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Israel Launches Unprecedented Strikes on Iran; Trump Admin Still Hopes Iran Nuclear Talks Will Happen Sunday; Officials Say, One Flight Recorder Recovered from Air India Crash. Aired 7-7:30a ET

Aired June 13, 2025 - 07:00   ET

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

[07:00:00]

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right. The breaking news this morning, major breaking news, Israel says it has launched an unprecedented attack on Iran, targeting the country's nuclear sites and top military leaders and the operation very much ongoing. The Israel Defense Forces say they use 200 fighter jets striking more than a hundred targets so far across the country.

And we just got new reaction from President Trump. We'll have much more on that in just a moment.

Video shows explosions at one of the sites in Northwest Iran. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, says the attacks struck at the heart of Iran's nuclear program, and they would last, quote, as many days as it takes.

Black plumes of smoke rose over Natanz. That's the site of Iran's main nuclear enrichment facility. The country's Atomic Energy Agency says the attack there caused, quote, superficial damage. Iran state T.V. says the strikes killed several top military leaders and nuclear scientists, including three of the most powerful people in the country, the commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the country's highest ranking military officer, and its former national security chief.

Israel has declared a state of emergency, and the military said it was already working to intercept more than 100 drones launched by Iran in retaliation. It is likely just the first stage of what is expected to be a much larger counterattack.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: Reaction already this morning, President Trump reacting just a short time ago, posting, I gave Iran a chance after chance to make a deal. I told him strongest of words to just do it. But no matter how hard they tried, no matter how close they got, they just couldn't get it done.

He added, there is still time to make this slaughter, as he put it, with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal come to an end. Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left, and save what was once known as the Iranian empire. No more death, no more destruction. Just do it before it is too late. God bless you all. Images of damage in Iran's capital, Tehran. Secretary of State Marco Rubio says Israel acted unilaterally against Iran and that the United States was not involved. After decades of simmering tensions, this massive attack is now raising fears that this is an all out war in the Middle East.

Joining us now, CNN Chief International Anchor Christiane Amanpour and CNN's Oren Liebermann in Jerusalem for us.

First to you Christiane. When you are looking at this, Israel says it's going to keep these attacks ongoing. Iran has already started to retaliate. Do you see this as an all-out war now?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Well, it just depends actually on Iran's ability to retaliate and what happens next, and whether the United States or others get involved. As you know, publicly, the U.S. said that Israel did it alone, unilateral. Here in Europe, our allies have backed off. They've said they had nothing to do with it. And they haven't even said that they would like the last time join any protection of the skies over Israel like they did the last time. So, people are really not wanting to get more involved and they're calling for it to actually calm down and for some kind of ceasefire.

That looks unlikely. And I think what's really interesting for the United States and you all to figure out is what is coming out of Israeli reports. Israeli reporters are saying that there seems to be a much higher level of coordination between the United States and Israel that is being said publicly, and that even some of the words, some of the actions, including potentially the so-called meeting that's meant to be happening to continue a nuclear deal this weekend in Oman, that was all potentially part of a deception.

So, I think that is going to be very interesting to look at, the extent of the U.S. inaction in this and permission. What we do know is that Prime Minister in Netanyahu has been itching for this fight for years. And we also know that no other American president has allowed any Israeli prime minister to take this kind of action. This will be the first time that that this kind of action has been permitted or green-lit, or whatever you want to call it, by an American president.

If you remember, the crisis stems from President Trump pulling out of the nuclear agreement back in his first term. From that moment when Iran was bound and had been verified by the international agencies to keep its uranium enrichment low, it started to produce at higher levels.

[07:05:07]

And what appears to have triggered this movement now is two reports from the IAEA, which is the U.N. nuclear surveillance agency, which has said two things, one ,that Iran has produced up to about 60 percent, which they believe is, you know, significant, much more rapidly than they expected. And also in a second report said that Iran had not allowed them enough access, sort of stonewalling certain access, and that is what caused the latest, you know, reports from the IAEA.

