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Israel Says It's Begun Large-Scale Strikes on Beirut; Oil Prices Rising as Vessels Hit Near Strait of Hormuz; AI Videos and Images of Conflict Spread Widely Amid Iran War; Iranian State Media: Major U.S. Tech Firms Potential Targets; NASA Spacecraft Set to Make Uncontrolled Plunge Back to Earth. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired March 11, 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: All right, welcome back to our breaking news coverage of the war with Iran. I'm Erin Burnett, here in Tel Aviv, where we are expecting, we understand, likely, a potential significant expansion of attacks from both Iran and Hezbollah on Israel and Tel Aviv tonight. The images that you're looking at on your screen, though, are from Beirut, and not long ago we had seen a barrage of fire coming from Beirut, projectiles, rockets, potentially missiles coming from Hezbollah to Israel.

And this is the response that you are looking at right now, we understand, over Beirut, that smoke filling the sky from Israeli airstrikes that just happened as we speak.

[15:35:00]

And just again, to give you the time, as we talk about this potential significant expansion in missile strikes here, it's about 9:30 at night, and I think it's fair to characterize it as sometimes during the day, some days are busier than others, but you might only have a few sirens during daylight hours, but often when we do see an increase in the intensity, we see it in the overnight hours, specifically after midnight, when people are asleep and it is most disruptive.

And all of these developments and waiting to see what this significant expansion may or may not mean comes as the U.S. and Iran are fighting for control over the crucial Strait of Hormuz. U.S. Central Command is now warning that Iran and civilians should stay away from ports along the critical shipping route. There are some crucial ones there, Bandar Abbas and others along that strait.

Iran says that if its ports are attacked, they will respond in kind across the region. And that is bringing us back to this, you know, mutually assured destruction in a certain sense of crucial infrastructure, whether it be oil-related plants, facilities, refineries, desalination plants, cargo ports. The shutdown of the strait is triggering a surge in fuel prices, chemical prices, natural gas prices around the world.

And today, member countries of the International Energy Agency unanimously are agreeing to the largest ever release of oil reserves, 400 million barrels, to offset potential supply loss, which is obviously a very big development.

I'm joined now by Bob McNally. He is the founder and president of the energy consulting firm Rapidan Energy Group and a former White House energy advisor to President George W. Bush. And I very much appreciate your time. Also, the author of "Crude Volatility, the History and the Future of Boom Bust Oil Prices."

Well, right now we're in an unprecedented boom, an incredible moment that we are witnessing, something that I think it is fair to say. And I'm thinking about last summer. I was along the Strait of Hormuz during the 12-day war.

And we were talking about how that was Iran's ability, right, that they could mine it and they could shut it down. And even then, while we were there, because that was what possibly could happen, then there's a ceasefire. And once again, that scenario went to becoming the unthinkable.

Here we are. It's not only thinkable. It appears to be what -- it's certainly what Iran is threatening.

Three vessels hit today near the Strait of Hormuz. Sources say Iran is putting mines into the water. The U.S. is striking boats that they say may be doing that. You know, how do you -- where would you say we are when it comes to the Strait?

BOB MCNALLY, FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT, RAPIDAN ENERGY GROUP: Hi, Erin. We are seeing the collapse of what we might call a load-bearing assumption in global energy and economics, a rule of thumb, a truism that was thought to be so true that if it was ever false, we couldn't understand how the world worked. Like the Treasury will never default or the Fed will never let a bank fail, which it did.

The idea that Hormuz would be shut for more than a day or two is something that was so absurd that it was not even contemplated, except for my company, Rapidan, we analyzed it extensively. You cannot run the world economy without 20 percent of the energy that we've lost through that Strait. And so we're now dealing with something that was, as you said, unthinkable, that this could be closed and with no end in sight so far.

And so we have now the world's largest oil disruption ever, two times bigger than the last one in history as a percent of total oil market supply. So it's a real problem. And the only solution, the SPR release, won't help.

The Strait of Hormuz must reopen to commercial traffic.

BURNETT: Right. When you talk about SPR, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, but when you say it must reopen, it comes down to -- and I don't want to oversimplify, but, you know, there's been reports of places in The Wall Street Journal. I mean, Iran obviously has been under heavy sanctions.

And one of the ways that the IRGC has funded itself is in part through oil sales, right, that they have been able to manage to get through, or a shadow fleet of tankers with Iranian oil on it, right, but that they've been unable to sell. Well, now all of a sudden, we know some of their -- at least one of their ships has gotten through, right, because they're controlling the Strait. And some of that shadow oil fleet is now finding an eager buyer, whether it be Russian oil or Iranian oil, suddenly at way higher prices, right?

So is it possible that, you know, that Iran just doesn't -- that they may see no incentive to open this at this point?

MCNALLY: I think you're right. So Iran has no other way to get leverage over the United States but to play the oil card, especially after June, when their defenses were degraded by Israel and the United States. They have no escalation dominance over the U.S. when it comes to military.

