Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Interview with Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA): Trump's Assessment of the Bombing Campaign in Iran; Defense Secretary Hegseth Speaks About Iran Stikes; Pentagon Holds Press Briefing on Iran Strikes. Aired 8-8:30a ET

Aired June 26, 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]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: ... limit the amount of classified information and detail that they offer even you all in a classified setting.

So do you expect to get answers to your questions?

SEN. TIM KAINE (D-VA): Yes Well, look, they were already limiting information to Democrats. They briefed Republicans on the on the bombing campaign and not Democrats, as had been the case in the past. So if there's a leak coming, I have a sense I know who it's from.

They want to avoid transparency, I think not because of the leak. It's because they don't like the information. When the president goes out and says they can't -- the campaign has obliterated, the nuclear program and the information from our own intel community and others suggest otherwise, it embarrasses the president.

And I think the reason to withhold information isn't because of a leak. It's because the president fears being embarrassed.

BOLDUAN: So I know that I saw that the top Democrat on House Intel, Jim Himes, had said, told Politico, you know, the leak is unacceptable and should be fully investigated. But on that, you said, who are you suggesting you think the leak came from?

KAINE: Well, look, I was on my way to the skiff to read the information and the reporters already were asking me questions about it on my way in. I would suspect that it was leaked by Republicans who want the president to continue the bombing campaign. I have no way of knowing. It shouldn't be leaked. It ought to be investigated. But I think it was an effort to say, hey, look, the job isn't done. Let's do more bombs.

And again, my belief is our sons and daughters are precious. We shouldn't send them into war unless Congress can debate and have a vote.

And now in this moment of ceasefire, thank God we're in a little moment of ceasefire. We have the ability to do this right and not get rushed into war based on false intelligence as we were with Iraq in 2003. BOLDUAN: Since everything I see suggests looking more broadly at the impact of the the Iran strikes and this damage battle, this battle damage assessment that is clearly coming together. Everything I've seen is the full picture from what from the strikes. It's not going to be clear for perhaps months, it's suggested by some.

With that in mind, do you like the idea of the president, as he says, he's going to be sitting down with Iran next week to negotiate?

KAINE: Yes, negotiation and diplomacy is the preferred option. I think the president made a massive mistake when he tore up the nuclear diplomacy deal that was working with Iran back during his first term. I think it was a mistake on the order of the Vietnam War, the invasion of Iraq, one of the most consequential mistakes that any president has ever made in the foreign policy space, because we had a diplomatic deal that was working according to us, according to our allies, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, according to the president's own cabinet.

To tear that deal up and allow Iran to go forward and now to be bombing Iran to accomplish by bombs what we had accomplished through diplomacy is tragic. But I do think it's good that the president is talking about sitting down to diplomatically see if there's a path for a new chapter in Iran with no nuclear weapons and a new chapter between Iran and the United States and the region.

BOLDUAN: We're about to hear from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and I'm curious, from your perspective, what is your measure of success when it comes to this operation, the U.S. operation and also what Israel has done over the last, I'll say, 12 plus days? It is success, obliteration of the sites, obliteration, which obviously is an undefined term, if you will, of the program. Is it the program's been set back by two years or the program has been set back by 10 years?

What is your met -- oh, stick with me, Senator. We're just seeing right now the Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is walking up to the lectern.

Thank you, Senator. We're going to jump over right now to hear from the Pentagon.

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Two days apart from my battle buddy, so it's good to see him this morning. Good to see you, Mr. Chairman.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You too, sir.

HEGSETH: Where there was a historic outcome. I want to start with that real quick. I think there's so much news, so many things happening that oftentimes big, momentous moments get missed.

What President Trump accomplished in NATO yesterday was game-changing and historic. A shift in burden sharing to European responsibility in NATO that most would have said was impossible at the beginning of his term. But he said, NATO needs to pay up.

They started in the first term and here in his second term, we've accelerated that. 32 NATO countries committed to spending 5 percent of their GDP on defense, on actually investing in the NATO alliance.

[08:05:00]

So I hope with all the ink spilled, all of your outlets find the time to properly recognize this historic change in continental security that other presidents tried to do, other presidents talked about. President Trump accomplished it. It's a huge deal.

