Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Trump Says Final Points of Iran Deal Approved, Cancels Strikes; Trump Nominates U.S. Attorney, Jay Clayton as Permanent National Intelligence Director; Oil Drops, Stocks Soar After Trump Cancels of Strikes on Iran. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired June 11, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:00:29]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": War Interrupted. President Trump now saying he's canceling strikes that he had planned for tonight against Iran, while suggesting that there may be an agreement in place with Tehran.

And raising alarm bells as the war drives energy prices higher, oil executives are warning American consumers could soon be facing even higher prices at the pump. One source telling CNN July is likely the pain point.

And there's nothing artificial about the backlash to A.I. CNN went to the front lines of the fight over the future in Data Center Alley.

We're following these major developing stories and many more, all coming in right here to "CNN News Central."

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We begin this hour with major Breaking News on the war with Iran. President Trump just minutes ago posting that he has, quote, "canceled the scheduled strikes and bombings against Iran this evening," adding that discussions and final points have been in both concept and great detail approved by all parties involved.

Let's get straight to the White House with CNN's Alayna Treene. Alayna, a bit of whiplash, because it was only a few hours ago that President Trump was promising the most powerful strikes we'd seen thus far, even saying that the U.S. would potentially take Kharg Island in the Persian Gulf, that critical oil hub for Iran. Do we know what changed in the negotiations that led to President Trump saying this? Because he's said things like this before.

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: He has. And whiplash was exactly the word, Boris, that I was going to use. This is such a sharp turn from the writer we have been hearing from the president, not only today, but also over the course of the last couple of days, and really pivoting back to this war footing after weeks of trying to give diplomacy a chance by halting any sort of aggression, obviously ordering new strikes this week, but now saying that he is calling them off and previewing what seems to be the potential signing of a memorandum of understanding with the Iranians.

Now, as for your question about what is prompting all this, I think part of this is that, one, I'd start with the frustration, what prompted the strikes. From the conversations I've been having with Trump administration officials over the last couple hours or so, they told me that the president had reached this level of impatience. You know, the president had last sent back a U.S. proposal to the Iranians roughly two weeks ago and has been frustrated with how long it has taken them to respond.

They cited that as partly why he had moved forward with this aggressive bombing campaign toward the Iranians. However, we know that the Qataris, who have been really kind of taking on a new leadership role in mediation and these talks, they were in Tehran this week. And sources are saying that the level of progress they were able to make with the Iranians was beneficial.

We also have a person familiar with the matter telling CNN's Kevin Liptak that the Iranians had delivered their response to the U.S. via the Qataris just this week. So that also likely changing some of this. Now, of course, I think we have to take everything we are hearing with a dope of skepticism, one, because clearly things are changing very, very quickly. But we have also heard this type of optimism from the president before.

But I do think the words that he used, I also think notable, this line where he said that discussions and final points have been in both concept and in great detail approved by all parties involving the -- or including the United States, Israel. He also then went and labeled a number of the key countries and Gulf partners in the Middle East who have been working on this mediation and in these negotiations, citing them as having signed on to this as well, going on to say the time and place of the signing to be announced shortly.

Look, I think it's clear that the president is trying to project that there is some sort of agreement in principle that has been reached after receiving this response from the Iranians. Question of when this could be signed, if it is signed in person, all of that still unclear. We have more reporting to run back into the White House and do.

But we'll see if this is -- continues to be kind of the approach he takes and whether or not this is actually what seems to be a finalized memorandum of understanding that they can move forward with or if perhaps there is still some negotiation and haggling that needs to happen behind the scenes, Boris.

[14:05:00]

SANCHEZ: Yeah, keep us posted on what you're hearing from sources. Alayna Treene, live at the White House, thank you so much. Brianna?

KEILAR: We're joined now by retired Army Major General, Randy Manner. And General, I want to ask you what you think of this announcement as we do keep in mind, this is very vague. This is a Truth Social post. The president has posted a lot of things in the past, and there's a lot of outstanding questions here. What are you seeing as you look at this?

MAJ. GEN. RANDY MANNER, U.S. ARMY (RET.): So, like many Americans, I'm very hopeful that this actually is going to move in a positive direction. On the other hand, as been expressed by many of the people on the T.V. lately, the skepticism is extremely high because the president has cried wolf so many different times, saying, we're there, we're there, we're there.

I certainly hope that there is an opportunity, and I look forward to the idea of us moving forward, even if it's just a framework for opening the Strait, and perhaps, of course, negotiating the nuclear material.

