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Jamil Jaffer is Interviewed about Iran; Michael Warren is Interviewed about the MAGA Divide; Inside Iranian TV Station Hit by Strike; Holly Dagres is Interviewed about Iran; Lawmakers Concerned about U.S. Intel. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired June 19, 2025 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:34:07]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. Thank you for joining me on CNN THIS MORNING.

It is half past the hour. And here's what's happening right now.

Israel has ordered its military to intensify strikes on Iran after a hospital in southern Israel was hit by the Iranians. The hospital suffered extensive damage, and Israel claims Iran is targeting civilian areas. Iran says it was attacking a military site next to the hospital.

And residents in Mexico are bracing for Hurricane Erick to make landfall near Acapulco this morning. It was upgraded to a category four storm overnight. Erick is expected to unleash flash floods and devastating winds. It's on record to become the strongest June hurricane ever to hit Mexico.

And today is Juneteenth, the anniversary of the day the last slaves were told they were free. Despite being a federal holiday, many celebrations across the country are being scaled back or even canceled.

[06:35:05]

Organizers say safety issues and mounting resistance to diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives are among the top concerns.

All right, we want to come back to this question for President Trump, whether he's actually interested in talking with Iran right now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I may do it. I may not do it. I mean nobody knows what I'm going to do. I can tell you this, that Iran's got a lot of trouble.

REPORTER: Have the Iranians reached out to you?

TRUMP: Yes.

REPORTER: And what did you say?

TRUMP: I said it's very late, you know? I said it's very late to be talking.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: As far as we know, senior Trump administration officials are still trying to push for a diplomatic solution. That includes special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who Trump himself instructed to try and meet with Iranian officials as soon as possible. The Iranian government, which has now called for an emergency meeting of the U.N. Security Council. But while there are some diplomatic back channels still open, they may not be for long as tough talk from both sides could be sinking those efforts.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

AMAN RAVANCHL, Iranian DIPLOMAT: We are not begging for anything. What we are saying, what we are saying is that to stop this aggression, then we will have time to -- to -- to do whatever needed. As long as the aggression continues, as long -- as long as this brutality continues, we cannot think of -- of engaging.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining me now to discuss, Jamil Jaffer, former counsel in the Justice Department's National Security Division.

So, in a tweet from Iran's mission to the U.N., Iran said that it would not "negotiate under duress, shall not accept peace under duress, and certainly not with a has-been warmonger clinging to relevance."

We've got a bellicose Iran, per the usual, but we've also got this ambiguous Trump. Help us understand whether or not there is actually some sort of diplomatic on ramp or off ramp.

JAMIL JAFFER, FORMER COUNSEL TO THE ASSISTANT AG FOR NATIONAL SECURITY: Well, Audie, look, the president made clear that he would like to resolve this problem diplomatically. All the way through and up through the Israeli campaign against Iran, President Trump had been talking about the need to find a deal, a path forward with Iran, a way to put off any military strikes. Word is he tried to put the -- put the Israelis off of conducting these strikes. Of course, since then, he's now adopted their strikes as his own and has lauded them. But right up to the moment they actually conducted the strikes, he was pressing them, and his team was pressing them, to hold back and try to not allow this to go forward.

At the end of the day, though, he has been supportive, and now he's trying to use the strikes and the potential the U.S. might get involved as an effort to bring Iran back to the table and find a deal that can work for the United States. We'll see if that happens, and we'll see what a deal like that looks like, because that's a big debate, both within the United States as well as abroad.

CORNISH: And considering military options, there is the potential for some sort of limited action, but there's also the potential that something that involves a regional or wider conflict. Given your past experiences with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, do you think that lawmakers should be consulted or vote before any major military action?

