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Israel and Iran Trade Strikes as Trump Weights U.S. Action; Trump Reviewed Iran Attack Plans, Holding Off for Now; Interview with Rep. Eugene Vidman (D-VA): All-Senate Briefing to Take Place Next Week on Iran; Israel Defense Minister: Iran Supreme Leader "Can No Longer Continue to Exist". Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired June 19, 2025 - 08:00   ET

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

[08:00:00]

RANA FOROOHAR, CNN GLOBAL ECONOMIC ANALYST: Little shades of that with the, you know, Houthi rebels and blocking the Suez Canal. Any time you get any choke point in the Middle East blocked, any kind of conflict, any sense that, oh boy, oil is in play, the Middle East is in play, you get inflation in energy. And that's what we're seeing.

And so cheap energy and the hopes of the White House that that's going to keep inflation down, I'm not so sure.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yes, it has been something that has been very helpful to them the last two months, but maybe not anymore. Rana Foroohar, great to see you. Thank you very much.

A lot of news coming in a brand new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts now.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, breaking news out of the Middle East. Israel says Iran has crossed a red line after an Iranian missile strikes a major hospital in southern Israel. Israel promising major retaliation.

Overnight it hit an inactive nuclear facility in Iran. CNN is on the ground in Israel and Tehran this morning.

Plus, we've learned President Trump has reviewed attack plans for Iran. We are standing by for him to make a decision on whether to attack.

And celebrating Juneteenth, two women connected by history meet for the first time at a historic Texas chapel. Their family stories reveal a deep meaning behind the holiday and the fight to keep history alive.

I'm Sara Sidner with John Berman. Kate is out today. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: All right, the breaking news this morning. Will he strike Iran or not? A source tells CNN that President Trump has reviewed attack plans for Iran, but he's holding off for now to see if Tehran steps back from its nuclear program. While he weighs this decision, this is what happened overnight. A large explosion from an Iranian strike on a major hospital in southern Israel. Officials there say it has caused extensive damage. You can see some of it for yourself.

Inside the facility, patients and staffers, they scrambled for safety. Israel says Iran launched dozens of ballistic missiles in the latest wave, several hitting civilian areas and injuring at least 60 people.

Also this morning, CNN has a team of the first Western journalists inside Iran. Since the conflict, this latest round of the conflict with Israel began, and we're getting a first look at the damage left behind after a deadly Israeli strike on a state-run news agency in Tehran. In the middle of a live broadcast that happened on Monday, video shows a reporter broadcasting out front shortly after it was hit.

This morning, CNN's Fred Pleitgen was there.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're inside the Iranian state broadcasting company, IRIB, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike a couple of days ago, and you can see the damage is absolutely massive. I'm standing in the atrium right now, but if you look around, this whole area has been completely destroyed. All of the offices, all of the technology that they have inside here, the broadcast technology, everything has been rendered pretty much useless.

All right, so we're going to go inside the building now. They have told us that we need to be very careful because obviously there might still be unexploded parts of bombs in here or something like that. What we see here is the actual studio where an Iranian state TV anchor was sitting and reading the news when the strike hit.

You can see here that is an anchor desk right there, and of course when it happened, the anchor was reading the news and then all of a sudden there was a thud. The studio went black at the beginning. She got up and left, but then later apparently came back and finished the newscast and is now being hailed as a champion of Iranian media.

Some of the main bulk of the explosion must have been here because this place is absolutely charred. If we look back over there, that actually seems to be the main part of what was the newsroom with a lot of the desks, computers, printers, phones. You can see how much heat must have been admitted by the impact and by the explosion.

The phones that they had here are molten. Here also the keys are molten. This screen, and there's actually someone's lunch still at their desk standing here, which probably they would have been wanting to eat until they had to evacuate the building.

You can see there's a spoon here that's also been melted away by this explosion. All of this is playing very big here in Iran. There's a lot of public anger that the Israelis attacked this site, and certainly the Iranians are saying that they condemn this and that there is going to be revenge for this.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Tehran.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

BERMAN: Our thanks to Fred Pleitgen and his team for being there. Remarkable reporting.