[15:40:00]

The only card the Iranian leadership, the Iranian regime has to play is to inflict a scary oil price on President Trump, and that they are doing. And they have to stick to it in the hopes that he just simply can't last. He can't take the political, the financial market and the economic and the consumer pain of high oil prices. And for that reason, I believe they can and they will prevent a resumption of flow for the coming weeks here.

BURNETT: All right, Bob McNally, I appreciate your time as we're looking at West Texas crude oil right now, up $4, 5 percent on the day, just below 90. And I will point out, of course, it had briefly during a moment of panic on Sunday night gone as high as close to 120. Thank you so much. I appreciate your time, Bob.

And we'll be right back with our breaking coverage.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:45:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Artificial intelligence is making the fog of war even murkier. Fake videos and images of the war with Iran have racked up tens of millions of views online in nearly two weeks since the conflict began.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: CNN's Daniel Dale is here to show us what's real and what's not and how to tell the difference, perhaps most importantly. And Daniel, as AI tech gets better, so, of course, do these images.

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yes, Brianna, we have a two part problem. Number one, because of AI, wartime fakes are much superior to the ones we saw just a few years ago, for example, after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. And then because these AI tools are so widely available, often free, we have way more fakes circulating on social media, maybe even in the hundreds of them. Now, what we tended to see in 2022 was pretty crude deception. So bad Photoshop jobs, video game footage or old footage presented as real, or current or from the war. We still have those during the Iran war, but they have been joined by custom made, often quite sophisticated fakes made with these AI tools. So things like fake explosions, fake videos of missile attacks, fake scenes of people fleeing or people mourning. It's pretty wild stuff.

So I'll let people watch one example. This fake -- this AI generated fake shows what appears to be a barrage of Iranian missiles hitting the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.

(AI VIDEO OF MISSILES HITTING TEL AVIV)

I'll let people watch another example. This AI generated fake shows what seems to be a group of American soldiers on the ground in Iran, captured by Iranian soldiers. Now, that is pretty good trickery. It's not perfect trickery, though.

AI is getting better all the time, but it's thankfully not perfect yet. And it often leaves telltale signs. So for example, that supposed Tel Aviv video people saw a moment ago has some oddly shaped kind of morphing images out of sync and kind of tinny sounding sound.

So you can sometimes tell if you rewind and look closely enough. And sometimes the errors are kind of comical. So this video that supposedly shows people fleeing an Iranian attack on an airport in Israel has a guy doing something weird and unrealistic with one of his arms.

It also more conspicuously shows suitcases moving by themselves. So sometimes the errors are clear, obvious, even kind of comical, but often they're not, And it's difficult.

SANCHEZ: When they're not obvious, what can people do to make sure they're not getting tricked?

DALE: So I spoke to one expert who's a professor, Hadi Fareed, not a journalist, but he said his number one tip is simply stop trying to get your news in wartime from a randomly scrolling through social media accounts, you know, where you don't know who they are, what they are. He said, get your news from credible journalistic outlets and stop just doing this aimless scrolling. Now, we, I think, like that advice as people whose job security depends on people paying attention to mainstream media outlets, but even I am aimlessly scrolling a lot of the time.

So when you are scrolling, I'd say a few other things. My number one tip is take a breath, take a beat before believing or sharing a sensational wartime video. Ask yourself, is there anything that just feels off about it?

Any of those kind of errors you can notice? Has any credible mainstream outlet debunked it or addressed it? Often, they have.

What do even people in the comments say? Sometimes they've raised skeptical questions. AI detection tools can often help.

Do not ask Grok, Twitter's or X's AI chatbot. Often, it's telling people that real videos are fake or fake videos are real. But there are things you can do to protect yourself.

SANCHEZ: Solid advice. Daniel Dale, thank you so much.

So Iran now says that American tech firms with a presence in the Middle East are legitimate targets in the war. Iranian state media published this list, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, NVIDIA, IBM, Oracle and Palantir.

KEILAR: We're joined now by Lance Ulanoff, Tech Radar's editor at large. All right, this is, you know, this is pretty eye-popping that we hear they're considering these companies to be targets. How is America's tech sector reacting?

LANCE ULANOFF, EDITOR AT LARGE, TECHRADAR: Well, I mean, look, they're always, honestly, in some ways, their platforms, their data centers, their systems are always under attack from cyber attacks, cyber security attacks, even from sometimes their own mistakes. So they're always trying to harden their systems and be prepared. I did speak, you know, I asked Amazon about this attack because they had an AWS center attacked in the UAE.

And they did say that at least the attack only was confined and the impact of it was confined to that locality. So it wasn't something that spread widely. And a lot of this feels like sort of a symbolic thing.

[15:50:00]

There are 1,500 U.S. tech companies in the UAE. And then the main ones are the biggest names in tech, you know, like Google and NVIDIA and Microsoft. And so attacking them is sending a message because technology is incredibly important to us, right? It's embedded into every part of our lives.

Everything that we do, all of our data, our banking, all of these things. And so there is a concern that if they attack the infrastructure, if they attack the data centers, could our data be at risk?

