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Holly Dagres is Interviewed about Iran; Noem Vows to Send more Officers to Minnesota; Tehran Gives Warning to the U.S. Aired 6:30-7a ET

Aired January 12, 2026 - 06:30   ET

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

[06:30:00]

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: Blaze.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: A government that gets along with ours to where people like me, the millennials, the gen xers who came from an exiled family that just want to see their family and see where we come from. That's all. That's all we want.

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[06:35:05]

CORNISH: Iranian American protesters in Texas calling for regime change in Iran. Is the west ready for that?

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

It's half past the hour. And right now there are pro-government protesters in Iran where it's about 3:00 p.m. in the afternoon. We're monitoring that, too. And here's what else is happening right now.

The Energy secretary says U.S. investment in Venezuela is, quote, off to a strong start. Chris Wright was on CBS "Face the Nation."

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WRIGHT, ENERGY SECRETARY: Quite likely you'll see American companies expanded presence there. You'll see growing production. Of course, you're going to see more American involvement in there. But exactly how that's going to work, that's going to unfold over time.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: But, last night, President Trump said he is inclined to keep Exxon out of the deal after the company said it had assets seized twice in Venezuela. A suspect arrested for arson and a Mississippi synagogue forced to

rebuild again. It's the largest Jewish house of worship in the state. It was also burned nearly 60 years ago after a bombing by the KKK. The suspect is Saturday -- in Saturday's fire has not been identified publicly. They are expected to face federal charges.

And tens of thousands of nurses at hospitals across New York City walked off the job just moments ago in what could be the largest nurses strike in city history. Union leaders say contract talks broke down over staffing levels, pay and patient safety. Hospital officials say contingency plans are in place.

And we want to talk about the idea of regime change in Iran as Iran enters a third week of nationwide anti-government protests. A new op- ed in "The New York Times" insists they're not prepared. And while many western governments have publicly criticized Iranian authorities for their use of brutal force, only the U.S. so far has signaled that it's weighing military options. Top Trump administration officials say that a strong position on Iran is actually encouraging for protesters.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WRIGHT, ENERGY SECRETARY: I think the people in Iran are rising up because they feel there's a strong America that has their back. I won't go into any specifics there, but we wish them well, and we'd love to see a free and democratic Iran again.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Joining the group chat now, Holly Dagres, senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.

Thank you so much for being here.

I know you've been writing about this on your Substack as well, where you say that this is -- the "protests aren't about the economy, though they were triggered by it," similar to the protests back in November 2019. Can you talk about that? Because I think, for Americans, they hear about protests in Iran every few years.

HOLLY DAGRES, SENIOR FELLOW, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY: Yes. It's true. It's become cyclical. And I would say since December 2017, January 2018 onwards.

I think what you're seeing here is this -- that every protest has mostly a different trigger, except the two that you just mentioned, which were economic. But the core issues remain, systemic mismanagement, corruption and repression. And as we saw in the 2022 women life freedom uprising, a consistent call for the ouster of the Islamic Republic. And that's what's playing out in the streets of Iran, where Iranians are fighting for their life.

CORNISH: Another thing that we're noticing here are protests by Iranian Americans in the U.S. Are they emboldened by what they saw happen for Venezuelans? DAGRES: Well, actually, in 2022, it was incredible. Iranians across

the diaspora, we had about 80,000 to 100,000 in Berlin, Germany, alone during the 2022 uprising. So, they are rising up to the moment and bringing international attention to what's happening in Iran.

CORNISH: How unstable is Iran's government right now?

DAGRES: I would say it has found a newfound fragility in the post- October 7th world dynamics, with the maiming of its proxies, the 12- day war, the loss of its top ally in the region, and, of course, the events domestically, historically high anti-regime sentiment, power outages, Iranians unable to feed their family, and the real possibility that Tehran might run out of water at some point.

CORNISH: Yes.

FRANCESCA CHAMBERS, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "USA TODAY": Holly, I had a question.

