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Erin Burnett Outfront
Trump: U.S. Will "Avenge" Death Of Three U.S. Service Members; Trump: Iran Conflict Could Last "Four Weeks Or So"; Trump: 48 Iranian Leaders "Are Gone" After U.S.-Israeli Strikes; Now: Israeli Forces Striking Hezbollah Targets Across Lebanon; Iran Releases Propaganda Video Showing Drone Tunnels; Sources: CIA Tracked Khamenei For Months For Right Moment To Strike; Police Release Photo Of Austin Gunman; Iran: Trump Crossed "Dangerous Red Line" By Killing Khamenei. Aired 9- 10p ET
Aired March 01, 2026 - 21:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT (on-camera): But they are currently striking in Dahieh, the southern suburbs of Beirut. Multiple strikes have been reported in Beirut at this hour. And this is a new front in this war, and I think that --
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Yes.
DIAMOND (on-camera): -- you're going to see Israel significantly focused on targets across Lebanon, Hezbollah targets there. This is going to be a major front --
BURNETT: Interesting. And this incoming that we heard, you know, they said in open areas they didn't want to waste their defenses perhaps on those, you know, unclear what the reason was. But you know, we certainly heard them without any warning.
All right, Jeremy Diamond, thank you very much.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN breaking news.
BURNETT: And good evening. I'm Erin Burnett, and welcome to this special Sunday edition of "OutFront" live from Tel Aviv. It is now 4 o'clock in the morning where we are standing with an entire region now under attack. And here where I am, we've heard those explosions within the past hour as the U.S. and Israeli war with Iran is escalating.
Most recently, explosions to the north near Lebanon where a new front of this war appears to be opening up. The Israeli defense forces says that it struck senior Hezbollah terrorists in the Beirut area, the Beirut suburbs after Israel says it intercepted several projectiles launched into Israel from Lebanon just within the past hour.
It all comes as President Trump says, the strikes on Iran may continue for up to four weeks. And we are learning that the three American service members who were killed in action were stationed in Kuwait on the base there. The source is telling CNN tonight that they were killed by a suspected drone strike for Iran. Five others were seriously wounded and the President of the United States is now saying that there may be more, significantly more American deaths as the operations against Iran continue.
And tonight, a new warning from Iran's foreign minister after the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei was killed in the initial strike. He says that Khamenei's death makes this war more dangerous and more complicated. Well, that seems to be the case right now as it plays out a sobering statement given what we have seen so far just even over these past 40 hours since this began.
You can see the number of locations targeted by U.S., Israeli, and Iranian forces, sort of a back and forth now across this region. U.S. and Israeli strikes in red. Iranian strikes in yellow. And we have a team of reporters across this region tonight as we cover this for you.
And I want to begin though at the White House where President Trump has been making these comments and some, you know, brief interviews and now saying this to the New York Times about more service members likely dying, talking about a timeframe to the Daily Mail.
And Kristen, you're getting limited information though, I mean from the White House about the attack. You know, they -- when it came to Venezuela so quick to go out and have that press conference, we were all watching it in real time. ere though other than those very brief television interviews, no public questions being relatively quiet about this. Do you know why and whether that will change imminently?
KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT (on-camera): Well, it certainly doesn't think -- seem like it's going to change. I mean, just remember Erin, it wasn't just the press conference. It was that after what happened in Venezuela, we saw President Trump at the cameras a number of times. They put out administration officials. President Trump would take questions about the capture of Maduro almost every time he was seen in public.
This is not a setup, the current set -- schedule that we've seen for tomorrow that is conducive to questions. He has much of his day behind closed doors, policy time, executive time, signing time. He has one Medal of Honor ceremony, which we will see him in public. We'll see if he talks about this at all during those remarks, but that's not conducive to questions. Those events are in the East Room and it's hard to get access to him to actually ask him questions. And of course, no White House briefing.
So unclear if any of this will open up, if any of this will change. But right now, it certainly seems as though the White House is keeping the messaging to these very strict scripted videos that President Trump has done and that have been edited by the White House. There was no press present and then this kind of short three to five-minute interviews that he's been doing over the phone. Remember, we saw no administration officials out there talking about this. And in fact, the only information that we've really gotten from the administration other than again, these interviews that President Trump is doing, which Erin, some of them have been inconsistent.
At one point, he said he could get out in two days of Iran. Then he said it was going to take four weeks. It was always going to be four weeks. Statement he put out said it would at least be one more week. But in addition to that, we didn't see any of these administration officials putting anything out there. And the only thing we got was a background briefing from administration officials in which they said that there was new intel that indicated potential preemptive strikes from Iran.
Well, my colleagues, Natasha Bertrand and Zach Cohen are now reporting that during a briefing today, Pentagon officials told Hill staffers that there was no new or imminent threat. There was nothing preemptive that everything was essentially that Iran is a threat, which of course we know, but there was no indication of why we're -- now why these strikes had to happen.