SANCHEZ: Amazon has already been targeted by Iran a few times, including a drone attack on an Amazon data center in Bahrain last week. Iran's state-affiliated news agency said the attack was carried out to identify how such centers support the military and intelligence activities of Tehran's adversaries. I wonder what you make of that claim.

ULANOFF: Well, I think, you know, look, we know that some tech companies work with governments. That's not unusual. Obviously, we just had the whole thing with Anthropic and the U.S. government and, you know, the Department of Defense or War. And, you know, now OpenAI has jumped in. So it's not unusual for tech companies to be involved in some way. I don't know the list of them that might be working with them.

They are distributed. Companies like Amazon and Microsoft are distributed around the globe. They work with all kinds of localities. So, you know, it would not be surprising if the Iranians are targeting these companies because they assume maybe they are working with them. I don't, you know, obviously, I don't know for certain whether or not they are. But you have to make the assumption that this business that they do cuts across all kinds of borders.

SANCHEZ: Lance, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate your perspective.

ULANOFF: It's a pleasure.

SANCHEZ: A 1,300-pound satellite is now barreling toward the Earth. So where exactly is this thing headed? Find out next.

[15:55:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: A giant NASA space probe could come plunging down to Earth years earlier than expected.

SANCHEZ: Keep your eyes peeled. NASA was expecting the spacecraft to hit the Earth's atmosphere last night. Once it does re-enter, most of it is likely going to burn up, though a few pieces could still make it through.

CNN's Jackie Wattles joins us now. Jackie, what exactly is this thing? How big are these chunks, potentially?

JACKIE WATTLES, CNN SPACE REPORTER: Yes, well, we're not totally sure about the size of the chunk. If we knew that, we'd be in much better luck. But yes, to give you some context here, this is called the Van Allen Probe A.

And if it was sitting right in front of you, I think you'd say it's a pretty big spacecraft. It weighs about 1,300 pounds. But in the grand scheme of things, this actually isn't that big of a spacecraft.

GPS satellites, for example, are about three times bigger than this. But what makes this so interesting and why we're following so closely is this legacy of it being a NASA science mission. This spacecraft, as well as its twin, went out and explored the Van Allen radiation belts.

And this is a fascinating area of Earth orbit where these charged particles kind of lie trapped in Earth's magnetosphere. So understanding that environment and how radiation changes in orbit is incredibly important for NASA. It helps protect our satellites, as well as our astronauts that are about to fly through these belts on their way to the moon.

KEILAR: OK, so talk to us, because the timing of this is wild and how it's changed here. Initially, NASA predicted that the spacecraft would return home in 2034. And then that changed to 2026.

OK, so we're eight years. Estimated hit timer on 7:45 Eastern last night. I mean, I'm on time for like nothing except for this show pretty much in life.

And even then, I'm cutting it close sometimes. How eight years they were -- it's showing up eight years early. Explain that.

WATTLES: Yes, yes. Well, I mean, a lot of it has to do with that space weather and radiation that these spacecraft were helping us better understand. It was really unexpectedly bad space weather that really drug these out of orbit faster than expected.

NASA wants these spacecraft to come back home, right? We don't like to have spacecraft just flying out aimlessly in the ether. So they set these spacecraft up on a path to come back home eventually.

And what we saw was that there was just more drag, more radiation that affected these spacecraft, bringing them home sooner. So as you mentioned, there was about, you know, plus or minus 24 hours from the original estimate. And last I heard from experts, we were hearing maybe around 11 p.m. last night till 5 p.m. this evening could be the reentry time. But we'll have to get pretty lucky to know for certain. You know, there's gaps in our vision of where this spacecraft is. It's not telling us its location.

We have to go search for it using telescopes and sensors. So we'll have to be lucky and have it fly over a sensor during reentry or maybe be caught by a human eye to know for sure when it reenters.

SANCHEZ: Hopefully not caught by a human eye too close.

WATTLES: No, that's right.

SANCHEZ: Should we be worried about this thing? What are the chances of it impacting a populated area?

WATTLES: Yes, by a distance, we hope. Yes, so NASA actually put the odds of this, a piece of this spacecraft surviving reentry and hitting the ground or hitting a person at about one in 4,200. So, you know, that's not a huge risk, but of course we'd like that to be zero.

But it's really important to provide context here. You know, we're in a new era of space exploration. We have launched a prolific amount of stuff into space and it's growing ever more year after year.

So we actually have about one piece of space junk that deorbits back towards Earth every week that poses this type of risk. You know, we're following along extra closely because this is an interesting science NASA mission, but this is actually a fairly common occurrence and definitely something that the space community is grappling with right now.

[16:00:00]

KEILAR: Yes, we know we love to follow things that are hurtling quickly towards space. They factor large on this show, Jackie. So we appreciate you bringing this one to us. Jackie Wattles, thank you very much.

SANCHEZ: Bam Adebayo got 83 points last night.

KEILAR: THE ARENA with Kasie Hunt starts right now. END