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Missiles Intercepted Over Saudi Arabia; Dana Bash Speaks with Trump; U.S. and Israel Escalate Attacks Against Iran; Rep. Greg Stanton (D-AZ) is Interviewed about Iran; Natasha Sarin is Interviewed about Rising Gas Prices. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired March 06, 2026 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Dr. King. And let's not forget, he was standing next to Dr. King when he was shot and killed, assassinated. And for 50 years he continued that battle to make sure civil rights across this country was recognized. And it was not only here, it was across the world where he took that message.

And then running for president, the idea that a man could be born and not be able to check out a book from a library and then run for president, he always kept hope alive.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Absolutely. Today will be a celebration of quite a life. Unprecedented.

Ryan Young, thank you so much for being with us.

A brand-new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: We have a lot developing this hour.

Breaking news, the war in Iran intensifies as President Trump now says he will only accept unconditional surrender. What does that mean?

And also breaking news this morning, the U.S. economy lost 92,000 jobs last month, an unexpected downturn here.

And gas prices have surged to their highest point throughout either of President Trump's terms.

And an intense rescue caught on camera. Body camera footage showing the moments police save a man from his burning car.

I'm Kate Bolduan, with Sara Sidner and John Berman. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

BERMAN: All right, the breaking news this morning, gas prices are up. Way up. You just heard Kate say it. As of this morning, they've never been higher under President Trump in either term. The reason why, for now, the escalating war with Iran. This data on top of a disappointing new jobs report just out moments ago showing the economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. More on that in just a moment.

We do have new video from overnight. Huge explosions in Iran. Witnesses say it was the worst night of strikes on the capital since the war began nearly a week ago. And this just in from President Trump. He posted on social media, "there will be no deal with Iran except under unconditional surrender." and then he added that, "that there will be the selection of a great and acceptable leader," suggesting that now part of the aim of this conflict is regime change, saying that the selection of a new leader is part of his war aim.

Inside Iran we're getting a better look at some of the destruction. State media reports that a busy shopping district was hit. Some of the attacks are playing out on live TV.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (Speaking in foreign language).

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BERMAN: You can see there the reporter running for cover.

U.S. Central Command released video of a strike on an Iranian drone carrier. The Pentagon now vows to dramatically surge firepower over Iran. And Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth says the fight is just beginning.

New images of the Sri Lankan navy rescuing dozens of Iranian sailors who survived a U.S. torpedo attack on a warship in the Indian Ocean.

CNN is reporting from inside Iran. We're the first U.S. network inside the country. Our Frederik Pleitgen is there. We will get to him as soon as we get a connection.

We also have live coverage throughout the region. Let's get to CNN's Nic Robertson in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh.

Nic, what's the latest from there?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes, a concerted effort by the Iranians to try to target a principal Saudi air base, the Prince Sultan Air Base, just outside of the capital, Riyadh, over the past sort of 12 hours or so. In the early hours of the morning, three ballistic missiles fired in the direction of the airbase, intercepted. Now, that is the first time that the Saudis have admitted that ballistic missiles have been fired at them, that they've been intercepted. Pete Hegseth, a couple of days ago, said that Iranians have fired ballistic missiles at Saudi Arabia's energy sector in the east of the country. But this is the first time that Saudi Arabia has admitted it for itself.

But it's significant not just because of that, but because of what it was targeting. We've seen a concerted effort over the past few days. Every day or so a few missiles, a few drones, fired at this Prince Sultan Air Base. But it was a really concerted effort. This morning, a couple of hours after those ballistic missiles

intercepted, a drone intercepted, headed towards or the same area, a similar target. A little hour or two after that, it was a cruise missile that the Saudis intercepted, being fired towards or in the vicinity of the Prince Sultan Air Base. An hour after that, it was three drones in the same area. An hour after that, it was another drone in the same area. We haven't seen a pattern like this. It's patterns that Saudi Arabia is watching for. It's patterns so that they could try to detect for themselves if Iran still has effective command and control, how many weapons it has to fire, can it bring them to bear in the same general area?

[09:05:10]

And the answer today appears to be, yes. And the knock-on effect in Riyadh has been, it appears, some international flights coming in, in the early hours of the morning, same time the missiles were inbound. The flights from Munich, flights from Frankfurt, flights from Paris, from London didn't make it in. Passengers hoping to get out on those flights told to come back later in the day.

