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Israel Hits Tehran and Beirut as Iran Strikes U.S. Gulf Allies; U.S. Consulate in Dubai has Been Hit and is on Fire. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired March 03, 2026 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN ANCHOR, ERIN BURNETT OUTFRONT: Welcome back to our breaking news coverage as we are here in the Middle East covering the war in Iran. I'm Erin Burnett, tonight in Tel Aviv, and we are watching major developments this hour happening around the region in this war. U.S. Central Command says that American forces have now hit more than 1,700 targets in Iran. Now, that's just American forces, so nearly 2,000 for American forces alone. And then, of course, there's Israel. Israel's military struck a compound belonging to the group tasked with electing Iran's next supreme leader, and that is according to an Israeli source.

Now, it is unclear. You know, Iranian sources are telling us that that had been evacuated before, but we just don't know exactly what happened there, who was there, but we do know that it was targeted, and we don't know what the implications are for this potential decision on who is going to be the quote-unquote supreme leader of Iran.

At the same time, the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is ordering Israeli forces to seize additional territory in Lebanon, in the other front, and we just heard some explosions here within the past hour-and-a-half coming from Lebanon, from here in Tel Aviv.

The IDF is now urging residents to evacuate parts of southern Lebanon as the military is targeting Hezbollah infrastructure there. So we're watching that and, of course, hear that incoming, as well as today, ballistic missiles coming from Tehran, multiple onslaughts throughout the day. And we're getting some new insight or at least a new set of explanations as to why this war started.

President Trump today says that he had a feeling that Iran would strike first. That's basically what he's saying. And, of course, you know, that fits with -- well, it's a little confusing, actually, because Marco Rubio had said, well, we knew Israel was going to strike, and we knew that once they struck, that Iran was going to strike. And because Iran was going to strike, because Israel struck, then we had to strike. And you got it. Confusing is a kind way of putting it.

Joining me now is retired Army Brigadier General Ty Seidule. And I appreciate your time, General, very much. I know you've got a new book, "A Promise Delivered, The American Heroes in the Battle to Rename Our Nation's Military Bases." So, General, where do you think we are right now? 1,700 targets hit by the United States alone. That meeting that I just mentioned in Iran's holy city struck today by Israel, they say.

Where are we in this war?

BRIG. GEN. TY SEIDULE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Yes, I think it's interesting to think about the strategy and the military that's trying to execute that strategy. As you said, the strategy is all over the place. Every time we listen to the president, there's something new.

And I think that's because there isn't a national security strategy that's being done. There's no national security advisor. There's no process that would make sure that everybody's on the same sheet of music.

And because that's not there, it means that the military is sort of figuring that out as it goes. And I think if we listen to General Dan Caine, it was clear what he said, which is prevent Iran from having the ability to project power outside of its borders. And everything else that everybody else has talked about has changed over around the long time.

But that's what hasn't changed, is the ability to do that. And then he says that ready for follow-on actions, as appropriate. What does that mean?

We don't know what that means. So what we have is, in the period leading up now, within the next four weeks or five weeks, is a clash of wills. And that's what's always the case in war.

It's the will of the American people and the president against the will of the Iranians. And they're going to go after whatever they can to force us to stop. And that means going after the Gulf Coast countries, going after economic assets that will force the Americans to say, no, we don't want to do this anymore.

On the other hand, the Americans are going to do as much damage as they can to force the Iranians to give up. But I don't think we're going to be talking about regime change. There's a million people in arms in Iran.

And unless there's something we don't know about, there's some opposition force, there's some way to get guns to them, I just don't see how regime change is going to happen. So I go back to what General Dan Caine said, which is to ensure that Iran cannot arm its neighbors.

And that seems to be what they're trying to do. Whether that can work, the one thing we know about war is, it is the most complex, dangerous and unpredictable activity undertaken by humans. And we have no idea what has happened once, as Trump has done, rolled the iron dice and gone to war.

BURNETT: There is a lot of confusion, too, about just what those strikes have accomplished. And I understand partially that's the fog of war. Partially, it may just be that they aren't sure, and they're still trying to figure it out, right?

