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White House Holds Press Briefing; Artemis II Heads Back to Earth; Iran Claims Victory as Attacks Continue in Gulf. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired April 08, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We have breaking news. We are standing by for a White House press briefing, as new complications threaten a fragile cease-fire with Iran.

After agreeing to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, Iran is now stopping oil tanker traffic through the critical shipping lane. State-run media says the renewed blockade is in retaliation for Israeli strikes today in Lebanon against the Iranian-backed group Hezbollah.

Iran says the strikes violate the cease-fire. President Trump, meanwhile, says Hezbollah is not included in the deal and calls the fighting between Hezbollah and Israel a -- quote -- "separate skirmish."

CNN's Nada Bashir is in Beirut and saw firsthand the aftermath of these new strikes.

Nada, Israel called these the largest attacks in Lebanon since the start of the war. Tell us what you saw.

NADA BASHIR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Brianna, the scale of the attacks we saw earlier today was certainly very different to what we have been seeing over the last few days.

We're talking about powerful airstrikes, several airstrikes across parts of Central Beirut that weren't under the forced evacuation orders issued by the Israeli military. These strikes took place in the early afternoon, during a time when many people would have been out and about, taking -- going about their ordinary days.

And, of course, for many here in the country, they had assumed that those parts of Central Beirut would not be targeted. And, clearly, that is not the case. In fact, just over an hour ago, we saw yet another strike happening not too far from where we are now in Beirut.

And there is mounting fear around the possible for yet further escalations. And, of course, we actually went down to the blast site of one of those strikes which took place earlier today. And it is hard to describe the scale and extent of the damage and destruction that we saw.

Of course, the Israeli military has said in its own statement that it targeted about 100 Hezbollah targets across Lebanon, not just in Beirut. But what we saw on the ground was the destruction of civilian infrastructure. This is a part of Beirut where there were apartment buildings, residential buildings, shops, cafes and bakeries completely destroyed in this latest round of strikes.

And, of course, we also saw as the emergency services responded on the ground, in some areas digging through the rubble to try to find the bodies and recover the bodies of victims. And, of course, we have heard from the Lebanese Health Ministry now, saying that they believe hundreds have been killed and wounded across Lebanon as a result of this massive wave of strikes we have seen today.

That's in addition to the already 1,500 people killed over the course of this latest war.

KEILAR: Nada Bashir with the latest from Beirut, thank you -- Boris.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: Let's get some perspective now from Iranian- American journalist Jason Rezaian. He's the director of the Press Freedom Initiatives at "The Washington Post." He was wrongly imprisoned, you may recall, in Iran for nearly a year-and-a-half. And he wrote a book about the experience called "Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison."

Jason, thanks so much for sharing part of your afternoon with us.

There are a number of aspects to this cease-fire that don't line up. For one, Iran released a 10-point proposal to reporters that was different from the one that the White House was referring to, that Trump was referring to when he said that he believed this 10-point peace plan was a workable basis on which to negotiate.

So how does that line up, if they're talking from two very different sets of points on a potential plan?

JASON REZAIAN, "THE WASHINGTON POST": Boris, I think often when it comes to the U.S. and Iran, the talking points don't line up, but they're designed for domestic consumption more than for the other side's audiences.

The one thing we don't see in either plan is any mention of human rights and how the Iranian people could and should be treated after this. And we were sold this war as a war of liberation six weeks ago. So, I think that there is still so much to be sussed out here.

But, frankly, I don't think that anyone among the Iranian populace who was so hopeful when this war started that they might be freed from the yoke of the Islamic Republic has any illusions right now that this war is on their behalf.

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SANCHEZ: On top of that, there's a dispute over whether or not Lebanon was central to the cease-fire and peace between Israeli forces and Hezbollah forces in Lebanon.

Pakistan and Iran are saying that that was part of the deal,the United States and Israel effectively saying that it was not. What does this tell you about how this cease-fire came together and its viability?

REZAIAN: What it indicates to me is that Israel probably wasn't very highly involved or agreeing to the points in that deal.

