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Oil Prices Jump Amid Concerns Over War Disrupting Global Supplies; U.S. Military Says Four U.S. Troops Killed, 18 Seriously Wounded; Israeli Military Launches Strikes Against Hezbollah Targets Across Lebanon After Evacuation Warnings; Trump Projected Four to Five Weeks for War With Iran, But We Can Go Longer; Iraq Vows to Block Militant Attacks, Keep Country Out of War. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired March 02, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: -- oil out to the market.

The other thing we got to watch closely is whether or not any oil production facilities, especially in Saudi Arabia, get knocked offline by attacks. All of this matters directly for the price of gasoline. Gas prices have been pretty low for the past year or so. They're still below $3 a gallon, but only. And analysts do expect that prices will continue to go higher as the oil market reacts.

And look, Brianna, bottom line here, the higher energy prices go, the more damage to the economy and of course, the more pain for consumers. Back to you.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": All right. We should be awaiting that. Matt Egan, thank you so much.

EGAN: Thanks.

KEILAR: And a new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN Breaking News.

KEILAR: The Breaking News this hour is an expanding war in the Middle East. Today, President Trump making his first public comments on camera since the war with Iran began. He expressed confidence vowing, quote, "We will easily prevail."

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": He also told CNN's Jake Tapper that a big wave of attacks on Tehran is yet to come. Earlier, the president laid out what he's trying to accomplish.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: Our objectives are clear. First, we're destroying Iran's missile capabilities. Second, we're annihilating their navy. Third, we're ensuring that the world's number one sponsor of terror can never obtain a nuclear weapon. And finally, we're ensuring that the Iranian regime cannot continue to arm, fund and direct terrorist armies outside of their borders. And we thought we had a deal, but then they backed out.

And they came back. And we thought we had a deal. And they backed out. I said, you can't deal with these people. You got to do it the right way.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: We also got an update on the American toll of these operations. The U.S. military says that four American service members have been killed, 18 others seriously wounded. Let's go live to Tel Aviv with CNN Anchor, Erin Burnett. What is it like there now, Erin?

ERIN BURNETT, CNN CHIEF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS CORRESPONDENT: All right, Boris. So, you know, right now, we're in the sort of rolling situation that we're in, in this war, and that is sometimes you'll get those blaring alerts on your phone. That means that missiles are coming around the area that you are. And then a few minutes later, if they're going to be in very close proximity to where you are, then you hear the sirens and people move.

And I will just emphasize, obviously, this is a war that in some senses, goes all the way back to October 7th and the initial terrorist attack against Israel in the way that they see it here. But those initial rockets that were coming from Hamas and then Hezbollah are very different than the cruise missiles that we're seeing here in Israel now. The damage from those, the death toll from that, unlike anything that we have seen before.

And now in a widening war, you have countries in the Gulf. I was talking to senior leadership in one Gulf state today. They said, right now, yes, I mean, of course, it's stunning and it's shocking and they want business as usual, but that they are focused completely on self- defense and the expectation that there's going to be continuing incoming both drones and missiles into the Gulf from Iran. That's the focus there. And the war widening. Right?

Qatar has now actually, they say, taken down Iranian jets, which would show yet more escalation and a new stage. And here in Israel, in addition to the ongoing strikes, of which we see evidence on the skyline over Tehran, you also have a widening war here with Hezbollah seemingly getting involved. We heard the back and forth.

And now, Israel retaliating. And Jeremy Diamond is here with new reporting here, Boris and Brianna, on the fact, we talk about a ground war and what could be happening in Iran. And if that's necessary. President of the United States is not taking that off the table, an absolutely unbelievable move.

And in Israel, clearly, a willingness for ground troops when it comes to Hezbollah now in a widening war from your reporting.

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. Well, certainly, we know that the Israelis have been waiting for this moment. We were talking about this last night as we heard those booms from those Hezbollah missiles that fell into an open area not far from Tel Aviv. And now, today, the Israeli military is saying they plan on delivering a devastating blow to Hezbollah to remove the threat entirely from Lebanon that Hezbollah has posed to Israel for decades now. And as for this question of ground troops, the Israeli military's top spokesman was asked about this twice today. Both times, he refused to take this option off the table.

And then he pointed to the fact that the head of the Israeli military, the chief of staff of the Israeli military, met with Northern Command today and is preparing battle plans in general for Lebanon. So I certainly think that ground troops are a possibility in this scenario, or at least special operations raid. We've seen those before into Lebanon.

BURNETT: Yes.

