehran Today; Republicans Divided Over Israel-Iran Conflict; Trump Claims Iran Was Few Weeks Away From Nuclear Weapon. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired June 18, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MARK LEVIN, FOX NEWS CHANNEL HOST, "LIFE, LIBERTY & LEVIN": -- Carter didn't have the guts to do. He is going to put an end to this damn thing.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: And, Erin, what's interesting here is often when we think of the MAGA-verse, we think of everybody being in lockstep with Trump ideologically on everything else clearly in this you can see there's a massive rift happening here.
That being said our Kaitlan Collins asked the President today what he thought of this. He did actually say that Tucker Carlson called on him in recent days apologizing saying that he'd gone too far in his comments about the President, but really this is a MAGA civil war.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Well, I mean certainly and I can't imagine he's apologizing for that conversation with Ted Cruz. All right, thank you very much and thanks so much to all of you for joining us. Anderson starts now.
[20:00:41]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": Good evening from Tel Aviv, where air raid sirens have sounded a couple times throughout the day today. But the number of missiles that Iran is sending has decreased noticeably, and no Israeli fatalities today.
Now, the reason why seems to be Israel's air superiority over Iran and strikes like this one on Iranian mobile missile launchers. Now this video shows one of those launchers being destroyed. The Israeli defense force, the IDF, which provided the footage, says fighter jets in just the past several hours today have also hit missile production sites as well as a number of nuclear facilities designed, they say, to accelerate the scale and pace of Iran's uranium enrichment effort. But even as the Israeli strikes and somewhat diminished Iranian counter strikes continue, the main focus right now is on the White House, where the President and his National Security team met in the Situation Room late today. Sources familiar with the matter telling CNN tonight that there's a discussion underway about how to strike targets that only the U.S. can hit without widening the conflict.
Also, that the President has reviewed attack plans but is holding off to see if Tehran steps back from its nuclear program. Now, this follows a day that saw the commander-in-chief speak out several times and in several different ways about the situation here. Here's how he answered when asked about his thinking on the subject.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: You don't seriously think I'm going to answer that question, will you strike the Iranian nuclear component and what time exactly, sir? Sir, would you strike it? Would you please inform us that we can be there and watch? I mean, you don't know that I'm going to even do it. You don't know? I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I'm going to do.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, a few moments later, he was asked what he meant to signal with his two word post online yesterday, which read unconditional surrender.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: Very simple. Unconditional surrender. That means I've had it, I've had it. I give up. No more. Then we go blow up all the, you know, all the nuclear stuff that's all over the place there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, still later, from the Oval Office, he suggested he was close to a decision, but hoped to delay making it as long as he could.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: I hate to see all that death so much death and destruction, but death primarily is what I hate to see.
REPORTER: Does that mean you haven't made a decision yet on what to do?
TRUMP: I have I have ideas as to what to do, but I haven't made a final. I like to make the final decision one second before its due, you know, because things change. I mean, especially with war, things change with war. It can go from one extreme to the other.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, also tonight, CNN senior National Security and Pentagon reporter Zachary Cohen says a third carrier battle group could be headed to the region. The USS Gerald Ford, he says, will likely be deployed next week and would join the Carl Vinson, which is already on station, and the Nimitz, which is already on the way.
On the diplomatic front, meantime, French President Emmanuel Macron today launched a European initiative to seek, along with partner nations, some sort of negotiated end to the fighting. And Vladimir Putin weighed in for the first time, telling reporters, and I quote, "This is a delicate issue and of course, we need to be very careful here. But in my opinion, a solution can be found."
Now, for its part, Iran sent a number of signals. There was this from the deputy foreign minister.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
MAJID TAKHT-RAVANCHI, IRANIAN DEPUTY FOREIGN MINISTER: If the Americans decide to get involved militarily, we have no choice but to retaliate wherever we find the targets necessary to be acted upon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: So that was the Deputy Foreign Minister, his boss, the foreign minister, went online today, posting that Iran has, "only retaliated against the Israeli regime and not those who are aiding and abetting it." But he also said that Tehran, "remains committed to diplomacy."
And Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, well, today he rejected talks with Washington, warning that if the United States attacked Iran, it would, "without doubt, face irreparable harm," which brings the focus back to the President's meeting with his national security team late today. And what we can glean from it about what happens next. We will go first to Washington's CNN's chief White House anchor, Kaitlan Collins. So what more are you learning about that meeting?
KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, we know it was this afternoon. It was after we were speaking with the President in the Oval Office when he said that he had not made a final decision on what to do with Iran and whether or not the United States should carry out a military strike on one of the most heavily fortified nuclear sites that we know Iran has, where they enrich that uranium.
And so, that was still a question as he was going into this meeting with his military advisers. We know that they've gone over the options here, the possibilities of what this could look like and we know that he's opened up that way. I mean, you can just hear it in the comments that he makes when he says, you know, maybe I'll do it, maybe I won't.
But he always kind of comes back to this justification when we've been speaking with him, you know, ever since, probably Sunday afternoon, in terms of what that could look like and that was part of the conversation inside the Oval where I asked about this divide among some of his biggest supporters, most loyal supporters, typically about whether or not that he should do this and if it aligns with America First.
[20:05:49]
The President essentially made the case, Anderson, that he could do it and that it would align with his foreign policy view, his noninterventionist view that he's had. And so, he certainly was making the case for it, even if he has not made a final decision here.
The other aspect of this is talks with Iranian officials and something that the President said today, Iranian officials wanted to come to the White House to meet with him and to have conversations about this. He cited one of them to me, who said, you know, it's so difficult to get out of Iran given the airspace is closed right now because of the scenes you're seeing right now.
But I asked the President if he had closed the door totally on having conversations with them, on having Iranians come to the White House and he said no. So, I still think it remains to be seen what the President's ultimate decision is here, even if it's been clear publicly which way he has been leaning towards in recent days.
COOPER: All right, Kaitlan Collins. Kaitlan, thank, we'll see you at the top of the next hour with "The Source." Now, to Tehran, CNN's senior international correspondent, Fred Pleitgen is the first western journalist to enter Iran since the conflict began. He filed this report right before air time.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (on camera): We've been hearing and seeing anti-aircraft fire in the skies over Tehran. Also, some pretty loud thuds could be heard as well. It's unclear whether or not those are possible airstrikes or maybe even interceptions by the air defense forces here. But one thing that is clear going through the streets of Tehran is that they are pretty empty, and most of the shops are also closed.
As we were driving into the city, we did see a decent amount of traffic going in the other direction trying to get out of town, and we know that a lot of people have left town since the Israeli airstrikes began here. But at the same time, the traffic was still somewhat flowing. One of the other things that we noticed as well, and we did drive through a substantial part of Iran to get to this place, is that in many other places, it appears to be almost business as usual.
There were a lot of cars on the road. There were factories that appeared to be working. Also a lot of trucks that were driving on the street as well. And folks that we spoke to on the ground were basically saying they were just trying to get by and continue the way that they had been before.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: That's Fred Pleitgen in Tehran, Iran.
CNN's chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward has spent the day here in Tel Aviv with some of that time at a local hospital, seeing how they are preparing for any attack. She joins me now. What have you been seeing today? Because the mood here is not as tense as I've heard it was earlier, and certainly as I kind of maybe expected it to be.
CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: It's nothing like it was on Friday night, on Saturday night. Friday night you had 200 missiles being intercepted, last night you had 30. So that's a massive reduction. And today we've heard the sirens twice. I believe the last time a few hours ago, only three missiles intercepted.
So clearly what we're seeing is that the, you know, the Israeli Air Force has been effective in really going after those missile launch pads, they say that they have destroyed 40 percent of them. We don't really have a way of verifying that.
COOPER: Even if they have the ballistic missile, the ability to actually launch --
WARD: To actually launch them, you can have all the missiles in the world, but if you can't launch them, then they don't make impact. They don't have the kind of desired effect that Iran is looking for.
So, we are seeing as well, now, the Israeli military has said that the country can start to reopen economically in a sort of phased approach. What does that look like? It looks like shops opening. It looks like people going back to work potentially. That's supposed to be underway from this evening. But at the same time, you still have to maintain that vigilant posture.
So, we went to this hospital here in Tel Aviv, Ichilov, and they've built this extraordinary sort of underground hospital with 600 patients basically living under there for the last four or five days. And we were there when the sirens went off and got to see sort of what the drill looks like. So, let's take a look.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(SOUND OF SIREN)
WARD: Sirens have gone off. They're now closing that door that effectively makes this a shelter now. And as soon as they have a sense of where those strikes hit and who will be coming in, they'll start to receive the patients and any casualties that may be coming in.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
WARD: So on that night, there weren't any casualties as a result. But, you know, everybody still needs to make sure that they're like in that mode that have that protocol locked down. Every single time you don't know what you're going to get. And I think that sort of reflects the broader feeling here.
