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U.S., Israel Conduct More Strikes on Iran; U.S. Officials: School Strike Under Investigation. Aired 6-6:30a ET

Aired March 10, 2026 - 06:00   ET

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

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AUDIE CORNISH, CNN ANCHOR: So, President Trump talking pretty much like the war is over, but the Iranians are talking like they're in it for the long haul.

[06:00:53]

Good morning, everybody. I'm Audie Cornish.

And the fighting over the past few hours has not slowed down. This is new video of a dogfight over a beach in Dubai. Fighter jets seen shooting a missile at a drone.

And just a few hours ago, this was the scene at Israel's Northern border. Israel says it intercepted a number of Hezbollah rockets.

In Iran, a residential building is now rubble after a U.S. and Israeli strike, and a CNN team in Tehran felt and heard that bombardment after seeing jets fly overhead.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is going to be speaking to reporters just two hours from now. The Pentagon put out a new video, strikes on Iran missile launchers with this warning: "You can hide them, but we will find them."

And President Trump threatening, quote, "death, fire, and fury" if Iran blocks oil tankers at the Strait of Hormuz. Trump says he's thinking about taking it over. Iran says it is awaiting the U.S. fleet.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMAL KHARAZI, FOREIGN POLICY ADVISOR, OFFICE OF THE SUPREME LEADER: I don't see any room for diplomacy anymore.

DONALD TRUMP, U.S. PRESIDENT: We've wiped every single force in Iran out very completely.

(END VIDEO CLIP) CORNISH: We're going to have live team coverage from across the Middle East. We begin in Tel Aviv with the latest from CNN's Oren Liebermann.

Oren, I'm going to start with you, because the U.S. and Israel, of course, these are joint strikes on Tehran. Can you give us the latest? OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF AND INTERNATIONAL

CORRESPONDENT: Well, we've seen both Israel and the United States carry out additional and intensifying strikes on Iran and on the capital of Tehran.

Israel announced late last night they were -- that they were carrying out an additional wave, although they didn't specify the targets.

We have seen Israel go after the regime itself. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, as well as the military apparatus of the regime and much, much more.

Meanwhile, at the same time, the U.S. has gone after, for example, the Iranian navy and -- and ballistic missile arrays and launchers. That's where you see that video from U.S. Central Command, where they showed striking what they appeared -- what appears to be three separate missile launchers of the Iranian regime, ballistic missile launchers, that is, in what appeared to be hiding positions in tunnels and under trees.

Iran still retains at least some capability to fire on Israel, because just about two hours ago, we got a siren warning of incoming ballistic missile fire. We saw that several times throughout the day yesterday.

So, the war that is now in its 11th morning here continues at the intense pace that we have seen with President Donald Trump, threatening that it could get worse for Iran with additional and heavier strikes.

CORNISH: And in the meantime, I understand Israel has ordered further mass evacuations from the area of Southern Lebanon. And then at the same time, you hear the Lebanese president talking about a diplomatic solution. Help us square this.

LIEBERMANN: This was a remarkable statement from a Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, and it came out as he was speaking with officials from the European Union in a Zoom meeting, where he said and condemned -- accused Hezbollah of basically betraying the country of Lebanon and the people of Lebanon, saying they were working, quote, "at the calculations of the Iranian regime" and that their efforts, what they were doing, attacking Israel, would work to collapse the Lebanese government.

That is a remarkable statement coming from the president of Lebanon.

He called for a new initiative and direct talks between Israel and Lebanon for a permanent cessation of hostilities, an end to the war, and a final agreement on the border and on security.

The question, Audie, is, will Israel engage on this? Considering we had two Israeli sources telling us that Israel is considering a deeper push into Lebanon, it looks like Israel is not taking this seriously.

CORNISH: OK that's Oren Liebermann talking to us from Tel Aviv.

I want to bring in the group chat now. We have got Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director at the National Security Institute; Alexandra Ward, national security reporter with "The Wall Street Journal"; and Jennifer Gavito, former deputy assistant secretary of state for Iran in public policy.

