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WH: Anything Iran Tells Us Privately "Will Be Tested"; Officials: Thousands Of People Killed In MidEast Since War Began; CNN With Israeli Forces As IDF Strikes Deeper Into Lebanon; WH: Troops Sent To Middle East Give President "Maximum Optionality"; Oil Tops $116 After Trump Said He Wants To "Take the Oil" In Iran; Airport Wait Times Plummet From Hours To Minutes. Aired 3-3:30p ET

Aired March 30, 2026 - 15:00   ET

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

PATRICK SNELL, CNN SPORT ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: One of Duke's worst, though, I will say, 19-point lead lost in the Elite Eight this year, a 14-point lead lost against Houston in the Final Four last year and that has to be absolutely devastating if you're on the wrong end of that. Take a listen now to one of Duke's crestfallen, vanquished players.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CAMERON BOOZER, DUKE BLUE DEVILS: I mean, I've learned so much this year, I'm never going to take it for granted, man. But, yes, I'm just super thankful for it all. I'm hurting right now. We're all hurting. I wish I could have gave more for those guys.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SNELL: The heartbreak of it all. And with that, it's right back to you.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Heartbreak of it all, I picked UConn, so my heart is not broken, Patrick Snell, thank you very much.

SNELL: Oh, okay, good to know.

KEILAR: Boris is still beating me in the brackets. A new hour of CNN NEWS CENTRAL starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Deal or Else? President Trump's new message to Tehran is simple, agree to end the war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, or the U.S. will obliterate Iran's electric plants and oil wells.

Plus, payday, finally, for the TSA, after weeks without a paycheck, agents are finally getting paid. But what about the hundreds of TSA workers who resigned and left the job? We'll take you live to one of the worst hit airports in Houston.

And are you too busy to go shopping? Is an A.I. personal shopper the answer? CNN's Hadas Gold tried one out for us. We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here, CNN NEWS CENTRAL. Breaking news on the war with Iran and the new messaging from the White House today after President Trump threatened to obliterate Iran's oil, power, and water sites if a deal to end the war is not reached by this time next week. At the same time, though, the President is saying that the U.S. is working with a new and more reasonable regime, and just a short while ago, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt warned the U.S. could not take Iran at their word. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: Anything that they say to us privately will be tested, and we will ensure that they are being held accountable to their word. When the President says more reasonable, again, these folks are appearing more reasonable behind the scenes privately in these conversations than perhaps some of the previous leaders who are now no longer on planet Earth because they lied to the United States.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: As the President weighs his next move, the war's death toll is rising. Regional authorities say that thousands of people have been killed, including 13 U.S. service members. Most deaths have happened in Iran, where some 1,900 have died, including some 200 kids. Lebanon has seen more than 1,200 deaths, 124 were children. CNN's Jim Sciutto is live for us in Tel Aviv, Israel, where I understand that sirens were just blaring, Jim.

JIM SCIUTTO, CNN ANCHOR AND CHIEF NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: That's right, Boris. I mean, if the test for the White House for the President is incoming fire, there is still incoming fire. In the span of just a few minutes here in Tel Aviv, there were two air raid signals, and we saw the missiles. You see them here as they fly over your head, coming from Iran this way, and then you see the interceptors come up and -- and -- and meet them. That happened just a -- a couple minutes apart here in downtown Tel Aviv.

On Sunday, my team and I went up to the northern border, Israel's northern border, where Lebanon, where there is an entirely different front to this war, that is Israel against Hezbollah. And there, the incoming fire is even -- is even more frequent, perhaps 40 times a day in one of the small communities we visited within less than a mile of the border. And as we were there, we heard one of those warnings of incoming fire.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

NISAN ZEEVI, SECURITY SQUAD VOLUNTEER: Let's to the ...

SCIUTTO (off camera): Okay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO (voice over): It's a fact of life on Israel's northern border that incoming Hezbollah fire comes frequently and without warning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO (on camera): So, this is life up in the north. They say about 40 warnings like that a day. We just had two of them in the span of five minutes, a combination of rockets, sometimes anti-tank missiles, but also increasingly drones, and some of them can't be intercepted.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SCIUTTO (voice over): The kibbutz Kfar Giladi lies just about a mile from the border with Lebanon. After the October 7th, 2023 Hamas attacks, Israel evacuated communities like these. But during this war, they're staying.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ZEEVI: You know, our children are in a shelter for more than 29 days, in a shelter, not allowing to go out. You know, all this -- the economic ecosystem collapsed.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

(END VIDEOTAPE)

[15:05:05]

SCIUTTO (on camera): The difference now is the Israeli forces have launched and are maintaining major ground operations inside Lebanon. Israeli leaders now speak quite openly of pushing that buffer zone, as they call it, about 20 miles into Lebanon, up to the Litani River. That is 20 miles into Lebanese territory. And that has forced many thousands, hundreds of thousands of Lebanese people out of their homes. I spoke to the commander of an Israeli company on the northern border who regularly crosses into Lebanese territory for operations.