COOPER: The efficiency of the early warning system here is remarkable. I mean, you get a ten-minute warning that there is something coming and then you get basically a kind of a last minute red alert with a minute and a half or so before some sort of impact or interception to really be ready to make sure you're in a hardened facility.
[20:10:34]
WARD: That's right, so that's like literally three or four phases, because then you get another one at the end telling you when it's the all clear. I will say that a number of times we've been here, there's been no warning. And suddenly you hear the sirens and that you know that you have to get to a shelter pretty quickly. But for the most part it is, it's really becoming like the new normal and people are getting used to. It doesn't mean that they like it, obviously. It doesn't mean that they're not exhausted and that it doesn't have an effect.
But when you talk to people here, Anderson, they're very strongly of the belief that this is an existential issue. You know, a lot of other places in the world, people are really having the conversation. Do we know that Iran was even trying, like, what is the evidence that they were going to build a bomb? But people here believe it unequivocally. And so, they are absolutely willing to make the sacrifices that are needed to their daily lives to support this operation.
COOPER: Yes, Clarissa Ward, thanks very much. We'll check in with you a little bit later on.
I want to bring in retired U.S. Army Four-Star General Stanley McChrystal. He has decades of experience leading U.S. Forces, including as commander of the International Security Assistance Force and U.S. Forces in Afghanistan. He's also the author of the new book "On Character: Choices That Define A Life."
General, I really appreciate you being with us in. If you are facing this, given your military experience, what are the questions you would want answered as a commander before making a decision about what the U.S. should do here?
GEN. STANLEY MCCHRYSTAL (RET), U.S. ARMY, "ON CHARACTER" AUTHOR: Well, I think the operational decisions are based on estimates that the Israelis have created, what seems to be air supremacy. So, the opportunity to strike seems pretty clear.
What I would step back, though, is what happens afterwards? You know, on December 6th, 1941, the American people, almost by majority opposed getting involved in World War II. The next day, after Pearl Harbor was the biggest recruiting day in American history, and we say, okay, that something like this could unite us and that would be helpful, but put the shoe on the other foot and think about the Iranians.
I think it's very likely that we think of a bombing mission as being sort of a transactional intervention. On the Iranian end, it's going to seem like all-out war, and they are likely to commit themselves for a long time and it may not be rational, but it will be human. And so, I think we need to think about what happens the day, the week, the month, maybe the years after this kind of strike.
COOPER: How important do you believe it is before the U.S. makes -- before the President makes a decision to make sure that Israel's goal is aligned with the U.S. goal? Brett McGurk has raised this several times, saying that if the U.S. was to try to degrade or eliminate the Fordow facility to make sure that our interests are aligned with Israel, and that if Israel, if their unstated objective is regime change, that they know that that is not the U.S. objective.
MCCHRYSTAL: You always have that challenge with partners and in fact, their intentions could change midstream, like happens often with nations. So, I don't think we can guarantee that were aligned even if we have a meeting with handshakes and maybe even written documents. I think we have to expect that unexpected what we have to decide first. Is it worth it?
Is it important enough in our interests to strike and take out the Iranian nuclear capability? My personal feeling is, it probably is. That said, and because it's doable now, this is probably the opportunity to do it. But we need to be prepared for what happens after. And what happens after is likely to be much messier than we think.
COOPER: Messier because you're not just talking about Iran responding with whatever ballistic missiles and launch capabilities they still have. There are many other levers Iran could pull in terms of trying to strike back, not only in Israel, but at the United States. Minding the Straits of Hormuz, targeting American civilians, sleeper cells, wherever Iran might have them.
MCCHRYSTAL: Yes, unless we, the west, Israel and the United States are prepared to put people on the ground, almost an army of occupation in a country of 90 million people, which is pretty impractical, it's impossible to prevent that kind of response. And a scenario we might consider is what if a couple months from now, an Iranian insurgency to overthrow the regime comes and then there'll be a temptation to help that insurgency to provide weapons, maybe advisers, and then at some point maybe get involved on the ground.
I'm not saying that that's not natural, I'm saying those are the kinds of things we need to mentally go through, not to scare ourselves off from action, but to be prepared for the day after.
[20:15:26]
COOPER: General Stanley McChrystal, I really appreciate your expertise on this, thank you.
