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Crowds in Iran Pledge Allegiance to New Supreme Leader; Airport Delays. Aired 11:30a-12p ET

Aired March 09, 2026 - 11:30   ET

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

[11:30:00]

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: People flying out of Houston yesterday, for example, spent up to three hours simply trying to get that -- through that TSA security line.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I have been here several times, and never once seen this level.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I just think it's just bad. It's just bad business. I don't really understand what's -- I mean, we know what's going on, but I think it needs to be cleaned up.

QUESTION: Are you going to miss your flight?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Probably.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: CNN aviation correspondent Pete Muntean is here with us in THE SITUATION ROOM.

It's very disturbing, especially for those of us who fly a lot, three, four hours' wait to simply go through the TSA PreCheck line?

PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Yes, and, today, the hours- long waits aren't over.

The latest from Houston Hobby is that the wait to get through TSA is three hours' long. That's clearly the worst, but New Orleans also seeing long lines. At Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, lines are about an hour long right now. Also, Charlotte was bad on Sunday, as well as Houston, George Bush Intercontinental Airport.

This is what Houston Hobby looked like yesterday. Hobby is a major hub for Southwest Airlines, and traffic really ramping up right now because of spring bake travel. The airport has been telling passengers to arrive four to five hours early for that flight, so early you can't even drop-off a checked bag yet under Southwest Airlines policies.

Remember, TSA agents are considered a single workers. They're currently reporting to work without pay during this partial government shutdown. So, even if a handful of agents don't report to work, it can have an outsized impact on capacity.

Now, Houston's director of airports has a simple warning. He says strong travel demand plus fewer TSA agents mean the lines simply grow out of control.

One more video. This was the line yesterday at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. TSA waits there reached two hours. Today, passengers are being told to arrive three hours before their flight. Some of the lines yesterday stretched all the way into a parking garage away from the terminal.

I want you to listen now to what one traveler had to say about that experience.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: How long have you been waiting in line?

GAL JURIK, PASSENGER: About 45 minutes.

QUESTION: Where did the line start when you got in line?

JURIK: It started deep inside the garage there. And it circles around seven times before you even get to this part.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MUNTEAN: The line started deep in the garage, she said.

Just some context here, TSA lines have historically been a major political pressure point. It was TSA agents not reporting to work that helped bring the 35-day government shutdown of 2018 and 2019 to an end. We also saw sick calls spike during the latest government shutdown late last year.

And now we're approaching the start of spring break travel with millions of Americans expected to fly. So, now the question, Wolf, is whether or not these images will get Congress back to the table to hammer out a deal, as there's still a lot of mudslinging and blame taking place, of course, travelers caught in the middle of all this.

BLITZER: I don't remember a time when they have said get to the airport three or four hours earlier just to simply go through the TSA security checkpoints.

MUNTEAN: Yes, and it's really not tenable for a lot of people.

BLITZER: Yes.

MUNTEAN: And a lot of people were finding out that alert as they were already on the way to the airport yesterday, so they really couldn't avoid it. That's when people end up missing their flights.

BLITZER: Yes.

All right, Pete Muntean, thank you very, very much. PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: What a mess.

All right, just ahead: brand-new video into THE SITUATION ROOM. It shows the moment a man threw what your police say was a homemade bomb. It happened during protests outside the mayor's home. And investigators believe it was a terror plot.

The latest CNN reporting just ahead.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:38:17]

BROWN: And we are back with the breaking news from Iran, black smoke, as you see right here, hanging over Tehran, as fires from destroyed oil storage tanks keep burning. And now Israel says it has started a new wide-scale wave of airstrikes.

Meanwhile, huge crowds celebrated the choice of Iran's new hard-line supreme leader.

Lots to discuss here, so I want to bring in CNN national security analyst Alex Plitsas. He's the director of the counterterrorism program at the Atlantic Council.