This is what the Saudis are watching. And, of course, as the clock ticks, questions over their energy production, what to do with all that oil if they can't export it? There is a clock running on these things.

BERMAN: Nic Robertson in Riyadh. Standby, if you will. We also have Jeremy Diamond standing by in the Israel-Lebanon border. Jeremy, if you could hang on just a second because we have Dana Bash with us right now.

And, Dana, I understand you just got off the phone with President Trump. What did you hear from him?

DANA BASH, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT (via telephone): I did, John. Good morning.

He just, broadly speaking, he insists that on a scale of ten, with ten being the best, he thinks that the war is, I would say at 12, maybe 15. He said that the U.S. is doing very well militarily, quote, "better than anybody could have dreamed." He said that he rebuilt the military in his first term. He's using it in his second.

And then he quickly turned to Cuba. He said, without being asked, Cuba is going to fall pretty soon, by the way, but Cuba is going to fall. They want to make a deal so badly.

And I asked, how so? He said, they want to make a deal, so I'm going to put Marco over there and we'll see how that works. But we're really focused on this one now, meaning Iran. We've got plenty of time on Cuba.

Just more quickly on, obviously what's going on with Iran. And you were just talking about this with our colleagues in the region. I asked about rising gas prices. And he said, that's all right. It will be short term. It will go way down very quickly. And I said, well, they're pretty high now. And he said, no they're not. They're up a little bit, not much, but it will drop to record lows.

And so I asked, well, does this mean that you're going to figure out the Strait of Hormuz soon. Again, something you were just talking about. He said, quote, "it's already figured out. We've knocked their navy because, you know, when you knock out the navy, they can't do what they wanted to be able to do. The navy is almost," he said, "we just hit the 25 mark. Can you imagine that? Big ones. Twenty-five ships are down. We're doing very well."

And, John, just real quick, I also asked about the gulf countries being hit. He said, "they're doing unbelievable and they're fighting. They made it today," meaning Iran, "made a terrible mistake when they attacked them. The UAE is freezing the assets and they have the assets, all of them, and they got hit enough where they were going to freeze them. They're brave people."

I do want to tell you one other important thing that he discussed with me, and it was about a five-minute discussion, and that is who the next leader of Iran will be. You know, he told our colleague Barak Ravid yesterday that he had like three people in mind and that he wants to pick the person. And I asked him about that. I said, how is that going to work? And he said, "it's going to work very easily. It's going to work like it did in Venezuela. We have a wonderful leader there. She's doing a fantastic job. And it is going to work like that."

And I said, OK, but are you OK with having a religious leader again? A different ayatollah? And he said, "well, I may -- yes, I may be, yes. I mean it depends on who the person is. I don't mind religious leaders. I deal with a lot of religious leaders and they're fantastic." And then he went on to say, "I'm saying there has to be a leader that's going to be fair and just, do a great job, treat the United States and Israel well, and treat other countries in the Middle East. They're all our partners." So, that was the gist of our discussion on the war and where he thinks they are and what the impact is having when it comes to gas prices.

BERMAN: That's a whole lot of information packed into one five-minute conversation, Dana. Notable, particularly notable, the idea that he said of rising gas prices, the highest they've ever been under a President Trump. He said that's OK and suggests that they will go down soon.

The other thing about the idea, and I think we can call it regime change. I guess I'll put it in quotes, because the United States continues to insist that regime change is not the goal of this war. But when he says him picking the leader is a condition of it, that is regime change. And on top of -- it must have been right after he was off the phone with you, he put out this statement, Dana, saying, he's demanding unconditional surrender of Iran, and then that he gets to pick, roughly, the next leader.

[09:10:07]

That's an extraordinary shift. That's a -- that's a different place --

BASH: It is.

BERMAN: Than they were one week ago when they said destroying the missiles was the goal of this conflict.

BASH: It is. But he also has suggested in different ways, shapes and forms that he wants the leadership to change. I mean, they -- they took out the leader of the country.

BERMAN: Yes.

BASH: So, obviously, just by their actions, their military actions, the first thing they did was to take out the leader. So, I think, by that standard, they're pushing regime change.