You see, we're here this morning because in hunting for scandals all the time, in trying to find wedges and spin stories, this press corps and the press corps miss historic moments. You miss historic moments like 5 percent at NATO, which when you hear, I was in the closed door briefing. I wish there could have been cameras in there. When you heard the prime ministers and presidents of other countries, to a man and to a woman looking at President Trump and saying, this never could have happened. Never would have happened.

It seemed impossible five years ago, two years ago, eight years ago. But here we are because of your leadership. If you ask them the question, I bet they'd say the same thing.

But searching for scandals, you miss historic moments like recruiting at the Pentagon, historic levels in the Army, the Air Force and the Navy. Yes, maybe there'll be a little mention here or there, but because it was under President Trump's leadership, because it was because, because Americans are responding to him as commander in chief, the press corps doesn't want to write about it or bring us to the, to the topic of the moment and the highly successful strikes in Iran. Let me read the bottom line here.

President Trump directed the most complex and secretive military operation in history. And it was a resounding success resulting in a ceasefire agreement and the end of the 12 day war. There's been a lot of discussion about what happened and what didn't happen.

Step back for a second. Because of decisive military action, President Trump created the conditions to end the war, decimating, choose your word, obliterating, destroying Iran's nuclear capabilities. I want to read some of the assessments that have been provided because whether it's fake news, CNN, MSNBC, or The New York Times, there's been fawning coverage of a preliminary assessment.

I've had a chance to read it. Oh, every, every outlet has breathlessly reported on a preliminary assessment from DIA. I'm looking at it right now.

Again, it was preliminary a day and a half after the actual strike. When it admits itself in writing that it requires weeks to accumulate the necessary data to make such an assessment, it's preliminary. It points out that it's not been coordinated with the intelligence community at all.

There's low confidence in this particular report. It says in the report there are gaps in the information. It says in the report multiple linchpin assumptions are what this assessment -- a linchpin assumption, you know what that is?

That means your entire premise is predicated on a linchpin. If you're wrong, everything else is wrong. And yet, still, this report acknowledges it's likely severe damage. Again, this is preliminary.

But leaked because someone had an agenda to try to muddy the waters and make it look like this historic strike wasn't successful. I'm going to get to the chairman in a moment because he's going to lay out the particulars for you based on his professional military experience.

But here's what other folks are saying. The DIA that put that report out says that this is a preliminary, low confidence report and will continue to be refined as additional intelligence becomes available. How about the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission?

The devastating U.S. strikes on Fordow destroyed the site's critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.

Have any of these quotes made their way into the New York Times or the Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN? Any of these quotes?

How about this one? This is a new one from the U.N., the United Nations. No friend of the United States or certainly Israel often.

Here's the head of the U.N. Atomic Energy Agency this morning, Rafael Grossi. U.S. and Israeli strikes caused enormous damage to Iran's nuclear sites. Don't take my word for it.

How about the IDF's chief of staff? I can say here that the assessment is that we significantly damaged the nuclear program, setting it back by years. I repeat, years.

The Iranian foreign minister, the spokesman. Our nuclear installations have been badly damaged, that's for sure. I'm sure that's an understatement.

John Ratcliffe, the director of the CIA, putting out a statement just last night. CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's nuclear program has been severely damaged by recent targeted strikes. This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable, very different than preliminary assessment with low confidence, he's saying historically reliable and accurate source and method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.

[08:10:04]

CIA continues to collect additional reliably sourced information to keep appropriate decision makers fully informed. How about DNI Tulsi Gabbard yesterday?

She writes, and I quote, New intelligence confirms what POTUS has stated numerous times. Iran's nuclear facilities have been destroyed.

Institute for Science and International Security President David Albright, overall Israel and U.S. attacks have effectively destroyed Iran's centrifuge enrichment program.

Time and time again, I can go down the list. Those that understand, those that see, those that do proper assessments recognize that what the United States military did was historic.

