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CNN News Central

Qatar Air Defenses Intercept Strikes Over Doha; U.S. Suspends Operations at Embassy in Kuwait; Israel Launches New Strikes on Iran and Lebanon; Trump Ousts Kristi Noem as DHS Secretary; Austin Police Release 911 Calls, Video from Deadly Mass Shooting. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired March 05, 2026 - 15:30   ET

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

[15:30:00]

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: And breaking news on the war with Iran here in Tel Aviv. We've got word of a fire erupting at an oil refinery in Bahrain, and we've just obtained some video of this flames. You got on lookers watching from the distance and you can see the massive size of that in Bahrain.

It's a major refinery. Bahraini officials say that it followed an Iranian missile strike. They do say that that refinery is still operating.

That blaze, though, is just one of the latest scenes that we are seeing as it comes through this, the war right now and the race to deal with these strikes continues and to get Americans out. The State Department says evacuation flights are starting, right? And they're happening sporadically, but they're starting from various locations.

They're saying since the war began that at least 20,000 Americans in the danger zone have returned to the United States. And Emirates first flight to JFK just landed moments ago. Travel in the region is incredibly difficult, though.

Lines at borders can be many hours long. In Azerbaijan, another strike. Airport reportedly hit by an Iranian drone.

I'll be clear. Iran denies that, that they're responsible for that. But you can see the evidence that there was some sort of a strike there on the screen.

And in Qatar, still incredible action happening there. Air defenses have intercepted multiple strikes through the day today. All of that happening.

And we're hearing more from President Trump today as Iran is still not having picked a leader, right? It was 48 hours ago that there were very reputable, credible reports that they had done so. But we haven't heard that it's actually happened.

And President Trump now is saying that he has to be involved in the process and that the former Supreme Leader's son, who is widely seen as the leading contender, is not acceptable to him.

[15:35:00]

A short time ago, the Center for Strategic and International Studies has just come out with a report. And that report says that estimating the first 100 hours of the war cost the United States $3.7 billion. 100 hours, $3.7 billion.

And just in, just a couple moments ago, updates from Kuwait, that the United States Embassy in Kuwait is now formally stopping all operations due to strikes. It had been hit several times by Iranian drones. It had paused some consular activities but is now fully closed for the U.S. Embassy in Kuwait, adding to yet another embassy closure in this war zone.

Let's talk more about what's happening right now, what we understand with our CNN military analyst, retired Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton.

And Colonel, I appreciate your time. Darkness of the night here. We understand strikes intensifying in Tehran.

North of here, Israel is doing something that it has not. And all right, so we'll see what happens here over the next few moments, Colonel. We're just getting a warning here that we will be getting sirens likely in a few moments for possible missile strikes from Iran coming here.

So I'm going to start the interview here, and we'll see what happens over these next few moments. So can you just go through, Colonel, as we're waiting for that, and I'll just be clear, it's 10:35 at night here. What have the United States and Israel hit so far in Iran?

They're talking thousands of targets. What are they?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, AIR FORCE (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: So the basic thing, Erin, that they've really gone through are the different areas right here. So what you're looking at is in the western part of the country, all along the Iraq-Iran border, you've got the Israeli and U.S. strikes taking place. Then in the southwestern area right here, which is a very oil-rich region, and then, very importantly, you've got stuff going on in targets being hit along the southern coastline of Iran.

This is basically the Persian Gulf area, and you've got targets such as this vessel right here, this Iranian Naval vessel, which was a helicopter carrier. That has been decimated, and that is one of the things that is really part of the major effort that the U.S. has made here. The idea is to get rid of the Iranian Navy, make sure it's not functional, that it cannot provide any type of combat support to the Iranians, and this is basically what you're seeing here.

So you've got the Navy targets, you've got nuclear targets, you've got air defense targets. Those are the things that they've been going after -- Erin.

BURNETT: All right, can I ask you about the nuclear targets? Obviously, that was the entire focus of the operation last summer in which the United States said that Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated.