Can I just tell you one other thing that I did ask him, and that is on a different topic, about what's going on in Texas. I asked about whether he's going to endorse the incumbent Republican John Cornyn soon. That's one of the big questions about whether he will do that in order to try to limit the fight in the runoff, the Republican runoff. And he said, "I like John Cornyn, get along with him well." But then he went into discussing the SAVE America Act, which he says, "it is the SAVE America Act, not the SAVE Act," which he says we always call it. And he said that he -- he called it the most important thing that he wants to do other than the war right now. And he said that there are now five things in this SAVE America Act that he wants the House and the Senate to pass. He said no mail-in ballots except military, illness, disability and travel. No men in women's sports and no transgender operations for youth. He added those two social issues to the voting issues that were part of the SAVE America Act. And he says that is what he wants to have done. Very, very intent on that as a very big priority

BERMAN: Throwing down a political marker, perhaps, in Texas --

BASH: Exactly.

BERMAN: And in Congress for the coming months.

BASH: Precisely.

BERMAN: Dana Bash, I should also note, suggesting that Cuba is next when it comes to regime change. Also a significant development this morning. As I said, a number of new bits of information in a conversation. I know you'll be on all morning long and at noon on "INSIDE POLITICS." Thank you for jumping on with us and letting us know what you learned.

BASH: Thanks, John.

BERMAN: Let's get now to CNN's Jeremy Diamond, who has been standing by on the dangerous border.

And, Jeremy, I appreciate you being there. I know, in this situation, standing out there in the open isn't always the best, safest thing. We just got a bunch of new information from Dana. Why don't you bring us up to speed on what you're seeing there? JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, John, we are right along the

Israel-Lebanon border, which has become the second front in Israel's war with Iran. And over the course of the last couple of hours, we've been witnessing a really intense back and forth here between Israeli military forces positioned near our location and Hezbollah fighters inside of Lebanon.

We actually saw two projectiles coming in from the Lebanese side right over our heads and making impact in the area that we are right now. It wasn't clear whether those were drones or perhaps anti-tank missiles, but they came in fast. They came in without any air raid sirens going off. And then subsequently we saw a kind of intense barrage of artillery fire going from the Israeli side over here right over our heads and striking positions in Lebanon.

And one of the things that's so interesting is that we've actually seen some of the targeted locations inside of Lebanon that the Israelis have struck, and some of those locations are within a kilometer of this border between Israel and Lebanon, which suggests that Hezbollah fighters are moving into positions right along the Israeli border, positions that they were supposed to have been repelled from over a year ago, when that last ceasefire took place. And it suggests that Hezbollah is now trying to re-infiltrate some of those areas.

We're also hearing some ground combat with machine gun fire off in the distance. We know that there are multiple positions that the Israelis now have inside of southern Lebanon. And right behind me over here, we've also got several Israeli tanks and artillery that are positioned right along the border, prepared to go inside of Lebanon if necessary.

One of the questions we've been asking ourselves as we've been here is how much more is this renewed conflict between Israel and Hezbollah going to intensify? We know that the Israelis have issued evacuation orders for every single position in Lebanon south of the Litani River. That's a really large stretch of land. And also last night, issuing an evacuation order for the Dahia, the southern suburbs of the Lebanese capital of Beirut, where hundreds of thousands of people were forced to flee their homes.

[09:15:07]

Israel, carrying out intense strikes there. And now the question, will Israel escalate this with an even deeper ground incursion than where they already are? That's something that we're very much watching for as we're here on the border.

John.

BERMAN: Literally watching, because you can see it all play out before your eyes. One of the most extraordinary things about that region is just how close everything is.

Jeremy Diamond, our thanks to you. Stay safe, you and your team.

Kate. KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, joining us right now is

Democratic Congressman Greg Stanton of Arizona. He serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

Congressman, I want to run through some of what we just learned from Dana Bash as she just got off the phone with President Trump. Call it regime change. Call it whatever you want. It does seem that the president having a say in or maybe final say in who the next leader of Iran is seems to be now very squarely part of the aims, goals and focus of this war operation. The president said it in -- on social media that after the selection of a great and acceptable leader, and then he said some other things. And he told Dana just now, Congressman, that how you're going to do that, install and approve the next leader of Iran, the president told her essentially that he thought it was going to be easy. It's going to work like it did in Venezuela. Will it?

