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Trump: Iran Has No Cards Except Short Term Extortion with Hormuz; White House Warns Staff Against Insider Trading Amid War with Iran; NASA Making Final Preps for Artemis II Crew's Return to Earth. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired April 10, 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]

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN HOST: ... loaded up with weapons just in case a deal is not reached with Iran this weekend. A defense analyst will join us with his perspective on these talks next.

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BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: A fresh exchange of attacks between Israel and Iran backed Hezbollah in Lebanon today is putting added strain on the shaky ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran. Well, Israel says it has agreed to direct peace talks with Lebanon as soon as possible. Today, Iran's parliament speaker says ceasefire talks with the U.S. are set to take place tomorrow in Pakistan. They can't even begin until a ceasefire goes into effect in Lebanon. He's also demanding that Iran's blocked assets be released.

Today, President Trump is warning Iran that they have no cards to play and says if a peace deal isn't reached this weekend, the U.S. is prepared to renew and intensify strikes on that country.

I'm joined now by retired Army Colonel Wayne Sanders. He's a senior defense analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Thank you so much for being with us. And as you're hearing these demands from Iran, how do you see those impacting the negotiations as the president is issuing a threat as well?

COL. WAYNE SANDERS, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Yes, I see both sides of this, right? They're both trying to leverage as much power as they can bring to the negotiating table. The U.S. has the ability for the overwhelming military might. So that's why he's wanting to bring up the fact that we have renewed our stockpiles. We are ready for the war if it were to continue. But Iran has the asymmetric threat advantage when it comes to Hezbollah, especially tied into Lebanon, which I think is one of the biggest reasons why the dichotomy, the split here between U.S.-Iran and Israel-Lebanon plays such an important piece to this going into the weekend.

KEILAR: So when you're looking at that, and there's been this big disagreement, Iran was saying Lebanon was included, the U.S. saying actually no, and Israel saying no. But J.D. Vance's explanation was quite charitable. He said essentially this was an honest disagreement over what was included in the ceasefire. How do you read that?

SANDERS: I read it about that pretty much at this point in time when you're trying to get U.S. and Iran to come to the table, and then you're going to bring in a proxy force like Hezbollah in Lebanon. Iran spends most of their funding, their training and equipping to Hezbollah in that region, which still has, Israel says right now, between 5,000 to 10,000 short-range ballistic missiles at their disposal. So even if you have a peace agreement with Iran, but you leave Lebanon off and Hezbollah still has that ability to reach out in the region, then the security is not stabilized.

KEILAR: The president says that Iran has no cards. Both sides have some cards to play here, though. We have to be clear about that.

And both sides have vulnerability. Both sides are sick of certain parts of this. How are you seeing the cards that they have to play, and where are you seeing the weak spots that can be exploited by the other side?

SANDERS: Yes, I see the U.S. still has the ability with the overwhelming air superiority to cause additional airstrikes. They can uptick this and actually start striking more vulnerable targets. I know President Trump had talked about going after energy infrastructure.

Obviously, that is a very dangerous, risky game to play because you want to still maintain that it ties to military objectives. They want to make sure that it's not going to cause disproportionate harm to civilians as part of that. But they still have the ability to do that.

They have the 11th and the 13th Marine Expeditionary Units and the Brigade Combat Team from the 82nd Airborne for the threat of a ground invasion. We use that term lightly because we don't have enough forces for something similar to like OIF, Operation Iraqi Freedom. So you look at those pieces of it and say, OK, I have military options at play. Don't make me use them.

Iran, on the other side, has been able to show that all I need is an asymmetric threat. All I need is a shoulder-fired weapon. I don't have to have the same sophisticated air defense capabilities that I had at the beginning or even in the Iran-Israel 12-Day War.

All I need at this point in time is a handful of individuals who can go near the Straits of Hormuz and launch some of these missiles, anti- ship cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, or their drones, and hit one of those. And all you have to put onto CNN would be a flaming tanker.

KEILAR: I mean, this has been a military success. I know it was very dramatic when we saw the pilots shot down.

We saw there was a vulnerability there. Thank God they got out. This has been a big military success for the U.S., but you can't bomb your way to a negotiated settlement.

SANDERS: Yes. KEILAR: Right. And with that in mind, what does the U.S. have to watch out for in these talks this weekend?

SANDERS: I think the biggest thing, if you're looking on the conventional side, is making sure that they shore up anything that Iran would have with additional allies as part of it, right? If you were looking at China, India, Russia from a conglomeration of consolidation of power to move some of that oil out versus others. I think you have to be able to look at money, missiles, and monitoring are really the three, the big ones that have to be on that table.

Money for funding proxies, missiles has to be on the table in terms of how long they would go without being allowed to produce any more of these strategic-range ballistic missiles as well. And then monitoring, you have to address the nuclear fissile material that's out there, 441 kilograms of enriched uranium that's out there.

