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U.S. Assessing Iran Damage; Protesters in Tehran; Trump Says Iran Must Make Peace; Joe Cirincione is Interviewed about Iran; Major Airstrike Near Tehran. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired June 23, 2025 - 06:30   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:32:18]

ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: This is CNN THIS MORNING with breaking news coverage of the situation in the Middle East.

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for joining me.

So, we want to talk about this. How did the U.S. pull off Operation Midnight Hammer with a fake out and more than 125 aircrafts. B-2 bombers carrying 30,000 pounds of never-before used bomb launched overnight Friday, headed towards Iranian nuclear sites. Some also headed west in an attempt at misdirection.

As the aircrafts neared the target, a U.S. submarine shot more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles at one of the nuclear sites. Officials went to great lengths to conceal the op after months of planning. It's still unclear how much damage Iran sustained.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GENERAL DAN CAINE, CHAIRMAN OF THE JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF: I think BDA is -- is still pending and it would be way too early for me to comment on what may or may not still be there.

PETE HEGSETH, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: This morning, Iranian media is reporting that the Fordo nuclear site has been hit again.

Joining me now, CNN military analyst and retired Air Force colonel, Cedric Leighton.

Good morning. Thank you for being here. COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Good morning, Audie.

CORNISH: We heard them use the term BDA, battle damage assessment. Can you talk about what makes it difficult to assess in this moment?

LEIGHTON: So, because of the type of target that we have here, let's take the Fordo site as a prime example of this. We have a -- what's called a hardened and deeply buried target. So, this is a target that -- it was built with specialized concrete. A concrete that has a type of strength that you don't normally see in regular construction. And then you also have the fact that its' buried deeply underground. So, we're talking almost 300 feet below ground. Very hard to get in there.

What we do know, when you look at the pictures of Fordo, is you -- you can basically see impact points where the GBU-57s, which are the -- the bunker buster massive --

CORNISH: Yes. And over the weekend, people might have seen some of the images. You see kind of a gray, like maybe there's dust.

LEIGHTON: Yes. Yes.

CORNISH: But are we reliant on that kind of imagery when you can't get there physically?

LEIGHTON: So, that's one of -- that can be a problem actually because traditionally BDA has been done using imagery with some of the other intelligence disciplines, like signals intelligence being kind of in a supporting role.

In this particular case, we need basically everything in order to get a -- at least the hope of an accurate assessment. So, imagery will be primary, but you also need imagery from underground if we can get it. So that would mean potentially using human assets to go down there, take the pictures and -- and get those pictures -- extract those pictures and bring them out so that they can be assessed at the Pentagon and, of course, in Israel.

[06:35:10]

So, those are the kinds of things that would have to happen. You have to have multi-source intelligence that would also include human intelligence. As the Iranians talk about this among themselves, there might be somebody who will overhear something and report it to the Israelis in particular because they have an extensive humint (ph) network, human intelligence network, within Iran. That would probably be one of the ways that we would be able to get BDA out of this.

The problem is, is that it may take a long time to get accurate BDA just because of the nature of the target and the --

CORNISH: Yes.

LEIGHTON: The difficulty of penetrating some of the -- some of the aspects of Iranian society. CORNISH: And we're not just sort of generally obsessed with the

nomenclature here. I mean, this has direct implications for whether you have to go back and whether this is a mission accomplished moment, as we understand historically, did you actually accomplish what you set out to do? And if you didn't, what action do you have to take to get there?

LEIGHTON: Yes. So, that's -- that's actually a really good question because we have a -- a series of -- of situations. Let's say it looks like you struck everything that you were supposed to strike, you know, and the initial assessments that the secretary of defense and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs made are accurate. Let's -- let's say that they're completely accurate and we actually struck everything. It's still possible that the ultimate goals were not achieved. The ultimate goal in this case being the actual destruction, or at least the neutralization of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

If that -- you know, if that is the goal and it continues to be the goal, then you want to assess not only what the damage was at a place like Fordo at the other -- or at the other two sites, but you also want to take a look and see, you know, what are the Iranians doing in other places? So, even places that were not struck are -- the activity at those places has to be observed in order to fully assess whether or not we are at the point that we want to be where we can say, OK, they've stopped their program, or they're at least doing workarounds and they've -- the program has been delayed by x number of years or months.