[21:05:11]
So a lot of questions here, Erin.
BURNETT: Yes, definitely a lot of questions in that. That contradiction on imminent threat is obviously beyond an elephant in the room.
Kristen Holmes, thank you very much.
And I want to go now to Congressman Jason Crow, a Democrat who sits on both the House Armed Services as well as the Intelligence committee. He's also a former Army Ranger. He served in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
So Congressman Crow, I appreciate your time. We've now confirmed that there are three U.S. service members killed by an Iranian drone at the U.S. base in Kuwait. We know there's an investigation to how that happened, but what President Trump just told the New York Times incredibly sobering, he said that Defense Department projections, so the number of U.S. casualties -- and I want to quote to you, Congressman Crow, could be quite a bit higher than that.
What does that say to you?
REP. JASON CROW (D-CO): Oh, I'm furious, Erin. I'm absolutely furious because Donald Trump is very cavalier with other people's lives. He loves pounding his chest and acting tough and talking about the cost of war. But he knows nothing about the cost of war, nor do his billionaire donors, nor do any of the political elites in the White House that he's surrounded himself with. They are very quick to play with other people's lives and other people's money, right? They are doing this without debate, without transparency, without any justification and who is left holding the bag but our service members and the working class of this country.
BURNETT: U.S. intelligence does not back up the argument that Iran was, you know, had making progress on ballistic missiles that could hit the United States. So we already know about that inconsistency, but senior administration officials yesterday said something else in addition. They said that the U.S. attacked Iran because Iran was planning to strike the U.S. preemptively and pose an imminent threat. They were implying, you know, an imminent threat to U.S. installations in the region. Perhaps U.S. bases. But then Pentagon briefers told congressional staff today. So one day later, your staff is told Iran is not planning to strike U.S. forces or bases in the Middle East unless Iran -- Israel attacked Iran first, which of course it did in this case, and now we're seeing it.
So do you think that the people briefing you are -- or that are saying these things are just lying? Are they -- what -- what's happening here?
CROW: Yes. Yes. They are lying to us and to the American people. That is what is happening here. There is no intelligence. I want to be really clear. There's no intelligence that shows an imminent threat to Americans or the American people from Iran.
Now, Iran is a rogue terrorist regime. That is true, but there has to be an imminent threat to us for the President to unilaterally conduct military action without congressional debate and without congressional authorization. And the reason why Congressional involvement is important here is because that is the accountability mechanism. That's the accountability mechanism to make sure that we don't have a president that'll get us into a quagmire without the consent of the American people because it's the American people that have to do the fighting and the dying and the financing of it. And they're just bypassing this whole process and they're lying to us about it, right?
The analysis doesn't begin and end with, is Iran bad? Right? Iran is bad. The regime is bad. There's no doubt about it. But the Taliban was also bad. ISIS is also bad. Saddam Hussein was also bad and we screwed up those conflicts in a pretty big way. So this has to be course corrected and it has to be corrected immediately.
BURNETT: OK. But how does Congress do that? Because right now, I think so many in the United States, they look at Congress and it seems at best that you have your arms and legs tied, right? Your arms are tied behind your back, your legs are tied together. I mean, is there anything Congress can actually do to so-called course correct as you're calling it?
CROW: Well, my immediate concern is the protection of our service men and women who have been put in a terrible position right now. We're already seeing fatalities. And my heart goes out to those families who have just heard the most devastating news that their loved ones have been killed in action, right? And there is tremendous danger for the almost 50,000 service members who are in this region is this snowballs out of control.
So we are pressing hard, Democrats in Congress are pressing hard for answers. How are they going to protect our force? Do we have enough munitions to protect our force? Do we have the intelligence to make sure that we can intercept these drones and these missiles? So we are pushing hard for answers and I'm returning early to Washington to do that.
Then we're also going to force a vote. Either on Wednesday, probably Thursday, so we can actually take a tally of who's willing to actually stand up in Congress and exercise your constitutional duty, not just your right but your duty to say whether or not the President should be doing this without the consent of the American people. So we're going to take a vote and we're going to take that tally.
[21:10:15]
BURNETT: All right, Congressman Crow, I appreciate it. Thank you very much.
And here on the ground, in the Middle East, here in Tel Aviv tonight, Nick Paton Walsh joins me. You know, it is pretty sobering what he's saying, that, you know what they're being briefed on that he's saying it's a lie, right? I mean, it just -- again and again, we're told there was this specific threat. There was this one. And then the intelligence --
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY EDITOR (on-camera): Yes.
BURNETT: -- comes out and says that that's not the case. It is a pretty stunning moment.