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Whether or not that's something that's being handed over to the IAEA, is it something that's being diluted through depleted uranium and something called down blending.

You have to look at all of these different possibilities and say, I have to shore these up in order to declare a win back to the United States. And then Iran has to be able to save face in the eyes of the rest of the world and say, I still have the power to affect geopolitics, and I still have enough military might to show, hey, I held off the great America as part of this, so we are still not a country to be messed with.

KEILAR: Colonel Wayne Sanders, thank you so much for your expertise. We appreciate it.

SANDERS: Thank you.

KEILAR: Omar.

JIMENEZ: Well, meanwhile, the White House is warning its staffers against insider trading amid some suspiciously well-timed bets on online prediction markets about the Iran war. I want to bring in CNN senior reporter Marshall Cohen for us right now. Marshall, can you just tell us more about the warning and what is the context?

Why is this warning even being issued?

MARSHALL COHEN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: It's pretty notable, Omar, from the White House to all of its employees, reminding them that it's illegal to use what they know from their government jobs to bet on prediction markets, to engage in insider trading with oil futures or other markets that have attracted a lot of scrutiny during the Iran war because there have been some very well-timed and suspicious and questionable trades related to the war and the activities of the U.S. military that have raised a lot of eyebrows.

So let me read for you what this memo said. This was sent on March 24th, and it said in part, quote, "All White House employees are reminded that the misuse of non-public information by government employees for financial benefit is a very serious offense and will not be tolerated." Now, the memo went on to specifically mention Kalshi and Polymarket.

Those are the two most popular prediction sites in the world, and they do billions of dollars in trades every single week. CNN has a partnership with Kalshi and uses its data to cover major political and cultural events. But the company got in some hot water last month for a controversial bet that it offered about the fate of the Ayatollah.

And then with Polymarket and its offshore international unregulated site, they have attracted a lot of scrutiny for some of the trades that have been flagged for possible insider trading. And that's why a lot of people have been talking about the possibility of insiders and the role of government officials possibly being on these platforms. Which, by the way, Omar, the White House, says is a completely baseless suggestion to imply that anyone in the White House is engaging in this.

But that's exactly why both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill have said that more legislation is needed, and they've proposed more than a dozen bills so far.

JIMENEZ: A whole new world in these prediction markets. Marshall Cohen appreciate the reporting as always.

All right, meanwhile, we are monitoring what is expected to be a fiery reentry to end a historic mission. A lot of risks, but a lot of expertise hoping to mitigate those risks. We'll tell you what to expect from the Artemis to splash down happening in just a few hours.

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JIMENEZ: The crew of the Artemis II mission, which went around the moon and helped us get these beautiful images of our Earth. That crew is getting ready to reenter Earth's atmosphere. And we've been watching live pictures of them over the course of today.

Ahead of tonight, their reentry will put the Orion capsule to the test as it's exposed to 5,000 degree heat while traveling 30 times the speed of sound.

KEILAR: And this is why I'm so nervous thinking about this. And then it does this. It splashes down off the coast of San Diego tonight.

Joining us now, retired Air Force Colonel Mike Fossum. He's a former NASA astronaut. He's now the chief operating officer of Texas A&M University in Galveston.

Also we're joined by Adam Frank. He's a professor of astrophysics at the University of Rochester. He's also the author of the "Everyman's Universe" newsletter. Colonel, this is, you know, we're so excited. I think so many people have become so engaged in this mission. But this is -- I'm so nervous and I feel like everyone I talk to feels the exact same way.

This is risky. It is exciting. What is the mindset of an astronaut getting ready for this?

COL. MIKE FOSSUM, RETIRED NASA ASTRONAUT: All the above because this is a test mission. So I actually share those butterflies, the jitters. It's a test mission.

And I've flown home in that 5,000 degree ball of plasma three times. Looking out the window as it's pulsing around you, it, you know, just praying that everything works. So I'm excited about it.

I'm really excited about all the attention on the mission and everybody that's following this because it is exciting. We're going back to the moon. This is a huge step.

JIMENEZ: Well, and just to see the amount of people across the country and really the world who have been following every bit of this and with NASA being able to put out the amount that they have in video and animation so that people can follow along is pretty, pretty remarkable.

Adam, you know, the Artemis II is using a heat shield that's nearly identical to the Artemis I test flight, which did have some issues during reentry. And the shield protects the astronauts from extreme temperatures as they're descending back to Earth.

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NASA says it's mitigating this by slightly altering the mission's flight path to reduce exposure time at peak heating. Can you just tell us how important that heat shield is, but also about how critical that adjustment is from NASA there?