But we just don't know. But you're looking at a situation, though, General, which is on its face untenable. When you mentioned the economic impacts, right, there's a certain amount of pain that can be before.

Western countries are not going to take it anymore when we talk about gas and oil, OK? We're not there yet, but when are you going to get there? You've got the world's busiest airport trying to open for a half an hour here and a half an hour there.

That's also untenable. All right, you have a lot of situations that are untenable. And the question is just how much time is left on the clock.

SEIDULE: That's exactly it. Who has the will to continue this longer? And we don't know that.

The Iranians are also going through a terrible, a terrible time of losing their missiles, going after the leadership. But I don't know that they can stop. I don't know if there's anybody there to stop.

So it will continue to go until there's some way that somebody's will breaks in this. And I think that's the thing about war. It is so unpredictable.

And this is only in a couple of days. Can you imagine, after we go four weeks, what's the price of oil going to be? What's the state of Hormuz going to be?

Can an American ship be hit? That's what happens when there isn't an overarching strategy that goes in. You know, General Powell had this doctrine that said, we're never going to go to war unless all these things are set to go. You know, that's the Powell doctrine.

And then there's the Pottery Barn, which is if you break it, you own it. But I think the Trump doctrine is more like Silicon Valley, move fast and break things.

Move fast and break things. That's what he does. And it may work, but boy, there's a lot on the other side that says it may not.

BURNETT: Yes, and you'll say, you know, whether the people look to the markets and say, well, the market is, yes, it's selling off, but not that much. The markets say this is going to be over soon.

The market may be right. The market also may suffer from a complete and utter failure of imagination about some of the scenarios you lay out and the black swan events, right, as Tlaib would say, of things that you just cannot imagine the implications of what they would bring of a U.S. ship, for example, were sunk or, you know, the things that they may fail to imagine.

Thank you very much, General Seidule. I appreciate your time very much. And don't miss more of our special coverage. Our breaking news

coverage continues here throughout the day. And also tonight, "WAR WITH IRAN LIVE IN THE MIDDLE EAST," an "OUTFRONT" special. We will be here for that as we continue our coverage here throughout the day. That's at seven o'clock Eastern.

We'll be right back.

[14:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We have breaking news into CNN, a source in the Middle East telling CNN that the U.S. consulate in Dubai was struck and now is on fire.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: CNN National Security Correspondent Kylie Atwood is with us along with CNN political and security analyst David Sanger. Kylie, first to you. What are you learning about this news?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes. What we're learning from a source in the UAE right now on the ground is that the U.S. consulate that is in Dubai, this is more than an hour from the U.S. embassy, which is in the UAE. It is on fire at this moment.

There are videos on social media that are coming in of this. This was hit by a suspected drone. This obviously comes after last night we were tracking drones that had hit the U.S. embassy in Riyadh.

So this is a very dangerous situation on the ground, of course, for all the people who are living there, but also the Americans who are at these embassies. Right now in Dubai, it's the middle of the night. So that means that there probably weren't staff at the consulate, but we should note that it's always protected, of course, by U.S. Marines around. And so, we need to consider that when we're trying to think about what the ramifications of this strike might actually look like. This is just the early minutes really after the strike, so we'll learn more as the hours go on.

But we should note that, you know, this comes as the U.S. embassy in the United Arab Emirates has gone on ordered departure. So it is told all of the non-essential personnel who work at that embassy that they are allowed to leave the country. They should be leaving the country right now. But there are many questions for Americans in the region at this moment about what they should be doing, the State Department telling them to leave now.

The White House saying that there are efforts underway to get those evacuation flights up and running. But we have not yet seen the U.S. government provide those evacuation flights.

KEILAR: David Sanger, you're with us now, too. Iran is making it hurt.

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes, look, the Iranians have one big mission here. It's survive. If they're going to survive, they have to wait out President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu. If they're going to wait out President Trump, it means they need to make it painful enough, long enough that he's beginning to get toward the elections. You're beginning to see significant casualties.

And it gets back to that question that Steve Witkoff, his chief envoy, asked about a week before the war broke out during the negotiations.