WALSH (on-camera): Yes. I mean, look, it's sort of -- it's almost like 2003 all over again when the U.S. invaded Iraq, but no one's bothering to put up the kind of general pretense or justification for it. They're essentially just saying, we're going to do this and try to clean up the mess afterwards. And I think all of this increases the pressure on the longevity of this whole exercise, because if we find ourselves in a week's long or a month's long enterprise here, then these questions are going to get more vocal, more precise.
And we're still dealing with the issue that way back in March of last year, the DNI assessment was that Khamenei had not ordered his officials to restart the pursuit of a nuclear weapon.
BURNETT: Right.
WALSH (on-camera): Yet still, we had the June bombing. Yet still, we had the suspicions emerging here. The problem I think, for the Trump administration is if your goal really is regime change, which if you read through all of this, that seems to be ultimately what it is.
BURNETT: Yes.
WALSH (on-camera): This current plan doesn't seem to get them there right now.
BURNETT: No.
WALSH (on-camera): If you listen to what President said earlier on, long range missiles and nuclear weapons were the things that he was really keen to see gone.
BURNETT: Yes.
WALSH (on-camera): And it was kind of like a nice to have, if there was a popular operation -- BURNETT: And I mean not to get into military theory, but when you read so much of it out there, right, that it -- regime change such that it has ever been, has not been accomplished merely through air power, that it would require --
WALSH (on-camera): Absolutely.
BURNETT: -- ground troops, something that certainly the U.S. has -- there's been no indication that they want to do that.
OK. But I guess this raises the question then we know what the goal is here in Israel, right? This is an opportunity literally of his lifetime for Prime Minister Netanyahu for regime change, for something different.
WALSH (on-camera): Yes.
BURNETT: When you look at Trump's map in Venezuela, right, he -- that was about regime change except for it wasn't. It was about somebody who was pliant even if they were as much an engineer --
WALSH (on-camera): We're seeing manipulation, yes.
BURNETT: -- of the existing regime as Maduro, right in the form of Delcy Rodriguez. So those two goals don't seem to match.
WALSH (on-camera): Yes.
BURNETT: So, what then happens?
WALSH (on-camera): I mean, we are potentially dealing with a moment of hubris here, right, where somebody thinks that the success, relative as it is in Venezuela, can be easily applied to here. But we don't know what the final calculation was prior to this launching, whether there was simply a decision between Israel and the United States that by removing this vast part of the autocratic regime in Iraq --
BURNETT: Sort of a moment of opportunity with this meeting.
WALSH (on-camera): -- that would just by definition --
BURNETT: Yes.
WALSH (on-camera): -- would suddenly somehow make everything better, that you couldn't get any worse. But I don't think all the unknowns we have here now of who's going to lead? Are they going to be a hard liner? Are we going to see any popular around rising here? Like what we're seeing with Hezbollah here, which it seems as though a very weak group is making an awful mistake here. But that's repeating what we're seeing --
BURNETT: Yes.
WALSH (on-camera): -- for a lot of Iran across the region here, attacking neighbors who weren't in the fight but are now in the fight -- BURNETT: Yes.
WALSH (on-camera): -- bringing in Hezbollah and potentially opening up another front, which will increasingly devastate their position already very weak inside Lebanon as well. All this poor strategizing is essentially the risk of the unknown of things start to spiral --
BURNETT: Yes.
WALSH (on-camera): -- out of control and stop this from being what seemed to start as a limited decapitation exercise where they had a massive hope there'd be some kind of popular uprising and change, and now we have to deal with these unintended --
BURNETT: Yes.
WALSH (on-camera): -- consequences spiraling out.
BURNETT: Right, right. Yes. Certainly the -- if there was a belief that there would be this would happen Saturday morning and by the night there would be mass, mass people in the street. Obviously, that has not happened.
All right, Nick Paton Walsh, thank you very much.
And our breaking news coverage continues the attacks on Iran and Israel intensifying tonight with new attacks now being reported in Lebanon.
We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:17:38]
BURNETT: And we are back with this special edition of "OutFront" live from Tel Aviv on this Sunday night.
Now, here in the early hours of Monday morning, the IDF has just put out a warning for people in Southern Lebanon to evacuate immediately as the war expands. The Israeli military is confirming it struck senior Hezbollah terrorists in the Beirut area. Our Jeremy Diamond reporting they were using some of their heavier bunker buster type bombs to do that here, just in the past hour or so.
President Trump is just speaking to the New York Times and telling them at this hour that the war, quote, won't be difficult. We have tremendous amounts of ammunition. You know, we have ammunition stored all over the world in different countries.
The President also telling the Daily Mail that he expects this to go on for four weeks, as our Kristen Holmes has pointed out. Other times he said two days. So it's very unclear. But the four weeks, obviously and rightfully getting a lot of attention.