And he says he and his unit will continue to do so as long as they are ordered to do so. And while we were in northern Israel, the Israeli prime minister, he visited as well. And he extended the area that Israeli forces will operate inside Lebanon. So, we -- we speak of the many fronts of this war, certainly in Iran, here in Israel, but also inside Lebanon, and one that appears to be, Boris, expanding.

SANCHEZ: Wow. Jim Sciutto from Tel Aviv, thank you so much for that report. Brianna?

KEILAR: The White House is facing a lot of questions about the war with Iran, especially at today's press briefing. CNN senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak is here with more on this. Kevin, tell us what stood out to you.

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes. And what you heard Karoline Leavitt doing today was really trying to reconcile what we're hearing publicly from the Iranians, which is essentially rejecting this 15-point peace plan that the President has tried to pass along, that they're trying to get some sort of negotiated settlement to this war.

The Iranians have called that excessive. They called it unreasonable. That doesn't necessarily square with what we have heard from President Trump himself, who has cast a fairly optimistic portrait of these talks. He says that the people that they're talking to are reasonable. He says that they're progressing.

And so, what Karoline Leavitt today was essentially saying is that what they're hearing in private from the Iranians is not what they're saying in public, that behind-the-scenes Iranian officials do sound much more receptive to some of what the U.S. is putting out there than what they're saying in public, in their public statements.

And I think what she's trying to do is essentially suggest that this diplomacy is progressing in a way that is not necessarily evident to the naked eye, that they're -- they're talking about things that they have not been willing to talk about previously. But I think there's another contradiction here, which is that President Trump himself is also continuing to issue these threats against the Iranian regime. We saw that earlier today. He showed a Truth Social post saying that he would target power plants and potentially even water desalination facilities if the Iranians don't reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

That, according to many experts, could amount to a war crime under international law if you're targeting these civilian facilities. Karoline Leavitt was asked about that prospect. Listen to what she said there.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

LEAVITT: Of course, this administration and the United States Armed Forces will always act within the confines of the law. But with respect to achieving the full objectives of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump is going to move forward unabated, and he expects -- expects the Iranian regime to make a deal with the administration.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIPTAK: So, international law is one issue. The other issue is that if the U.S. strikes a desalination plant in Iran, Iran could very well target the desalination plants in all of those Gulf countries, the U.S. allies in the Gulf that really rely on those facilities for almost all of their freshwater. So, there's some questions beyond just the international law question to this threat that the President is issuing.

KEILAR: There's practical questions, there's ethical questions, there are legal questions, and more questions. I have one more question, which is what is the White House saying when it comes to the potential for sending U.S. troops into Iran?

LIPTAK: Yes. Because that is kind of the decision that I think is in front of the President now. Does he potentially use these assets that he's sending to the region, whether it's the 82nd Airborne or these Marine Expeditionary Units that are all headed to the Middle East, does he put them on the ground to potentially take Kharg Island, that key export hub that the President has openly talked about as being on the table? Does he send them in to retrieve the thousand kilograms of enriched uranium that's believed to be buried underground? He's not taking that off the table.

What Karoline Leavitt is saying today is that, yes, the President is leaving all of those options on the table, but I also think it's clear that the President thinks that this is leverage. As he tries to get the Iranians to the negotiating table to agree to things that they weren't willing to agree to before, he's leaving this as an open option, hoping that they will finally come to some sort of negotiated settlement to the war.

KEILAR: We'll have to see if it is leverage. Kevin Liptak, thank you very much.

Still to come, Paid At Last: TSA workers start receiving that back pay that they have been missing out on for weeks.

[15:10:00]

And then later, a growing number of retailers have been racing to develop A.I. tools to enhance consumer experience. But are you ready to hand over your shopping list to a chat bot? We'll see how it goes. One of our colleagues did just that. We have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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[15:14:39]

KEILAR: At its high today, the worldwide price for oil crossed $116 a barrel after President Trump told the Financial Times his, quote, "favorite thing is to take the oil in Iran."

Before the war accrued, it was at $73 a barrel. The President also told FT that the U.S. could take Kharg Island, quote, very easily. That island is a key energy hub for Iran. It handles 90 percent of its oil exports. But the President acknowledged that, quote, "it would also mean we had to be there for a while." CNN Business and Politics Correspondent Vanessa Yurkevich has been watching the markets all day.

Vanessa, investors are reacting to signs that the war is actually escalating.

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS & POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we have been watching headline-sensitive investors, particularly around oil. And when they hear these types of comments from the President, they get nervous that this war is only going to be prolonged even further. That is why you see WTI, that's U.S. crude, now back trading over a hundred dollars a barrel. At last check, it was about $103. But these are, of course, live numbers changing on the fly here. And then Brent Crude, that international benchmark, earlier this morning topping $116 a barrel.