Israel clearly believes that it had neutralized, serious opposition, including from Iran. So far, you've seen, and I'm going to say this because it's relative, only a hundred drones have been sent in retaliation, but no missiles yet and no nothing. And also Hezbollah is not involved. Hamas is not involved. Other Iranian proxies are not involved in great part because they have been defanged. Israel apparently feeling that it though was reaching what they call, I believe, a zone of immunity, something like that where it needs to -- where something needs to be done before Iran is in a state of being able to do something without it being able to be pulled back.

So, this is very complicated. The Arab states, including those who made, you know, agreements under the Abraham Accords with Israel, are all calling for calm. And we'll just see where it goes next. And by the way, it was the Persian Empire and not the Iranian empire.

In Iran right now, the president is making a speech on state television to call for unity, and also, as he said, to raise Iran's head up. Clearly, this also presents potentially a matter of survival for the current regime. Back to you.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Christiane, thank you so much. Stick with us. Let's go to Oren Liebermann now.

Oren, you've been covering this since the wee hours of the morning as this was playing out. I was watching you overnight. Is the attack over?

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF AND CORRESPONDENT: The short answer is no, it doesn't look like it is. We've been here in the bureau in Jerusalem covering these for the last ten hours since the first wave of strikes occurred, striking the nuclear enrichment facility in Natanz and a number of other places across the country. That's where we see that 200 fighter jets hitting a hundred targets. But it looks like that number may continue to grow.

The IDF spokesperson just got on camera a short time ago and put out a statement where he said, the Air Force continues to strike Iran over the recent hours. And it was Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who, in his first video statement, said this could continue for days. Israel has made clear that it has a number of goals here, including either destroying or degrading Iran's nuclear capabilities, as well as taking out Iran's top military and nuclear leadership. And that we have already seen play out a number of Iran's top military leaders, including the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Air Force have been killed as part of these strikes.

The latter is significant because he was in charge of Iran's ballistic missile program, and that remains the great fear here, that Iran has the capability to launch hundreds of ballistic missiles at Israel that could overwhelm Israel's air defenses. And he was also responsible or led Iran's retaliatory attack against Israel last April.

So, he has been, or had been, I should say, in this sort of scenario, and was clearly very high on the list of Israeli targets as they went after, again, not only the nuclear facilities and the ballistic missile facilities, but the top of the military and nuclear leadership in what is frankly a remarkable sweep of strikes in terms of the numbers, the targets, how far spread across they are across pretty much all of Iran and in a number of neighborhoods Tehran itself.

The question now, of course, as we wait to see how many more strikes, how many more targets are there coming, Israel has made clear it will go after nuclear facilities, including, for example, the underground facilities at the Natanz enrichment facility. And then, of course, we're here waiting to see what that retaliation looks like.

BERMAN: Oren, thank you. Please keep us posted as you hear more.

One more question to you, Christiane, if you're still with us. The fact that several Iranian military leaders have been eliminated, how stable is the Iranian leadership at this point? What is the potential for disarray inside the ranks?

AMANPOUR: You know, I think that is a very important question. And as you can imagine, so many people outside Iran, including opposition groups, monarchist, former, you know, terrorist groups, which have now been taken off the terrorist list who claim to be opposition, they are also, you know, hoping that this is what, in fact that does. There is a significant number of Iranians and others who hope that any such attack on Iran would lead to a weakening of the regime and to a toppling of the regime.

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The question is what comes next?

But the question also is, right now, what is this strategy? What is the hope that these attacks on these facilities will achieve? They're saying that they're not attacking, for instance, the civilian nuclear power plant Bushehr on the Persian Gulf. Fordo apparently is too difficult to penetrate without American bombers, which have the highly, highly sophisticated and heavy tonnage that would be required to penetrate the highly enriched and strengthened -- I don't mean enriched in terms of uranium -- but strengthened concrete and other materials they've used very deep underground at Fordo, which is somewhat away from Rum, the main religious city, whether that can be penetrated. And if it can't, how much actual damage, long-term damage can be done to the Iranian enrichment?