There's been a lot of talk about the options that President Trump has on the table, including potential military options. What role would it be useful for the United States to play at this point?

DAGRES: Well, I think the most obvious thing would be to turn on direct to sell, which is --basically connects any latest phone from 2020 onwards to Starlink. So, we have Starlink working right now in Iran. There's a misconception about that. There's about 50,000 to 60,000 users, and that's how we're getting information out of the country during a total communications shutdown where phone lines in the internet's not working. So, I think that's a real simple ask.

I think the other thing is to heed the calls of the Iranian people, which have been made for a long time for a Democratic transition. They don't want the regime.

[06:40:00]

They want it gone. We should be, as an international community, listening to those calls. It's not something I'm interested in here as an analyst. There's been activists on the ground talking about it.

CORNISH: Yes. But I feel like the -- what often happens, we talked about it being cyclical in the protests. The U.S., from a distance, sees those protests happening. They say, good for you and hope there's democracy soon. And there's not much else. This is a president who's willing to act much more aggressively. Do people want him to?

DAGRES: Well, I think that's an important note. And I didn't say this earlier, but I think it is that sort of Damocles, which is Israel and the United States hanging over the clerical establishment, which puts them in such a delicate situation.

CORNISH: You said Israel and the U.S.?

DAGRES: Yes. Because even before these protests happened, there was a real prospect of a second war coming between Israel and Iran because of their redevelopment of their ballistic missiles program.

CORNISH: I'm surprised because after October 7th, Israel was able to make so many gains against, as you said, Iran proxies, Hezbollah, whoever, and Hamas itself, that they had been weakened and therefore Iran had been weakened.

DAGRES: It is surprising, but they've been doubling down and rebuilding actually alarmingly quicker, their ballistic missiles program, than many experts had expected, and it's been reported in the Associated Press.

SARA FISCHER, CNN SENIOR MEDIA ANALYST: I'm just curious, if the U.S. were to get involved in some way, how realistic is it? Could they sustain change in involvement? Because we are seeing now, with President Trump getting involved with Russia and Ukraine, with the Israel-Gaza conflict, now here in Venezuela, he's talking about Cuba. To what extent could we actually go and make an impact if the president's attention seems somewhat divided?

DAGRES: I think that's really an important fact that you're bringing up. And I think there's a lot of concern also that Iranians are saying, well, what if Venezuela plays out, which is that, here we are risking our lives for freedom and the U.S. president decides he's going to make a deal with the regime. He's going to pull and decide, oh, we're hearing all this talk about negotiations over the nuclear program, that he's going to throw the people under the bus. And I think that's a real concern that Iranians had before the communications blackout. That was a lot of what they were talking about on the ground.

CORNISH: That all that pressure won't lead to something for them, but something that keeps the regime in place?

DAGRES: Yes. A lifeline.

CORNISH: OK. We're going to be paying attention to this a lot this week.

Holly, I love your writing. I always appreciate you being here.

I want to turn to something else. Protests here over ICE. Protesters not letting up pressure. So, after the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, more than 1,000 protests were planned over the weekend. We're talking about L.A., New York, Washington, D.C., Seattle, Atlanta. These are just some of the cities that joined Minneapolis in their protest against ICE. This is their message, that they want the federal government out of their cities. In response, the Trump administration is actually doubling down. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says they're now going to deploy hundreds of additional Border Patrol officers to Minneapolis in a move threatening to inflame already heightened tensions in the city and nationwide.

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KRISTI NOEM, HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY: If you look at what Mayor Frey has said, they've extremely politicized and inappropriately talked about this situation on the ground in their city. They've inflamed the public. They've encouraged the kind of destruction and violence that we've seen in Minneapolis the last several days. And I would encourage them to grow up.