KEILAR: OK, and so what do you make of the fact that so many times, we've sort of seen these threats that he backs off of, these suggestions of some kind of a deal, only to realize that actually those key issues that you outlined, there isn't a deal brokered on them?

MANNER: So the leadership of Iran absolutely understands this president, and they know that they can play him any which way to be able to further their own position, further their position within the Middle East, further their position within the world. They have newfound power. They are actually more powerful than they were before the war started, not from a military point of view, but from the point of view of their national security interests.

Not only are they able to keep the Strait closed with a few hundred thousand dollars worth of drones, their geography gives them a strategic advantage, so they can actually call the shots. Giving up their nuclear material, which by the way, because I was the Deputy Director and the Acting Director of the Defense Threat Reductions Agency, responsible for looking at the nuclear materials, they are nowhere near the capability to develop a nuclear weapon. So I think they will be able to give that away and gain an awful lot on the world stage.

KEILAR: As you look at Iran, having learned from this conflict, that having control of the Strait, shutting down the global economy essentially, it's almost as effective, or it's certainly very effective in the way that having a nuclear weapon is incredibly effective. How do you see them being willing to give both of those things up?

MANNER: They will never give up the capability to shut down the Strait. That's not going -- they will not give that up, and they can't give it up, because they can't remove their country from the location in the Strait. So that is theirs to keep.

I do think that they're going to give up that "nuclear capability and enriched uranium" in exchange for bringing up all the many billions of dollars that they have that are being held by the United States, as well as, of course, at any point, the Strait is now their nuclear weapon, because they can exercise that without fear of what we're going to call a nuclear destruction under the MAD concept, Mutually Assured Destruction. KEILAR: How does the U.S. protect itself and its allies from that capability of Iran?

MANNER: I think once some kind of a treaty is negotiated that is acceptable to all parties, then it's going to be, quite frankly, the idea of enforcement of that treaty by both sides. And then, like anything that exists in the world, we want to make sure that we abide by it, that we can verify and validate the various factors that are in it, and hopefully move much more toward a stabilization of relationships and stability in the world economy. So like any treaty, it's not necessarily easy, but it does take a lot of trust and verified.

KEILAR: General Randy Manner, thanks so much for being with us.

MANNER: Thank you.

KEILAR: Boris, you have some Breaking News?

SANCHEZ: We have major Breaking News just in to CNN. Let's go back to Alayna Treene, who's at the White House, because the president has just announced his nomination for a new Director of National Intelligence to replace Tulsi Gabbard, who announced that she was resigning toward the end of May because of her husband's cancer diagnosis.

The notable thing about this, Alayna, is that the president had already said that he was installing an Acting Director, Bill Pulte. That was on June 2nd, just over a week ago. The president got pushback almost immediately from Republicans on Capitol Hill that expressed skepticism about Pulte, in part because he's a housing official that has no known experience in intelligence.

[14:10:00]

And the DNI, when Congress created it, it was a position that required, by law, someone with extensive experience in intelligence.

TREENE: No, absolutely. I mean, I have to -- you know, there's no other way to say this. This is a capitulation of President Donald Trump after the backlash that Pulte has seen and, really, the president and this White House has seen to the president having named him, at least in an acting capacity to be the Director of National Intelligence.

I do want to get you to this announcement, though, that he just shared moments ago on Truth Social. The president said that he is pleased to announce the nomination of very highly respected Jay Clayton, former Chairman of Securities and Exchange Commission. He goes on to list other accolades that he is attributing to Clayton. He goes on to say, I encourage the United States Senate to confirm Jay as soon as possible. Does not mention Pulte here.

Now, to give you a little bit of context, you did a great job with that coming into me, Boris. But I think it's hard to understate how fervently people on Capitol Hill, Republicans in addition to Democrats, of course, but also some people internally from the administration, were pushing back in response to the president naming Pulte as Acting Director of National Intelligence.

One of the big things, of course, you named it, is that he had no real intelligence background. He was also a very controversial figure inside the White House and someone who really the president wanted to bring in to, number one, try to, you know, make the Department of National Intelligence much smaller, the Office of Director of National Intelligence much smaller, to root out what the president believes are, you know, the deep state people who aren't loyal to him within that, and also to potentially, you know, look into some of the documents that relate back to the 2020 election and election security overall.

That was really kind of the short-term goal that the president had in mind with that selection of Pulte. I think another key thing to keep in mind here, too, for context, is that one of the reasons that Pulte has really rocked both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue is because he has really been the reason that many Democrats are saying, and even some Republicans, you know, saying that they would not move forward with renewing FISA, a very crucial intelligence surveillance program.

