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Republicans Divided Over Trump's Iran Decision; Rep. Adam Smith Is Interviewed About The War In Iran; CNN Visits Iranian State News Broadcaster Hit By Israeli Strike; U.S. Moving Military Assets In Mideast Amid New Iran Threats; Obama Warns Of Drifting From Democracy To Autocracy. Aired 12:30-1p ET

Aired June 19, 2025 - 12:30   ET

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

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[12:32:05]

MANU RAJU, CNN ANCHOR: President Trump says he has not yet decided whether to strike Iran. And while most Republicans say they trust him to make the right call, the party is divided on what that call should be.

I spoke yesterday to two Senate Republicans with very different views.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

SEN. JOSH HAWLEY (R). MISSOURI: It's a very different thing, though, for us to then say, but we are going to offensively, affirmatively go strike Iran, or insert ourselves in the conflict. That, to me, is a -- that's a whole different matter. I'd be real concerned about that.

But I don't think there's a need for us, the United States, to affirmatively insert ourselves. I mean, I think that is a different -- whole different kettle of fish.

SEN. THOM TILLIS (R), NORTH CAROLINA: Iran has, for years, have spent billions of dollars funding Hamas, Hezbollah, and terrorist cells all around the world. It is time for regime change. And I believe that this president should be given a fair amount of leeway to affect that.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

RAJU: So what do Democrats think? Well, Congressman Adam Smith, he's the ranking member of the House Armed Services Committee, and he joins me live now. Congressman, thank you so much for being with me this afternoon. Do you agree with Senator Tillis that it is time for regime change in Iran?

REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): No, I do not. I think the United States should not be in the business of regime change, period. I would hope we would have learned that lesson in Iraq and Afghanistan. We cannot simply pick the leaders of other countries.

I think it puts us in a very dangerous position. It undermines our claim that there should be an international system, a rules-based international order, and it's dangerously unpredictable in terms of what comes next. So no, I do not support regime change, and I don't support going to war with Iran, which is what it would be if United States forces bombed Iran.

RAJU: But, Congressman, today after an Israeli hospital was struck by an Iranian missile, the Israeli defense minister said that Iran's supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, cannot be allowed to, quote, "continue to exist". Do you agree with him?

SMITH: I don't. Again, I don't think it's our place and our business to pick the leader of another country. I mean, Israel has a different set of priorities without question in terms of their fight with Iran. And let me be clear, I support what Israel is doing to disrupt Iranians' nuclear program, and I support us helping Israel. We've helped them defend against Iranian attacks, and we're certainly monitoring the situation, but for the U.S. to get directly into a war with Iran, I think would be a mistake.

RAJU: Congressman, let's talk about the nuclear capabilities of Iran. President Trump said yesterday that he believes that Iran is only, quote, "a few weeks away" from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Now, you have been briefed extensively on the Iranian nuclear program over the years. So is what President Trump's saying correct, that Iran is just a few weeks away from obtaining a nuclear weapon?

SMITH: It's correct with a caveat, because what Iran has been doing is they have said consistently they have not decided to build a nuclear weapon, and I think that's probably true. They haven't made the decision and said we're going to go get a nuclear weapon.

[12:35:11]

But what they have done, and I think a huge mistake that Iran made in the last several months in particular, is they've massively ramped up their enrichment of uranium to get them closer to making a bomb.

So if they did make the decision, it would be, gosh, in some estimates, days, and certainly not more than weeks before they could actually have one. So, you know, the distinction of, well, Iran isn't, you know, it is not their plan to build a nuclear weapon is really kind of meaningless if they're running right up to the line, getting ready to do it.

So I think it is accurate to say that Iran is closer now -- well, we'll see the result of Israel strikes -- they were closer before the Israel attack on Iran than they had ever been to having a nuclear weapon.

RAJU: So --

SMITH: And that was incredibly dangerous. Go ahead.

RAJU: So then if Trump does agree to strike the underground nuclear site in Iran, the Fordow enrichment plant, would that be enough to stop Iran's nuclear program? And then what happens the next day? What does the next day look like if that happens?

SMITH: Yes. Well, those are the two crucial questions, and this is the two points to understand about why I don't support striking Iran. Number one, most experts also say that even if the strike on the mountain was somewhat successful, it doesn't mean that we would significantly set back Iran's ability to develop a nuclear weapon. Maybe it's months instead of weeks at that point.