CORNISH: Colonel Leighton, thank you. A lot to look out for there. Appreciate your time.

LEIGHTON: You bet.

CORNISH: We want to turn now to protesters who have taken to the streets of Tehran. Some of them say their anger with the U.S. is bringing them together.

CNN's Fred Pleitgen brings us this report from the streets of Iran.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CROWD (chanting): (inaudible).

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There still is a lot of public anger unloading here on the streets of Tehran. Thousands of people have come here to Revolution Square, first and foremost, to criticize U.S. President Trump and to vow revenge for those strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities.

One of the interesting things that we're seeing on the ground now here is that it's not only conservatives and hardliners who are here, but also people who say they're normally quite critical of the Iranian government.

PLEITGEN (voice over): Even if missiles rained down on my head, I will stay here, she says, and I will sacrifice my life and my blood for my country.

This member of parliament says, a lot of those standing here chanting slogans against the United States may have been critics of the policies of the Islamic Republic. But today, all of us are standing in one line behind the supreme leader.

PLEITGEN: People now chanting "death to America" here at Revolution Square. And you can really feel how angry a lot of them are towards President Trump. Of course, the Iranian government has said that it reserves the right to retaliate for those strikes on the nuclear facilities, saying that it is their right to have nuclear enrichment. It is their right to have a nuclear program. And it's not something that they're going to allow the Trump administration to take away from them. And that is certainly also the sentiment that we're seeing here on the streets of Tehran.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Tehran.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CORNISH: So, as anger boils over for anti-American protesters in Iran, President Trump is calling for calm, or else.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace. If they do not, future attacks will be far greater and a lot easier.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: But the president's message for peace seems to be falling on deaf ears for Iranian leaders who are promising everlasting consequences.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ABBAS ARAGHCHI, IRANIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: In accordance with the U.N. charter and its provisions allowing legitimate response in self- defense, Iran reserves all options to defend its security interests and people.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: OK, my panel is back with me.

And, Stephen, you were writing over the weekend that you can't necessarily -- maybe Trump is trying to bomb Iran to the negotiating table, essentially just making it that they're in a surrender capacity.

STEPHEN COLLINSON, CNN POLITICS SENIOR REPORTER: Right. That seemed to be the initial plan, at least from the rhetoric that we saw on Saturday night and what followed through.

[06:40:02] And this idea that the way is now open for Iran. Several of the senior administration officials on TV yesterday were saying, we could have a partnership with Iran, which seems an extraordinary thing to say after you've just sent, you know, B-2 bombers halfway around the world to bomb the country.

It seems like this is a long shot because the Iranian revolution, the regime for the last 46 years, its core principle in many ways has been opposition to the United States. There's a deep set feeling that the United States is a colonial power throughout modern Iranian history.

That said, a lot of the options that Iran has to respond to the United States, they all come with a downside, whether its bombing U.S. bases in the region, which would precipitate a big response.

CORNISH: Right.

COLLINSON: And even that, regime change option from the U.S. and Israel, but also, you know, action elsewhere in the region. There are a lot of Iranian diaspora in the gulf states, for example. There's lots of financial problems with closing down the -- the Straits of Hormuz. So, it doesn't look like the Iranians have a lot of good options to respond that don't intensify this.

CORNISH: Joel, I want to play for you something from a House lawmaker, someone on the House Intel Committee, a ranking Democrat, Jim Himes, because here we're talking about the idea of coming back to the table. Meanwhile, over in Congress, you're starting to you're your rumblings of, hey, wait a minute, should we be involved in this? What's the intelligence? People asking questions.

Here's what he had to say.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): I learned about this strike last night on Twitter.

As a member of the Gang of Eight, you might think that for something this consequential, we would be informed of any change in intelligence. And by the way, I mean, let's not lose sight of the fact that -- that an offensive attack against a foreign nation is something that the Constitution reserves to the Congress of the United States. So, bad enough that we weren't informed. But, you know, unconstitutional.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: I realize this is kind of for both of you because I can't imagine a White House wanting their surprise attack being told to Congress first.

But, Joel, let me start with you. What did you hear in that?