It seems as though Iran wouldn't have accepted any terms of a cease- fire if Lebanon wasn't a part of it. I also have seen reporting, as you have as well, that Israel is vehemently opposed to that. So I think, if we go back a couple of years into the Israel-Gaza conflict, cease-fires were shaky at every point, and there were lots and lots of continued skirmishes directly at the outset of cease-fires in the past.

I hope that the cease-fire holds, because the Iranian population has sustained so much destruction and damage, as has the Lebanese one, as has the Israeli one and many other countries in the neighborhood. So, one wants to see an end to open conflict.

At the same time, the calls from so many corners for the rights of Iranian people, which have been ignored by every party in this conflict, are ones that need to be heard.

SANCHEZ: And to that point, when you hear Secretary Pete Hegseth say that there's a new regime in Iran that's defined, in his words, as a new group of people who've seen the full capability of the United States military and has a new calculus about what it means to negotiate with us, it doesn't sound like you see much difference between the previous regime and the one...

REZAIAN: That's just not true.

SANCHEZ: Go ahead. Go ahead.

REZAIAN: It is simply not true.

I mean, the people that the United States are negotiating with are tried-and-true members of the Islamic Republic regime that have been around for decades, whether it's the current speaker of the Parliament, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is an IRGC commander and the former mayor of Tehran, a multiple, many-time candidate for president in Iran, whether it's the team that the Obama administration negotiated the nuclear deal with in 2014, led by former President Hassan Rouhani and then Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Whoever they're talking to are members of the exact same regime. We haven't seen any defections from the power structure inside Iran. So it's just simply not true.

SANCHEZ: Jason Rezaian, appreciate the expertise. Thanks for joining us.

REZAIAN: Sure. SANCHEZ: So, again, we are standing by for that White House press

briefing. It is set to begin at any moment, and we will bring you the comments from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt live.

Plus, we're following the money. Oil prices have plunged after this cease-fire, but how long until we see the impact at the gas station?

And we're still tracking Artemis II, the historymaking astronauts cruising toward Earth right now. We will take you live to NASA Mission Control as we follow these important stories on CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

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KEILAR: Oil prices plummeting and global stock market surging today, even as major questions remain over when significant traffic will resume through the Strait of Hormuz. The cease-fire does not mean that costs will automatically come down for consumers.

Delta Air Lines warning today its jet fuel costs were up more than $330 million last quarter, and they're expected-- and they're expecting that to jump by as much as $2 billion this quarter.

CNN's Matt Egan is with us now.

Matt, very shaky cease-fire at this point. Is relief coming for American consumers?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Brianna, relief is likely coming, but, unfortunately, it's probably not as much relief, nor as fast as we'd like.

However, on Wall Street, the relief was instantaneous and it was significant. Look at this, U.S. stocks moving dramatically higher. The Dow is up by almost 3 percent, 1,200 points, the Nasdaq surging by 3 percent. Investors are hopeful that we have moved out of the most dangerous part of this energy crisis, and that oil will begin flowing again out of the Middle East.

And that's why oil prices are crashing. Look at this, a 16 percent decline for WTI. That's the U.S. benchmark. This would be the biggest one-day percentage decline since 2020, back when oil was trading in single digits.

However, we have got to keep all this in context, right? Ninety-five dollars a barrel, that is not cheap. In fact, when you look at where things were, this is -- this green line is roughly when the war started, and you can see oil prices, while they are down from their peak, they are way up from not just before the war started, but also from the start of the year.

And I think the reality is, this is going to take some time, right? This is not like flipping a light switch or restarting your smartphone. This is a massive, historic energy supply disruption. And the truth is, I mean, we have never seen the closure of the Strait of Hormuz before. That means we have never seen what reopening it will look like.

And, as you mentioned, this is a fragile cease-fire. We don't really have a clear understanding on exactly how many vessels are going to start going through the Strait of Hormuz again, how long it's going to take to get back to those pre-crisis traffic of vessels going through the strait.

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And there's also uncertainty over how much the ships going through the strait could be potentially charged by Iran for safe passage here. So there's a lot of questions. And even the Energy Department's own forecasting arm, just yesterday, they cautioned that this is something it's not going to take just days or weeks, but that it could take months to fully restore the flow of energy out of the Middle East.