MAYOR JACOB FREY (D), MINNEAPOLIS: I said this was a federal agent recklessly using power that ended up in somebody dying, because that was a federal agent recklessly using power that ended up in somebody dying. It's exactly what happened. I mean, am I biased in this? Of course. And I'm biased because I got two eyes

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Group chat is back.

I hear some version of that argument a lot. I saw Jake Tapper having it with Kristi Noem over the weekend, where it's like the administration is saying, hey, here's how this played out. And someone was being like, but I just saw this video and it doesn't seem like it played out that way.

FISCHER: Yes. And also that reaction is happening because this is what we've seen play out across multiple cities. You'll recall in Portland, Oregon, you had Kristi Noem and other officials trying to say that this was a lawless city, that things were going off the rails. In reality, officials on the ground in Portland were saying, actually, things are pretty peaceful here. Things are going just fine. You heard the mayor say before that they've only had two shootings in Minneapolis, one of which was this ICE shooting.

And so, this is a war of words and a war of interpreting reality to meet everyone's political needs. I think one of the things that we can't deny here, though, is that Minneapolis is a place where Donald Trump can sort of frame this as being political leftist. You have the vice president's -- you had Vice President Kamala Harris' running mate, Tim Walz, from Minneapolis.

CORNISH: Yes. It's also the history hangover of the Black Lives Matter protests that escalated in that city.

FISCHER: Yes.

CORNISH: It's like going back to a lot of things that culturally we have a lot of connection to.

FISCHER: Exactly.

CORNISH: In the meantime, there is actually an ongoing investigation. Trump officials basically want to say that Renee Good was a domestic terrorist. And you mentioned something earlier, and we found it. Tom Homan, the borders czar, who was asked about that this weekend.

[06:45:01]

Here's how he responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) KRISTEN WELKER, HOST, NBC NEWS "MEET THE PRESS": You don't have evidence that she's a domestic terrorist?

TOM HOMAN, BORDER CZAR: I don't know what secretary has that I don't. I'm not going to judge what the secretary says. But if you look up the definition of terrorism, it certainly can fall within that.

But I think we all got to agree, there was no reason for this lady to do what she did. There is no reason to be there. If you want to protest, protest, but don't actively impede and interfere, and certainly don't drive a 4,000-pound vehicle toward an officer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHAMBERS: Right. That's what I've been referring to, that he -- he notably -- he did not call it domestic terrorism but here --

CORNISH: Yes. Sort of like, well, one may if you consider --

CHAMBERS: Yes.

CORNISH: Yes.

CHAMBERS: And it was also saying that he had said that this was still under investigation and referred back to that.

But going back to what Sara was saying, the administration has been out there trying to aggressively shape the narrative around this protest and leading -- you're talking about the war of words and the political clashes between the administration and Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, last week after he said that he wasn't going to run for re-election. They really doubled down on this assault on him, saying that the reason they needed to be in charge of this investigation was because he's, you know, incompetent. They made accusations that he had somehow been involved in the fraud or at least did not do enough in Minnesota to combat the fraud there. So, this is part of escalating tensions between the Trump administration and the governor of this particular state.

CORNISH: The other thing that's interesting is talking about the network of protesters, meaning there is this informal world of people who they've just -- they've decided, when ICE comes to their town and they don't want ICE there, they're in communication on listservs and apps and things like that. And I think this is the acting ICE director. I want to play for you guys something he said on Sunday where they're trying to make this into a broader conspiracy.

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TODD LYONS, ACTING ICE DIRECTOR: We do believe there's a criminal conspiracy going on. We are working with all of our federal partners to try to track down the funding, the leadership of these groups, because, you know, we would see time and time again ICE officers and agents, we'd be doing an operation, and within seconds to minutes all of a sudden there's 50, 60 protesters on that site. So, there's an active, active group out there that is criminally based, that's, you know, impeding in -- causing these operations

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CATHERINE LUCEY, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, "BLOOMBERG NEWS": I mean tensions between law enforcement and organized protests have been going on for a very long time, as we know. I don't know that people communicating, you know, via WhatsApp or whatever to gather at locations necessarily is a criminal conspiracy. We'll have to see if an investigation of that plays out.