DIAMOND: So it's a possibility. And this is, again, a signal of Israel's willingness to continue to escalate here as they see fit, because they understand that this is a key moment for them to take advantage of this opportunity to kind of change the map in the Middle East.

BURNETT: Yeah. And I know you've been reporting on, you know, and we see it on the ground here, right, completely militarized society essentially at this point. But, we saw it on the (inaudible), 100,000 reservists being called up. And you see that.

[14:05:00]

But when you talk about ground troops and you talk about their willingness to do this here, it just does raise the question about where this is going. And the president of the United States said, well, other presidents might take that off the table. But I'm going to say everything is on the table, when you talk about actually American troops on the ground in Tehran.

How does Israel see that? I know that we are seeing continuing strikes and whether they're being done by Americans or Israelis, we don't know in every case, right? But those are the two countries that are doing the airstrikes over Tehran. What about ground troops?

DIAMOND: I haven't talked to Israeli officials about ground troops. I don't think they certainly have an appetite for that. Would they welcome the United States doing something like that?

BURNETT: Of course. Yeah.

DIAMOND: I'm sure. I mean, I think by and large, the Israelis want to see this go as far as possible in terms of changing the regime in Tehran. I think it was interesting today, you heard Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth. He listed the United States objectives. He did not talk about regime change in that way. He said this is not a war of regime change, but we've seen the regime change.

But when he was listing off the objectives that the United States has, you know, ballistic missiles, nuclear sites, naval assets, he didn't talk explicitly about regime change.

BURNETT: Interesting.

DIAMOND: When I talk to Israeli officials, they are very clear that that is their ultimate objective here, or at least creating the conditions for that on the ground.

BURNETT: Yeah.

DIAMOND: So the Israelis want to see this go as far as possible, and I'm told that today in particular has been a very heavy day of Israeli and American airstrikes over Iran and that the numbers are really, really going up in terms of how many targets they are hitting because they have that total air dominance now over the skies of Tehran.

BURNETT: And of course, those targets, you know, we're talking about obviously they want stockpiles and they want ballistic missile sites and they want nuclear sites, and they want individuals and they're doing all that. But when it comes to regime change, I think we can't overemphasize enough that the killing of the Supreme Leader, obviously huge, seismic for the world. But he was almost 90.

He was ill and he was going to die soon anyway. And everybody knew that, including everybody in Iran. And he wasn't even really present when they -- he wasn't even part of the ceasefire last summer. So in terms of the contingencies beneath him that had been made. So I guess the question is, what does regime change really mean and what are people willing to accept?

DIAMOND: Absolutely. And I think it's clear that, you know, the United States knew going into this that regime change would not be so simple as what we saw in Venezuela.

BURNETT: Right.

DIAMOND: I mean, this is not just a one-man rule. This is a system, a whole structure inside of Iran that has multiple layers of succession, that has all of these different systems in place to remain in power.

BURNETT: Yep.

DIAMOND: And we're seeing those plans being executed now inside of Iran. Regime change entirely is going to have to come from the Iranian people, it seems.

BURNETT: Yeah.

DIAMOND: I think that's the view of the United States right now.

BURNETT: Yeah. And Boris and Brianna, it is fascinating when we talk about this. You know, I was with the Iranian President, Pezeshkian, last fall and he was bringing up the strikes last summer. And he said what they served to do was have Iranians become more aligned and more connected to, "the system."

Now, that was pre all the mass demonstrations and the horrific crackdown that we saw from the Iranian regime. But the sense of the system, something that has tentacles throughout all of Iranian society is obviously hugely important and shows how different this is than Venezuela. Back to you guys.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. The outcome for Iran's future in terms of who leads, it's still an open question. Erin Burnett, we'll go back to you throughout the afternoon. Thank you so much.

Let's get a more detailed look at this U.S. operation with former Air Force Secretary, Frank Kendall. Frank, great to see you as always.

I want to actually take a look at places where the U.S. and Israel have struck inside of Iran, in part because, as you see here on our graphic, today, President Trump talked about a number of objectives, not only limiting Iran's missile capabilities, but also destroying their navy, stymieing their ability to develop a nuclear weapon, and preventing the leadership in Tehran from funding terror groups across the region.

When you look at that map and you think about these airstrikes, can the U.S. accomplish that with just air superiority, with just these sorts of strikes?

FRANK KENDALL, FORMER AIR FORCE SECRETARY: Partially. And how much is a big question. Some of the targets are relatively easy to take out. Some of the naval assets, for example, are very easy to target. We've already gone after their nuclear sites. We knew where they were. Some of the missile production facilities, but there are also a lot of things that the Iranians can hide from us.