So, I wanted to talk to you guys. We have a state of play on the battlefield, so to speak. And I want to get a sense from you about how the president is talking about this at home, because he was just speaking recently at a retreat last night.

[06:05:11]

So, first, we've been hearing different reasons. Now we're hearing kind of mixed messaging on what has been accomplished so far.

The president saying, I think the war is very complete, pretty much. And then -- then if you check the social media for DoD, they say, "No mercy. And we have only just begun to fight," Internet caps.

So, you have worked at DoD. Can you talk about the split screen here between the active fighting, this thing is still going on, possibly in another phase, and the president already coming out and speaking in terms of victory?

JENNIFER GAVITO, FORMER DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR IRAN IN PUBLIC POLICY: In my view, this really is reflective of the fact that we don't yet know what the overall objective is.

I think it's fair for the president to say that many of the operational objectives have, in fact, been met. Certainly, degradation of the missile program and of the naval fleet.

But if you go back to statements over the last few days looking for total surrender, ongoing discussion about regime collapse, then that is still a long way off.

And so, until the administration really coalesces around a single definition of what "mission accomplished" looks like here, what success looks like, then I think all of these things can be true at once.

CORNISH: And I should be clear: we have not heard the phrase "mission accomplished," but we have heard this. This is the president over the last couple of hours and days.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: Will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated.

We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough.

We've struck over 5,000 targets to date, some of them very major targets, and we've left some of the most important targets for later.

We could call it a tremendous success right now. As we leave here, I could call it. Or we could go further, and we're going to go further. (END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Those last ones were just in the same speech. But there is a difference between an operation, and a mission, and a war.

ALEXANDER WARD, NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT, "THE WALL STREET JOURNAL": Yes. I mean there's no question this has been a military success in the way that they've been doing this.

The question is, towards what end? To what end are you using the military? And the political objective here remains unclear. As you heard the president say. He's saying right now we could leave, right?

CORNISH: Yes.

WARD: We could say we've taken out the leader. We've taken out a lot of their navy, missile and other and other locations and -- and sites and now we could go ahead and say we did what we did, because the real mission here was the degradation of the military threat from Iran.

CORNISH: Yes. Does the fact that they kept it mixed, gave this long list going in make it easier for them, meaning that their takeaway from the Bush years was don't go out and say a bunch of things that will be held against you later.

JAMIL JAFFER, FOUNDER & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NATIONAL SECURITY INSTITUTE: I think that's exactly it. If you set a certain set of goals and you don't reach them then you can be accused of not having done what you said you were going to do.

If, on the other hand, you say, well, we've won, but we haven't quite won. We've hit a lot of major targets. There are more to hit. You know, we want the Iranian people to rise up. We'll set the conditions; you rise up. You've created a scenario where you can do --

CORNISH: You can rise up. What does that mean? Right? What does that look like? And what would you support? No answer on any of those three questions.

JAFFER: Exactly right.

CORNISH: OK. I want to show you how voters are receiving this. There's been recent polling, this time from Quinnipiac. Has the Trump administration provided a clear explanation behind military action? We broke this out for you by party, so you can see.

Even looking at independents, where I always look that number at 71 percent [SIC]. And surprisingly, Republicans at 75 percent, yes. Like, I feel like that, actually, is a little lower than I thought it would be.

And also, how much longer do you think the war in Iran will last? You've got voters looking at the options of days, weeks, months, about a year, longer than that. People giving it months. They're -- they're not expecting this to be short. And honestly, this looks sort of like a pragmatic assessment. GAVITO: Completely agree. That seems totally realistic.

CORNISH: For not military people, right? For like average Joes you're calling on the phone, they're expecting this.

But are they expecting and do you think they will support the economic pain that could come with it? And some of the more complex things, if we get tangled in the region?

JAFFER: Well, I think that's exactly what President Trump is trying to figure out himself. The reason you see these mixed messages, as the president is trying to assess what -- how far can he go? How much pressure do you put on the Iranian government and the regime to ultimately collapse?