Seth Jones is with us now, former advisor to the Commanding General of U.S. Special Forces in Afghanistan. Nazila Fathi is a former New York Times correspondent. She was based in Tehran for a decade, forced to flee the country with her husband and children. And she is author of The Lonely War. And also tonight, retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt.
All right, I'm grateful to all of you.
So Seth, President Trump telling the New York Times that this conflict, quote, won't be difficult because we have tremendous amounts of ammunition all over the world. Of course, it also comes as the reality of U.S. Missile defense batteries, THAAD. It has been obviously dropping precipitously without known replacement. What do you say to the President's comment tonight, though, that this is -- this won't be difficult because we have tremendous amounts of ammunition around the world?
SETH JONES, PRESIDENT DEFENSE & SECURITY DEPARTMENT, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC & INTL STUDIES: Well, Erin, I think one of the most significant concern is air defense, as you mentioned. Patriot munitions, PAC-2, PAC-3, as well as THAAD. I mean, it's worth noting that last year over the span of just about a week, the U.S. expended about a quarter of its THAAD munitions in defense of Israel last year. And at this point too, we don't have the Houthis yet that have entered the war. They may or they may not. If they do, then we're going to have to use some of those air defense systems as well to target their cruise missiles, they got ballistic missiles and they've got drones.
So part of the question is, how confident we are that this won't spread more?
[21:20:05]
BURNETT: And General Kimmitt, I mean, I suppose this is -- that is the real question. I mean, how confident can one be? I mean, there's been so far in terms of what many had expected might happen in the immediate after that -- aftermath, certainly in the administration has not come to fruition. So you know, where do you see this heading?
MARK KIMMITT, FMR DEPUTY ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE, MIDDLE EAST POLICY: Well, first of all, I agree with Seth. The real issue is not necessarily to have enough ammunition for this fight, but it's for the other potential fights around the world. Obviously, the European command wants for Ukraine. The INDOPACOM commander wants to make sure he has enough to defend against China.
Where does this go? In many ways, it's not up to the President nor is it up to Netanyahu, it's up to the Iranians. But this fight is going to go on until they capitulate and return to the negotiating table under different terms and are willing to accede --
BURNETT: Yes.
KIMMITT: -- to the demands of the United States.
BURNETT: And I actually, you know, the Omani foreign minister who has been central to the talks obviously tried to avert this obviously on Friday night by talking about the terms is out again, saying diplomacy is still on the table, which I want to ask about in a moment.
But Nazila, you know, when the general says this comes down to the Iranians, obviously talking about the IRGC and Iranian leadership such that it is, what about the Iranian people, Nazila? You have family still inside Iran. I know your mother is among them. What is the best feeling you have right now for what people are feeling on the ground there?
NAZILA FATHI, FMR NEW YORK TIMES CORRESPONDENT BASED IN TEHRAN: Well, Iranians are hunkering down now. I mean, let's not forget that they just endured one of the worst massacres in the modern history of Iran. They were numb by that. And then when the news came that there's going to be a war, they started stalking food. They started making sure that they're going to be OK for a couple of weeks. I speak to people on the ground and there is no traffic in large cities. People either have fled the cities or they're just staying home.
I don't think Iranians are in a situation to come out again, protest, try to overthrow the regime. I think they are all waiting to see what's going to happen, especially because they see no fracture yet. I mean, they are -- the regime is still running the country. The missiles are being fired. They are getting constant messages from the regime telling them what to do, what's happening. So there is no sign that the regime is on the verge of collapse.
BURNETT: Seth, what is the significance of what Nazila just said? Because when you hear the IDF and you hear the U.S. administration talking about, we took out 48 leaders in one meeting, we decapitated, we -- right. OK. You think something very different, the way they set the stage is going to happen than what Nazila just described, right? That she's saying no fracture yet, and a regime, maybe not individuals, but a regime still very much in charge communicating with people.
I mean, Seth, what is the significance of that?
JONES: Well, Erin, I think what's significant is that the U.S. is trying to engineer a regime change from the air. I mean, I suspect there are a small number of U.S. personnel on the ground. I'd be surprised, frankly, if there weren't intelligence personnel on the ground.
BURNETT: Yes.
JONES: Can -- you can't really engineer or regime change and expect that you can have a significant influence over the outcome from the air. So I think this raises a lot of questions about the future of the regime. And if the U.S. is unhappy with the regime that largely stays in place, will they continue to conduct strikes? Or if you get civil war and you get the regime cracking down and killing large numbers of protesters, will they conduct strikes to prevent that from happening?
I just see a lot of potential scenarios where the U.S. may want to continue to conduct strikes. So I think it's going to be hard to put a specific timeline on this. BURNETT: General Kimmitt, when you hear the point that Seth was making about regime change from the air never having been successful before, I'm curious how you see this in the context of President Trump saying that there are likely going to be notably more U.S. casualties. I mean, do you see that? It's just his belief of how things will continue to go the way they are now, or is that somehow opening the door to a broader involvement?
