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Israeli Strikes Target Iran's Top Military And Nuclear Leadership; Trump: I Gave Iran A 60-Day Ultimatum To "Make A Deal"; Israel Strikes On Iran Will Continue Until "Objectives Are Reached"; Senator Detained After Interrupting DHS News Conference; Schatz: "This Is The Stuff Of Dictatorship," Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired June 13, 2025 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Welcome to Inside Politics. I'm Dana Bash in Washington. And we're following breaking news on Israel's historic assault on the Iranian regime. You're looking at new video of Israeli strikes inside Iran in the last few hours, as Israel warns the attack is not over.

Israeli forces say, they used 200 war planes to strike well over 100 targets in a massive and highly covert operation intended to decapitate Iran's nuclear capabilities. That includes the exact facility where Iran has enriched uranium, putting the regime on the cusp of creating nuclear weapons, which Israel has long viewed as an existential threat to its existence and democracies worldwide.

Iran's supreme leader promises Israel will face, quote, severe punishment after several top military leaders and nuclear scientists were killed in the strikes. In a brief phone call with President Trump this morning, I asked him about Secretary of State Marco Rubio's initial statement about Israel's strikes on Iran. Notable for what it did not say that the U.S. supported Israel.

The president responded to me, quote, we, of course, support Israel, obviously, and supported it like nobody has ever supported it. It was a very successful attack. Iran should have listened to me when I said, you know, I gave them, I don't know if you know, but I gave them a 60- day warning, and today is day 61. They should now come to the table to make a deal before it's too late. It will be too late for them. You know, the people I was dealing with are dead, the hardliners.

Now I asked if Israel got all of them. The president responded, well, they were hardliners, and now they're dead. Which people I asked? I don't want to say, I can't say. I followed up, just to underscore this is as a result of the attack last night, to which he responded quite sarcastically, yeah, they didn't die of the flu. They didn't die of COVID.

CNN's Kristen Holmes is at the White House. Kristen, there are so many different tentacles to this unbelievable story, the operations that Israel went -- you know, went through to get these strikes and to clearly have what they deem as real success, the way that they did. And obviously, from your perch at the White House, what was the U.S. involvement, the U.S. point of view, and what were they saying to Israel as they prepare for this behind the scenes?

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Well, look, Dana, a lot of this is still playing out. We talked a lot last night after Marco Rubio issued that statement about one specific line in it, which was that Israel had informed the U.S. that it was going to do this for self-defense. But what was missing from there was who informed who?

We knew that last Monday, while Donald Trump was at Camp David, he had spoken to Netanyahu, but we weren't sure exactly what happened in the lead up. Now we are told that Netanyahu and Trump spoke multiple times before those strikes, and that the U.S. was very aware that this was going to happen. Obviously, now Iran is aware of that as well.

One of the other things we pointed to last night was just how quiet the president was. He was deferring to Marco Rubio's statement. The White House was deferring to Marco Rubio's statement, which really expressed that this was a unilateral action of Israel's. When you see what Donald Trump is saying to you in these conversations but also saying online. It certainly seems as though he gave the green light.

As we're looking at him, he's posting more and more bullish kind of posts about Iran, saying things like, two months ago, I gave Iran a 60-day ultimatum to make a deal. They should have taken it, today is 61. He also posted saying Iran was given chance after chance.

Now, I've been told by a number of administration officials that there's still a hope that they could get to Oman to have these talks between Steve Witkoff, the middle east envoy, and Iran. Whether or not that happens, there's a lot of doubt cast on whether or not they can actually go through with these talks.

But clearly here, you see Donald Trump almost kind of goading Iran into making this deal, saying, hey, now is your only opportunity, and still come to the table. We'll see what you can get in exchange

BASH: Kristen, you've been doing such amazing reporting on this story and most of the stories -- all the stories that we do. Thank you so much. Appreciate it, Kristen. and I'm joined here by some excellent reporters and experts, CNN's Jamie Gangel, Seung Min Kim of the Associated Press, Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, and CNN national security analyst, Beth Sanger.

Jamie, you've been talking to your sources in Israel and in Washington. What are they telling you?