So, Alex, 10 days into this war with Iran, what is your assessment of where things stand right now and where it's going?

ALEX PLITSAS, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Thanks so much for having me.

So, where it stands is, I've got to kind of put it in two buckets for the viewers, because a lot of things are being interchanged. There's been a lot of talk about regime change, and there's obviously a lot of military action going on. So let's put the military bucket in one vein for right now. Let's talk about that first.

So, the Pentagon, the White House tried to clarify the military objectives of the campaign. And what they've listed out is the destruction of Iran's navy. About 47 boats have been sunk. The destruction of the ballistic missile program, which Israel saw as an existential threat. It's also a component of a nuclear program, because you need an ability to deliver a weapon once you build one.

And the Israelis came out yesterday and said, I believe, there's about 120 launchers left. And while the volume is down, they're still launching missiles at neighboring states, right? Then, also the proxies in the region, so that would be Hezbollah and Lebanon, some of the Shia militias in Iraq, they're going after them as well.

And then, finally, the nuke program, which really hasn't been struck yet, so those are targets that are still being worked by the military. On the second part of that is regime change. So the military can help to facilitate that in part by setting the conditions on the ground, because we don't have ground forces. No ground forces are mobilized anywhere either. We don't have army or

Marine Corps infantry divisions ready to go. This is all air and sea assets. And so what they're doing is, in addition to those targets, they're also striking at the Basij, which is the local security forces, and the military, because they're the ones with the guns.

[11:40:11]

And so until that's overcome or there's a negotiated settlement, it'll be difficult for the people to rise up and take over.

BROWN: Yes, that is one of the key questions.

Just to follow up on what you said, they haven't hit the nuke programs. Are you surprised at this stage or does that make sense to you that that hasn't happened yet?

PLITSAS: It makes sense to me, because it would be -- even though it's the president's top priority, in terms of other things that they would have to hit, it actually comes afterwards.

And what I mean by that is, in the beginning, this began with a targeted strike, an intelligence-driven one, on Iran's leadership, that killed the late supreme leader and a number of senior officials in the country. There was a subsequent strike on another group of officials that killed another, I don't, close to 80, if I'm not mistaken.

And those were all intelligence-driven. Those are people who can go underground. So you have to hit those first in terms of you have intelligence and you decide that's what you want to do.

The second would be, you also need to try to prevent retaliatory strikes against U.S. forces in the region, as well as any of our allies and partners. And to do that, that means trying to target the ballistic missiles and the drones that Iran has been firing at our bases throughout the region.

And so until those are really suppressed and dealt with, right, you don't need to move on to what we'll call fixed-infrastructure targets or fixed targets, right? Mountains don't move. Nuclear complexes don't move. I imagine, based on conversations with the Pentagon and other folks that I have spoken to an intelligence community, that we're staring and have persistent stares, we will call it, at the facilities in question.

So there's 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium at about 60 percent that's still buried underground under one of the facilities that was struck this summer. And so, until they work through the target set and feel comfortable that they've got air supremacy in the area, the threat has been suppressed to our forces and to our allies to the extent possible, then they'll likely move to the nuclear targets.

BROWN: I want to ask you about Iran's new leader. Its military and political hard-liners have pledged allegiance to Mojtaba Khamenei, the -- Khamenei, I should say -- the new supreme leader, who is the son of the former one who was killed.

Some are saying he will be even more hostile toward the United States and Israel. What is your view of that and the fact that that is who Iran picked?

PLITSAS: Well, there's no doubt President Trump made it clear that he would like to be involved and said, in point of fact, he needs to be involved in determining who's going to be in charge next or they won't last very long.

He had already made comments that he did not approve of the late supreme leader's son, who is who we're talking about now, who was just elected by the Assembly of Experts yesterday and was announced by the Islamic Republic as the new supreme leader, and for a few reasons.