With us now is global affairs correspondent for Axios and CNN political and global affairs analyst, Barak Ravid.

Barak, great to see you this morning. It's about five after 8 a.m. on the East Coast. The president said to be considering this strike. He's reviewed plans.

[08:05:00]

What's the very latest that you're hearing on where things stand?

BARAK RAVID, CNN POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Good morning, John. Well, I think the most interesting thing this morning will be another Situation Room meeting that the president is going to have with his top national security aides around 11:30 in the morning, something like that. Trump, this will be, I think, the third Situation Room meeting in third days when Trump is still deliberating if and when to launch a U.S. (INAUDIBLE).

And one of the main questions Trump is asking his team, has asked his team, is whether the 30,000 pound bunker buster bomb that the U.S., that only the U.S. has, that only the U.S. has the bombers to drop it on Iran's heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility, whether it will work. Because Donald Trump doesn't want to go in to such an operation and find out two hours after the bombs dropped that it did nothing.

And what U.S. officials are telling me is that the Pentagon was pretty confident telling President Trump that they think it will work and it will neutralize this nuclear facility in deep inside a mountain in Iran. It's been tested at least twice during 2024, and former U.S. officials also say they think it will work. I think Trump will have to make a decision in the next few days.

BERMAN: How prepared do you think President Trump is for what would happen after an attack like that? How much is that weighing in on the consideration?

RAVID: So I'm sure it's a main pillar because, you know, the U.S. doesn't want to have U.S. forces and U.S. interests in the region being attacked by an Iranian retaliation. And it is clear that if the U.S. goes in, the Iranians will retaliate against U.S. forces and U.S. interests. There's also the highly likely scenario that the Iranians will attack oil fields in the region, will close the Strait of Hormuz, which will have significant impact on commercial shipping.

If the U.S. goes in, we are in a whole different scenario, both for Iran, for the U.S., and for the region as a whole. It's a whole new ball game. BERMAN: Overnight there was this hospital in southern Israel that was hit. Has anything that has happened between Israel and Iran over the last several days, not since the beginning, but really the last 24, 48 hours, changed the situation at all, influenced which way this is headed?

RAVID: I think the main change, and it's a gradual change that I think everyone could have sensed in the last few days, is that there are two stated goals for the Israeli government for this war. One is to destroy the Iranian nuclear program, and the other one is to destroy Iran's ballistic missile capabilities. But over the last 48, 72 hours, a new unstated goal has emerged, and this is regime change in Iran.

And today, after this attack on the hospital and several other cities in Israel, Israel's minister of defense, Israel Katz, publicly stated that the destabilization of the Iranian regime is one of the goals of this war. It's the first time an Israeli official said it publicly. He said that the Iran's supreme leader, Khamenei, is a target.

This is another first time, and I think it is clear that for the Israelis, it is not about the nuclear program and the ballistic missile anymore. This was a goal at the beginning. Now it is clear that they're trying to destabilize the Iranian regime, hoping that it will collapse.

BERMAN: A pronounced change in the language there overnight. You're smart to point that out. Barak Ravid, great to see you this morning. Thank you -- Sara.

SIDNER: All right. Joining me now is Democratic Congressman Eugene Vindman of Virginia. He is also a retired U.S. Army colonel.

All right, you just heard some of the reporting there from Barak Ravid, saying the president is asking whether the bunker busters will take out the heavily fortified Fordow nuclear facility. Are you confident that those bombs would do the job if deployed?

REP. EUGENE VINDMAN (D-VA): Well, look, first of all, it's a tough mission. I don't think there can be 100 percent confidence. Those centrifuges are buried deep in the mountain, 300 feet, at least 300 feet, and there's uncertainty in these missions.

[08:10:00]

It really depends a lot on the intelligence that's available. And I would have been involved in these discussions when I would have been in the room at the National Security Council as a legal advisor.

And there's never 100 percent certainty in this. And that's why wars are so easy. They're easy to start and they're hard to finish.

SIDNER: There is a schism among Republicans. Some support U.S. military involvement in Iran. Others are vehemently against it. Where do you stand on whether the U.S. should take military action against Iran now? VINDMAN: Well, the first thing I would say is that Iran is a major sponsor of terrorism. It's a destabilizing force across the Middle East, across the country, across the world. And it's responsible for more American deaths than any other country around the world.