JOEL RUBIN, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE, OBAMA ADMINISTRATION: Yes, you know, what I heard right there was Congressman Himes saying, this is a major process foul. That you need to get the process right if you're going to have an ongoing commitment of American military power in the region towards Iran. And the administration is already starting in the -- in the wrong way.

That said, I think there is space within the war powers resolution, the act, a statute for the president to have taken the -- the -- the strikes that he did. But now -- now we're in the debate phase on The Hill. Congressman Himes, my understanding is, he's going to join with Adam Smith and Greg Meeks, the leaders of the national security committees in the House, for Democrats to try to push forward legislation.

CORNISH: Yes.

RUBIN: And -- and you shouldn't have process fouls in times of war. It should be bipartisan from the get go, not partisan.

CORNISH: But the question has always been, when are we officially at war?

RUBIN: Yes.

CORNISH: When we look back at presidents who have used authorizations for the use of military force, it's going all the way back to George W. Bush.

SABRINA SINGH, FORMER DEPUTY PENTAGON PRESS SECRETARY: Yes.

CORNISH: How do you think about this, Sabrina?

SINGH: I think there's, you know, there's clearly room within the War Powers Act that allows presidents to take advantage of acting unilaterally in the interests of Americans. And that's what --

CORNISH: For limited strikes and things like that.

SINGH: For limited strikes. And, you know, you saw that when we were conducting strikes when -- in the Biden administration against the Houthis. But this goes back, whether it be Bosnia under, you know, President Clinton, Libya under President Obama, you know, should Congress be consulted? Absolutely. Congress plays a role. And these are representatives who represent Americans.

I think what was concerning, what I heard from Democratic lawmakers, is that they didn't get the same briefing that their Republican counterparts, Senator Thune, Mike Johnson, they were just told, strikes are happening. And that, to me, is really concerning because even though these are Democratic members, they still represent all Americans in their districts, including Republicans, Democrats, independents. They deserve to have those full briefings as well.

CORNISH: Interesting. You guys stay with me. We've got more to talk about next in this breaking news coverage of the U.S. strikes in Iran.

The U.S. claims to have done monumental damage to Iran's nuclear weapons facilities. Iran says they moved their supplies last week. So, what is the status of the nuclear program this morning?

Plus, President Trump's new pitch, make Iran great again, is regime change in the cards?

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[06:48:29]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: Iran's nuclear ambitions have been obliterated.

GENERAL DAN CAINE, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF CHAIRMAN: Final battle damage will take some time, but initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: You heard it there. The top Trump administration officials appear convinced they have obliterated Iran's nuclear program with a daring B-2 bombing mission over the weekend. CNN analysis of before and after satellite images show significant damage across several Iranian nuclear sites. But is it enough to end Iran's nuclear ambitions for good?

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. JIM HIMES (D-CT): I think all three facilities are probably smoking rubble right now. But the Iranians are not dumb people, right? There are some chance that, you know, given that this raid was telegraphed for a couple of days, that they might have thrown a couple hundred kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium into the back of a truck and moved it somewhere else.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And the director of the International Atomic Energy Agency also seems concerned that Iran was able to guard part of its stockpile of nuclear materials.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

RAFPHAEL MARIANO GROSSI, DIRECTOR, INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY: Iran has made no secret that they have protected this material.

We need to ensure that we are not moving towards a situation where the unthinkable would happen. This being Iran -- Iran going towards a nuclear weapon.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CORNISH: My next guest writes this in his latest piece for "The New Republic," quote, "only a fool would expect anything good to come out of this unnecessary, illegal, extraordinarily dangerous bombing campaign."

[06:50:07]

And he adds, "this is not the end of Trump's war. It's only the first act."

National security expert Joe Cirincione joins me now.

Thank you for being here.

JOE CIRINCIONE, FORMER PRESIDENT, PLOUGHSHARES FUND: My pleasure.

CORNISH: So, it sounds -- you're very much going against this idea of, quote/unquote, kind of a "mission accomplished" moment here because we had Trump get up and say, "obliterated," "done," that this has been effective. And over time, we're hearing, is it the ambitions that are done or the physical damage? What are you listening for?