So he's about 56 years old. He was born in 1969. He then joined the Quds Force, which is the 10 percent of the military of the hard-liners that reports the supreme leader, and he served from '87 to '88 towards the tail end of the Iran-Iraq war. He then later on became a cleric. He didn't go to study in religious school until he turned about 30.

And then from there he got more politically involved. So in 2009 he oversaw the Basij, which is the local security forces that were responsible for repressing an uprising after the elections. And he was associated with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the former Iranian president who was targeted and survived in a strike recently.

And there's been some writings to suggest that he may actually be supportive of Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon. So if you put all that together, from a policy perspective, that's a disaster and not what the U.S. is looking for.

President Trump made it clear in a statement he made, said, look, whoever comes in needs to be somebody whose policies we can work with, because I don't want to have to come back and fight another war in five years. But we haven't heard from him yet. He hasn't given public speeches. He's a religious -- he was a religious teacher, a theology teacher at the seminary in Qom up until this point.

And he hasn't given public statements. But as we saw, Fred Pleitgen, just did an interview with his foreign policy adviser to the new supreme leader, who said that there's not really room for negotiations right now. So all signs are not pointing in a great direction.

But until we hear from him and he lays out what the new government's policies are, it's still up in the air.

BROWN: So then how long could this last? I mean, given this development and given what the U.S. objectives are, how do you see this playing out?

PLITSAS: There's really only a couple ways this can end.

So if we go back to the two buckets on the military side and you're working through the target sets, the Pentagon and the White House have made statements. There's several weeks of operations left to sort of move through that target set to destroy and achieve that from a military perspective.

And those are, in fact, militarily achievable objectives. The second question then becomes regime change and what happens afterwards. The military doesn't control the protesters on the ground. That was an organic movement in response to deep-seated, deep-rooted economic issues in the country that are not solvable in the short term.

And they also don't control Iran's security forces, but they can degrade them. So this only ends in a couple ways. Either somebody steps to the microphone and says, hey, new government, new policies, we're not looking to harm the U.S. or Israeli interests in the region. We're going to focus on our domestic issues and rebuilding a country. That's one scenario.

And, obviously, now with the new supreme leader elected, that's looking grim, at least at the moment. We'll see what he has to say. The second one is that we continue the bombing, to the point where the security forces are degraded until they break and they decide that they're going to collapse.

[11:45:03]

That tipping point is incredibly difficult to predict. And the intelligence communities globally have done a really poor job at predicting that, because it is so difficult. And then, finally, the last piece is, potentially, we achieve all of those military objectives, the government hangs on and is -- it refuses to sort of give up, they don't break.

The people on the ground are -- decide that they're -- it's impossible, they can't overtake the government, and the president declares victory, and says, hey, we achieved our security objectives through the military that we set out. I set the conditions on the ground. You couldn't take over, and you leave.

And so for me this ends up two ways. It's either a serious situation where you have somebody like al-Sharaa who stands up and is a reformer coming in and can work with President Trump and the administration and from his perspective you get things done, or this ends up like Afghanistan, with a bleak picture of economic, diplomatic isolation, and the country largely in not great shape.

So we will see which direction this goes.

BROWN: OK.

PLITSAS: I think the coming weeks will be telling.

BROWN: All right, Alex Plitsas, thank you so much.

We will be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:50:23]

BLITZER: We're following breaking news.

Crowds of people in Iran are gathering to pledge allegiance to the new supreme leader in Iran. Mojtaba Khamenei is the second son of the former supreme leader who was killed in U.S.-Israeli air strikes.

With us now is Karim Sadjadpour. He's a CNN Global Affairs Analyst, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

So what do you think of this new supreme leader?

KARIM SADJADPOUR, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: I think Mojtaba Khamenei is inheriting an almost impossible situation, Wolf.

He's someone who is -- he's wounded. He was also a target of the attack that killed not only his father, Ayatollah Khamenei, but his wife and his mother. He's in hiding because he's trying to elude Israeli assassination.