I spent -- I was deployed to Iraq in a combat zone. We took many casualties from Iranian-backed militias. Thousands were killed, hundreds were killed in the Beirut bombing.

So I'm not apologizing for Iran. But what I do expect the president to do is take his case to the American people and to the representatives of the American people, which are members of Congress.

I haven't seen that yet. The president owes that to the American people. He's promised repeatedly that he's not going to engage us in Middle Eastern wars. And he's so far failed to have that conversation with the American people.

SIDNER: Representatives Thomas Massey and Ro Khanna, a Republican and Democrat who do not agree most of the time, are coming together, planning to introduce a measure that would force President Trump to get approval to Congress to enter Israel's conflict with Iran. Do you agree that Congress in this instance should have a say here as to whether or not the military is used in this instance?

VINDMAN: Well, 100 percent. The Constitution is clear that Congress has the power to declare war. And there are only narrow provisions where the president can act on his own in self-defense.

I don't see a justification right now that this is self-defense. There's potentially collective self-defense with our partners in the region and Israelis. But under international law, aggressive war is banned under the U.N. charter. And there needs to be a legal justification, which folks in the White House should be working on. And also a plan and objective. Congress must play a role in this.

The president must provide a plan, objectives. And in the previous segment, we heard, you know, it was classic mission creep. Originally, the Israelis were looking at destroying the nuclear capability. Now it's regime change.

These are -- this is very dangerous for the United States and Israel to engage in this type of mission creep without clear objectives. The president owes this to the American people.

SIDNER: Yes, I mean, there was talk about regime change. And you're hearing Israel put some pressure on the United States to be a part of this. How dangerous is that when you consider what happened in places where you served, like Iraq or also in Afghanistan?

VINDMAN: It's very dangerous. I mean initially, the Afghanistan war started as a sort of a punitive expedition. That al-Qaeda that attacked the United States in 9-11 came out of Afghanistan. And then we adjusted our mission after the regime collapsed to nation building.

These are some of these things are the military, the U.S. Army, the Marines, U.S. military overall is just not good at. And so before we engage in another war, the president has repeatedly promised not to engage us in forever wars in the Middle East.

He needs to have a clear plan, clear objectives. And I'm frankly concerned that he has the team that's going to be able to provide him. I have confidence in the uniformed service members that have been there for decades that are true experts.

But I don't have much confidence in his national security team on the civilian side, folks like Pete Hegseth, who appeared before my committee last week and couldn't answer basic questions about, you know, what's the size of the Chinese fleet. And the same thing goes for for Tulsi Gabbard and other folks in the civilian leadership.

So I don't think he has the right team around him. And it's extremely dangerous time.

SIDNER: Congressman Eugene Vindman, it is always a pleasure. Thank you for coming on and talking us through this this morning. Appreciate it.

VINDMAN: Thank you.

SIDNER: All right, ahead, we will speak with a retired brigadier general on what a potential U.S. strategy could look like.

Plus, Karen Read acquitted of murder in her retrial. But her legal battles, not over yet. Details on the next court challenge she is facing.

Plus, a routine test of SpaceX Starship rocket ends like this. Huge explosion. What went wrong?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BERMAN: All right, the breaking news this morning. Just a short time ago, Israel's defense minister said that Iran's Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cannot be allowed to continue to exist.

This after Iran struck a hospital inside Israel. The defense minister said, quote, a dictator like Khamenei, who's heading a state like Iran, who set himself the goal of destroying the state of Israel, he can no longer continue to exist.

With us now, the former assistant secretary of state for political military affairs, retired Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt. General, great to see you.

This is the Ayatollah right here. This is the most explicit language we've heard from a senior Israeli official calling really for the ouster, calling for essentially regime change here.

What significance do you read into that statement?

[08:20:00]

And how would that change the type of military operation we're seeing? BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT (RET.), FORMER ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR POLITICAL-MILITARY AFFAIRS: Well, it's an extraordinarily significant statement. That means that the Israelis are subscribing to the policy of regime change. And how would that change the mission?