REP. GREG STANTON (D-AZ): Well, first off, issues of war are never easy. In the recent United States history, in Vietnam and Afghanistan, even in Iraq, people have said to the American people that those missions were going to be quick. Well, they ended up too often being quagmires. And we need to make sure that that doesn't happen again here in Iran. So, President Trump's rosy, optimistic outlook may face a very different reality soon. That's the reason why they need to come to Congress. And if they're going to go to war against Iran, and this is clearly a war, it needs to be voted on by the American Congress. This is not a decision unilaterally made by one person, Donald Trump. No matter how much power he thinks he has, the actual power lies with the people, and the people are represented through Congress. Under our Constitution, this is not a close call, he has to bring these decisions to Congress.

BOLDUAN: Well, I mean, how Senate voted, they greenlit the operation, it doesn't seem like, unless, maybe, possibly, if it moves towards a ground operation, ground troops going in, that they will be coming to the Congress for any of it.

But let's focus on the here and now, because it does seem almost, quite frankly, practically speaking, too late for asking for that.

The president also brought up -- brought up Cuba to Dana and said this, that essentially Cuba's next. "Cuba is going to fall pretty soon, by the way, unrelated, but Cuba is going to fall, too. They want to make a deal so badly," he told Dana. And then he said he's going to put Marco Rubio on it, which is fuel to -- sure to fuel the memes that have already been out there, which is Marco Rubio has to take on everything. This seems to be Marco Rubio's next and new assignment. What do you think of this, that now, already in the midst of this, President Trump is now putting his sights on Cuba?

STANTON: Well, let me first address what you said earlier, that we somehow bypass the United States Constitution. No, you cannot bypass the Constitution. The president tried to do it with tariffs and the Supreme Court made it absolutely clear, the president acted in a concisely (ph) --

BOLDUAN: I'm just saying effectively Congress is not doing anything.

STANTON: Well, it's unfortunate that our Republicans in Congress aren't standing up for themselves and demanding that this president act in a constitutional way. But I don't want to sort of gloss over that. It is our Constitution. It's the guiding document of this country. We should not gloss over the fact that this president is consistently doing things in an unconstitutional way.

But while he's gallivanting around the globe trying to take over this country or that country, prices are rising in America. What about affordability? That's the issue that most Americans care about. We see gas prices rising drastically right now. This president, because of not supporting the tax credits on health care, health care costs are rising for the American people. So, while he is gallivanting about the globe and trying to replace leaders here and there, prices are getting more expensive for the American people and we need to be focused in on creating a more affordable America. This president is not focused in on that. And the American people are going to punish him at the ballot box because of that lack of focus on the -- the most important thing to the American people.

BOLDUAN: On gas prices, the president is talking about that. He told Dana, it's OK because they're going to go down. He also talked to Reuters and said, "I don't have any concern about it," meaning the -- how gas prices have gone up so much. "They'll drop very rapidly when this is over, and if they rise, they rise, but this is far more important than having gasoline prices go up a little bit."

[09:20:04]

Talking about the war and his war aims there. Does he have a point?

STANTON: No. The president has lost the confidence of the American people on the issue about caring about affordability. You saw that. The one big, beautiful bill that ripped away health care from the American people, the failure to include the tax credits so that the Affordable Care Act can be in -- within reach for the American people, millions of people are losing their health care. The tariffs, the illegal tariffs that raise costs on the American people. The Supreme Court told him, correctly, that it is illegal. And he told the Supreme Court to pound sand. And now he's trying to do tariffs under a different unconstitutional regime. This president is hell bent on violating the Constitution and the American people are paying the price.

BOLDUAN: Congressman Greg Stanton, thanks for jumping on. A lot of breaking news happening this hour. Appreciate you running through it with me.

We'll be right back after this.