JAFFER: Well, look, this is a topic of -- of much debate on Capitol Hill and -- and with the White House. The president generally believes -- and all presidents have generally believed that they have the ability to take military action for some period of time before Congress has to weigh in. In fact, the War Powers Resolution, which was designed by Congress to reassert its authority, permits the president, in response to an attack, and arguably, in the view of some presidents, in response to a threat to the United States or our allies can conduct operations before they ask Congress for action. If this becomes an extended conflict, it's (INAUDIBLE) and the view of -- of -- of the law as passed, that the president does have to ask Congress for approval. That has happened at times, and that has not happened at times. So, this is an area of tension between the executive and legislative branches.

In the Constitution now, Audie, as you know, the power to declare war is granted to Congress.

CORNISH: Jamil Jaffer is a former counsel to the assistant attorney general for national security. Thank you.

JAFFER: Thanks, Audie.

CORNISH: I want to talk more about the politics here, because there is clearly a rift in the Republican Party over the Israel-Iran conflict. It's on full display. Here's an example. Senator Ted Cruz making an appearance on Tucker Carlson's show. The former Fox News host spent the first 40 minutes pressing Cruz about his support for Israel. Carlson has been a vocal critic of the strikes in Iran, and Cruz was there to try and assuage him.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TUCKER CARLSON: It's interesting you're trying to derail my questions by calling me an anti-Semite, which you are.

REP. TED CRUZ (R-TX): I did not.

CARLSON: Of course you are. And -- and rather than be honorable enough to say it right to my face --

CRUZ: I'm -- I'm sitting -- I --

CARLSON: You are, in a sleazy, feline way, implying it, oh, just asking questions about the Jews. I'm not asking questions about the Jews. I have -- this has nothing to do with Jews or Judaism. It has to do with foreign government.

[06:40:02]

CRUZ: Isn't Israel controlling our foreign policy? That's not about the Jews?

CARLSON: You said -- I'm asking you --

CRUZ: And, by the way, you're the one that just called me, I think, as sleazy feline. So, let -- let's be clear.

CARLSON: It's a -- it's sleazy to imply that I'm -- I'm an anti- Semite, which you just did --

CRUZ: No, I just said --

CARLSON: When I am asking you --

CRUZ: Why is that the question you're asking?

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: I'm joined by Michael Warren, senior editor at "The Dispatch."

That may look like an unrelated clip, but it actually is, because it gets at a central tension. Those who, like Carlson, are saying, is the U.S. unduly influenced by Israel in its -- in its foreign policy. The -- the unsavory aspects of that movement that Cruz was bringing up there. But also Cruz, his military position. Help me make sense of this moment.

MICHAEL WARREN, SENIOR EDITOR, "THE DISPATCH": Well, we can overstate this divide within the Republican party because if you look, Audie, at polls, most Republican voters, including people who consider themselves parts of the MAGA movement, there -- there's some polls recently that show they support Israel. They support the American military doing something. Some kind of strike is vaguely worded in these polls, some kind of strike on Iran. Overwhelming majority of Republican voters. So, we shouldn't overstate how many actual people who consider themselves Republicans who support Donald Trump.

CORNISH: Yes. And Trump has said as much.

WARREN: Exactly.

CORNISH: He says, my supporters are with me. He also says America first is whatever I say it is.

WARREN: He's kind of right about that, actually.

CORNISH: Tell me more.

WARREN: Well, look, I think that is the case that most of Trump's supporters will follow him where he goes. And so, it's important -- most important to follow what Trump is doing.

I will say this, we don't need to understate as well the influence of Tucker Carlson and his sort of younger group of -- we call MAGA Republicans, more nationalist Republicans.

CORNISH: Who came up being anti-forever war.

WARREN: Exactly.

CORNISH: I mean they have positions in the White House, no?

WARREN: Positions in the White House, throughout the administration. They are the sort of young energy within the party. They're going to be staffing, you know, on Capitol Hill in administrations in the future, for quite some time. And I think it's important to recognize that this is -- they -- they are definitely a break from the past in terms of the Republican Party and -- and their views about Israel. But they're still a minority and -- and a pretty small minority, a very vocal minority, with somebody with a huge platform like Tucker Carlson as their champion within the broader Republican world.