And so, they said unless the president had named a different person for this role, they weren't going to move forward with it, and so that was a big threat hanging over the president's head and this decision as well. So this is a big move. One other thing I think important to mention is that just earlier this week, you know, the President had met with the House Speaker, Mike Johnson. They had talked about FISA. They had talked about how Pulte posed a threat to getting that renewed. And the president had told Johnson in that meeting that he didn't want to give in. He was not going to give in when it came to his decision about Pulte.

And then the next day, the president went on social media and said that Pulte would begin on June 19th, when Gabbard was planning on leaving. Now clearly that has changed. He has named the former Chairman of the SEC, Jay Clayton, to be not only an Acting Director of National Intelligence, but wanting to nominate him and get him confirmed by the Senate for a more longer-term permanent role.

So big changes here on this front. We have to wait and see what the reaction is, but I think a lot of people on Capitol Hill, particularly Republican leaders on Capitol Hill, who were really concerned about FISA in the near term, you know, this intelligence role more broadly overall, will be happy with this news, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, notably an effort to extend FISA Section 702 failed in the House earlier today. Perhaps this is a reaction to that. It is set to expire tomorrow. Alayna Treene, thank you so much. We're going to be speaking to a Democratic member of Congress, not only about this Breaking News, but on the fight over FISA generally, when we come back. Stay with CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:18:37] KEILAR: We're following two major stories now. First, let's start with the president announcing the nomination of a new director of national intelligence. This is the person who would replace Tulsi Gabbard. Elie Honig is joining us now to talk about this. Elie, what do you think about this nomination of U.S. Attorney, Jay Clayton to be the permanent DNI?

ELIE HONIG, CNN SENIOR LEGAL ANALYST: Well, Jay Clayton certainly has more national security expertise than Bill Pulte, but still not a lot in the grand scheme of things. Now, Jay Clayton, as you said, is the U.S. Attorney right now for the Southern District of New York, my former office. But before that, the 30 years of his legal career were primarily spent either as an associate or a partner at a big Manhattan law firm where he was doing primarily corporate deals and that type of thing. And in 2017, he became the Chair of the SEC, the Securities and Exchange Commission, where he was involved with regulating the markets and financial transactions.

So his only real experience in the national security area comes over the last year when he was U.S. Attorney at the Southern District of New York. Now that said, If you're going to get experience in terrorism cases and national security cases, the SDNY is probably the single best U.S. attorney's office in the country to do that because the SDNY specializes in those areas, has long brought cases involving terrorist attacks, international and domestic terrorist organizations, and indeed Jay Clayton has overseen some investigations and prosecutions of that nature during his time as U.S. attorney over the past year.

[14:20:00]

SANCHEZ: Elie, as we were reporting out his installing Bill Pulte as the Acting DNI, there was reporting that emerged that part of the reason he sought Pulte for the position was that he wanted him, essentially, to wither down the ODNI, to fire people the way that he had as a housing official in the Trump administration, also to delve into these accusations of fraud in the 2020 election, accusations that have been widely discredited. How do you think Jay Clayton may approach that sort of desire from President Trump for the ODNI?

HONIG: It's a good question. Well, certainly, with regard to firings, he will have the power to fire whoever he wants or whoever the president tells him to. Jay Clayton though, I think is different than Bill Pulte when it comes to his level of political loyalty to Donald Trump. Bill Pulte was a 2020 election denier. Bill Pulte was an over- the-top Pro-Trump political partisan. Jay Clayton certainly is a Trump person, he was nominated both to his SEC job and now to the U.S. Attorney job by Donald Trump. So he does have that sort of typical amount of allegiance to Donald Trump, but he does not appear to be a frothing partisan.

He does not appear to be somebody who has espoused false conspiracy theory. So I think there's a difference in kind here between Jay Clayton and Bill Pulte.

KEILAR: He is someone who you know just recently, when he was on -- he was on, let's see here, CNBC I think, he was talking about fraud and he was saying he didn't say that there is fraud, but he was saying that the opportunity for fraud makes no sense to him. So he's kind of someone who -- this was in relation to California, which of course President Trump has taken -- he has really targeted because of the delay in the vote counting as we have seen sort of the positions in the mayoral race shift over the days of that vote counting. So this was specifically about that.

But I wonder what you think sort of about his response there is he's kind of threading a needle and what that may indicate about him.

HONIG: Well, threading a needle I think is exactly right, Brianna. And I can tell you from being in touch with various people who still work at the Southern District of New York that that's essentially the view of Jay Clayton. He's not revered in the same way that some prior U.S. attorneys are and there has been some internal criticism of him for not properly standing up for the office against some of Donald Trump's actions.