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: So, couple of things. First, they are not surprised that Israel made this decision. They tell me that Israel did not think diplomacy was in their interest at this point. The time had run out. It was not going to resolve what Israel always says is an existential threat. They saw an opportunity and they took it. They also said that this was both years in the planning and months in the planning.

[12:05:00]

In other words, we see Mossad. I mean, it is -- it has been a remarkable operation --

BASH: Sure has.

GANGEL: -- the strategic and precision, and there is reporting now that, you know, there are Mossad agents in there right now, continuing to work.

BASH: It's almost like it was written by a novelist named Daniel Silva. Do you know him? Seung Min, you covered the White House, and I'm just curious what you're hearing from your sources.

SEUNG MIN KIM, CNN POLITICAL ANALYST & WHITE HOUSE REPORTER, AP: Right. Well, I just came from the White House, and he doesn't have any public events on today's schedule. We're not scheduled to see him before the cameras, but we know that he is convening a meeting of his national security team in the Situation Room, and that's going to be a bulk of his day, especially as he holds conversations later, including with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

He's also spoken to other world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron. But I was really struck in the last 24 hours, sort of the evolution of the tone that we're hearing from the president. I mean, hours before the attack, he was saying, of Israel, I don't want them going in because I think it would blow it.

BASH: Hold that thought. Let's play that for our viewers because I think it's really telling.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We are fairly close to a pretty good agreement. I don't want them going in because I think it would blow it. We might help it actually, but it also could blow it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KIM: Right, right. And he was really encouraging. I was in the room with him when that happens. He was really encouraging and bullish on these diplomatic talks. But now that the attacks have happened, and the -- and sort of the, the aftermath of that is sinking in. He's talking to -- he's saying -- he's talking on his social media platform and talking to reporters saying this attack was excellent.

He told you, Dana, that this was a very successful attack. He's very, you know, not hesitating to show that allegiance with what Israel did. And just that shift in tone over the last 24 hours has been really something to watch.

BASH: Beth Sanger, I want to get your take on this, for people who don't know, but certainly should know. You have spent your life in intelligence. You were a briefer of President Trump on his daily brief as you didn't work for him. You weren't a political appointee, but you were a career government employee for a very long time, working on issues of intelligence. So just on the intelligence part, a law alone Beth. What are you seeing that we're not seeing when you hear about this operation?

BETH SANGER, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: Well, it's really similar, in many ways, I think, to Ukraine spider web operation that we just saw a couple weeks ago, where, you know this was planned for, as Jamie was saying, for years, some of it may be for months, but the Israelis were on the ground. They're on the ground now, from what we can see on X, and they emplace things there.

They used automation. They used high tech. But they also used really just intense -- intense human operations combined with this military power in order to blind the Israelis -- the Iranians and take out their air defenses.

But I think that the other point that I really want to make here is that the timing of this, the fact that they were planning this for years, and the fact that Netanyahu saw potentially the window closing with a potential U.S. deal meant that he needed to pull the trigger or throw this operation away. And so, when he talks about a preemptive attack, I actually think he was preempting our negotiated solution as much as he was anything the Iranians were doing.

BASH: That is such an interesting point. And Susan, pick up on that, if you would, and talk about how that might play into the tone that we heard from the president yesterday. I believe it was that we just played, the statement from Marco Rubio last night, and then the shift now that they see that this was quite successful with regard to hurting their nuclear capabilities and taking out the top -- some of the top officials who were involved in planning military operations.

SUSAN GLASSER, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: Yeah. I was nodding my head as Beth was saying that, because I think that she is making a very important point, which is the extent to which the United States and Israel, President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu were not necessarily on the same page in advance of this.

I think because of the Republican Party's strong embrace of Israel as a political issue in recent years, what's gotten obscured is the fact that there have been very significant differences already between Netanyahu and Trump that, have, you know, at times, flashed into public view and that this is one of them.

[12:10:00]

This question, this strategic question of, do you pursue a peace deal with Iran, or do you just go ahead and try to take out their nuclear program? By the way, this dispute, I think, that has existed between Trump and Netanyahu, also very much behind the scenes in Trump's own MAGA world. You know, you had Tucker Carlson just the other day, expressing the viewpoint, you know, it would be madness, it could lead to war.