CORNISH: And, obviously, Trump has heard some aspect of it, or has some concerns. He recently referred to Carlson as kooky and just said this about the former Fox commentator.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Tucker's a nice guy. He called and apologized the other day because he thought he said things that were a little bit too strong, and I appreciated that. And Ted Cruz is a nice guy.

If they think that it's OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, then they should oppose me. But nobody thinks it's okay.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: That seems pretty fundamental to the argument here. And you even saw J.D. Vance tweeting an extensive post, kind of giving the president room to maneuver with that part of the base.

WARREN: Right. Look, well, Vance is a -- is a politician. He's sort of positioning himself within the party, within the administration, as supportive of Donald Trump. Although Vance is really representative of that kind of younger, less interested in foreign engagements.

But we should just -- we should just not lose sight of the fact that in that interview between Tucker Carlson and Ted Cruz, Tucker Carlson is really misrepresenting what Republicans like Ted Cruz and even Donald Trump are suggesting. Nobody's talking about boots on the ground. Nobody's talking from a -- from a position of power, meaning in the Senate or in the administration, about any kind of regime change in Iran. That's sort of the argument that Tucker Carlson would like to have. It's not really reflective of reality. I'll be interested to see, by the way, where J.D. Vance lands on this come 2028 when there's going to be debates about this on a Republican presidential primary stage.

CORNISH: 2028. Michael Warren, get out of here.

WARREN: I'm always looking forward, you know.

CORNISH: Get out of here. You're not allowed back.

Michael Warren is senior editor at "The Dispatch."

Now, ahead on CNN THIS MORNING, Iran is unleashing a new wave of ballistic missiles across Israel. How are the Iranian people dealing with this conflict?

Plus, SpaceX is calling this a, quote, "major anomaly." Its Starship exploding on the launch pad.

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[06:48:28]

CORNISH: First on CNN, we're getting a closer look at some of the damage being brought by Israeli airstrikes in Iran. You'll remember this, for example, from earlier this week.

(VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: That was the moment when an Israeli strike hit a TV network while it was on air.

Fred Pleitgen is the first western journalist in Tehran. He takes us inside the destroyed station.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're inside the Iranian state broadcasting company, IRIB, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike a couple of days ago. And you can see the damage is absolutely massive.

I'm standing in the atrium right now, but if you look around, this whole area has been completely destroyed. All of the offices, all of the technology that they have inside here, the broadcast technology, everything has been rendered pretty much useless.

All right, so we're going to go inside the building now. They have told us that we need to be very careful because, obviously, there might still be unexploded parts of bombs in here or something like that.

What we see here is the actual studio where an Iranian state TV anchor was sitting and reading the news when the strike hit. You can see here that is an anchor desk right there. And, of course, when it happened, the anchor was reading the news and then all of a sudden there was a thud. The studio went black. At the beginning she got up and left, but then later apparently came back and finished the newscast and is now being hailed as a champion of Iranian media.

[06:50:04] Some of the main bulk of the explosion must have been here, because this place is absolutely charred. And if we look back over there, that actually seems to be the main part of what was the newsroom with a lot of the desks, computers, printers, phones. You can see how much heat must have been emitted by the impact and by the explosion. The phones that they had here are molten. Here, also the keys molten, this screen, and there's actually someone's lunch still at their desk standing here, which probably they would have been wanting to eat until they had to evacuate the building. You can see there's a -- a spoon here that's also been melted away by this explosion.

All of this is playing very big here in Iran. There's a lot of public anger that the Israelis attacked this -- this site. And certainly the Iranians are saying that they condemn this and that there is going to be revenge for this.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Tehran.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CORNISH: Joining me now to discuss this, Holly Dagres, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Holly, first, can I get your reaction to some of the reporting we saw from Fred there because this was state media and the symbolism of Israel striking the voice of the government in a way, in such a total way. What do you see when you look at those images?