The potential for U.S. involvement in Iran is leading to calls for the President to involve Congress in the decision. Senior senate Democrats, including the ranking members on the intelligence, Armed Services and Appropriations Committees, released a statement today calling on President Trump to, in their words, consult Congress and seek authorization if he's considering taking the country to war.
Late today, one of the senators Intelligence Committee Vice Chairman, Mark Warner, had this to say about Iran's nuclear progress to CNN's Kasie Hunt.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MARK WARNER, (D) VICE CHAIR, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: We got a brief as recently as Monday that seems ages ago. That said, the intelligence community has not changed their assessment that Iran had not moved towards an actual weaponization. They clearly enriched uranium but there is then how do you put that in a weapons form and how do you deliver it?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, the White House responded by pointing to comments by the head of U.S. Central Command who is citing the International Atomic Energy Agency, claimed Iran, if it decided to sprint, "could produce 25 kilograms of weapons grade material in roughly one week." That's according to the head of CENTCOM.
Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts, who served in Afghanistan as a U.S. Marine.
Congressman, you wrote recently on Substack referring to President Trump, you said a strong leader would steer the conflict toward regime change in Iran and a change in Israel's posture toward governance in Gaza. When you say regime change, do you mean targeting Ayatollah Khamenei directly or what exactly do you mean?
REP. JAKE AUCHINCLOSS (D-MA): Anderson, good evening.
What I mean is empowering the Iranian people to take on this repressive regime -- the Ayatollah and the Iranian, excuse me, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is weaker now than it has ever been, partly because Israel has taken out Hezbollah and toppled Assad and taken on the Houthis and taken on Hamas. And so the IRGC is bereft of its proxies and is delegitimized at home, and a no regret investment that we can make right now and we can debate the strikes on its nuclear facilities but a no regret investment we can make is investing in the Iranian people through freedom of communications by cyber targeting the IRGC's infrastructure of repression and censorship, by financially supporting civil and opposition leaders.
We want to empower the Iranian people towards self-determination because while the IRGC is an enemy of America, the Iranian people are not.
COOPER: Do you worry? I mean, we just had you may have heard General McChrystal on raising, you know, questions that any leader should think about in terms of what happens next. What are the follow on consequences? It's one thing to encourage people to rise up against the government. Do you worry about what the unintended consequences of that may be that we don't know about, given our past history? I mean, you served in Afghanistan. You know better than anybody Iraq as well. Libya as well -- regime change is tricky.
AUCHINCLOSS: Yes, and to be clear, there should be no U.S. troops engaged in this. The American public has zero appetite nor do I for any engagement in Middle East maelstroms again. And this is why Congress needs to be involved in authorizing any military strikes against Iran. I don't think any member of Congress right now can fully answer the salient questions. The salient questions being one. Do these bunker buster bombs actually work to take out the deeply buried enrichment sites?
If we do take out the enrichment sites, would that actually fully render dysfunctional Iranian nuclear enrichment capacity? What would be the repercussions of those strikes? Do we have sufficient force protection for U.S. troops in the region? How would they likely react in the Red Sea and elsewhere?
So, this is why Congress needs answers to these questions. And the American public are owed a deliberation and then a vote to affirmatively authorize any strike against Iran.
The President is claiming, will I or wont I? Candidly, it's not his decision, Anderson, it's Congress's decision.
COOPER: Do you believe that the President has the answer? I think all those questions you raised are important ones. And you said Congress doesn't have the answers. Do you believe the President has the answers? Do you believe those answers are knowable at this point?
[20:20:01]
AUCHINCLOSS: Yes, I think they are. There are certainly depth to the answers to those questions and I think the intelligence community would have. And I also think that the debate that members of Congress would have about them would render them even more digestible, not just to Congress, but also to the community would have about them would render them even more digestible, not just to Congress, but also to the American public.
This would be a strike of choice, not of necessity. So the authorizations for the use of military force from 2001 or 2003, the War Powers Act from the 1970s, none of these apply to Iran right now. This would require a new and scoped authorization from Congress for the President to strike Fordow or anywhere else. And I want to be clear, I may vote for that. If he put it in front of Congress. But I want to see the answers to these questions so I can go to my district and explain to the American public why these strikes make America safer, and why they're not going to lead to another deployment of U.S. troops to the Middle East.
COOPER: Congressman Auchincloss, I appreciate your time. Thank you very much.