But I do think, more broadly on that sort of -- the nature of investigations has become a problem in this -- in Minneapolis because you have this tension between the feds and the state about who is going to run the investigation. You know, state and local officials are saying they've been cut out. And now a lot of Democrats in the state are raising questions about whether they think the investigation will be valid. You know, will they (INAUDIBLE).

CORNISH: Yes. Because you have the federal officials who could hold people accountable saying out loud, it's definitely her fault.

LUCEY: Yes.

CORNISH: And those same people are supposed to do the investigation. And then you have people at the state level who are like, we're not even allowed to see the evidence.

LUCEY: Yes.

CORNISH: I think, for the public, you feel like, well, this is not ever going to be a real investigation.

FISCHER: Yes. And also, you look at this reaction to protests. I can't get this out of my head. In one sense we're looking at Iran and we're saying, we're here to protect the protesters. On the other hand, we're here domestically saying that this is potentially criminal conspiracy. Which one is it? Which -- for the MAGA party, do you care about the First Amendment or do you not? This is, to me, like the case in point example of that rift.

CORNISH: Yes.

CHAMBERS: One argument, I was going to say, that stood out to me yesterday as well, though, coming from Democrats, though, is to tell protesters to keep it peaceful, to not give the administration any other reason to send in additional either ICE officers or --

CORNISH: Yes, I hear that frequently.

CHAMBERS: Yes, but this was coming --

LUCEY: You heard that from Tim Walz as well.

CHAMBERS: I was going to say, but this was coming up yesterday specifically from J.B. Pritzker, as well as Tina Smith, the senator from Minnesota, to keep these tensions from further escalating. CORNISH: Yes. Yes. And in the meantime, the internet's undefeated,

like, in terms of people filming things. That is a very hard thing to stop in this day and age.

Listen, if you missed any of this conversation or maybe part of the show earlier, we're a podcast, so you can share it. Scan the QR code now to find it. CNN THIS MORNING is going to be available anywhere you get your podcasts.

Next on CNN, the president looking at his options in Iran.

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SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): I don't think it's the job of the American government to be involved with every freedom movement around the world.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: And what would a U.S. military intervention even look like?

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[06:53:57]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are violent. Can you call them leaders? I don't know if they're leaders are just they -- they rule through violence. But we're looking at it very seriously. The military is looking at it. And we're looking at some very strong options. We'll make a determination.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: So, while President Trump considers military options against Iran, Iranian officials warn that they would retaliate. And they say U.S. military and commercial bases would be the target. Taking action on Iran is something members of the president's party say should be off the table, at least for now.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RAND PAUL (R-KY): I don't think it's the job of the American government to be involved with every freedom movement around the world. And I do believe that bombing them may have the opposite -- it's like, how do you drop a bomb in the middle of a crowd or a protest and protect the people there?

Bombing is not the answer. Plus, there is this sticking point of the Constitution that we don't normally (ph) let presidents bomb countries just when they feel like it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: CNN political and national security analyst David Sanger joins the group chat.

[06:55:01]

I want to play one more for you, actually, because Rand Paul is someone who we sort of expect to be in this position of saying, look, this is not the job police person. However, Senator Lindsey Graham also commented this Sunday, and here's what he had to say

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): For Iran, I don't want any boots on the ground. But President Trump has chosen wisely to be with the protesters. He's the first president since 1979 to pick the people over the ayatollah.

Donald Trump says the best way to make Iran great again is for the protesters to win and the regime to come down. If I were you, Mr. President, I would kill the leadership that are killing the people. You've got to end this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

DAVID SANGER, CNN POLITICAL AND NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Well, it was an interesting response, Audie. The U.S. has laws about killing foreign leaders. And it sounds to me like what he is suggesting would probably violate those.