And yet, there are many hawks, especially in the Iran issue, who remain inside the Republican Party and in Trump's administration. And so, you know, this is not with one voice foreign policy. And so, some of the confusing signals, I think, are because they themselves have not really fought it out. Is not one line to follow. And so, part of it is how successful really was this operation?

We're still waiting to get a full assessment of the damage, but we can all see here that Netanyahu has gone big with this. And I think that's a bit -- an important takeaway on the front end of this, as it plays out. Netanyahu went maximalist. He went not only after nuclear sites in Iran, but actually after leadership targets, after military targets. To me, it looks like an attack that actually is on Iran leadership broader than just on the nuclear program, frankly.

BASH: Absolutely, because we have to remember that Iran, when we focus on Iran, at least since October 7, it has been through the proxies, Hamas, the war in Gaza, Hezbollah, the way that Israel has really decapitated their leadership, as they were in Lebanon. But going back years and years and years, Jamie, beyond the proxies that Iran funds and helps, it's the nuclear capability that Israel does think is the most existential.

I mean, going back even to the Obama administration, this is just a reminder of Bibi Netanyahu at the U.N. General Assembly. This is in 2012, we have the picture. He was holding up a cartoon, like drawing of a spherical bomb with a red line below the fuse. You see that. That was what, 13 years ago, where he was talking about the threat of Iran's nuclear capability.

GANGEL: There is no question, as Susan just said, that Netanyahu thought this was his moment to take, but I think to your point, what is coming down the road. We have to see what damage was done. But my Israeli sources are saying, and our reporting is, the strikes are not over. You know, how long does this campaign go on? What else do they have in store? In addition to leadership being taken out, what damage was done in those nuclear sites.

The other side of the equation is Iran. What does retaliation look like? What are they capable of even doing short term? Let's put aside for the moment that there are going to be, you know, threats of terrorist strikes on soft targets outside of the middle east. What can Iran really do in the coming days and weeks?

BASH: Yeah. And maybe they haven't responded the way that people were bracing for because Israel eliminated the people who make those decisions. All right, everybody, stand by. We're going to come back to what's going on in the U.S., which is a shocking moment out of Los Angeles.

That is a sitting senator from California forcibly removed from a news conference given by the Homeland Security Secretary. What Alex Padilla's colleagues are saying on both sides of the aisle. Stay with us.

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[12:15:00]

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BASH: In case you missed it, this is what happened at a news conference with Homeland Security Secretary, Kristi Noem.

(PLAYING VIDEO)

BASH: That was California Senator Alex Padilla. Here was how Secretary Noem responded later on Fox News.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KRISTI NOEM, UNITED STATES SECRETARY OF HOMELAND SECURITY: This man burst into the room, started lunging towards the podium, interrupting me and elevating his voice, and I was stopped, did not identify himself and was removed from the room.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, you saw -- excuse me, you saw the video and you did hear him saying who he was. He told my colleague Erin Burnett, this last night.

[12:20:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. ALEX PADILLA (D-CA): If this can happen to me, a United States senator representing the state of California. This is how the Department of Homeland Security and the people around the secretary will treat a United States senator for having the audacity to ask a question that imagine what they can do, imagine what they are doing to people in communities, not just throughout Los Angeles, but throughout the country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And my panel is back, joining us now at the table is Isaac Dovere and Priscilla Alvarez. Priscilla, what are you hearing from your sources about -- let's just start with the micro how this all went down?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, we had our own colleagues in the room when it happened. They said that initially, he sort of lunged and was asking these questions, and security responded, and then he identified himself. You can see some of that in the video, but it all happened very quickly. But it did become sort of this micro moment that spoke to the macro debate, which is how the administration is carrying out its immigration enforcement.

Of course, that was at least the beginning, the premise of the protests in Los Angeles. And it all culminated in this news conference by the Homeland Security Secretary, who earlier that day had similarly been on ICE operations across the Los Angeles area. And so, this was the senator who was raising questions about who the administration was going after? How they were going about it?