Coming up next to the Congressman's earlier point about regime change, Israel has encouraged Iranians to do what they have done at critical junctures in recent history, rise up against their regime. What that has looked like in Iran's recent past and rebellions against Western intervention and popular resistance, the Ayatollahs. The question is, is that likely to happen now?
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:25:42] COOPER: With sources tonight telling us that the President has reviewed plans for attacking Iran, but is waiting to see whether Tehran steps back from its nuclear program, two questions move front and center. One, how will Iran's leadership respond to Western pressure? And if it comes to pass American military force?
The other, perhaps more critical question is how might the Iranian people react to the pressure, the airstrikes and any attempts to end a regime which many Iranians themselves over the years have tried to reform or even drive from power?
Behind both those questions is a lot of history. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice over): Iran has a history of protest which brought to power the Islamic revolution and repression of it that's tightened slowly under the Ayatollahs.
The young face of Neda Agha-Soltan, killed by security forces in 2009 lit years of anger, 2012 saw a crackdown and the expansion of the death penalty. And so, by 2019, protests against fuel prices, repression and the economy sprawled for six months and killed hundreds -- violence the norm.
None of it dislodged the theocracy and none of it has yet reignited by the past week of Israeli airstrikes. Instead, anger at Israel, already loathed by many for civilian deaths -- the chaos and panic it has caused.
HAMID DABASHI, PROFESSOR OF IRANIAN STUDIES, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY: No country will ever receive democracy through bombing. Political prisoners inside the Islamic Republic are publicly writing against this military invasion. So, this military invasion will do precisely the opposite, it will unite people.
WALSH (voice over): The U.S. has backed regime change before helping the British in 1953 oust a democratically elected government. Bashar, who followed was remarkable for his brutality, and opposition to him ushered in the Ayatollahs, who sold themselves as purist Islamist reform.
DR. SANAM VAKIL, CHATHAM HOUSE: Frankly, Benjamin Netanyahu's call for regime change and sort of appeal to the Iranian people to come out and overthrow their government reeks of condescension and smacks of a misunderstanding of Iranians.
WALSH (voice over): And President Donald Trump's half failed threat to kill Iran's Supreme Leader is unprecedented, but killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose rhetoric was defiant but not at its most fiery when he emerged Wednesday does not decapitate the theocracy of which he's just the latest face.
DABASHI: If he is assassinated, in fact, it will exacerbate the critical situation that we have. The ruling regime is fully capable of replacing him with another major figure, whether his son or another cleric. It will not have an effect on the military dimensions.
WALSH (voice over): Any successor might be more hard line and reverse Khamenei's fatwa against building nuclear weapons.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
WALSH (on camera): Anderson, have been some suggestions that perhaps the animosity towards the authoritarian government made it easier for Mossad to infiltrate parts of Iran. But ultimately, look, it's the complexity of what could follow. Removing the Ayatollah that surely must be weighing into the calculations inside the Trump White House as to whether or not they intervene -- Anderson.
COOPER: Nick Paton Walsh, thanks very much.
As this latest conflict has unfolded, the drumbeat calling for regime change in Iran has continued to grow. Israeli officials and hawkish members of Congress back in the United States point to the fact that the Iranian government has been significantly weakened by Israel's military campaign, its proxies in the region are in disarray -- Hamas, Hezbollah.
My next guest says any potential U.S. military involvement should be tight, achievable and focused on Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile program. Here with me now, CNN global affairs analyst, Brett McGurk, former Middle East and North Africa coordinator for the National Security Council. So, Brett, we haven't talked over the last 24 hours. I'm wondering what you make of where it seems the Trump administration is right now.
BRETT MCGURK, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I think one of my main takeaways, Anderson, particularly what you just said about coming out of the meeting in the White House tonight, I think a recognition that, you know, we own the clock here. We can take some time. You have to get the theater set. There's aircraft carrier strike group moving in. We should not rush into this and we own the clock.
Now, what to do in the time we have? I think we use it wisely, see if there is a diplomatic off ramp. The Iranian Foreign Minister will meet in Geneva on Friday with some of our European allies. I have low expectations in that meeting, but let's see if the Iranians are prepared to diplomatically dismantle those enrichment facilities in Fordow. There might be a diplomatic off ramp. I think we should pursue every effort for a diplomatic off ramp.
[20:30:43]
But also, particularly for the lead up to the piece you just had, and I mentioned this last night, we got to be on the same page with the Israelis on the military objective. Anderson, I have actually very high confidence that the military objective narrowly focused on Fordow is achievable. Centcom can do it, very high confidence. I have zero confidence that we can use a military instrument of power to effectuate a regime change in Iran. And if that's what the Israelis might want to achieve by using a military instrument, that's a very dangerous road.