CIRINCIONE: Right. Once again, we're hanging the victory banner way too early. War is not a one act play. This is the beginning of a very long campaign. Iran is a very large, rich, populated country. The nuclear facilities are sprawling, protected, deeply buried. There -- there are other sites that we know Iran has constructed that we did not touch.

Rafphael Mariano Grossi is exactly right. The Iranians, we now know, did move their stockpile of 60 percent enriched uranium out of those sites. We have satellite imagery of trucks pulling up to the sites right before the bombing campaign began.

So, yes, we should be deeply concerned that not only did these strikes not destroy the facilities, which is clear they did not, but they didn't get the most important part, that bomb material that Iran could be spinning even now up to weapons grade uranium for the core of a bomb.

CORNISH: But to raise a different idea here, you have this leader of Iran, 86 years old, in a bunker somewhere.

CIRINCIONE: Yes.

CORNISH: Most of his people sitting around the table have been assassinated. You have a lot of these sites, at least under some amount of rubble. Why shouldn't the administration feel like they have, at the very least, really set back Iran's nuclear ambitions?

CIRINCIONE: You have to keep this in perspective. These -- the damage that was done by these bombing strikes, both the Israeli and the U.S. bunker busters on Fordo, destroyed less equipment than the Iran nuclear deal did. Diplomacy eliminated many more thousands of centrifuges than this bombing campaign got. Almost all of the enriched uranium out of the country. This bombing campaign hit some of it. Is the ayatollah -- has he lost some of his leaders? Absolutely. But it is a very big military and intelligence operation. They can be replaced.

To -- to my view, what you have here is a situation where you have a war going on, led by Trump, Netanyahu and the ayatollah. Three unstable, unpopular, unpredictable leaders. Anything could happen here. It's very premature to believe that we've solved this war or that we've won this war, or we delivered a fatal blow. That's the classic military mistake, the fallacy of the last move to believe that you're bold. Even a militarily superior move is going to settle the conflict in your favor. No, the enemy gets a vote. Now we're waiting for the Iranian regime to cast its vote.

CORNISH: That's a lot of questions you have raised, Joe. Thank you so much for being here. Appreciate your time.

CIRINCIONE: Thank you.

CORNISH: Back now to Tehran, where our CNN crews on the ground witnessed a major airstrike on the city. Our Fred Pleitgen was there and sent in this just a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FRED PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So, we've just witnessed a massive airstrike here on the area of sort of northern central Tehran. We actually went downstairs into a shelter once we heard planes overhead, and then we heard explosions.

You can see now, the sky over the northwest of Tehran is completely filled with smoke. It seemed to us as though it were several really, really strong impacts that took place. And if we look over to the left here, you can see the smoke seems to be emanating from that area. That's more towards the west of Iran, the sort of northwest of Tehran, of the Iranian capital.

This is the first time since we've been here that we've seen a heavy airstrike like this in the fairly central part of the city. So, we're only going to be able to be up here for not much longer. But this is definitely something that I wouldn't say is unprecedented, but it's definitely something that we haven't seen in the past couple of days coming, of course, exactly after the Trump administration struck those nuclear facilities, and the Iranians are vowing revenge for that. Of course, the Israelis also continuing their air campaign. And right now, as you can see, the skies over Tehran filled with thick black smoke.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Tehran.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

CORNISH: OK, so we are starting this week in this major moment, right? You saw strikes there that Fred was just reporting on. And in the meantime, in the U.S., a conversation about regime change.

[06:55:02]

President Trump is now floating the idea of that. He posted on social media, quote, "it's not politically correct to use the term 'regime change,' but if the current Iranian regime is unable to make Iran great again, why wouldn't there be regime change?"

And for some Iranians, that might not be such a bad idea.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

WOMAN: I'm actually thankful about that to President Trump. But at the same time, we, Iranian people inside of here, inside in -- I mean the states and outside, we were expecting a regime change. We were expecting the United States and Israel help us to get rid of the -- this, you know, dictator regime.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining me now, my panel.

I wanted to talk about this because lawmakers will be back this week. We will hear these rumblings of concerns here and there. And I want to play one more thing for you, which is what we are hearing from the administration when they are asked about, you know, Trump saying it's a kind of politically charged term. But here's what they said when they were asked about regime change.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: This wasn't a regime change move.