Some of the satellite images that I saw the other day, I guess maybe 36 hours ago, Colonel, from Natanz, for example, post what they said were strikes, looked like nothing had been hit at all. It was very hard to tell. Are you actually seeing targeting of Iranian nuclear sites this time?

LEIGHTON: So that's a really interesting question. When you look at some of the imagery that we have right here, this is of Natanz, there is some damage to this particular area -- in this area, but the problem that you have is it doesn't seem to cover a lot of the other buildings that are part of that nuclear facility. So that's Natanz.

There are other elements here, for example, at the Fordow site and at Esfahan, where there has been some damage to this, but we really don't have a good handle on whether or not they've actually been able to create major damage. Now, the one thing to keep in mind, Erin, is that the B-2 bombers that were flying during the June attacks have maybe been flying just a little bit during this exercise, but they have not been able to really go in and take out anything. They haven't used those 30,000 pound bombs that they used back in June.

BURNETT: Yes. All right, so obviously those, you know, some of those MOAB bombs, as they call them, those massive ordnance payload.

What weapons does the United States have? I know anyone watching this who's following this is following what's the munitions in terms of outgoing missile supply, but also missile defense, and this whole sort of rubric that's going on, on how much can missile defense keep up with Iran's missile supply. How do you see that balance right now?

Do you have any visibility on it, Colonel?

LEIGHTON: Well, what we see right now, this is a graphic of the THAAD system. So this is the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense System. This is basically how it works, and basically what it does is it intercepts the missile and strikes it.

So the types of things that you need for this type of system are really interceptors that have the right trajectory, the right caliber, all of those things that belong in as part of this.

[15:40:22]

Then you have, of course, the Tomahawk system, which is an offensive weapon, but more importantly from a defensive perspective, you have the Patriot system here. So what is basically the issue in terms of shortages for these systems is the fact that we don't have the missiles that need to be launched from these systems in order for them to be effective, as is seen in this graphic right here.

BURNETT: All right. Well, Colonel Leighton, I appreciate your time, and as we go to break, I'll just let everyone know exactly what's happening right here as we speak. Which is we just got an alert of missiles being fired from Iran to here. We get that alert because they can get a little bit of foresight because of the distance they're traveling.

So sometime in the next few seconds to a few minutes, we most likely are going to hear a lot of loud sirens, and then we seek shelter as those missiles come in and Israeli air defenses attempt to intercept them. So that's where we are now. We're going to have those sirens going off in just probably the next few seconds.

So we'll take a brief break, and our coverage will continue.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:45:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We continue to follow the breaking news. A major change in the president's cabinet. Secretary Kristi Noem out at the Department of Homeland Security.

The president naming Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma as her potential replacement.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: CNN's Kristen Holmes is with us now from the White House. And Kristen, you have some new details on when Secretary Noem learned of her firing.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, Boris and Brianna, I mean, we talked about this because we saw Secretary Noem up there at that stage, at that podium, who seemed as though she did not know that she had been replaced as Department of Homeland Security secretary. She did not mention it at all. She referenced her work there.

She took questions. But I am told that she learned of her firing and replacement as she was pulling up to that Nashville event where she was the keynote speaker, that President Trump called her. So this would have been moments before he posted about her ouster and informed her of the news.

Then she stepped out there and gave that keynote speech. So she was aware of it then. Of course, there were a lot of questions as to how she learned of it, given that in his first term, President Trump was known to fire people just on social media. But I am being told by multiple officials that he called Kristi Noem directly to tell her.

And, again, this all comes down to what we have seen over the last several months when it comes to Kristi Noem. But one thing in particular stood out to me from an administration official who has been talking to the White House and is aware of the thinking around this was this idea that Kristi Noem was distracting from the messaging on immigration.

And the reason why that is so critical is because it shows you that the White House is essentially scapegoating on Kristi Noem when it comes to that messaging of immigration. We've been wondering how they were going to, if anyone was going to take the fall for the fact that President Trump has been increasingly angry over the fact that he believes his message isn't clear enough on immigration. We've seen the polling.