[14:45:00]

He said, you know, the president is curious about why the Iranians haven't capitulated. Well, the answer is that the whole meaning and purpose of the current Iranian state is to stand in opposition to the U.S. And so it's not as if even with the loss of the supreme leader that they're just going to say, well, this is over. So and, you know, they've got other techniques, cyber. We haven't begun to see anything here in the United States. I hope we don't.

But I wouldn't be shocked if we did.

SANCHEZ: Let's go ahead and actually play some new video that CNN has verified off of social media. This is the U.S. consulate in Dubai, apparently hit by a suspected Iranian drone. You can see a plume of smoke in the background and people in the foreground taking video and expressing alarm over it.

David, just something you said about how these Gulf nations will have to endure. There is the question of how much endurance they have, their capacity for doing that. Do they have the ear of the president in the sense that if they go to the United States and they say, we can't do this anymore, would he listen?

Would it change the U.S.'s approach?

SANGER: Well, look, the U.S. is their major patron. You know, eight months ago, what were we discussing with the UAE? How many data centers we're going to build there, right?

So the Iranian strategy at this point is not necessarily to go after U.S. bases. It's to go after the financial engines of these countries and say the price for sticking with the U.S. is high. In public, they have been very supportive of the U.S. so far. In private, they have been raging angry that they weren't consulted on the start of this war to begin with, right? Many of them didn't even know what the start date was going to be. So they feel like they are sort of collateral damage in President Trump's confrontation with the Iranians, which many of them don't think is timed right.

KEILAR: Kylie, how prepared was the State Department for the fallout? I mean, the inevitable fallout, as we saw the buildup of troops. You have to think with the possibility of there being a strike, they would need to be ready for what this could mean.

ATWOOD: Yes, it's a good question. And I do think when it comes to the Trump administration, what we know is that decision making is very centered among a few people. It's not widely dispersed.

So when I talk to folks at the State Department over the weekend, as these strikes broke out, they really didn't know that this was the U.S. government's plan, that this was where the Trump administration is heading. And these are folks who are experts in the region and have been, you know, in touch with their counterparts in the Gulf for quite some time now. When it comes to this question of was the U.S. government prepared to assist the Americans in the region, I think that is a bit of an open question at this point, because there aren't those evacuation flights happening right now. Of course, as I said earlier, the White House said that they are actively working on plans to help Americans in the Middle East return home.

But President Trump was asked earlier today in the Oval Office why those evacuation plans weren't in place before the strikes took place. And I want us to listen to what he said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Well, because it happened all very quickly. We thought and I thought maybe more so than most, I could ask Marco, but I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel. They were getting ready to attack others.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

ATWOOD: So what the president is saying there is effectively that the United States didn't do a whole lot of legwork before these strikes took place because it happened so quickly. The decision making happened and then these strikes went forth. I was speaking with an American who's in the UAE and is trying to get home just today.

And they were saying that they're a little bit confused because what the State Department is telling them when you call that hotline that they've put out is that they should stay quote, "... to shelter in place and that they should look for commercial options to get out of the country." Well, right now, those commercial options just aren't flying.

SANGER: Can we back up on what the president said? The timing of this from everything that we've been able to determine in our reporting was that it was the U.S. that chose the timing. In fact, President Trump's initial plan was to strike earlier, then they went through that last bit of negotiation, you'll remember, which was about a week ago with the Iranians.

I haven't found any U.S. intelligence folks who have said to me at this point, we thought the Iranians were about to go strike Israel or strike anyone else. They are trying right now to make this look like it was a preemptive strike instead of a preventative war. And there's a big difference.

[14:50:00]

SANCHEZ: So then what do you make of what we heard from Secretary Rubio yesterday when he spoke to the press and he said, well, we determined that Israel was going to strike and therefore Iran was going to retaliate not only by attacking Israel, but also by attacking our assets and allies in the region. And so therefore, in a sense, this is a preemptive strike.

It certainly makes it sound like it was Netanyahu's decision and not Trump's.

SANGER: That's right. I mean, at what point did the United States decide that it was going to subcontract its decisions about when to go to war to another ally, even an incredibly close ally?

KEILAR: Your reporting just doesn't show that that actually happened.

SANGER: That's right.