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[09:25:02]

BOLDUAN: This morning, Energy Secretary Chris Wright says the Navy will begin escorting ships through the Strait of Hormuz as soon as military assets in the region are able to direct their attention away from Iran's retaliatory strikes on neighboring countries. Now, those comments come after a critical moment, because we just found out that two of the world's largest shipping companies have announced that they are no longer accepting cargo bound for the Persian Gulf because of the war. This war with Iran clearly taking a toll on a lot, including oil prices, sending U.S. gas prices soaring. Gas prices are now at an average of more than $3.30 per gallon, the highest that they have been at any point in either of Trump's presidency. And as we've just heard, President Trump is talking about it, telling Dana Bash he thinks it's OK because he says it will eventually come down.

Joining me right now is Natasha Sarin, president and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale.

Put a pin on that because I do, because of the breaking news with the jobs report that just came out, Natasha, I did want to ask you about that.

The U.S. losing 92,000 jobs last month, a surprising downturn here. What is -- what do you see in it, and what does it say about the overall jobs picture, because this is, you know, it's a look back. It's -- has nothing to do with this war now. So, give us some perspective.

NATASHA SARIN, PROFESSOR OF LAW AND FINANCE, YALE LAW SCHOOL: Yes. In some sense what we're seeing is that this jobs report was amiss. It was a 92,000 jobs loss relative to what was expected to be around a 50,000 gain number. And if you take in collection what we've learned about the last few months in the labor market, essentially alongside the downward revisions for December and January, we now know that the labor market has essentially stalled.

We're in a situation where it is across all sectors we are not seeing jobs being added. And in some sense that is continuing a downward trend that had been going on for several months in response to a lot of uncertainty about the way in which the economy is functioning. Probably a bunch of that has to do with the nature of tariffs being at these levels that we haven't seen in the last century. And also some of that might very well be starting to reflect the fact that artificial intelligence and this boon associated with it is going to have downstream effects in the labor market.

And so we're in kind of an uncertain time. And to your point, these numbers are already out of date because they're not reflecting all that's happened in the last week as a result of this war

BOLDUAN: Yes, the last -- it honestly feels like all that's happened in the last 20 minutes.

One of the things that is -- let's talk about gas prices.

SARIN: Yes.

BOLDUAN: They're surging. Oil markets are all over the place and continue to rise. Matt Egan, our colleague, made a really good point as he was just reminding me that people were sour on the economy and her -- and saying that their cost of living was already untenable. When gas prices were low. So now, what does this mean? Even though we -- the president is trying to offer a reassuring tone, saying to Dana, saying to Reuters, he's not concerned about gas prices surging because eventually they'll go down and this matters more than some gas prices going up. What does this all mean for the current cost of living crisis?

SARIN: Yes, it means a lot. And, you know, the State of the Union now feels like ages ago. But if you recall, energy prices were kind of at the forefront of the president's response on affordability, because the idea was that, you know, you're seeing tariffs have these massive price increases for consumers across essentially everything they buy.

BOLDUAN: Right.

SARIN: But in energy, you were seeing oil prices coming down and you were seeing gas prices coming down. And that's about six percent of the average household's budget. So, it's significant. And now, just a few days later, you're in a situation where you've seen gas prices go up $0.26 this week. This is the largest gain in one week in the gas price market since the early stages of the Russia Ukraine war.

These are really significant consequences that are already being felt by consumers at the pump. And the nature of gas prices is really interesting because as oil prices rise, those increases fall through to consumers basically immediately. But any decreases in prices that are going to come down the road, even if they do come as a president attests, are going to take time to downstream to the consumer. There's a sort of rockets and feathers phenomenon in the market.

BOLDUAN: I want to ask you, just like leaning on your past experience in working in administrations, the Strait of Hormuz in general, it means what to the U.S. economy? If it's -- if it's shut down, if Maersk is like, we're not taking on any more cargo, I know they -- obviously, people hope and believe it's temporary. But if there is still this threat hanging over that your ships are going to get attacked and you can't get insurance, people aren't going to be shipping things through the Strait of Hormuz.

SARIN: Twenty percent of global oil flows through this incredibly narrow passageway.

BOLDUAN: And so does a lot of food I'm now learning. Yes.

SARIN: And -- a ton. So, this is like so immensely significant to our national security. And it's actually -- part of what I don't think has gotten as much attention as it should in this particular moment is, energy security is national security.

[09:30:00]

And you've seen this administration lambaste things like wind power or solar power. But one of the benefits of a shift to renewables is it actually removes you from being at these types of moments where this incredibly.