ADAM FRANK, PROFESSOR OF ASTROPHYSICS, UNIVERSITY ROCHESTER: Yes, the technology here is so important because, you know, basically the space capsule is coming in at 20 times the speed -- 20 to 30 times the speed of a bullet. Right. And when it hits the atmosphere, the temperatures rise to the point that it's almost the surface of the sun, those temperatures and those temperatures, you know, vaporize metal.

And so you have to have some kind of really advanced material that is exposed to these conditions as it rips through the atmosphere or else the spacecraft will break apart. And so the first Artemis mission showed that there were some pockmarks coming in. There were some damage to the -- or more damage than they wanted.

Now, they feel like by altering the incoming trajectory, they're going to be able to reduce those temperatures, reduce those stresses. And, you know, they've done -- they've thought about this a lot. But still, there's risks here.

And I think that's what we have to understand, that these astronauts are taking this amazing risk throughout the whole project. And they're taking them for us, for all of humanity, for our children to open up this future. And, you know, given everything we've seen this week, we've seen the best and worst of humanity.

And it's such an amazing thing that these four people are willing to do this to open up a future and a frontier for us.

KEILAR: Thank you for articulating, I think, what has been making me so verklempt, Adam. It is.

JIMENEZ: Verklempt, great word.

KEILAR: Yes, it has been. And it's just -- it's amazing to watch people who are willing to do that. Colonel, there's also the parachutes. Right.

Ideally, they all work, because if they don't all work, you're talking about a greater speed of splashdown. And that's when you start talking about injury. And we don't want to see that.

So there is splashdown and they're coming down pretty fast, even if this goes all as planned. What does that feel like to splash down?

FOSSUM: For the crew, of course, when they start reentering and coming into using drag to slow down, they'll start feeling the force of of G's on them again, the forces of gravity on them, which feel weird after floating around for eight and a half days, nine days. But, you know, falling under the parachute, they'll be basically at one G. It'll still feel heavy to them because they've been floating.

The impact on the water is, I mean, it's not as bad as landing on a Soyuz on land like I did a few years back. But even when you're moving fast, that water still doesn't cushion you that much. But the belief is it's better and that the parachutes have actually been tested a lot.

Those are one of the things that we were able to do, a lot of different kinds of drop tests and things like that on the parachutes. And there is some extra capability if they lose one, they'll come down a little faster. And all of the systems in the spacecraft are there to help protect them and absorb those stresses.

JIMENEZ: Well, and embodying the precision that it takes to pull this off successfully from launch, quite literally back to splashdown here.

Before we go, Adam, I just want to ask, look, the Artemis II is part of a larger Artemis program here. The president asking for a billion dollar boost for the program as part of his 2027 budget here.

But can you just give us some perspective on what this sets the United States up to do next?

FRANK: Yes, really, as people like to say, this time we're going and we're going back to stay right. This mission is really not just about building a moon base, which is that's a big part of it. But it's really about finally humanity becoming kind of a space faring species. Right.

When you get on an airplane now and the airplane takes off, you're not like, oh, my God, you're like, oh, I'm going to read a book. At some point in the future, not that long in the future, people might be like, oh, I'm on the flight to the moon tonight. Right.

So really, the space economy is opening up. There's hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on space. Like, really, what we're doing is we're opening up the next chapter in sort of human history where space becomes something that human beings do where they work there. They live there. They make money there.

So, you know, really, that's the importance of this. And that's the difference between this and Apollo.

JIMENEZ: Yes. On that launch, I will be screaming and my grandkids are going to be like, Grandpa, be quiet. Colonel Mike Fossum, Professor Adam Frank, thank you both for being here. Really appreciate it.

And be sure to tune in to CNN tonight at 7 p.m. Eastern. "MISSION TO THE MOON, ARTEMIS II RETURNS.: We'll be right back.

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JIMENEZ: Eva Longoria explores France in her new CNN original series. Here's a preview.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I love destroying my cake.

EVA LONGORIA, CNN ORIGINAL SERIES, EVA LONGORIA, SEARCHING FOR FRANCE: You do?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Yes.

LONGORIA: You find pleasure in that. I get anxiety, but you go. Oh, my gosh.

Oh, you're right. There's a sound.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Hearing the sound.

LONGORIA: There's a sound to it.

Oh, wait. Look inside. Look at the inside.

Look, look, look, look, look, look, look. Oh, my goodness. Look at all of this.

This is the most beautiful slice of cake. Wow. Wow.

It is like air. It's so fluffy. And this little cake at the bottom.

And the crust. And all of that custard and whipped cream. Wow.

That is incredible. This is extraterrestrial. Like, your brain is on another level to create something like this.

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JIMENEZ: What I just saw was beautiful. The back-to-back premiere of "EVA LONGORIA, SEARCHING FOR FRANCE," airs Sunday at 9 p.m. on CNN.

Thanks for hanging with us. Au revoir, everyone. "THE ARENA" with Kasie Hunt starts right now.

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