And again, before I pass it to the chairman, because you and I mean, specifically you, the press, specifically you, the press corps, because you cheer against Trump so hard, it's like in your DNA and in your blood to cheer against Trump because you want him not to be successful so bad. You have to cheer against the efficacy of these strikes. You have to hope maybe they weren't effective. Maybe the way the Trump administration's representative isn't true.

So let's take half truths, spun information, leaked information, and then spin it, spin it in every way we can to try to cause doubt and manipulate the mind -- the public mind over whether or not our brave pilots were successful. How many stories have been written about how hard it is to, I don't know, fly a plane for 36 hours? Has MSNBC done that story? Has Fox? Have we done the story how hard that is? Have we done it two or three times so that American people understand?

How about how difficult it is to shoot a drone from an F-15 or 16 or F-22 or F-35, or what it's like to man a Patriot battery, or how hard it is to refuel midair, giving the American people an understanding of how complex and sophisticated this mission really was. But there are so many aspects of what our brave men and women did that, because of the hatred of this press corps, are undermined because people are -- people are trying to leak and spin that it wasn't successful. It's irresponsible.

And folks in this room are privy to that information because of the proximity here in the Pentagon. It's an important responsibility. And time and time again, classified information is leaked or peddled for political purposes to try to make the president look bad.

And what's really happening is you're undermining the success of incredible B-2 pilots and incredible F-35 pilots and incredible refuelers and incredible air defenders who accomplished their mission, set back a nuclear program in ways that other presidents would have dreamed. How about we celebrate that? How about we talk about how special America is, that only we have these capabilities?

I think it's too much to ask, unfortunately, for the fake news. So we're used to that. But we also have an opportunity to stand at the podium and read the truth of what's really happening.

And the reality is you want to call it destroyed. You want to call it defeated. You want to call it obliterated. Choose your word. This was a historically successful attack. We should celebrate it as Americans.

And it gives us a chance to have peace, a chance to have a deal, an opportunity to prevent a nuclear Iran, which is something President Trump talked about for 20 years and no other presidents had the courage to actually do.

So with that, I want to hand it over to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. They've done technical analysis on this, not just on the strike, but also on our patriot defenders and Al Udeid.

And Mr. Chairman, I'll hand it over to you.

GEN. DAN CAINE, JOINT CHIEFS CHAIRMAN: Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Secretary. And good morning, all of you.

Thank you for being here. As a follow up to my comments on Sunday's press conference, I wanted to give you a few updates this morning on something I'm honored to do as a chairman, and that's a chance to get to talk about some of our service members and the incredible things that they do on behalf of our nation. And I apologize ahead of time for the length and the detail.

Today, I'm going to brief you on a couple of things. First, I'm going to talk about our air defenders at Al Udeid in Qatar and their actions on Monday. Then I'm going to walk you through a little bit about the academics that went into the attack against Fordow, the massive ordnance penetrator weapon. And we're going to show a video that highlights the effects that that weapon has. Of course, nobody was down inside the target, so we don't have video from the target.

First, on Monday, as the President has stated, on Monday morning, we began to receive indications and warnings that Iran intended to attack U.S. bases in the region.

[08:15:00]

That morning, building on the work that CENTCOM Commander Eric Carrillo had done and on the orders of the President, Al Udeid, at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar and around the region, we assumed a minimum force posture. Most folks had moved off the base to extend the security perimeter out away from what we assessed might be a target zone, except for a very few Army soldiers at Al Udeid.

At that point, only two Patriot batteries remained on base, roughly 44 American soldiers responsible for defending the entire base to include CENTCOM's forward headquarters in the Middle East, an entire air base and all the U.S. forces there. The oldest soldier was a 28-year-old captain. The youngest was a 21-year-old private who'd been in the military for less than two years.

So let's put ourselves out there for a second. Imagine you're that young First Lieutenant, you're 25 or 26 years old, and you've been assigned as the tactical director inside the command and control element. You, at that age, are the sole person responsible to defend this base.

Listening next to you is your early warning operator whose job is to notify you of imminent attack. There's five people inside a vehicle and five people outside of a vehicle around these, a total of, as I said, 44. By the way, you've sat in the Middle East for years, deployed over and over again, extended multiple times, always being prepared but unsure of when that particular day will come that you must execute your mission and not fail at doing it.