KIMMITT: Well, I think we had president here, he'd say, nobody's talking regime change and certainly not from the air. We're talking about regime decapitation, take out the highest level of the most extreme members of the government. And if they can be replaced by moderates, fine. If they can't be replaced by moderates, well then we'll keep this war going. But the most important thing right now is that we don't have a regime vacuum, a vacuum inside of Iran as Nazila said, where nobody knows who's in charge. The Army goes out on its own.
[21:25:18]
Look, there's some value into having order over the next couple of weeks, so at least we have somebody to be talking to. Pezeshkian and the leadership that is now providing a transitional council may be the right people to talk to. Pezeshkian is known to be a moderate. But the important thing is to see what happens to the IRGC and the other security instruments. The fact remains if we can get through this --
BURNETT: Yes.
KIMMITT: -- with simply a regime decapitation replaced by moderate government that we can talk to, I think that's really what we are trying to get. And I think that's what the President is trying to get.
BURNETT: Yes, interesting just thinking about, you know, when Ahmadinejad or Rouhani or Pezeshkian would breach the press how they came across differently. Ahmadinejad is so much more conservative. Obviously, they say they've taken him out. Pezeshkian, though more moderate even in his presentation but of course fully in line with the Supreme Leader and the accolades that he would talk about of him.
Nazila, obviously Pezeshkian is still alive and as -- and in Iran right now, the President. And the Iranians have just put out this propaganda video. I'm going to show it. It's video, I understand, of drones in a tunnel. So it's propaganda. But I guess to show sort of their stockpile. We're talking about drones. We know they've got a lot of them, right? How many have been used in Iran? I mean, I'm sorry, In Ukraine, I believe up to 57,000.
What does it say to you, Nazila, that they're, I guess to your point, that it's functioning, right? You're getting the propaganda video, you're getting the photos, you're getting that the -- you know, there is some sort of a state apparatus functioning.
FATHI: Definitely. They are flexing their muscles. They are showing their strength. They are trying to intimidate not only the United States and Israel, but also other countries in the region that they have attacked.
And I just want to go back to Pezeshkian. He has become a member of the so-called Interim Council along with two other clerics. The other two clerics are quite radical. One of them is a 67-year-old that we know very little about, but he's appointee by the Supreme Leader himself. And the other cleric is a judge and the head of the judiciary who has been behind jailing of reporters, reformist politicians from the early thousands, and he's the one who's signing death sentences of protestors.
So I highly doubt that the interim council that is now making decisions is going to be more compliant or more moderate, especially under the current conditions that any kind of opposition would be seen as treason.
BURNETT: Yes. Thank you very much for sharing all of that such insight. Thank you all. I appreciate you.
And next, we do have new satellite images coming in of military bases across Iran. To understand better what they do, show what has happened so far.
We're going to go through each of those images, show exactly what we understand that they factually show right after this.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[21:31:57]
BURNETT: We are back with a special edition of "OutFront." We are live in Tel Aviv with the breaking news of this moment.
The Pentagon just releasing new video of strikes on fighter jets and drones in Iran and they put a message with it saying, U.S. Force is taking bold action. And it comes as we have obtained incredible new satellite imagery and this is really important. It does show extensive damage at military bases across Iran as you might expect, but that is what it shows
Now we're using these images to piece together how the United States managed to kill the country's supreme leader and so many around him that they -- they, you know, after they thought dark was this light. Darkness was done. They're going to have this meeting and was taken out the U.S., we understand had secretly been trailing him with intelligence for months.
Katie Polglase is out front with this incredible report.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KATIE POLGLASE, CNN REPORTER (voice-over): With Iran very much still under attack, we've been using videos and satellite images like this, one of the strike on the Supreme Leader's office to analyze how the senior leadership was dismantled by U.S. and Israeli strikes, and where exactly they've hit. POLGLASE: We now know from U.S. and Israeli sources that the CIA along with Israeli intelligence had been tracking Iran's senior leadership for months. Then came intelligence about a perfect opportunity to strike in broad daylight, when many of Iran's top officials would be in the same place at once.
POLGLASE (voice-over): And that place was here the leadership house and the hub of Iran's power. It's also the office of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei now confirmed dead. It's in a very old traditional Tehran neighborhood surrounded by government office, scientific institutions and museums.
Khamenei was known to not leave this compound much. He was seen here in this video just last week addressing crowds at a mosque. The Israelis say they hit three sites on the compound simultaneously, we found several locations that have damage. You can see a central building completely flattened. You can also see two craters here, this one appeared to have been targeting an underground structure according to a former U.S. Special Operations Tactical Advisor Wes Bryant.