And, Brianna, something else that gets lost in the conversation is, it's not just the fact that the Strait of Hormuz has been closed. It's the fact that energy infrastructure in the region has been damaged. It's going to take time and money to repair that. And some oil producers, including Saudi Arabia, they have been forced to shut in their production.

Millions of barrels of production out of the Gulf has been shut down because the producers just ran out of room to store it all. Now, I know everyone's thinking, what does this mean for gasoline prices? Now, it's important to remember gas moves with a lag to oil.

So the national average for regular gas today hit $4.16 a gallon. Now, that is the highest level in almost four years, well above the $2.98 before the war started. The good news is analysts do think that, in the coming days, you're going to start to see gas prices come down.

In fact, GasBuddy thinks that the national average could fall below $4 a gallon in the next week or two. However, I think the bad news is, history shows that, often, gas prices, they fall a lot slower than they went up. There's an old saying that, gas prices, they go up like a rocket, but they fall like a feather.

And so, Brianna, even in the best case, even if this cease-fire holds and the Strait of Hormuz actually reopens, we're likely not going back to these pre-crisis gas prices any time soon -- back to you.

KEILAR: All right, Matt Egan, thank you so much.

And coming up: countdown to splashdown. We're tracking the Artemis II crew as they make their way to Earth.

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SANCHEZ: This is a live look at the Press Briefing Room at the White House. You can see it's packed with reporters, as we await the start of this briefing, the first since the announcement of this two-week cease-fire between the United States and Iran. We will take you there live as it happens. And we are expecting it to start at any moment.

Meantime, Artemis II is heading back to Earth with a treasure trove of images from the moon mission. NASA has released some of the 10,000 photos snapped during the journey, including this incredible shot of our galaxy, the Milky Way.

Back here on Earth, preparations are under way off the coast of San Diego, the Orion capsule, of course, expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean Friday night. And, this morning, Mission Control played this song to wake up the crew.

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SANCHEZ: Randi Kaye is at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

And, Randi, NASA did a little bit of show-and-tell in explaining how they trained the astronauts to take some of these amazing photos.

RANDI KAYE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Yes, it was really cool, Boris, because we have seen these pictures coming in, these close-ups of the craters and these amazing shots of the Earth setting behind the lunar horizon. I mean, they have been spectacular right?

We have been looking at them now for a couple of days. So, we wanted to know, how did they train to take such amazing photos, especially given that they were like 4,000 miles away from the moon?

So this guy Paul Reichert with NASA showed us the cameras that the crew actually has with them in the Orion capsule. And one of them is a D5. It's this large camera with a very long lens on it. And that was the one that was able to get the craters, the close-ups of the craters on the moon, and also the Earth setting.

And then they had another one, a Nikon Z9, which is a smaller one. And that was the camera that was able to get the eclipse. And then he also showed us the little camera. It's like a GoPro that they have inside the Orion capsule, which is how Mission Control can keep an eye on the astronauts and how we can all see their feed and how the public can follow along.

And then there was also the microphone that they have that's always floating by when they're talking. So that was actually a really cool demo. And we asked how they trained. Well, it turns out that they have a blow-up globe -- a blow-up moon, I should say, in a dark room here at the Johnson Space Center, where they practice taking pictures.

And then he told us a little bit more about what type of training they had to do to learn how to take such amazing photos. Watch this.

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PAUL REICHERT, NASA PHOTO TEAM: We went out and we figured out, what are the right camera settings for the eclipse?

It's not an easy photo to take, because the automatic system on the camera would not give you the picture that you saw, right, because you have just got a very little bit of light around the edge of the moon. We took an array of photos at different exposures to make sure we got it.

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KAYE: And they have about 34 cameras, just so you know, inside and outside the Orion capsule.

And they have to be, like, almost like contortionists to try and get these pictures. We have seen the pictures where they have put the -- like a lens shroud, as they call it, around the window, and then they're able to sort of crouch down and get these amazing photos, because they don't have enough room in the capsule to just hold these cameras with these giant lenses up to their eye.