In this case, these Patriot crews were deployed from Korea and Japan as part of our U.S. forces there to ensure that we had the most capable missiles in the CENTCOM area of responsibility. As the day continues, you start to hear more and more chatter in the information space about an impending attack. And as the sun starts to set in the West, you get orders from your higher headquarters to make sure that your missile batteries are pointed to the North.

There are just a few other teammates. It's hot, you're getting nervous, and you expect an attack. Outside of those Patriot vehicles, your hot crew, which is one NCO and four additional soldiers, turns a key and relinquishes control of those missiles to that young lieutenant inside the vehicle.

And you wait. You know that you're going to have approximately two minutes, 120 seconds to either succeed or fail. And then at approximately 12:30 p.m. on Monday, that's 7:30 p.m. in Qatar, as the sun sets in the West, Iran attacks. As the targets were detected, round after round of Patriot missiles are ejected from their canisters by an initial launch charge. Then the main solid rocket motor ignites. You can feel this in your body if you've ever been around a Patriot taking a shot.

And round after round goes out and guides against those missiles coming inbound. We believe that this is the largest single Patriot engagement in U.S. military history. And we were joined in this engagement by the Qatari Patriot crews.

I'm not going to tell you how many rounds were shot, but it was a bunch because of classified purposes. And we're aware that something -- there's reports of something getting through. What we do know is there was a lot of metal flying around between attacking missiles being hit by Patriots, boosters from attacking missiles being hit by Patriots, the Patriots themselves flying around and the debris from those Patriots hitting the ground.

There was a lot of metal flying around. And yet our U.S. air defenders had only seconds to make complex decisions with strategic impact. These awesome humans, along with their Qatari brothers and sisters in arms, stood between a salvo of Iranian missiles and the safety of Al Udeid.

They are the unsung heroes of the 21st century United States Army. And I know a lot of you have seen the videos online and the excitement as those Patriots departed their launchers and went up and guided. This really demonstrates the combat capability and capacity of our Army air defenders. Simply stated, they absolutely crushed it.

[08:20:00]

If you'd flip this over -- thanks. Let me -- let me next move to a walkthrough of the GBU-57 massive ordnance penetrator weapon and share a little bit about the planners who did this and their work on the weapon. First, let me set the stage for you.

There's an organization in the U.S. called the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, DTRA. DTRA does a lot of things for our nation, but DTRA is the world's leading expert on deeply buried underground targets. In 2009, a Defense Threat Reduction Agency officer was brought into a vault at an undisclosed location and briefed on something going on in Iran.

For security purposes, I'm not going to share his name. He was shown some photos and some highly classified intelligence of what looked like a major construction project in the mountains of Iran. He was tasked to study this facility, work with the intelligence community to understand it, and he was soon joined by an additional teammate.

For more than 15 years, this officer and his teammate lived and breathed this single target, Fordow, a critical element of Iran's covert nuclear weapons program.

He studied the geology. He watched the Iranians dig it out. He watched the construction, the weather, the discard material, the geology, the construction materials, where the materials came from. He looked at the vent shaft, the exhaust shaft, the electrical systems, the environmental control systems, every nook, every crater, every piece of equipment going in and every piece of equipment going out. They literally dreamed about this target at night when they slept.

They thought about it driving back and forth to work, and they knew from the very first days what this was for. You do not build a multi- layered underground bunker complex with centrifuges and other equipment in a mountain for any peaceful purpose. They weren't able to discuss this with their family, their wives, their kids, their friends, but they just kept grinding it out.

And along the way, they realized we did not have a weapon that could adequately strike and kill this target. So they began a journey to work with industry and other tacticians to develop the GBU-57. They tested it over and over again, tried different options, tried more after that.

They accomplished hundreds of test shots and dropped many full-scale weapons against extremely realistic targets for a single purpose, kill this target at the time and place of our nation's choosing.

And then, on a day in June of 2025, more than 15 years after they started their life's work, the phone rang and the President of the United States ordered the B-2 force that you've supported to go strike and kill this target. Yesterday, I had the incredible honor and privilege of spending time with these two Defense Threat Reduction Agency officers who've given so much.