Will the American people support a longer war? Will they accept higher gas prices? We saw him recently reduce sanctions on Russia in order to get more oil on the market.

CORNISH: Yes. Or even the casualties, right? He's sort of been like war happens, but I don't know how much longer they think people are going to be down with that.

You guys stay with me, because we are actually going to talk about some of these topics more. We have more experts coming in.

Our breaking news coverage continues after the break, and we're going to focus on this: The 180 children and teachers killed in an attack on a school. So, what the president has said he knows about this.

Plus, a seventh soldier killed in action brought home to the U.S.

[06:10:06]

And is Cuba the next foreign government on the president's list?

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CORNISH: President Trump still struggling to respond to the question of whether or not it was a U.S. bomb which fell on an elementary school in Iran last week.

It killed more than 180 students and teachers in the opening hours of the war.

Videos analyzed by weapons experts show what appears to be a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile hitting a military target in the town of Minab.

But as the camera pans to the right, you can see a large plume of smoke rising over the site of where the school is located. And this is just outside the main gate of the military facility.

Now, over the weekend, President Trump blamed Iran for the bombing, but when asked again Monday, he said this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war.

But you're the only person in your government saying this. Even your defense secretary wouldn't say that when he was asked, standing over your shoulder on your plane on Saturday. Why are you the only person saying this?

TRUMP: Because I just don't know enough about it. I think it's something that I was told is under investigation.

But Tomahawks are -- are used by others, as you know. Numerous other nations have Tomahawks. They buy them from us. But I will certainly -- whatever the report shows, I'm willing to live with that report.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: All right. Joining me now, I'm bringing in retired U.S. Army Major General Randy Manner. Thank you so much for being here.

I wanted to talk about this because you are familiar sort of with how a potential investigation would work. And can you talk about how you see the administration is talking about this?

MAJ. GEN. RANDY MANNER (RET.), U.S. ARMY: First of all, I do want to express my condolences to the families of the fallen soldiers so far. And of course, to all of the civilians that have been impacted by this, whether by death or by injury and their families on all sides. Because those are very -- they're significant tragedies.

In this particular case, anytime that there is a suspected impact on civilians, the first thing that is -- that happens is there would be a -- an initial investigation followed by, of course, a far more detailed investigation to determine what is the truth? What exactly happened? Was it a malfunction? Was it intentional? And to separate what is fact and what is fiction?

And then after the investigation has been conducted, then, of course, those results would be released. The objective, of course, is to say that, of course, the United States does not ever want to impact and kill civilians. And whether again, by accident or literally by a missile that may have been -- gone in the wrong direction.

So, in the end there could be an apology. There could be reparations. This is something that has happened in the past in Iraq on numerous occasions --

CORNISH: Yes.

MANNER: -- where things -- munitions did not do what they were supposed to do.

CORNISH: Now, the White House and Karoline Leavitt has said specifically, the U.S. does not target civilians. People have been talking about the intelligence here, given that this was near a military base.

But I think the reason why people are asking these questions in part, is because the defense secretary has really made it his business to delineate how the U.S. goes to war now versus the Iraq era. No more what he calls "politically correct" wars.

Here he is on March 4.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: We're playing for keeps. Our warfighters have maximum authorities granted personally by the president and yours truly.

Our rules of engagement are bold, precise, and designed to unleash American power, not shackle it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: That "not shackle it" bit I want to ask you, what's the difference? And how does that play out in a scenario around, you know, questionable casualties?

MANNER: The secretary of defense's own words in writing. I'm very concerned, where he basically talks about ripping the arms and legs off of people -- of prisoners.

It's extremely difficult for the average soldier to understand. Wait a second: Why is it that we have removed all training from basic training for our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines about the Geneva Convention, for example?

Why have we removed so many JAG officers from the military to overlook the legal implications of various kinds of strikes?

So, this idea of having very open-ended or no rules of engagement is dangerous, not only, of course, to the reputation of the United States. It's also very dangerous for our soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines that could be captured or kept in -- or in harm's way.