We support the Iranian people. This regime is brutal, in the Women Life Freedom uprisings in 2022, they killed 600 innocent Iranians. There is American blood on the hands of this regime. We would love to see history take its course. But one anecdote, Anderson, I've negotiated with the Iranians over the years and they act very confident, almost cartoonishly confident at the table sometimes. And I said to an Iranian intelligence official, you know, your system, you just look historically, you've lost the support of your people. You cannot keep a rifle pointed at your people for decades on end. Eventually, history will take its course and your system is going to collapse.
And his answer was cold and menacing. He said, you might be right, but we have about 35 percent of the population. They're true revolutionaries, and we have all the weapons. So, we don't know what would happen if the upper layer of this regime collapsed. We cannot effectuate that in a way we might predict. We have learned that lesson. I fully agree that we should support the Iranian people, allow them to communicate, do whatever we can. But on a military objective, national security objective, narrow, tight, and focused.
COOPER: I think what you say is so important because, I mean, it is stunning to me that there's a lot of smart people who look at a problem, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and say, OK, well, you remove Saddam and yeah, you, let's get rid of the Ba'ath Party and get rid of all those people who's propped up the regime. The de- Ba'athification led to a lot of folks with military training not having jobs, suddenly not having resources. It -- then there was an insurgency and we all know what happens, the follow-on effects of that. It's very hard to game things out correctly from a distance or even up close.
MCGURK: And in a country like Iran, where we have not had American diplomats, American personnel for 46 years, we do not know all the dynamics inside Iran. We cannot pretend to know. And I spent a year in Iraq in 2004 and the Iraq that we found was not the Iraq that was assumed in the war plan, completely different. You mentioned Libya, another example. Bottom line, we have learned this lesson. We've also learned we can use the military instrument of power in a very effective way. And if the objective is simply to dismantle that Fordow facility, degrade the nuclear capabilities and the missile program, and as of now, those are the stated objectives of Israel. They're the stated objectives, that is achievable.
When it comes to regime change, you're talking a much longer road and different instruments of national power, not military.
COOPER: Brett McGurk, a really important discussion. Thank you. Appreciate it. Coming up next, how domestic politics and a political divide the president faces over deeper American involvement overseas could shape the coming days. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:38:33] COOPER: While the president continues to weigh U.S. military intervention in the conflict between Israel and Iran, his own party is split on whether or not the country should get involved. Several Republicans said they have trust in the president's judgment.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. RICK SCOTT, (R-FL): I believe this president is doing the right thing. I believe Israel is doing the right thing.
SEN. ROGER MARSHALL, (R-KS): I fully support the president doing what he thinks we need to do in this very strategic moment.
SEN. THOM TILLIS, (R-NC): It is time for regime change and I believe that this president should be given a fair amount of leeway to affect that.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Other Republican lawmakers, however, like Missouri Senator Josh Hawley are warning against taking action against Iran.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. JOSH HAWLEY, (R-MO): You can come to the negotiating table with us and give up your nuclear program, and we'll facilitate that. That's great. It's a very different thing though for us to then say, but we are going to offensively, affirmatively, go strike Iran.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Joining us now is CNN Chief Political Analyst David Axelrod and CNN Senior Political Commentator and former Republican Congressman Adam Kinzinger, who served in the Air Force prior to Congress. So David, when the president says on television, maybe I will, maybe I won't, is that him at his most candid in a way? Or is that strategic thinking?
DAVID AXELROD, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, he may think it is strategic thinking. It's very hard to discern and partly because there's been such a head-spinning turn from his rhetoric of just a week ago.
[20:40:00]
He went from urging negotiations to we're going to -- we might take the Ayatollah out and I think people, you know, are justly sort of trying to figure out exactly what it is that he does mean. I'm sure the Iranians are as well. But, I thought what General McChrystal said was so wise, this is not an easy decision, not just because of the operation itself, but all the day after questions. And I imagine there are a lot of people in Congress who have that same concern, but whether they'll raise their voice is another question.
COOPER: Congressman, I want to ask you some specific military questions in a moment, but given your military experience and what you have seen during your service, if you were looking at this operation, looking at what the U.S. should do, what would be the calculus in your head?