HOLLY DAGRES, SENIOR FELLOW, THE WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: Well, first, I knew exactly the location because I used to go on dates with my high school sweetheart at the bootleg Carl's Junior next door to it and walk by it. But -- so just to give you a sense of how densely populated Tehran is and how -- and how these buildings are housed in these areas.

But, you know, for a lot of Iranians, this is a symbol of a big propaganda arm. Historically, it has paraded forced confessions on television. And it's not a place that many Iranians are getting their information right now. Iranians are relying on diaspora satellite channels, but more importantly, on internet and social media. And we've been seeing that the internet has undergone a near total shutdown in the last less than 24 hours.

CORNISH: Because of the strikes, or is the government shutting down access to information?

DAGRES: The government is shutting down access to information, but they've been -- it's been cutting off and on. So, sometimes maybe our viewers are familiar with WhatsApp.

CORNISH: Yes.

DAGRES: Like Singaone Check (ph). So, when we're messaging with our friends and family, we're seeing one chat (ph). So, we have to call landlines. So, without this access to information, Iranians don't know what's happening. And that's what's scary because sometimes the Israeli government is saying that they're going to hit a certain district. And these -- this information is sometimes even coming in the middle of the night. So, it's worrisome.

CORNISH: It's interesting you're saying -- at CNN, we've actually received some messages from people living in Iran. I'm just going to read one or two of them that strikes me here. But one, mentioning something you talked about. This person says, "when I scroll through our old conversations on WhatsApp," referring to their family, "they've shifted from what color jewelry are you going to wear to, are you alive?" Another message reads, "we're all in shock and some of us have nowhere to go. Some of us are still in our apartments just waiting to see if we survive."

It's -- we've been seeing images of cars leaving, and I don't think people fully understand just how many people are still there.

DAGRES: Well, for starters, like Tehran is roughly the size of the L.A. Metro area. So, imagine that -- that's the kind of -- that's 10 million people that needs to flee. Not everybody can afford to flee. Not everyone has savings. Some are elderly. It's hard for them to leave. And so, yes, there's been a mass exodus of people from Tehran leaving, but a lot of them are hunkered down at home.

CORNISH: With no information is what you're talking about.

DAGRES: No information.

CORNISH: Yes.

DAGRES: About no air raid sirens. No shelters, except for they've been offering mosques and schools, which aren't even safe from bombs. So, Iranians are really terrified in the capital.

CORNISH: I want to ask you one thing. We've talked so much today about President Trump and his kind of indication of potential backdoor channels, potential, some kind of diplomatic conversation. We are not hearing that from Iran. Does that mean that it isn't happening or is there still -- like, what's their end game, right, if -- if they're saying that they're going to fight no matter what?

DAGRES: So, they've been exuding this, I would say, proud sense of, oh, we're going to fight to the death and we're going to stand up for the Islamic Republic, but -- but it seems that according to reports, behind closed doors, they're seeking an off ramp. But the thing is, what is that off ramp? U.S. President Donald Trump is saying that they cannot enrich. They want -- he wants zero enrichment. The Iranian --

CORNISH: So, complete denuclearization.

DAGRES: Absolutely. And the Iranians, that's why we're in this situation because Trump did not receive that messaging during the talks. They were trying to figure that out. But here we are.

CORNISH: So, are you going to be listening for that in the coming days? Is there any world where Iran can signal it would back off, or is it backed into a corner? [06:55:04]

DAGRES: I think we're going to hear it's going to be diplomacy, and it's not going to be very public facing. I think there's going to be some messaging, maybe through Oman, which has been a mediator during these talks, maybe even during the -- through the Swiss, who have an interest section, the U.S. interest section in Tehran.

But right now, I really just don't see an off ramp because also, as this war goes on, they haven't technically taken out the nuclear facilities either. So, I think unless they decide to surrender, as President Trump full surrender tweeted or posted on Truth Social, you're not going to get an off ramp here for now.

CORNISH: OK. But, thank you for telling us where we should be listening, Oman, the Swiss. I appreciate your time, Holly.