What it seems to mean, even though President Trump suggested in his latest, you know, missive that they wanted to say, you can still come to the negotiating table. That's going to be interesting to see, whether Iranians are going to actually decide that they still want to negotiate. So far, what we've heard from Iran is that they are not coming to this Sunday meeting, but we don't know whether that's a final word. Or whether it's happening or even if that Sunday meeting was serious, as I said, some Israeli reporters have said that was also part of the deception. But, again, whether this is going to be resolved diplomatically or militarily is what we're going to wait and see. BERMAN: The operations still continue, so it's still very much a military situation at this point.

Christiana Amanpour, thanks to you, Oren Liebermann as well. Much more on that just ahead.

BOLDUAN: And we are going to have much more on this breaking news coverage. President Trump's first reaction and President Trump set to meet with his national security team in the situation room this morning. This is all still unfolding, this massive, preemptive attack by Israel on Iran, a major escalation in the Middle East.

We'll be right back.

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BOLDUAN: And this just in. CNN's Kylie Atwood now reporting that the Trump administration is still hoping that nuclear talks with Iran will go ahead as planned this weekend in Oman. That is according to two sources familiar with the matter. A U.S. official saying, we still intend to have talks Sunday.

And just this morning, President Trump is offering his first public reaction to this major escalation in the Middle East.

CNN's Alayna Treene joining us right now for the latest on that angle. Alayna, what are you hearing from the White House right now?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. This is the first official response we have gotten from President Donald Trump this morning, came in just moments ago. And I will note just before I get into it that this is a bit in contrast with what we have been hearing now from the White House and from the Trump administration, specifically from Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that the U.S. had no involvement whatsoever in the strike.

So, the statement from him, he posted this on his Truth Social website. He said that he gave Iran chance after chance to try and make this deal, but that they couldn't get it done. He said that he warned them of the manpower that both the United States and Israel has and that those took a hard line position during these negotiations in Iran over a potential nuclear deal are, quote, all dead now.

And then he said quote, there has already been great death and destruction, but there is still time to make this slaughter with the next already planned attacks being even more brutal come to an end. Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian empire. No more death, no more destruction. Just do it before it is too late.

Now, Kate, you mentioned this, but Kylie Atwood reporting that they are still hoping to have this next round of talks on Sunday in Oman. I will note that it is very hard to see that the Iranians are going to want to do that at this point. But from our conversations behind closed doors with some of these sources, they are saying that they're hoping they can still move forward with a potential nuclear deal. They do want that to be really the way to salvage all of this before more attacks begin to continue. And you kind of heard the president himself reiterate that.

Now, a few things I also want to point out is that we did hear from Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday saying again that the U.S. had no involvement in this and that Israel believed that this action was necessary for self-defense.

But we do know as well that Trump administration officials, people here at the White House, they were given aware and told to prepare for these strikes. So, they were bracing for this yesterday when we saw those first strikes hit in Iran. And I also know, I reported this with Kylie as well, is that the president had convened a cabinet level meeting last night as these strikes were happening.

That meeting, I would like to point out, was actually scheduled before Israel began its attack. They wanted to start to coordinate what the official U.S. response would be, so, again, adding to the point that they kind of knew about this.

Now, of course, I think the big picture here is that, one, President Donald Trump has not kept quiet about his frustrations with Iran and for what he believes is a very slow pace in the progression of talks over a nuclear deal. Again, to reiterate, they still want to have those talks. They do not believe that this deal is not unsalvageable. But, of course, these attacks really throw that into question.

Another big question I have, and I'm hoping to get answers from this White House today, is whether or not President Donald Trump spoke with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu specifically and directly about this, and whether he tried to warn them against this.

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Because we know in the past the present has told Netanyahu not to do this while these talks over a nuclear deal played out. But, clearly, this administration was aware that this would happen, and now they're trying to make their response known and that they want these talks to continue. Kate?