Americans don't like what they see when it comes to immigration enforcement tactics. He believes that's about messaging, not actually about the tactics themselves. And what I'm hearing from these administration officials is they're saying her drama was overshadowing the messaging, which makes clear to me that that is the administration's way of essentially saying it's her fault. Let's move on now. They've cut her loose. Now, she's, of course, been given this off-ramp as the special envoy for The Shield of the Americas.

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes, thanks so much for that reporting. Stay with CNN. We'll be right back.

[15:50:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Today, officials have released new footage showing the harrowing moments that police exchanged fire with a gunman this past weekend after he drove a large SUV down a popular entertainment district street in Austin, Texas, and began firing his pistol out of the window. Officials also released new 911 audio from early that morning. The gunman was fatally shot by officials after killing three people, and 19 others were struck by gunfire.

CNN senior national correspondent Ed Lavandera joins us now with the latest. Ed, tell us about this update.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hi Boris. Well, first of all, I want to preface everything we're about to talk about is that the videos you're about to watch, the limited portions that we're going to show, can be very graphic, very difficult to watch. So I wanted to extend that warning to anybody watching this right now.

But there were a series of videos released by Austin police this afternoon that show the chilling and terrifying moments that unfolded early Sunday morning over this past weekend where three young people were shot dead and more than a dozen others wounded. In that first video, you see the 53-year-old suspected mass shooter there brandishing an AR-15 and firing at one of those young people in the crowd there at very close range. And this all unfolded, according to Austin police, where the suspect drove up alongside this popular bar in the West 6th Street Entertainment District of downtown Austin and started firing on a crowd of people who were standing on the curb just outside of this bar. Then drove a couple of blocks away and pulled out an AR-15 and started making his way back toward that same area and continued firing.

By then, that's where a number of officers, three in all, we understand, engaged the suspect and shot and killed him there on the street corner as well. Investigators say that there is still other videos that have not been released, one of them simply just too graphic and horrific to watch, and investigators say they're still trying to determine the motive.

This is what they said about that part of the investigation so far earlier today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHIEF LISA DAVIS, AUSTIN POLICE DEPARTMENT: We're working in tandem with our FBI partners, and certainly as we look at different indicators, you know, we conducted two search warrants and all of those are being gone through, and you talk about the digital evidence and all the things that we have to do, we are not ready to talk about exactly what that nexus is.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LAVANDERA: And Boris, really what these videos kind of capture is the fast response of police to that shooting scene, and up and down the board, we've heard that the actions of these officers as heroic and saved countless lives on early Sunday morning -- Boris.

SANCHEZ: Ed Lavandera, live for us in Texas. Thank you so much.

Ahead, gas prices across the U.S. are now at their highest level in 11 months as the war with Iran rages on. How it's affecting the economy when we come back.

[15:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: We're just moments away from the closing bell on Wall Street, and right now the war in the Middle East is not only rattling markets, it's also sending oil prices to their biggest one day increase since May 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

SANCHEZ: Just look at the big board. It's been a rough day for investors. A lot of red stocks right now down 800 points.

Earlier this week, the markets largely shook off the impact of the war in Iran. That may not be the case anymore.

KEILAR: This is likely going to have a direct impact on Americans with, of course, rising gas prices. The war in the Middle East appears to have completely stopped the flow of oil tankers through the Strait of Hormuz. Zero oil tankers transited that critical waterway on Wednesday, which is according to data from S&P Global Commodities at Sea, which was shared with CNN.

For comparison, 65 oil and chemical vessels went through the Strait February 27th. That was the final day before the war started.

SANCHEZ: President Trump, meantime, has promised to provide maritime insurance and Naval escorts for vessels in the Gulf. But an industry official told CNN that quote, the market needs a lot more detail. Yes, it's tough to secure those vessels in, obviously, an area of extreme activity right now.

"THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now. Thanks so much for joining us. END