OK, it is now 55 minutes past the hour. Want to give you your morning roundup.

Minnesota police are investigating a possible break in at Melissa Hortman's home. That's the state representative who had been shot and killed at her house, along with her husband. Police had a camera in front of the house. Someone was able to remove it, break a rear window and get inside. The investigation is ongoing.

And a SpaceX Starship rocket exploding into a massive fireball on the launch pad. This happened late last night while preparing for its 10th test flight. SpaceX says no one was injured. The cause of the explosion is still unclear, but SpaceX is calling it, quote, "a major anomaly."

And a federal judge is ordering the Trump administration to restore scientific research grants that were terminated by the National Institutes of Health. Attorneys on the case say the funding cancellations were illegal and discriminatory because they targeted race and gender identity.

As we wrap things up this morning, I can't help but look at the comparisons some are making between now and what happened shortly before the U.S. launched its invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was a time when the U.S. was convinced that Iraq, under the leadership of Saddam Hussein, was in the process of developing weapons of mass destruction. That intel turned out to be false. And now some lawmakers are raising flags about how trustworthy U.S. intelligence is this time around, as it considers action on Iran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. MARK WARNER (D-VA): We got a brief as recently as Monday, that seems ages ago, that said the intelligence community has not changed their assessment that Iran had not moved towards an actual weaponization.

And if this president is going to suddenly blow off all of the consensus opinion of the intelligence community, well, what are these folk's job --

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And we can't forget director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, who raised her own doubts about whether Iran was developing a nuke.

Joel Rubin and Colonel Cedric Leighton are back.

I want to talk about this because, as we are waiting for the White House to make a decision, I assume intelligence reports are part of informing that decision.

Joel, you're the one who mentioned earlier Iraq, so I want to come to you.

JOEL RUBIN, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Yes.

CORNISH: Is there a legitimate point from Senator Warner?

RUBIN: Yes, Audie, there is, clearly. And I was serving in the State Department as a civil servant when we invaded Iraq. And we were lied to. We were lied to by our leaders, by the president and his team, and lied with the goal of pushing us into a war. That's where there's a bit of a difference here. Intelligence matters. It's key.

But this is now a policy debate question. The intelligence is not going to make the decision, and it's not going to be used to manipulate the United States into a war, because right now there's already a war. Israel is already at war. Iran is already attacking and threatening. So, it's much more of a policy issue.

CORNISH: But let me bring in the colonel here because, honestly, I can't think of -- Iran has been under the microscope for so long.

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes.

CORNISH: The -- there's a lot of intelligence there. So, are we really questioning what we've got between us and what the U.S. is hearing from Israel?

LEIGHTON: So, one of the big differences, Audie, between the Iraq situation and the Iran situation is, we have been focusing on Iran for a very long time. The very first country that I focused on as an intelligence officer was Iran. And that really indicates to me that, you know, we've got a pretty good book on the Iranians.

Now, the question is this, how well do we really know the culture? And one of the key things that happened in the Iraq runup was the fact that linguistically we had some issues. For example, the term "al Qaeda" in Arabic actually means "the base." And every time the Saddam Hussein regime mentioned that word, people here thought that they were talking about the terrorist group. They weren't, they were talking about the base of the Ba'ath Party. So, we have to --

CORNISH: But -- so it's subject to interpretation --

LEIGHTON: Absolutely.

CORNISH: Which, in a way, I think a lot of us, that's the concern we're talking about, right?

LEIGHTON: Yes.

CORNISH: Which is who's interpreting. We know for a long time the Trump administration was very sort of diminishing in how it talked about the U.S. intelligence community.

[07:00:02]

RUBIN: Hostile, in fact, yes.

CORNISH: Right. But now is the time when all of that is going to be very valuable.

RUBIN: That's right.

CORNISH: I want to thank you guys for being with us today, because there were a lot of questions about what's going on. It's going to help us understand the decision to come.

I want to thank you for waking up with us. I'm Audie Cornish and "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" has the headlines. It's going to start right now.