ADAM KINZINGER, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL COMMENTATOR AND FORMER REPUBLICAN CONGRESSMAN: Well, I mean, the calculus is, what's the end state? What is the mission? I think the mission on the United States side is a denuclearized Iran. Yes, if they want to come to the table tomorrow and say we're done with a nuclear program, I think that's fine. But I think a denuclearized Iran, so once the Fordow facility is taken out, Natanz and other areas, and basically they're -- this has been wiped out, then I think it's OK to go to standing down operations.
What the United States should do, if they do, is take out Fordow with the B-2s and obviously, the big bombs they have, and then put a serious amount of air power over Iran to basically suppress surface- to-surface missile fire. This is what Israel is doing so well, as these launchers pop out and expose themselves, they take them out. In fact, Israel that's -- Iran, that is their limiting factor right now. They can have thousands of missiles, but they don't have a ton of launchers. So that's what I think you end up doing and ultimately, trying to press down or suppress any response they can have.
I'll say really quickly, nobody had on their bingo card for any operation like this that Israel would have air supremacy over Iran ever, much less within 48 hours. So I think it's good. It's pretty astounding, honestly.
COOPER: Well, on top of that, Congressman, the -- obviously, the decimation of Hamas or degradation of Hamas at the very least, Hezbollah as well, taking out Syrian air defenses months ago as there was regime change and chaos there, all of that has paved the way to Iran's weakened position right now.
KINZINGER: Yeah, it really has. And I think they're on the back ropes. Keep in mind, literally probably, I guess just prior to October 7th, we thought Iran had this massive reach all over the Middle East and they did, and Israel has systematically rolled back that reach. They've rolled back the proxies. Proxies still exist in places like Iraq, and we have to be aware of that, but then they have shown Iran to either be a paper tiger or Israel's military is much better than we assumed.
And so, I think this is one of those things where I -- look, I don't think we should necessarily be going for regime change. If it naturally happens by the forces within Iran, that's Iran's business. Our business should be, let's destroy the nuclear facilities and then we can possibly negotiate economically to say things like, you need to withdraw your support for the proxy forces. That's where you then can come in and negotiate.
COOPER: David, you were in the White House during the Obama administration. You saw firsthand the difficulties of the administration having -- in Afghanistan and elsewhere. What lesson did you take away from that, that applies to what the U.S. may do now?
AXELROD: Well, General McChrystal had that experience too, which is maybe why he said what he said. I have such a high regard for Adam and so much respect for his service. And I think the thing that makes this a hard call is that, is an opportunity here, clearly, to damage and maybe take this program out. But the question is, and the lessons we've learned from these other conflicts is what happens next? What kinds of reprisals are still open to them? What kind of asymmetric warfare is being waged?
And it may be that you weigh all those things and say, it's still worth it. The question is, are those things being weighed? And we don't really know because of the way this whole thing has evolved so rapidly and because of the fact that the president has been all over the place on this issue.
COOPER: Congressman, you mentioned using B-2 Stealth Bombers to strike Iran's hardened nuclear facilities, Fordow, which is inside the mountain. Can you explain the logistics of sending those aircraft into the region, refueling them mid-air, getting them out safely?
KINZINGER: Yeah, so likely, they take off from where they're based in the United States in Missouri. It's a long flight. They usually fly at a round -- a round trip flight and they'll use an air bridge.
[20:45:00]
So there'll be tankers stationed throughout. So these are air refuelers stationed basically throughout the route that the B-2 would have to take. It then makes its way into Iran. They don't have to really worry about surface-to-air missile fire because that's been degraded so much. But normally, the B-2's advantage is they're unseeable by radar. So, they would basically go in, drop their bombs just pretty easily, and then turn around and fly all the way home. It's a very long mission. I don't know, it's like 30-some hours round trip.
So, they have more than obviously, then two pilots on board and but that's the logistics. They basically would take off from the U.S. and hit these tankers to continue to go into Iran and then come out. It's part of the reason we keep them in the United States is they're so expensive. They're so valuable to us that, frankly, to keep them somewhere else overseas would I think presents some danger.
COOPER: Yeah, some unknowns. How many of these bombs would it take to actually destroy this facility? Would there need to be sort of follow- on forces on the ground, Israeli or other, to get documents to actually determine whether or not the facility has been destroyed? A lot to consider. Congressman Kinzinger, appreciate your time, David Axelrod as well. What if Iran gets a nuclear weapon? That's the question we should look at next. What damage could that do? Some insights from a CNN Military Analyst ahead.