So it was just pretty fascinating to learn all about that, Boris.

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SANCHEZ: Yes, a special feed on multiple fronts.

Randi, NASA also showed us some of the food that's been consumed on this voyage.

KAYE: Yes, we got a close-up look at the macaroni and cheese and the spicy green beans. Those have to be rehydrated.

But they don't have a microwave or any way to heat things up on board. So they just put some room temperature water, and then they let them sit in there for about 10 or 15 minutes in this warming bin that they have on board.

But we also saw the barbecue beef brisket that comes in a little pouch. And they have those maple cream cookies. That is sort of a nod, of course, to mission specialist Jeremy Hansen, who's on board from Canada.

What else did we see? We saw M -- they have M&Ms and peanuts and all kinds of stuff. But they have about -- they have 139 pounds of food on board -- back to you.

SANCHEZ: Wow, it looks delicious.

Randi Kaye in Houston, thank you so much.

Let's go straight to the White House and Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.

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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: ... fundamental role in getting past that protects victims from nonconsensual A.I.- generated sexually explicit images, cyber stalking and threats of violence.

This is a huge achievement for the first lady. And I know the president is very proud of his wife's efforts in getting this critical legislation passed to protect America's youth. So we thank the first lady for her efforts and we hope that others will report on this historic conviction yesterday.

With respect to the two-week cease-fire announced by President Trump last night, this is a victory for the United States of America that the president and our incredible military made happen.

From the very beginning of Operation Epic Fury, President Trump stated this would be a four-to-six-week military operation to dismantle the military threat posed by the radical Islamic Iranian regime. Thanks to the unbelievable capabilities of America's war fighters, the United States has achieved and exceeded those core military objectives in just 38 days.

The U.S. military destroyed Iran's defense industrial base, crushing the regime's ability to manufacture weapons that they and their proxies used to maim and kill Americans and terrorize the world. Iran's ability to build and stockpile ballistic missiles and long- range drones has also been set back by years compared to where it was six weeks ago prior to the launch of Operation Epic Fury.

We destroyed the vast majority of Iran's ballistic missiles, launcher vehicles, and long-range attack drones through more than 450 strikes on ballistic missiles and approximately 800 strikes on Iran's drone launching units and storage facilities. In total, more than 13,000 targets across Iran were struck. Again, this is in the matter of just 38 days.

Meanwhile, the Iranian naval -- navy was completely annihilated. The United States destroyed more than 150 naval vessels in total, including 16 entire classes of Iranian warships. Despite once being the largest undersea force in the Middle East, Iran now has zero submarine vessels; 97 percent of Iran's once massive inventory of more than 5,000 naval mines has also been targeted and destroyed.

Iran's air forces are functionally and operationally irrelevant at this point, after the United States maintained total air dominance over their country for weeks on end.

To underscore the significance of this, before Operation Epic Fury, the Iranian air force would fly between 30 to 100 flights per day. Today, that number is zero. Iran's ability to fund and support its terrorist proxies has been greatly reduced.

At this point, Iran can no longer distribute weapons to its proxies in the region, and, most importantly, Iran will not be able to acquire nuclear weapons. Prior to the start of this successful operation, Iran was aggressively expanding its short-range ballistic missile arsenal.

Through these weapons and its navy, Iran was attempting to build a military buildup around their country that would pose an imminent and existential threat to the United States military assets in the Middle East, our allies in the region, and ultimately the free world.

Iran was pursuing this dangerous and aggressive strategy for one reason, to hold the entire world hostage to its terrorist ambitions. The Iranians aimed to use their expanded military capabilities as a shield around their country to continue achieving their ultimate goal internally, building nuclear bombs.

But their murderous and evil plans have been blown up, quite literally and figuratively, along with their military, their nuclear program, and most of their senior leadership, including the former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Their command-and-control structures were also massively disrupted after being struck more than 2,000 times. Many of their remaining leaders are paralyzed in fear and no longer enjoy the freedom to move around their country freely and meet openly.