One of them said, quote, I can't even get my head around this. My heart is so filled with the pride of being a part of this team. I am so honored to be a part of this.

To you both, thank you, and thank you to your families.

Operation Midnight Hammer was the culmination of those 15 years of incredible work. The air crews, the tanker crews, the weapons crews that built the weapons, the load crews that loaded it.

Before I run through this video today, I want to talk a little bit about weaponeering and what goes into an attack. Weaponeering is the science of evaluating a target. I mentioned all of those factors before that these two DTRA officers had thought about.

Ultimately, weaponeering is determining the right weapon and fuse combination to achieve the desired effects and maximum destruction against a target. In the case of Fordow, the DTRA team understood with a high degree of confidence the elements of the target required to kill its functions, and the weapons were designed, planned, and delivered to ensure that they achieve the effects in the mission space.

By the way, in the beginning of its development, we had so many PhDs working on the MOP program doing modeling and simulation that we were quietly and in a secret way the biggest users of supercomputer hours within the United States of America.

[08:25:00]

So let me talk about -- let me talk about the graphic a little bit. In the GBU-57, which all of you I know know is a 30,000-pound weapon dropped only by the B-2. It's comprised of steel, explosive, and a fuse. Programmed bespokely, each weapon to achieve a particular effect inside the target.

Each weapon had a unique desired impact angle, arrival, final heading, and a fuse setting. The fuse is effectively what tells the bomb when to function. A longer delay in a fuse, the deeper the weapon will penetrate and drive into the target.

So on Fordow, in June of 2008, you can see these three holes depicted here as the main exhaust shaft with two additional ventilation shafts on either side. The United States decided to strike these two ventilation shafts seen here on the main graphic as the primary point of entry into the mission space. In the days preceding the attack against Fordow, the Iranians attempted to cover the shafts with concrete to try to prevent an attack.

I won't share the specific dimensions of the concrete cap, but you should know that we know what the dimensions of those concrete caps were. The planners had to account for this. They accounted for everything.

The cap was forcibly removed by the first weapon and the main shaft was uncovered. Weapons 2, 3, 4, 5 were tasked to enter the main shaft, move down into the complex at greater than 1,000 feet per second, and explode in the mission space.

Weapon number 6 was designed on each side -- so there were six on each side. Weapons number 6 was designed as a flex weapon to allow us to cover if one of the preceding jets or one of the preceding weapons did not work.

The video I'm about to show you is a culmination of over 15 years of development and testing. As I said, hundreds of test shots on various models. This is one weapon. So if you take a view of this, five additional, you'll get a sense of what this looks like.

Hopefully you can see it and there's not too much reflection. Tom runs our videos out there. We'll run it at full speed so you can see it and then go back through it. Go ahead, Tom.

(VIDEO OF BOMB)

CAINE: Keep it going for a minute. You'll see inside the mission space.

Unlike a normal surface bomb, you won't see an impact crater. Because they're designed to deeply bury and then function. I know there's been a lot of questions about that.

All six weapons at each vent at Fordow went exactly where they were intended to go. A bomb has three effects that causes damage. Blast, fragmentation, and overpressure.

In this case, the primary kill mechanism in the mission space was a mix of overpressure and blast ripping through the open tunnels and destroying critical hardware. The majority of the damage we assessed based on our extensive modeling was a blast layer combined with the impulse extending from the shock. Imagine what this looks like six times over.

A point that I want to make here. The joint force does not do BDA. By design, we don't grade our own homework. The intelligence community does.

But here's what we know following the attacks and the strikes on Fordow. First, that the weapons were built, tested, and loaded properly.

Two, the weapons were released on speed and on parameters.

Three, the weapons all guided to their intended targets and to their intended aim points.

Four, the weapons functioned as designed, meaning they exploded.

We know this through other means, intelligence means that we have, that were visibly -- we were visibly able to see them. And we know that the trailing jets saw the first weapons function and the pilots stated, quote, this was the brightest explosion that I've ever ...

[08:30:00]