And look, in his interview with Erin Burnett, he does raise a valid question, which is, how are things unfolding behind the scenes away from the cameras? And that has always been a question when it comes to law enforcement. And with ICE enforcement, some things are quite routine. I've covered ICE for a long time.

But other times they can be more aggressive, and that is where you hear from advocates and attorneys who say this is unusual. This shouldn't have happened. And so, I think that question is a valid one. And one that I think a lot of the public will be thinking about in the weeks to come as they get more aggressive in their -- in their arrest.

BASH: So, what's going on behind the scenes when the cameras aren't there is the most important thing that's going on, and we're just still trying to get a handle on a lot of it. You've done amazing reporting on it. But as we've been saying all week, this story, it more than many, or really any I've seen in a very long time, is all about optics.

And so that moment, as you said, it's a micro that represents the macro is very much about optics. And Senator Padilla got the world to focus in on him and what he calls a tactic that went beyond the pale. And on the gnome and the Trump administration side, they feel like this is not a bad thing for them and what they're trying to put out into the world.

EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Yeah. Look, I think there are two things here beyond what Priscilla was saying is that we have, all five of us, been at many events where there's been a protester has been removed. I've never seen somebody removed that violently, even before he was handcuffed.

And then to be forced down. There are three men with guns who are pinning him to the ground. He's not resisting at all, and then handcuffing him. Whether or not he said, I'm Senator Alex Padilla, which he did, or whether they heard it, that is unusual. And it says something about the way the Trump administration is approaching things.

It's also with what we heard from Secretary Noem after the fact, where she said, oh, he didn't -- he was handcuffed before he identified himself, whether he had said it before he was handcuffed. And so, we are also seeing as a situation where, as has happened in other instances, but there's a very clear video tape of what happened.

They are not accurately representing what happened, and they are saying it without any qualms about what it is. And that is disturbing in its own way, going beyond whatever happened with Senator Padilla yesterday or what it means for immigration.

BASH: And in the world in which we live, the facts are presented to people depending on what media echo chamber that they are in. And that's, I think, the point that you're making, the reaction was pretty swift. And I mean, I was told by a member of the House that as soon as they heard about this, the kind of the air almost went out of the room on the House floor, because people were stunned on both sides of the aisle before the politics started, you know, creeping back in.

Listen to Brian Schatz, who went on the Senate floor very soon after.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. BRIAN SCHATZ (D-HI): This is the stuff of dictatorships. It is actually happening. A United States senator was manhandled, shoved to the ground and cuffed. Well, he was being disrespectful. Being disrespectful is legal. Being disrespectful is American. Being disruptive is OK, if it's just using your words and not your body.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And now let's listen to the House Speaker Mike Johnson.

[12:25:00]

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. MIKE JOHNSON (R-LA): A sitting member of Congress should not act like that. It is beneath a member of Congress. It is beneath a U.S. senator. They're supposed to lead by example, and that is not a good example. We have to turn the temperature down in this country and not escalate it. The Democrat Party is on the wrong side. They are defending law breakers, and now they are acting like law breakers themselves.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: One more clip, somebody who is ran from -- one more quote that I'm going to read for you. Ran for the United States Senate. She was a Republican. She got back in over the objections of Republicans because she was a write in candidate, and since then, she has tried to kind of cut through it all. And here's what she said. I've seen that one clip. It's horrible. It's shocking at every level. It's not the America I know, and that is Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Jamie.

GANGEL: A couple of things for people who may not be familiar with Senator Padilla. He is one of the most mild mannered, nerdy, soft spoken. He is not someone who goes running for every camera he sees. And I think it's important to have a sense of who he is. You know, in daily life. I also want to say it's not clear whether he lunged, because the cameras had not turned yet.

He says he was standing there. And I think the motion you see is when they grab him. Yes, he does push back, but I think we have to be careful about it. He is not a show boat. He is not someone who -- yes, he interrupted her. But I think that when you see Senator Murkowski say, a Republican say what she has to say, whether or not other Republicans say that publicly they were stunned that the senator was treated that way.

BASH: Hold that thought. We have to sneak in a quick break. I'll get your take and your reporting on the other side. Don't go anywhere.

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