But you've also got to think about the second order effects here. I mean what's happened is, once again, but this time bigger, a national uprising against the leadership. If the U.S. steps in and reminds everybody of the days when the U.S. ran coups in Iran in the 1950s and so forth --

CORNISH: Yes.

SANGER: There's a decent chance that you could actually unify part of the population against the U.S. And so when --

CORNISH: Yes, which is hard to see right now. There are pro-government protests that we are seeing in Iran today.

SANGER: Right.

CORNISH: I don't know if that's regime organized. We don't know what -- really what we're looking at, but this is a good example, at least, of that kind of support.

SANGER: But these kind of protests work when they are organic. And so, as Holly was saying when she was up here earlier, there's a lot of advantage of stepping in and giving internet connectivity. I can understand that. But there are some tasks for which dropping a bomb doesn't actually achieve your objectives.

And here, I'm not quite sure what that would be. And I think many Iranians are also concerned that if the Iranian government simply said to the president, we'll give up what's left of our nuclear program, that alone would satisfy him, and he'd walk off to something else.

CORNISH: Yes. And we heard Holly say that would be a disappointment to the people of Iran.

SANGER: That's right.

CORNISH: Didn't you mention in the article, and you guys did a big sit down with the president about his foreign policy? Doesn't he keep like a model on his desk?

SANGER: He keeps a model of the B-2 bomber that was used to go after the three nuclear sites. And, you know, that really sort of gets to it because with a B-2 bomber, you can bury an Iranian site that's distant from lots of people. And, in fact, that's what's happened. The uranium is buried. I'm not sure that helps you in a -- in an uprising of this kind.

CORNISH: Yes.

Can I ask you one more thing about that meeting. You -- because we were talking in the group about the role of the video in the shooting of the Minnesota protester in ICE. And -- by ICE. You actually were there when the president saw at least the initial video clip. What was his reaction?

SANGER: So, what happened was the incident, the tragedy in Minneapolis happened a few hours before we were supposed to go over to the White House. When we got there, the president had already seen the clip and tweeted about it, and he said to us, well it looked like she ran over an ICE officer. And I said, and some of my colleagues said that that wasn't what we saw in this.

So, he asked an aide to come over and basically set up her laptop. And we gathered around the Resolute Desk and all watched it together. A little bit of a -- of a strange feeling because in the tape you hear these gunshots ringing out and they're sort of bouncing off the Oval Office walls as were watching it.

And I said to him, and several of my colleagues said as well, doesn't look like the ICE officer was run over. And he began to back off a little bit and talk about, you know, I hate seeing all of this happen. It was a rare moment of sort of real time fact checking of the president.

CORNISH: You know, since you are our guest here, I wanted to ask you, what's in your group chat. What you're thinking about this week. I know you got a lot of scoops ahead that are going to irritate me.

SANGER: Yes.

CORNISH: So, what are you thinking about?

SANGER: I can't imagine any of our scoops would ever irritate you.

So, my chats have blown up over the weekend entirely on the question of things that were in the -- in the interview. And "The Times" has published last night the transcript of the interview, which is, I warn you, 23,000 words long. OK.

CORNISH: A weave of sorts.

SANGER: It was -- it was two hours of straight on and fairly rapid conversation.

So, we have many readers and a couple of friends wondering, why didn't I ask about x, y, and z? We had a lot of conversation about why the president was giving his secretary of state and his vice president gifts of shoes. And the president says he cares a lot about shoes.

CORNISH: OK.

SANGER: And I guess a number of our readers do as well.

CORNISH: All right. Well, control f shoes. OK.

SANGER: Yes.

[07:00:03]

CORNISH: That's how you can get to all those parts of the interview.

Thank you so much, David, for being here.

SANGER: Thank you, Audie.

CORNISH: Thank you, ladies, for being with me and setting up the week. And thank you for waking up with us. I know you have a lot of places you could be, and I'm glad you're here with us. I'm Audie Cornish, and the headlines are next.