They can use deception. They can use -- they can put them in hardened facilities of some kind, making it much harder. We've gone after a lot of the targets that are easier to go after. And as time goes on, the Iranians will do more to try to conceal what they have, move it around. We've had a lot of experience with this, going all the way back to the first Gulf War.

An adversary who, and Ukraine is another good example, who knows he's going to be attacked, has a number of steps they can take to hide their assets and to help them survive. And Iran is going to be doing all those things.

KEILAR: They have also retaliated. And we've seen that. If we take a look at some of the strikes, these are the sites of some of the strikes. And the U.S. has to defend against this.

[14:10:00]

And we know that that's not 100 percent possible. We've seen the fallout from that, right? Four service members who died, 18 others at this point, who are seriously wounded. We're expecting that number to pick up. What are the capabilities of the U.S. and allied air defenses in trying to thwart these attacks?

KENDALL: Well, first of all, I was an Army Air Defense Officer at one time, quite a long time ago. I visited all of our air bases in the region. They're all defended. PATRIOTs, used very commonly, as well as other systems. The naval bases are defended also. So, we do have capacity to defend.

And unfortunately, the Iranians have pretty good arsenals, shorter- range ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as unmanned aerial systems. They can attack. And I expect any defense is imperfect. While we will probably be able to engage most of the targets that come at us, some of them will probably get through. And we're already seeing that to a certain degree.

SANCHEZ: There's also some asymmetry when it comes to the cost of these strikes, because it costs a lot more to defend these bases, and not just U.S. bases, but also, as we look at the map again, some of our allies in the region.

We've seen essentially a range of strikes going from just about everywhere that Iran could reach, Kuwait, Bahrain, into Riyadh and Saudi Arabia. I wonder what you think will last longer. The endurance of these Gulf allies and the U.S. and Israel to defend, or the ability of Iran to send relatively cheap unmanned drones and that sort of capacity?

KENDALL: If you look at nothing else but the capability, both can go on for quite some time. I don't think Iran can inflict enough damage to prevent us from doing operations. I don't know that we can inflict enough damage to get Iran to capitulate. It took several weeks for Serbia to capitulate during the war in the Balkans.

In the case of Venezuela, a raid and a decapitation attack got the government to cut a deal very quickly. I think Donald Trump would like to see that. I think that was his anticipation. He thought it would be like Venezuela. It doesn't have to be that way. And I think Iran, if they want to be resilient and continue, they can inflict damage on us and our partners for quite a long time.

KEILAR: It was interesting today that the president and also the defense secretary didn't rule out boots on the ground. It doesn't seem they're inclined. It doesn't seem that there's that appetite in the U.S. populace right now, but they wouldn't rule it out. So that's really significant.

There are a lot of bases that have been targeted. There are a lot of assets that are there in the region. How real of a possibility do you think it is that we could see American boots on the ground in Iran?

KENDALL: I've seen senior military people very reluctant to talk about scenarios in which we actually invade Iran. It's a very large country. It has some very difficult terrain. It has 90 million people. It has a large military, not well-armed necessarily, but still armed. And if you want to try to get to Tehran, that's a long way from the coast.

Something along the coast and perhaps try to secure the Strait of Hormuz might be more manageable. That's difficult terrain, too, but it's a more manageable operation potentially. I don't think there's anyone who is anxious to commit ground troops of any kind, other than maybe special operations raids into Iran for any purpose that I can think of.

SANCHEZ: Frank Kendall, great to get your expertise. Thanks so much for joining us.

KENDALL: Thank you.

SANCHEZ: Still plenty more news to come this afternoon. President Trump calling the threat Iran would pose with nuclear weapons intolerable. How the administration is defending its decision to go to war.

KEILAR: Plus, police in Austin, Texas, revealing new details this hour in the deadly mass shooting over the weekend, and the possibility that it was motivated by the strikes in Iran. We'll have that and much more coming up on "CNN News Central."

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:18:22]

KEILAR: President Trump is justifying his decision to go to war with Iran. Today, he accused Tehran of ignoring his warnings against rebuilding its nuclear program, and he expressed confidence the U.S. mission will be victorious no matter how long it takes.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We will easily prevail. We're already substantially ahead of our time projections, but whatever the time is, it's OK. Whatever it takes, we will always -- and we have right from the beginning, we projected four to five weeks, but we have capability to go far longer than that. We'll do it. Whatever somebody said today, they said, oh, well, if the president wants to do it really quickly, after that, he'll get bored. I don't get bored.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: The American public is a bit more skeptical. A new CNN poll says nearly six in ten Americans do not agree with the military action and believe a long-term military conflict between the two nations is likely. 60 percent say they're not confident Trump has a clear plan, and nearly as many say they don't trust him to make the right decisions about the use of force in Iran.