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Our view has been very clear that we don't want a regime change. We do not want to protract this or build this out any more than it's already been built out.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: I'm not shocked that J.D. Vance is delivering that message.

Stephen, you?

COLLINSON: Right. I think the question is, I think a lot of people in the administration would like a regime change. The question is whether they're going to push for a regime change. The issue here is these events do tend to gather their own momentum. We went from a week ago -- just over a week ago, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, saying we had nothing to do with this, to U.S. bombing. And now, within eight days, nine days, the word "regime change" is again on the lips of many people in Washington.

You know, this whole U.S. showdown started with Iran, with regime change. Back in 1953, the CIA, British coup to overthrow the prime minister, Mosaddegh. The lesson, and I'm going to keep going back to the lessons of history because things don't always, you know, work out the same way, but regime change plotted in Washington have a pretty bad record of working out well for the United States.

CORNISH: But they start with those military moments, right?

SINGH: They do.

CORNISH: And those successes of saying, as we heard our guests earlier, that, OK, there's a bold move and therefore we can follow it up.

Is it fair, though, as Americans hear the term regime change and think boots on the ground, is that -- are those just linked or are they actually linked militarily?

SINGH: I don't think that -- a regime change necessarily means boots on the ground. I don't know --

CORNISH: Yes, here's Marjorie Taylor Greene tweeting about this this weekend, saying, "American troops have been killed and forever torn apart physically and mentally for regime change."

SINGH: I -- you know, I -- I don't, in this day and age, with the type of capabilities that we have, I don't know that that means boots on the ground, and I don't know that that -- this administration is there and committing boots on the ground for a, quote, "potential regime change."

But I think what's important here is what we don't know. We have not had a diplomatic presence in Iran for some 20 years. So, we don't even know what the inner workings of a diplomatic regime change could even look like. That is really for the Iranian people to chart their course on. If we expedite that in some way, if the Israelis expedite that in some way, again, we have a lot of unknowns, and right now, I don't know that this administration wants to pull Americans into a larger war.

CORNISH: Yes.

Joel, how are you seeing this debate play out, especially on the right?

RUBIN: Sure. Well, you know, Audie, the -- the administration needs to decide if it wants regime change or to change the regime's behavior. That's the core decision. And President Trump is sort of throwing out a lot of different ideas, making a mess of it.

It's a toxic term to the American public across the board. I served in the Bush administration when we invaded Iraq. Regime change came and it became this magnet, Iraq did, where it just sucked us in. And so, I think the United States need to be very careful that the goal here was the nuclear program. Stick to that. We need to supercharge our diplomacy. The president's going to mee with NATO.

CORNISH: Yes, but isn't it hard to stick to that, right? Like, it --

RUBIN: It is extremely hard to stick to that.

CORNISH: It -- because I -- you can hear the language bleeding back and forth, right?

SINGH: Yes.

RUBIN: Yes.

SINGH: They're signaling.

CORNISH: Like, first it's the nuclear facility, then it's the ambition.

RUBIN: That's right.

CORNISH: Then it's the capability. And those seem vaguer or more hard to quantify.

COLLINSON: And perceived success accelerates that thought. But six weeks ago, in Saudi Arabia, the president said words to the effect of, the -- the people that pushed interventionism over the last 20 years were interfering in societies they didn't understand.

SINGH: Right.

COLLINSON: That seems to be the point where we may be crossing over to.

CORNISH: Yes. And though we are very far away from that point if he is now saying, make Iran great again, but literally inserting this idea into the very core of his sort of public persona.

SINGH: Yes.

COLLINSON: (inaudible).

RUBIN: Which will only mobilize the Iranian people behind the Iranian regime because they don't want to have a foreign intervention overthrow the government no matter how much they detest that government.

[07:00:03]

CORNISH: Yes, although it's hard to tell because over the years they have suppressed oppression so effectively in Iran.

RUBIN: Yes.

CORNISH: So, as you said, we don't know what could come after, if there is an after.

I want to thank you guys for bringing your expertise here with me this morning. I really appreciate it.

And thank you for being with us. I'm Audie Cornish. We're going to have the headlines with "CNN NEWS CENTRAL" right now.