We don't know what other facilities they have, and centrifuges are easier to put back in place than most people realize. So it wouldn't necessarily stop Iran's nuclear program for decades or anything close to that, number one. But what would happen the next day, Iran would attack U.S. forces in the region, and we have U.S. forces in the region, in Qatar, in Bahrain.

We have the Fifth Fleet in Bahrain. We have an Air Force base in Qatar. We have bases in Iraq, bases in Syria, all within very close range of an Iranian attack. We would be dragged into a direct conflict with Iran, and there would be damage done to U.S. facilities and, in all likelihood, U.S. casualties.

RAJU: And, Congressman, you mentioned Iraq earlier. In 2002, you did join 80 other Democrats in voting to authorize that war, that invasion of Iraq. You said at the time, quote, "Saddam Hussein cannot be allowed to possess nuclear weapons. It is so critically important to the future of our world that we must use force if necessary to accomplish that goal."

So I'm wondering, isn't this the precise rationale that the White House and Israel are using now against Iran?

SMITH: Yes. Now, there's two crucial things about that. First of all, I was wrong, and that's, you know, what I have learned, is that it's awful seductive, and you can sit here and say, my gosh, if Iran just had a different government, how great would the world be? If we just made that change, you know, because you can look at all the terrible things that Iran has done, just like you can look at all the terrible things that Saddam Hussein had done.

But at that point, I'd been in Congress for five years, didn't have the level of experience that I have now. What I've learned is it's not that simple. You can't simply change a regime and instantly make things better. So that was a mistake, first of all.

And second of all, at the time that we took that vote, Iraq was blocking inspectors. But then, after we took that vote, they agreed to a coercive inspections regime that very easily could have confirmed that Iraq wasn't building a nuclear weapon. But instead of accepting that as a victory, George W. Bush went to war anyway, which proves that I was also wrong about the motivation behind George W. Bush asking for that resolution in the first place.

It wasn't really about stopping Saddam from getting a nuclear weapon. It was about regime change, which I don't think we should support.

RAJU: All right. Congressman Adam Smith, thank you so much for your time and for your perspective. Really appreciate it.

SMITH: Thanks, Manu. Appreciate it.

RAJU: And coming up, we'll go to Tehran, where CNN's Fred Pleitgen gets an up-close look at the aftermath of an Israeli strike. We'll bring that to you next.

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[12:43:29]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: CNN's Fred Pleitgen is in Tehran. He was the first Western journalist to enter the country since the conflict started. He takes us now inside the aftermath of one Israeli airstrike.

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: We're inside the Iranian state broadcasting company IRIB, which was hit by an Israeli airstrike a couple of days ago, and you can see the damage is absolutely massive. I'm standing in the atrium right now, but if you look around, this whole area has been completely destroyed. All of the offices, all of the technology that they have inside here, the broadcast technology, everything has been rendered pretty much useless.

All right, so we're going to go inside the building now. They have told us that we need to be very careful because obviously there might still be unexploded parts of bombs in here or something like that. What we see here is the actual studio where an Iranian state TV anchor was sitting and reading the news when the strike hit.

You can see here that is an anchor desk right there. And of course when it happened, the anchor was reading the news, and then all of a sudden there was a thud. The studio went black at the beginning. She got up and left, but then later apparently came back and finished the newscast and is now being hailed as a champion of Iranian media.

Some of the main bulk of the explosion must have been here because this place is absolutely charred. If we look back over there, that's actually seems to be the main part of what was the newsroom with a lot of the desks, computers, printers, phones.

[12:45:00]

You can see how much heat must have been admitted by the impact and by the explosion. The phones that they had here are molten. Here also, the keys molten. This screen, and there's actually someone's lunch still at their desk standing here, which probably they would have been wanting to eat until they had to evacuate the building.

You can see there's a spoon here that's also been melted away by this explosion. All of this is playing very big here in Iran. There's a lot of public anger that the Israelis attacked this site, and certainly the Iranians are saying that they condemn this and that there is going to be revenge for this.

Fred Pleitgen, CNN, Tehran.

COOPER: That was Fred reporting.

I want to bring in CNN's Chief International Correspondent, Clarissa Ward. There is still a lot of diplomatic efforts going on today, tomorrow. I mean, there's no telling exactly where this is going to go.

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: I think we're now in a really crucial 24 to 48-hour window, right, where it's possible that President Trump's mind could still be changed. Again, we don't really know. And we've been hearing a lot, understandably, about the Iranian perspective, the Israeli perspective, but I've been talking to sources throughout the region, particularly in the Gulf, who are extremely concerned about this situation.