And he's essentially running now a country which is -- in simultaneously in three wars against the greatest superpower in the world, the United States, against the greatest military power in the Middle East, Israel, and his own population.

BLITZER: Some have described him, as you know, as a gatekeeper for his father. Did that make him unpopular in the regime? What do you think?

SADJADPOUR: Well, this is a regime which came to power in 1979 deposing hereditary monarchy.

BLITZER: Opposing the shah.

SADJADPOUR: Opposing the shah.

And Ayatollah Khomeini, the father of the 1979 revolution, said that hereditary rule is un-Islamic. So he starts with that position of illegitimacy. And I think this is a society which I've always said they aspire to be more like South Korea than North Korea.

But Mojtaba Khamenei, if there's anyone he resembles in the global geopolitical landscape, in my view, it's Kim Jong-un of North Korea, because he's a hereditary dictator of a deeply ideological regime which has now doubled down on isolation.

BLITZER: Does Mojtaba Khamenei have the support of the Revolutionary Guard?

SADJADPOUR: So the Revolutionary Guard and the senior clergy, I think, rallied behind him, believing that, when you're in an existential war -- this is a regime in an existential war for their lives -- you shouldn't change horses midstream.

And the office of the supreme leader has such vast authority, including as the commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guards, that they wanted someone very familiar with the office. And who better than the son of the late dictator? BLITZER: Why is the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, the IRGC, as it's called, why is their support so crucial right now?

SADJADPOUR: Well, in any revolutionary, authoritarian regime, the men with the guns are the ones who uphold the rule of that regime, and the Revolutionary Guards are the main power in Iran.

They are about 150,000 men. They have vast control over the country's economy as well. And Mojtaba Khamenei was someone who liaised very closely with them over the years.

BLITZER: Interesting.

President Trump has said that a new Iranian leader wouldn't last long without U.S. support. Here's what two senior Israeli officials have told CNN. Listen to this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DANNY DANON, ISRAELI AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: We will target anyone who is promoting those radical ideas, who is sending terrorists to attack our communities. So he's on the top of the list.

BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN HOST: Is Mojtaba Khamenei now a target for Israel?

GIDEON SAAR, ISRAELI FOREIGN MINISTER: Well, you will have to wait and see. But it is clear that he continue the very extremist and mad policies of his father. He's a hard-liner. He is anti-American. He's anti-Western. And you can see already the cracks inside this regime.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: How do you see these threats actually playing out?

SADJADPOUR: Well, I think President Trump is in a predicament right now, because we know this war costs -- has cost the country approximately a billion dollars a day. So, on day 10, this has already been a $10 billion...

BLITZER: Cost the U.S.

(CROSSTALK)

SADJADPOUR: Cost the United States now perhaps as much as $10 billion.

And I think it's going to be difficult for President Trump to end the war having replaced an 86-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei saying "Death to America" with a 56-year-old Ayatollah Khamenei saying "Death to America."

BLITZER: I guess we're all waiting to hear what he says. He hasn't made any public statements yet since he became the new supreme leader, right? SADJADPOUR: There's only one video that the Iranian public has seen

of Mojtaba Khamenei. So he's obviously someone whose name has been ubiquitous in Iran. He's a familiar name, but not a familiar face and not a familiar voice.

[11:55:07]

But, by all accounts, the people behind him are some of the hardest- line figures in the Islamic Republic. And, in my view, it's very doubtful that he's going to change the character of the Islamic Republic. And so the question for President Trump is, will he be content ending this war having only changed the capabilities of the Islamic Republic, and having not changed its character?

BLITZER: Always great to get your analysis, Karim Sadjadpour. Thank you very much for joining us. Appreciate it very much.

SADJADPOUR: Thank you.

BROWN: Thank you.

BLITZER: And, to our viewers, thanks very much for joining us this morning.

"INSIDE POLITICS" with our friend and colleague Dana Bash starts after a short break.