Over here, you can see crowds and emergency and construction vehicles. But this wasn't the only location hi, the intelligence ministry headquarters was also up in smoke yesterday. And then there's this strike right outside the house of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He has today been reported dead by some Iranian outlets. CNN has not been able to confirm his death.
Ali Shamkhani a senior advisor to the Supreme Leader has also been reported dead by the Iranian authorities. He narrowly escaped death last June when Israel struck his home in this precise targeting of a top-floor apartment, almost miraculously he emerged from the rubble days later. This time, he was not so lucky. But others have been. The Iranian foreign minister here Abbas Araghchi was away in Geneva this week. The Amman Foreign Ministry posted this picture of him meeting his counterpart just four days ago, that trip may have saved his life.
[21:34:58]
But Iran is very much still under attack. This IDF footage from Sunday morning shows a strike on the headquarters of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the notoriously brutal elite wing of Iran's military. What happens next remains to be seen, but Iran is aggressively fighting back.
Striking multiple U.S. allies across the Middle East, including the United Arab Emirates, fires visible here over Dubai's port area, alongside Kuwait, Qatar and Bahrain.
Katie Polglase, CNN, London.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: All right, I want to go to retired Army Major General Spider Marks now out front, Head of the Geopolitical Intelligence at Academy Securities. And, you know, when you look at Katie's reporting, I'm just -- it's
just incredible the detail and to look at that. Khamenei rarely left the compound where he was ultimately killed. OK, so in a sense, as she reports, that was common knowledge. Right. But the reason that they did this when they did it, we understand is because all of the senior leadership came in here. I mean, there was probably no bigger, you know, one strike to take out all that could have existed than this one. And they it should have been pretty obvious that such a thing could have happened, I guess, in retrospect.
I mean, what do you think, Spider? Was there any sign that this was coming to the Iranians? They obviously did not think they had been penetrated.
MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS, HEAD OF GEOPOLITICAL INTELLIGENCE, ACADEMY SECURITIES: Totally surprised. I think it's a combination of speculation on my part, but I think it's a combination of hubris on their part and the notion that they had been in negotiations with the administration over the course of several weeks and reports at the end of last week indicated that progress had been made. In other words, they probably understood that they were now negotiating their themselves into a position where there might be a delay on the part of the administration, that they were favorably aligned in some particular areas.
And so they, who knows? Who knows? It's absolutely baffling that they would do that. Right. But also, you have to understand that someone who doesn't leave the compound for weeks on end probably is not surprising. We saw that with Osama bin Laden, although he never left that thing for the longest time. But he also isolated himself and he kept it very clear that his support network was as probably well- trained as they could be to obfuscate their kind of connectivity.
In this case, bringing 40 plus leaders to see the boss, very bad idea. But again, I think it's probably those two factors that probably played into it.
BURNETT: Yes.
MARKS: They probably thought they had more time and technical talks were going to take place in Vienna on Monday. Obviously, those are off the table, of course.
BURNETT: Yes. So, it was a false sense of security. And interesting though, I mean, given his age and his health, there had been probably, never mind the infighting, but also planning for his replacement. In addition to the fact that last summer, right, I mean, his senior leadership did a ceasefire without him even knowing about it because he was in a bunker. Right.
So, you know, when we look at who's replacing him now, I guess that context does matter.
We do know, Spider, that the CIA had been tracking senior leadership in Iran though for months. OK. For months. Can you, you know, as having spent your career doing intel as well, how much preparation and planning, like what goes into doing that?
MARKS: Oh, it's a phenomenal amount of trade craft. And it's just not the four months, the three months that has been reported. This is, opportunities like this are very rare. And the preparation is extremely long.
You know, the horizon is quite considerable. You go into very, very deep patterns of life. You use all manners of intelligence. You're getting all the signals intelligence. You're reading their e-mails. You're into their phones. You check their patterns, as I've indicated. And then you've got the human element, as you've described, which is those, those sightings that occur as a matter of routine. And then also you look at the possibility for penetration into the inner circle, or at some point, and every, every senior leader has got multiple circles, these concentric circles, right? The levels that they trust, the levels that they may not trust, or they trust less.
So it is an incredibly long horizon of work that allows you to get into a position, to a position to say, look, I've got a level of confidence that they're going to meet tomorrow. And that's all I have. And this is where the location is. Then you take it from there.
BURNETT: Yes. It's a stunning too, when you think that they're, they're -- they're most likely on multiple, you know, important points, are human beings deceiving each other.
All right. Thank you very much, Spider. I appreciate you.
And next, we've got the breaking news law enforcement investigating whether the gunman in Texas behind the mass shooting that we've seen that a horrible deadly shooting in Austin was motivated by the strikes in Iran.
[21:40:07]
We'll be right back with some new developments on that tonight.