If we don't treat people under the Geneva Convention and according to the rules of international law, then we, obviously, could be subject to the same issues in reverse.

So, I think this is very dangerous, opening Pandora's box the way the secretary of defense has been explaining this for the past year.

CORNISH: I want to ask you about something else, because I understand you were among those who had been in the region at the start of the war --

MANNER: Yes.

CORNISH: -- and got one of these flights out. Do you have a sense of why it was so disorganized, why the U.S. was not among those countries that was able to move quickly to help people such as yourself get out? [06:20:13]

MANNER: So, my plane was forced down by missiles at Abu Dhabi Airport. We -- after we landed, you can imagine thousands of cell phones going off in the airport in the same way, in the United States, you have tornado warning alerts. Very loud. There was both a little bit of panic with a little bit of being in shock.

Move away from glass. But in every airport it's almost all glass.

Then, of course, over the days, incoming missile alerts. I was on one of only 12 aircraft that departed on Wednesday morning from Dubai. We took off, after a fourth attempt, with actually incoming missiles that hit only five miles away at the U.S. Consulate in the -- in Dubai.

We -- as soon as we took off, we had two UAE F-16 fighters escort us out of the area to -- they escorted us in terms of if we were -- if we got under fire by any missiles, they could intercept them.

So, my hat is off to the UAE and for their government picking up the tabs of hotels and food for the literally tens and tens of thousands of Americans and other people who were there.

This was definitely a very difficult situation, particularly for most of the civilians that were there, whether American or not --

CORNISH: Yes.

MANNER: -- who, quite frankly, were abandoned by our government, where they couldn't take care of us.

CORNISH: That's retired U.S. Army Major General Randy Manner. Thank you. And I'm glad you're here safely.

MANNER: Thank you.

CORNISH: Next on CNN THIS MORNING, our breaking news coverage continues. The oil crisis deepens, and the President, Trump, is talking about Russia's Vladimir Putin. What's going on with that?

Plus, fears of a much wider war. British fighter jets deployed to protect allies in the Middle East.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[06:26:19]

CORNISH: It's now 25 minutes past the hour. Here are five things to know to get your day going.

We're looking at the body of the seventh U.S. service member killed in the war, now back on U.S. soil. Vice President Vance oversaw the military dignified transfer. This happened last night at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.

Twenty-six-year-old army Sergeant Benjamin Pennington of Glendale, Kentucky, died after being injured in an Iranian attack on an air base in Saudi Arabia.

And British fighter jets intercept drones in defense of Jordan and Bahrain on Monday. That's according to the British ministry of defense.

The U.K. has also started conducting defensive flights in support of the UAE.

The U.S. Ally has deployed more military resources, military resources to the region after a drone hit a British air base in Cyprus last week.

President Trump setting his sights on toppling another foreign government, this time Cuba. While talking about the operation in Iran on Monday, the president issued a fresh round of threats against a country he says is in deep trouble.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It may be a friendly takeover. It may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn't matter, because they're really in -- they're down to, as they say, fumes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CORNISH: Now, at this point, Cuba is in the middle of an energy crisis as the U.S. rolls out an oil blockade of the island after cutting off supplies from its main exporter, Venezuela.

And Southwest relaxing its checked bag policy at Houston's Hobby Airport as long security lines continue amid the TSA shortage. This is, of course, due to the ongoing DHS shutdown.

Southwest typically does not allow bags to be checked more than four hours before the flight, but with the long lines, it's now accepting them at Hobby up to five hours before takeoff.

And rush hour is about to take on a whole new meaning. On the streets of Washington, D.C., officials unveiling the track for the IndyCar Freedom 250 Grand Prix. It's a new race planned as part of celebrations for the United States' 250th anniversary.

It's going to feature seven turns around some of America's most iconic landmarks.

We're going to continue our breaking news coverage of the war in Iran with an urgent search. Crews race to rescue residents in Tehran after the U.S. and Israel bomb a residential building.

Plus, a terror threat. How law enforcement is preparing for attacks on U.S. soil as the war in Iraq drags on.

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[06:30:00]