KEILAR: So why --

SANGER: In fact, this was so closely planned that the CIA gave the data to the U.S. to strike that initial -- to that initial strike that killed the Ayatollah.

KEILAR: And so then why lie about it?

SANGER: Well, preemption, you know, under international law, preemption is considered to be a legal step. I mean, I see that you're getting ready to attack me. I can attack first.

But preventive war, you're weak, I'm strong. That's not considered to be legal under the U.N. charter or under any kind of international law. Now, I'm not sure how much that concerns President Trump and the rest of the administration.

Maybe it does. Maybe it concerns many of their lawyers. But in recent days, I think -- and Kylie, tell me if you've been hearing the same thing -- they're going out of their way to try to create different scenarios under which this was preemption.

ATWOOD: That's right. And there's not one singular descriptor or singular story that we're hearing from these administration officials. I mean, you had the secretary of state on the Hill yesterday explaining in his perspective that, you know, it was because Israel's going to strike.

So the U.S. had to strike with them to prevent the U.S. from being further hurt. And when President Trump was asked about that in the Oval Office today, he completely undermined his secretary of state, saying that's not the case. He, being the president, believed that Iran was going to strike first.

We have not heard that there were intelligence assessments to back that up. But that's what the president felt. And so he felt it was necessary for the U.S. to go forth with the strike.

SANGER: He also didn't say that in his initial taped statement. What did he say? He said, this is a war that we're going to conduct.

We then want the Iranian people to rise up and overthrow their government, which sounded a lot like regime change. Then we heard the Defense Secretary, Pete Hegseth, say yesterday, this is not a war of regime change.

SANCHEZ: Let's go live to Nic Robertson now, who's in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, which itself saw Iranian attacks overnight. Nic, talk to us about concern, not only where you are, but across the region, as we're watching this breaking news about the U.S. consulate in Dubai, over Iran penetrating defenses.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: And specifically able, it appears, to penetrate defenses where U.S. consulates, U.S. embassies are. Last night, it was the U.S. embassy in Riyadh here that's now closed. Four different drones hit it.

The day before, it was the U.S. embassy in Kuwait. We saw a lot of fire and smoke around there. Now it's the U.S. consulate in Dubai. All that black smoke, the big fire that's happening around there. And earlier on today, there was an absolute hard and immediate warning of an immediate threat of drone or ballistic missile strike on the U.S. consulate in the east of Saudi Arabia in Dhahran. And that was a very stark warning.

Shelter in place. U.S. citizens in that area, stay in your homes. Don't come out. Don't come to the consulate.

So very clear warning of an immediate threat. And as we understood, even in the last hour or so, that threat at the U.S. consulate in the east of Saudi Arabia was still in place. So a level of intelligence seeing these threats coming. But to your point, the ability to interdict missiles coming at U.S. consulates and embassies seems to be diminished.

Look, take Riyadh here, the capital of Saudi Arabia, yesterday as an example. Four drones get through and hit in and around the U.S. embassy here. Yet five drones fired at the massive Saudi military air base just outside of the capital. Those were all brought down.

The two drones that were fired at the big Saudi oil refinery near Tehran in the east of the country, two drones fired there. They were shot down. Some debris did set fire to oil facilities.

But it seems that there is a weakness or a hole in the defense systems around U.S. premises. And that does seem to be something that the Iranians have either tested, had an idea about, or are putting into effect to put extreme pressure on the United States.

Look, I go back to the assessment here in Saudi Arabia.

[14:55:00]

And that is that Iran, despite the best efforts of Israel and the United States to disrupt it, Iran still has command and control. It is deciding what to hit, where to hit, and when. It knows the effect it wants to cause. It's trying to shake confidence in Washington.

It's trying to shake the confidence of Americans in the United States around the world in their administration.

KEILAR: All right, Nic, thank you so much for that reporting from Riyadh. Kylie, thank you. David, thank you.

We continue to follow this. The U.S. consulate in Dubai has been hit by a suspected Iranian drone. We've been seeing a number of U.S. embassies and assets hit by Iranian drones. And this is the latest. This, as we understand it, consulate is currently on fire. We are tracking this.

We'll have much more straight ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

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