Let's get more on the White House's position from CNN Senior White House Reporter, Kevin Liptak. Kevin, what are you hearing?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yeah, and you did hear from the president today sort of a new effort at laying out what exactly his objectives in launching this war are.

You know, in a lot of ways, this is retroactive. The president didn't lay any of this out before the war began. But now, you see him sort of making a four-pronged objective layout of what exactly he's trying to accomplish.

[14:20:00]

He said, one, the U.S. wants to degrade Iran's ballistic missile program. Two, he wants to, quote, "annihilate their navy." Three, he says they want to ensure that Iran never obtain a nuclear weapon. And four, he wants to ensure the country does not continue to support proxy groups in the region.

And so, you see how the president -- you know, after spending the weekend behind closed doors, taking phone calls, leading to some questions about what exactly he was trying to accomplish in all of this, because a lot of his answers ended up being contradictory or consistent, you see the president really trying to lay this out a little more clearly. But at the same time, I think the message is still somewhat muddled.

You know, in that address, the president did not mention the goal of regime change, even though in the hours after this operation began, he said he was encouraging the Iranians to rise up and overthrow their government. You also hear the president there saying that, in his view, Iran was trying to develop a ballistic missile that could reach the United States soon.

According to American intelligence and other sources and analysts that we've talked to, that could have potentially been more than a decade away. You also heard the president argue that under President Obama's Iran deal, that Iran would have been able to obtain a nuclear weapon. In fact, the first sentence of the JCPOA, that Obama-era deal, said that Iran would not be able to obtain a nuclear weapon.

So, I still think there are plenty of inconsistencies in what exactly the president is laying out there. And, you know, those polls make clear that the American public does want to know more about what precisely the president is trying to accomplish and that they don't necessarily trust that he has a plan in place.

One thing that I think was important that the president said was that it was his view that this was the, quote, "last best chance" to take action on Iran. And I think that actually does underscore what we've heard from officials, was that this action was taken because they viewed Iran as badly weakened. They saw, clearly, an opening to go after the country and the country's leaders that did not exist previously.

But, of course, the questions about the endgame in all of this remain. You know, you heard Pete Hegseth say today, earlier today, that this was not Iraq, that, quote, "We set the terms of this war from start to finish." But I think, you know, any president before President Trump will acknowledge that the enemy has a say in all of this and that once the war begins, much of it becomes out of his control.

KEILAR: Yeah, so true. Kevin Liptak, live for us from the White House, thank you.

Still to come, we're following these strikes across the Middle East as the war with Iran enters a third day. We will have a live report from Iraq on the potential dangers at American bases there. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:27:32]

SANCHEZ: We're continuing to monitor the escalating war with Iran now in its third day. Strikes are spreading across the Middle East, raising fears of a much wider regional conflict. The government in neighboring Iraq is vowing to prevent its territory from being used to launch or support attacks. That's where we find CNN Chief International Correspondent, Clarissa Ward, in Erbil, Iraq.

Now, Clarissa, what is the situation where you are?

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris, earlier on in the day, we actually traveled to the border between Iraq and Iran. It had been closed for the whole of Saturday and Sunday. Today was the first day they had opened it in a limited capacity, just to let Iranian trucks and truck drivers back into the country, and Iraqis who might have been trapped on the other side back home into Iraq.

There was a very long line, more than a mile long, of Iranian truck drivers. But after being there for literally half an hour, Boris, we actually saw an Iranian Shahed drone flying over the border right above us. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: Hoping you can see that now. An Iranian drone literally just flew directly over our heads from Iran into Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WARD: After that, another half hour later, we saw another Iranian drone flying into Iraq. Apparently, those two drones appear to have crashed. But that has not been the case, Boris. These have been consistent attacks.

According to the Iraqi foreign ministry, more than 70 missile and drone attacks since the U.S. and Israel began their bombing campaign. And the vast majority of them have been focused on the U.S.' rather limited presence here.

The U.S. completed its withdrawal two years in the making from Iraq back in January. But here in the autonomous Kurdish region, there are still U.S. troops at the airport, which is just over there, where we saw a large impact followed by a fire for some hours last night, and also at a couple of other bases throughout this region.

And the reason it is so tough, particularly for the Kurdish people --