BOLDUAN: Alayna, keep us updated. Very important to hear and drill down on that today amongst many things. Thank you so much. John?

BERMAN: Yes. We're going to have much more on this again from Israel, where there appears to be an Iranian drone counterattack underway. How much of that will be repelled?

Also we've got new details in the investigation into the Air India crash. We're learning new information about the plane's final moments and a possible cause behind the disaster.

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[07:25:00] SIDNER: This morning, new video shows the moment a Boeing 787 Dreamliner crashed moments after takeoff. You see that new video there. We want to warn you, it's hard to watch because you know what happens here. But officials say one flight recorder has now been recovered from Thursday's horrific Air India plane crash that killed some 290 people.

Investigators are now working to determine, of course, what caused this crash. This is the incredible part of that. If you're seeing that plane just explode there, there is a sole survivor. He's apparently a British national who was reportedly seated in 11A, according to his boarding pass. The Hindustani Times reporting, he told them, quote, 30 seconds after takeoff there was a loud noise and then the plane crashed. It all happened so quickly.

Dozens of others died on the ground as a plane slammed into a hostel housing doctors and medical students the death toll. Still could potentially rise with us now.

CNN Safety Analyst and former FAA Safety Inspector David Soucie. Okay, first of all, the crashes you have investigated and all that you have covered as an analyst, how extraordinary is it that someone walked away from this crash, not only survived, but walked away from it?

DAVID SOUCIE, CNN SAFETY ANALYST: It is just incredible. It's truly miraculous that this happened. And especially the fact that he was in 11A, typically, survivors of aircraft accidents avoid the fireball part, which is B, back in the tail. But to see that he was in 11A and having survived this, the only thing I can think is that it was because he was directly above the wing spar, which when the impact happened, the wing spar is the heaviest part of the airplane. So, that impact is what probably saved him, the fact that he was above that heaviest part of the airplane.

SIDNER: Yes. As to the cause of the crash, there are several causes being considered here for this Dreamliner, a bird strike, double engine failure, flaps not being deployed, and I know you mentioned sort of noticing that the flaps didn't appear to be deployed yesterday. Are those areas that you would concentrate your investigation on?

SOUCIE: Yes. It is too early to tell, as we know. But as far as attacking the investigation based on the video, the fact that the flaps are not deployed is not typical but it doesn't mean that it was a mistake. You know, flying out of Denver high altitude when it's a hot day to put those flaps up on, at least on older model aircraft, you do that to try to get enough air speed so that you can then take off. So, it isn't a counter-practice or a bad practice is just a different practice. So, I'm not thinking that's the problem at this point.

But knowing that there's that loud bang, hearing that loud bang 30 seconds later would indicate to me that I would start looking towards the possibility of a bird strike.

SIDNER: Wow, yes, because we heard that from the survivor that there was a loud bang about 30 seconds. And this plane went down less than a minute after takeoff.

What is Boeing's role in this investigation? What do you expect from them?

SOUCIE: Well, Boeing fully will cooperate with the investigation. They have people on site, I'm sure at this point, and they're going to be part of it. As far as the data box, as soon as the black box is retrieved.

Now, Boeing did design this aircraft with a lot more data points than any other aircraft prior to its time. So, the data that's available to the investigators will be huge and Boeing will be there to interpret that data to compare it to what is normal versus what happened on this flight. So, they're very important to be part of the investigation for that reason, for comparing normal to what is happening now.

SIDNER: And that's a very important point, that there's going to be a lot of data points, and we know that a black box has been recovered now.

David Soucie, thank you so much for your expertise this morning. Kate?

BOLDUAN: And we are continuing to follow breaking news on so many fronts right now. Our breaking news coverage of Israel's attack on Iran, the targets, the people killed, and what is next. As we know, Israel says that this -- the first wave may have come. This attack is not over. And now lawmakers here at home are reacting to all of this today.

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