For example, Donald Trump fired Maurene Comey, who happens to be the daughter of Jim Comey a few months ago who worked at the SDNY and there was some level of disappointment in Jay Clayton among the rank- and-file there that he did not stand up against that, which a lot of people saw was wrong. But you're right, Brianna. He has been walking this sort of delicate line. He is a political appointee. He is an appointee of Donald Trump as the U.S. Attorney. He is loyal to Donald Trump. But he has not shown a willingness to sort of cross over that line into espousing outright false theories and conspiracy theories.

KEILAR: All right, Elie, thank you so much. If you can stand by for us, let's go to our other big story. Stocks are rallying on the hope that President Trump and Iran have reached some kind of agreement that might eventually reopen the Strait of Hormuz and lead to more normal oil shipping conditions.

We have to be clear, this is what the president is putting in his Truth Social, right? He's talking about this being a transition. He's talking about there being some kind of signing. He's talking -- he doesn't say the word deal. He's talking about agreement, but he's sort of giving that idea of it. But we have no idea at all what is in this thing, right Boris?

SANCHEZ: He has said something to this effect now multiple times and so when he says that the deal will be finalized, it is an open question as to whether that is going to happen, when that is going to happen, two to three days from now is something that he has repeated multiple times. Joining us is Patrick DeHaan. He's the Head of Petroleum Analysis for GasBuddy.

Patrick, thanks so much for being with us. So we're looking at the Dow right now, which had a tough day yesterday. It clearly has rebounded and you can see exactly when the president made this announcement there. What is your reaction to seeing markets react this way with oil dropping as soon as this post comes out?

PATRICK DEHAAN, HEAD OF PETROLEUM ANALYSIS, GASBUDDY: I mean look, I think you just said it, Boris, really well that we've been here before. We've seen this rhetoric that we're close to a deal, that a deal is imminent. We've gotten real close in the language and then, you know, even within six or eight hours ago, the president had been talking about attacking Kharg Island. So the market obviously is having to price this in, but we've seen this head-fake a few times before.

Make no mistake, I'd love nothing more than to see gasoline and the stock market go up and gas prices go down, and the Strait to reopen, but one has to wonder, is this the boy that has cried wolf now that a deal is imminent only to see things unravel.

[14:25:00]

So I think there's a lot of complexities here to making a deal with the Iranian regime. You have the Revolutionary Guard, you have leadership, so to simplify it and say a deal is imminent, you know, we've been here before.

Oil prices are reacting to this, obviously going down. But again, you know, how many times are we going to go through this without seeing an actual negotiated deal to reopen the Strait? In the interim, while the market may believe this right now, there's still pressure building in the backdrop that if a deal doesn't land, there is more and more pressure every day that the Strait remains closed.

KEILAR: Yeah, because the market with each of these announcements, Patrick, believes him. You know, if in sometimes, we've looked at him sort of repeating this refrain and then backing off from it. And he's been the boy who cried wolf. The market always does believe the boy who's crying wolf here. I suppose at a certain point, the market will be correct in that matter.

DEHAAN: Well, you know, exactly. The market is assessing risk. And for now at least, the most powerful president in the world, the market is still believing that there's truth there. And who really knows beyond that? You know, we've seen oil markets reacting very interestingly over the last 48 hours. Even after escalations yesterday, we haven't seen much rally in the price of oil here over the last 24 to 48 hours. It could be a lot of that investment money is flowing elsewhere within stock markets.

You know, you talk about IPOs and I don't want to go too much down a rattle hole here. But all in all, the market simply isn't really sure what to believe. Oil prices remain $30 a barrel higher than they were earlier this year. They're also $30 a barrel lower than where they were in April. So, you know, do or die, where we end up though, there will be a slingshot at some point if this deal doesn't get done.

And who knows? Oil executives, July, August, we don't really know the exact date that that pressure is just going to exert itself. But there is something still stewing in the backdrop of this. And while the market may be ignoring it today, there's so much -- only so much pressure that can build until, eventually, reality will be met with the lack of a potential deal. Yes, certainly. KEILAR: Yeah, certainly. Patrick DeHaan, thank you so much for that. We have much more ahead on our Breaking News on two fronts here. The president naming a new -- well, his nominee to be DNI, the Director of National Intelligence.

SANCHEZ: Yeah, and we're awaiting reaction from Congress on that. Remember, there's a fight before FISA Section 702 expires tomorrow over whether or not that is going to pass. Obviously, a huge instrument in gathering intelligence. And on top of that, the president calling off strikes on Iran that he said were going to be the most powerful thus far. Stay with CNN, we've got the latest after a quick break.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)