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BURNETT: Breaking news as we are live here in Tel Aviv. President Trump just making new comments on the death of Iran's Supreme Leader after U.S. and Israeli strikes. Telling Jonathan Karl, quote, I got him before he got me. They tried twice. Well, I got him first.
Now, that's a reference to what U.S. intelligence believes was a plot to kill Trump in 2024. Those comments coming as law enforcement is investigating if the Iran strikes may have motivated the gunmen in a mass shooting overnight in Texas. One official telling CNN that the suspect there, who we're showing you in the image here as you can see on your screen, was wearing a hoodie reading property of Allah and a shirt with an Iranian flag design.
The FBI says other signs also indicate a potential nexus to terrorism is a word that they're using. Three people, including the gunmen, are dead. Fourteen others wounded in that horrific event in Austin. For now, Republican Congressman Mike Lawler, he is on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. And obviously right now, very, very big moment in decisions for Congress as well. Congressman, I appreciate your time.
I first just want to give you a chance to respond to what Trump just said there about the death of the Supreme Leader.
Well, thanks for having me, Erin. And certainly, I know you're in Tel Aviv, so stay safe and appreciate you being on the ground.
REP. MIKE LAWLER (R-NY): But look, this situation, the Ayatollah in charge for 47 years, you know, death to America has been their mantra. And they certainly have not only been responsible for the deaths of thousands of Americans, but they have tried to kill our political leaders, including President Trump.
[21:45:10]
And so, you know, from the standpoint of the Ayatollah being killed and his reign of terror ending, I certainly am not shedding a tear for him. And I think the world is safer today than it was yesterday.
Now, you just mentioned the situation on the ground in Austin, Texas, and obviously we will wait to hear more from local authorities. But that is one of the reasons why yesterday I put out a, a tweet saying that the Department of Homeland Security needs to be fully funded.
I understand the differences that, you know, my colleagues and I have on issues pertaining to immigration enforcement, but ICE is funded through 2029. At the moment, the Coast Guard, the TSA, Secret Service, FEMA, they are not funded. And given the situation, given what has happened in the Middle East, the threat level is rising and we need to be cognizant of that. And I think it is imperative this week that we fully fund the Department of Homeland Security immediately.
BURNETT: And I -- and I know that obviously has been one of the key points you've been making, Congressman.
I -- I do want to ask you, you know, when you said you're not shed a tear for the Ayatollah, and it's been interesting to see, you know, so many say that to share your sentiment and then to say, but that isn't necessarily the same as a war of choice.
And I'm curious as to what you make of the intelligence that's been presented publicly --
LAWLER: I can't -- I just (INAUDIBLE) --
BURNETT: -- and then what we're learning. Oh, OK. Sorry.
OK, well, while we lost the -- the Congressman's audio, obviously I'm -- I want to set up the question to him, so I'm just going to give them a second to try to work on that. But I'm going to be asking him about how Ted Cruz said that he has no indication that they were anywhere close to getting nuclear weapons because our bombing was devastating, which was Ted Cruz referring to the bombing last summer during which President Trump said Iran's nuclear program had been obliterated.
And that, that now the -- the threat of imminent, progress on that as well as imminent attacks on America were given as the intelligence justification for the strikes that we just saw. Do we have any further luck here of getting Congressman Lawler's audio back or? OK. OK. OK.
So, we're going to move on. We're going to get back to Congressman Lawler. And just because I don't want to waste the time when we do that, but I want to go on now to, we'll get this in the right place. Sorry. All right.
For Robert Kelley, who is a nuclear -- nuclear munitions tracker tracks this. He has served as Chief Nuclear Inspector in Iraq for the International Atomic Energy Agency and has also studied the nuclear program in Iran for over 20 years.
So no one knows it better than you do, Bob. And actually, as I was setting up that question that I was going to ask to Mike Lawler, I was using the -- the commentary that Ted Cruz had said about the nuclear program. And I'm just curious as to how you see it, right. That the -- the justification we've been given in -- in recent days, right, was all this progress had been made and suddenly you were hearing from Netanyahu that they were imminently about to have a nuclear weapon again. It's not -- it doesn't match at all what we heard last summer, and it also sounds like it doesn't match what people like Senator Cruz have been told.
ROBERT KELLEY, FMR CHIEF NUCLEAR INSPECTOR, IRAQ INTL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY: I haven't seen any indication that they have done much since they were obliterated back in June. They are not reconstituting the program as far as I can see, and one of the problems is it doesn't look as if even if they were making enriched uranium, which they haven't taken the weapons grade, that they've worked much on the design for a bomb itself.
So, it appears to me that this is kind of off the cuff kind of new.
BURNETT: So, you know when -- when we heard about what happened last summer, right? And there was this whole debate, Bob, and I think you and I talked at the time about what does obliteration mean and did they really obliterate the nuclear program or not? I guess what you're saying is you hadn't seen any reconstitution of it in any, you know, meaningful way since last summer.