And, of course, that translates right on down to gas prices for everyday Americans. The average price today, $3.99. So, we have not hit $4 yet. And the pace at which gas prices have risen has actually slowed just a little bit, but still up more than a dollar since a month ago. And that has been a lot of extra spending by Americans.

In the last month, Americans have spent $8 billion more to fill up their tanks because of these higher prices, up a dollar. That's about $375 million in extra spending of gas every single day. Now, U.S. markets actually, usually when you have oil prices rise, they actually tank or start to fall.

We've seen moderate sort of moves on Wall Street today. At last check, the Dow was up a little bit. And that is because U.S. markets, investors have been more reassured by some things the President has been saying, that they are in discussions with a new reasonable regime in Iran, but also by the fact that the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, sort of squashed any concerns that investors were having about interest rate hikes. That was something that investors were starting to get nervous about.

Earlier today, Jerome Powell spoke to folks at Harvard and talked about this uncertainty, but there's no decision yet that the Federal Reserve is able to make on where things are going. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: I think a situation like the present situation where, you know, there's -- there's sort of downside risk to the labor market, which suggests keep rates low, but there's upside risk to inflation, which suggests maybe don't keep rates low. You've got tension between the two objectives.

And I think to try to expect unanimity at a time like that where it's really quite historically challenging, it would almost be misleading to be really confident in -- in which way that should go.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YURKEVICH: And, Brianna, when I was at the Fed listening to Jerome Powell after the last press conference earlier this month, he just talked about the fact that members of the board of the Federal Reserve just really couldn't predict where things were going, obviously because of just the duration of what this war would look like, but also, Brianna, how Americans would respond.

The next Fed meeting is in late April, so the Fed has some time to see where this war is going, where inflation goes, where the jobs market ends up landing. We have the jobs report actually coming out this Friday, so a lot to parse through before they have to make a decision on where they're going to send rates, Brianna.

KEILAR: Yes, certainly is. Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you very much, and we'll be right back.

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[15:23:15] SANCHEZ: Today, weary air travelers are finally getting some good news. Those hours long security lines have plummeted from hours to just minutes as TSA employees start to get their overdue paychecks. Last week, President Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security to immediately pay TSA workers as funding talks broke down on Capitol Hill. And we've just learned that Senate Majority Leader John Thune privately told Republican senators on Sunday that he will not bring the Senate back from its two-week recess to end the shutdown for another, quote, show vote.

In a letter to his conference, he said that he would not bring them back to Washington until there is a deal with Democrats. Remember, House Republicans rejected the Senate's bipartisan deal to fund most of DHS last week. Let's go live to Houston's George Bush Intercontinental Airport with CNN's Ed Lavandera.

Ed, a very, very different scene behind you from what we've seen over the last week plus.

ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, absolutely. They should be piping in the sounds of a choir of angels singing hallelujah to take in this scene here. It's wide open. Remember, it was just this terminal -- lobby of Terminal E just last week that was filled with thousands of people all around me. Now, it's smooth sailing. You can watch this gentleman right behind me. He is going to walk right up to a TSA security line and be through in less than ten minutes. And that is a dramatic change from what we saw just last week when the wait time was -- at times four to five hours long. So, an incredibly frustrating time.

A combination of things, I think, at play here. The call-out rates of TSA employees seems to be dropping a little bit about 3,100 nationwide. Last week at this particular airport, the call-out rate was hovering around 40 percent. The latest figures we have shown just yesterday was at 35 percent, so an improvement there.

[15:25:06]

We also know that here at George Bush Intercontinental Airport there was almost three dozen TSA -- TSA employees brought in from around the country to be able to help out and alleviate the pressures on this particular airport. And we've also seen, more so than what we saw last week, Boris, ICE agents who have been checking IDs, working some of the security lanes, helping passengers push their personal belongings through the X-ray machines and that sort of thing. So, a little bit more stepped up on that front from what we saw just last week.

But, I mean, just take all of this in. Remember, Boris, last week all of this filled with people. The line spilled outside of the terminal into the vehicle passenger drop-off area. The line stretched below underground where we are, even to a second floor below where we are yesterday. So, what we are seeing here today with the lines close to just about 10 minutes, at -- at the most we've seen today, was a 30- minute wait, and it's been hours since we've seen that. This is just an incredible change that we've seen here just today at George Bush Intercontinental Airport. Boris? SANCHEZ: A chorus of angels always surrounding the great Ed Lavandera

live for us in Houston. Thank you so much, Ed.

LAVANDERA: (INAUDIBLE) --

SANCHEZ: Still to come -- still to come, President Trump says the U.S. is negotiating with a new and more reasonable regime in Iran. Later, his top diplomat called Iranian leaders lunatics. So, which is it? Who is the U.S. negotiating with? And do they have legitimacy within Tehran? We'll discuss next.

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