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[20:50:33]
COOPER: There's certainly a lot of what ifs in this conflict between Israel and Iran. The central one, which has motivated Israel's decision to strike is what if Iran got a nuclear weapon? CNN's to Tom Foreman has more than that.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
TOM FOREMAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Amidst showers of missiles and thundering exchanges, the claims are growing louder. Israel and its allies insist the already sweeping attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities need to be decisive.
ISAAC HERZOG, ISRAELI PRESIDENT: If you want this war to de-escalate, get the nukes out of Tehran's hands.
DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: It's very simple. Not complicated. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
FOREMAN (voice-over): For decades, Iranian leaders have been building a nuclear program, which they say as for research and to generate electricity. Indeed, just days ago, Iranian leadership reiterated they have no intention of building a nuke. But intelligence and military analysts say Iran has long been stockpiling refined uranium, developing more powerful missiles and mining the technical knowledge of allies, including Russia, with hopes of someday becoming the world's 10th nuclear armed nation.
COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: The Iranians are definitely much closer than they were five or 10 years ago, and it is certainly true that they've gotten a lot closer to deploying a weapon of this type than they were even a year or two ago.
FOREMAN (voice-over): How big would an Iranian nuke be? Some analysts suspect it would pack about two-thirds of the explosive power of some bombs developed by the U.S. in the 1940s and '50s. U.S. intelligence predicts a viable weapon could still be years away, but the Israelis argue it might come much quicker.
BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: We decided to act because we had to -- we saw enough uranium, enriched uranium for nine bombs and all they had to do was weaponize them.
FOREMAN (voice-over): Netanyahu did not offer specific evidence. The Israelis have made such claims before, and the complete equation is more complicated. Any Iranian nuke would have to be miniaturized enough to be carried by a missile, plane, or other delivery mechanism. It would need to evade Israel's robust detection and defense systems, and it would have to work. But if just one made it through --
LEIGHTON: It could obliterate a large portion of a major city. It could make a port unusable.
FOREMAN (voice-over): It could cripple communications, shut down electricity, and poison the land with radioactive fallout. And so far, plenty of analysts note a lot of Iran's nuclear infrastructure is deep in the ground where Israeli bombs can't reach it.
REP. JIM HIMES, (D-CT) RANKING MEMBER, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Right now, Iran, if they were left alone, could reconstitute their program very quickly. FOREMAN (voice-over): Tom Foreman, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: Thanks very much, Tom. Coming up next, perspective from someone who briefed the president on Iran in the first administration.
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[20:57:32]
COOPER: We began the program with word on what the president and his national security team are now weighing with respect to Iran. We end it with perspective from someone who briefed the president on the subject in his first administration, CNN National Security Analyst, a former Deputy Director of National Intelligence, Beth Sanner. Beth, what is your best assessment of how close Iran is to having enriched uranium at a weapons-grade level?
BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Right. As Netanyahu just said, they're very close to having enough fissile material. It's really only a matter of whether they want to or not. So, it would've been days at Natanz, it would be three weeks at Fordow. But fissile material does not make a weapon and that's what he just said.
COOPER: Even if Iran is able to enrich uranium at the levels to make a bomb, they still have to, to your point, make that material into a deliverable weapon. How hard is that to do? How far along do you think the Iranians are in that pursuit?
SANNER: So I think that, when the U.S. intelligence community says that it's months, maybe a year for a weapon, that's like a high-end weapon, that's figuring out how to take this fissile material, put it inside a bomb, miniaturize that, make sure it fits in a warhead, that that warhead goes up, that the re-entry vehicle comes down without burning up. It's complicated. But people are worried about this creation of a crude weapon, and that could be done in maybe a matter of weeks or months. And that is even less comp -- more complicated than just doing a dirty bomb that we worried about terrorists doing.
But I think that this calculus for whether they would do that or not is something that is not certain. And so, I want people to understand that.
COOPER: Israel in the past has had an assault on a facility. I think it was a chemical weapons facility in Syria, successfully taking that down. How convinced are you that Fordow is only destroyable with these bunker busting bombs? Would Special Forces be able to, in a large operation, take it offline, damage it?
SANNER: I think that they might. I mean, I don't think Israel would've started this if they thought they had no option other than the United States. But here's another idea. There's a possibility that Iran has other covert facilities and that they could actually have moved some of their stockpile to other places. And so, maybe even taking out Fordow might not be enough.