The UAE is saying they are desperate to get people back to the negotiating table, have them talking again. There is a real concern that one miscalculation could set off a chain reaction that would risk a massive escalation. Talking to a source in Saudi Arabia as well, and it's interesting, it's a slightly different kind of response.

It's like we would like a diplomatic solution, but we recognize that we can't do anything to stop Israel at this stage. And so now the goal, rather than trying to get everyone back to the negotiating table and stop things right away, is more about how can we apply pressure to at least ensure that, for example, Iran's oil output is not targeted.

COOPER: Yes.

WARD: Very real concerns of the economic fallout --

COOPER: Yes.

WARD: -- that all of this can have as well. And what remains to be seen, Anderson, is whether these voices, whether this sort of flurry of diplomacy as we're in this kind of crucial last-minute window will have an impact. Israeli officials publicly are not putting any pressure on, but privately they're saying that they're feeling pretty optimistic that they think President Trump is going to intervene more forcefully.

The Europeans today also sitting down in Switzerland with the Iranians and everybody kind of waiting to see whether it can have an impact, whether there will be some last-minute diplomatic solution.

COOPER: Yes. Clarissa Ward, thanks very much. We'll continue to talk with you throughout the day.

Manu, back to you.

RAJU: Thanks, Anderson.

Next, we're going to shift gears and look at perhaps the most popular Democrat in the country and why he's been mostly MIA.

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[12:52:14]

RAJU: As the Democratic Party stumbles through its resistance to President Trump's agenda, there is one resounding voice that has been largely quiet, that's former President Barack Obama. But that changed momentarily this week when he sat down for a wide-ranging conversation where he offered this warning.

(BEGIN VIDEOCLIP)

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Democracy is not self-executing. It requires people, judges, and, you know, people in the Justice Department and, you know, people throughout the government who take an oath to uphold the Constitution. It requires them to take those -- that oath seriously.

And when that isn't happening, we start drifting into something that is not consistent with American democracy. It is consistent with autocracies.

(END VIDEOCLIP)

RAJU: Excellent panel is back. A lot of Democrats want to hear more of that.

JAMIE GANGEL, CNN SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT: The question I get asked more than anything else is, where are the former presidents and when are they going to speak out? Why aren't they speaking out more? I would say President Obama has actually spoken out more than any of the others.

I think what you hear from them is, you know, they want to pick their moments. They don't want to dilute the message. But as I think we know with history, you never know when that tipping point is going to come that it makes a difference.

RAJU: And the argument from the other people who want to hear it more is that this is a time where you should be speaking out because of everything that's happening out there.

TIA MITCHELL, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL- CONSTITUTION: Yes, they say of course that they believe that Donald Trump is a unique threat. Quite frankly, the Democratic Party is uniquely in disarray in a way that it's a moment for the Democratic Party that they say needs leadership that just isn't existing in the party. There's a lot of infighting.

But I think we do have to just take a step back and think, you know, during the Biden administration were Republicans saying, we must hear from George W. Bush right now. And they weren't. They let him be, you know.

And so it is just kind of unprecedented to see Democrats clamoring for Obama. But I think it's more of an indication that the party doesn't really feel like it has any other leaders. RAJU: Yes. And the former Attorney General Eric Holder told the Atlantic's Mark Leibovich, the thing you don't want to do is you don't want to regularize him, referring to Obama.

JEFF ZELENY, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: I think referring to Trump, actually, to normalize the --

RAJU: I guess he's referring to Trump.

ZELENY: -- behaviors of Trump.

RAJU: I read it as Obama.

ZELENY: But I think the --

RAJU: I think he's talking about Obama, but you know.

[12:55:02]

ZELENY: The whole idea here, I think, is -- and President Obama subscribes to this, President Bush does, there's one president at a time. And so they have been very consistent in their reluctance. However, it's also -- if they speak too much, they become a lightning rod, and then the Trump administration is able to use them as a foil.

So President Obama, in his very -- it reminded me of his job before president, he was a constitutional scholar, and he was trying to tell the students of America and the Democrats that sort of like focus here. He does not believe he can lead Democrats out of the wilderness. If that was the case, if Democrats listened to him, Kamala Harris would have been elected, et cetera. Hillary Clinton would have been as well.

So, but he is just trying to sort of nudge them along. But I think institutions, talking to lawyers, law firms, and others who can stand up, and urging them to hold the line.

RAJU: And we'll see what he does in the run-up to the midterm elections. I'm sure we'll hear more from him. We'll see if that happens sooner than in the past.

All right, thanks for joining us on Inside Politics. CNN News Central starts after a quick break.

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