KELLEY: There's lots of discussion about what obliterated means. There were really kind of two programs. They had a great big --
BURNETT: Yes.
KELLEY: -- program as of June that was making lots of highly enrich uranium and making fuel for reactors and things like that. Very unlikely that they would try to restart that program. It was too big. It isn't necessary, and a lot of major buildings were destroyed. The concern will be if they try to recover that, material that's enriched is 60 percent, and there they could re-enrich it to, to 90 percent very quickly using maybe a series of small centrifuge.
[21:50:03]
In fact, I brought mine with me this morning to -- to show you this is about the size and -- and operational capability of a small gas centrifuge in 1958, which these guys can make very easily. They could make hundreds of them, thousands of them in a short time, and that would allow them to enrich to a higher level.
But I don't know that anybody's seen anything like that. And we also don't know where that 60 percent rich material is. I doubt very much it's buried in, in a tunnel somewhere. They're not that stupid. They would've put it someplace safe. And there isn't very much material, it can be stored in a -- in a small building, and it doesn't have to have very high security if you don't want to have indicators.
BURNETT: Yes. And -- and interesting though, separate from the moment we're in that that mystery about where that went, had -- had never been resolved even since last summer. I'm curious, Bob, how you feel about the IEA if they were allowed back into Iran, which in the talks that, that are now obviously scuttled for now that they had said they were -- they were willing to do in some capacity.
Would the IEA be able to answer some of these questions?
KELLEY: Absolutely. I think if they get access and they get some cooperation they could do a really good job. The analogy is, in 1991, Iraq was badly bombed. All the major facilities were bombed, and we went back in and we crawled through burned out buildings and looked at, destroyed equipment, and I would say within about three months we had a pretty good idea how much material was in the country, where it was, we had a flow sheet, and that flow sheet stood up really well over the next few years.
So, I -- a -- a given access and given some cooperation and allowed to do their business under JCPOA type agreement or even under basic safeguard agreement, should be able to do a very good job.
BURNETT: Yes. All right, Bob, I appreciate your time. Thank you so much, and thank you for your flexibility as we were dealing with our technical issues. Thanks so much.
KELLEY: Sure (INAUDIBLE).
BURNETT: We're going to take a brief break as we come back here with our breaking coverage here now just around 4:30, 4:40 a.m. here in Tel Aviv day. Getting ready to dawn again in the Middle East to see what this new day will bring.
We'll be right back.
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[21:55:42]
BURNETT: One of the great tragedies of this unfolding conflict is what appears to be more than a hundred young girls in Iran killed, mistakenly in the early strike. An absolutely horrible tragedy. We are only now just learning to learn -- learning a little bit more about Isobel Yeung has been investigating this and has the very latest on what we know right now.
She's OutFront.
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ISOBEL YEUNG, CNN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): As strikes unfold in the Middle East, Iranian state media broadcast images of what they say is a girl's elementary school that was decimated this weekend. Footage from the scene shows the remnants of children's school bags and books along with grieving parents.
Iranian officials say over a hundred students have been killed with scores more injured and others still buried in the rubble.
YEUNG: Saturday is the first day of the school week in Iran. CNN has not been able to independently verify these reports. So, what do we actually know?
YEUNG (voice-over: CNN has geolocated and verified the location of the school. It's here in southern Minab. Footage here shows casualties being taken to a nearby hospital. The school sits about 200 feet from an Iranian revolutionary guard space.
In this video, you can see smoke rising from that same base in the distance just after the school was hit, which you can see here.
2012 satellite imagery appears to show that this building may have been connected to that base, but it seems to have been separated since at least 2016 when this image shows the base walled off and a new entrance added.
If we look at satellite images from December, we can see dozens of people in the courtyard in what appears to be a handball court.
YEUNG: But there's also a lot we don't know, the internet and phone lines are down, so we haven't actually been able to speak to people on the ground to verify the civilian impact. We don't know who fired or the scale of the munitions that we used.
YEUNG (voice-over): Online, some are speculating that it was a failed missile launch by Iran and sharing this photo, but CNN and other experts have geolocated this photo to Zanjan, about 800 miles away.
A U.S. Central command spokesperson has said that they're aware of reports concerning civilian harm, resulting from ongoing military actions and are looking into them.
The Israeli Defense Forces have said they're checking reports of incidents and are not aware of a U.S. or Israeli strike at this location.
Isobel Yeung, CNN London. (END VIDEOTAPE)
BURNETT: Just an unbelievable tragedy. Well, the conflict now expanding as we've said, there's been back and forth firing between Israel and Lebanon these early hours of the morning, and our crew just saw very large planes coming in, apparently landing in an air base near where we are. All the lights were completely off. It is a full moon here though, so we were able to see them.
We're going to take you back here to the ground right after this. We'll be back.
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