Well, it would just add on to the mission. That is classic mission creep. And while I appreciate everything that Israel has done up to this point about taking out the nuclear facilities, my question to Israel would be, OK, if there's going to be regime change, are you taking over the day after operations yourself?

BERMAN: Talk to me more about that, because you also say this is something the entire world needs to think about more, the day after management.

KIMMITT: Well, I do. It goes back to the Colin Powell comment, the old comment about if you break it, you buy it. We saw that in Iraq. We saw that in Afghanistan.

I'm not saying that it should be necessarily completely taken off the table, but there ought to be some considerations and a lot of planning because it's easy to do the regime change, but putting it back together is much like Humpty Dumpty.

BERMAN: And the type of conflict this is, and we can see all the strikes that have taken place, and this is, I think, just now a fraction of them, all the strikes that have taken place in Iran. The nature of this operation, Israel's over here. I mean, it's not like there are troops at the border of Iran, Israeli or otherwise, waiting to go in to occupy.

So if there were to be regime change, if the regime were to fall here, I'm not even sure I understand what would happen, how there would be an organization to run the country.

KIMMITT: No, I agree. And people seem to think about Iran as a homogeneous nation. Well, that's not true.

Persians only make up about 65 percent, I think, is the number of the population. You have Kurdish areas, you have Armenian areas, you have the areas out by Afghanistan. And we could unintentionally, Israel could unintentionally be putting Iran into a civil war.

That's an extreme case, but I don't necessarily believe that the right answer is bringing in expatriate Iranians who are out of the country for the last 40 plus years as the solution. We saw that in Iraq and the expats didn't make things better.

BERMAN: You did have some experience with that, to be sure. One of the other things that people talked about for years in the run up to a conflict like this between Israel and Iran, it could spiral into a regional conflict. But what they meant when they were talking about that was the presence of Hezbollah in Lebanon.

All of Syria, you know, the allies of Iran, even Hamas and Yemen. But now so many of those Iranian proxies are weakened. So when you talk about a possibility of a regional conflict, does that still exist in the same way?

KIMMITT: Well, I put it in a different way of looking at this. October 7th and its aftermath created this once in a generation opportunity for the Israelis to attack into Iran. The great fear before that was if they attacked into Iran, you would have all of these proxies with hundreds of thousands of missiles, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis raining down missiles along with Iran into Israel.

That wouldn't work. That was, in fact, a deterrence to Israel from attacking into Iran. After October 7th, the way that Israel has methodically taken out the missile capabilities of all those countries, then they understood all they had to worry about was Iran's capabilities.

They could handle it, and that's why they've attacked.

BERMAN: General Mark Kimmett, always great to have you on. Thanks so much for being with us this morning.

And this morning, quote, it is blowing up.

The new message from a staunch ally of President Trump as the Iran conflict and potential U.S. involvement is sparking a serious rhetorical battle within the Republican base.

Plus, new video shows the moment a woman was rescued alive after spending days lost at a campsite.

[08:25:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SIDNER: The second trial for Karen Read coming to a stunning end. The jury verdict, not guilty of second degree murder or manslaughter in the death of Read's police officer boyfriend, John O'Keefe. Jurors only found her guilty of drunk driving.

Outside the court, a big reaction among the crowd that has been gathering there day after day, wearing pink in support of Read.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAREN READ, ACQUITTED OF MURDER CHARGE: I could not be standing here without these amazing supporters who have supported me and my team financially and more importantly, emotionally for almost four years. And the second thing I want to say is no one has fought harder for justice for John O'Keefe than I have.

JOHN JACKSON, JOHN O'KEEFE'S FRIEND: Johnny deserved much more than this. He just deserved much more than this. The fanfare and all this domestic violence hit and run.

And that's it. This circus it's unacceptable. But you respect the jury's decision. It's what it is.

(END VIDEO CLIP) SIDNER: That's the family of John O'Keefe there. CNN's Jean Casarez is joining us now.

You have covered so many trials over the years. What is so different about this one with this huge public response? Every day, large crowds gathering in support of Read.

JEAN CASAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Because it's in support of the defendant. You know, Sara, think about these huge trials that we cover.