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Injured U.S. Service Member Describes Iranian Drone Attack; Iranian State Media Reports, Major U.S. Tech Firms Potential Target; Attacks Escalate on Ships in Strait of Hormuz. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired March 11, 2026 - 10:00   ET

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

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking News, a soldier story. U.S. Army Sergeant First Class Cory Hicks, survivor of that drone attack in Kuwait, speaking out,

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SGT. FIRST CLASAS CORY HICKS, INJURED IN WAR WITH IRAN: Seeing the nose of that drone popped through, and as soon as it did, I knew what it was. It was either a missile or a drone. So, I turned to my right and that's when it blew up and just blew the whole building apart.

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BLITZER: His account straight ahead.

Plus, attacks escalating, the Strait of Hormuz, multiple ships struck, and the new reporting, Iran now laying mines in the crucial waterway. The shipping channel virtually shut down. How Washington is responding. Oil prices rising again this morning.

Also, Iranian naval ships struck, new video into The Situation Room.

Plus, new attacks in Tehran, buildings reduced to rubble, and the new video just in showing explosions at the international airport.

And critical report, we're waiting for the Pentagon to release its findings on what it says happened at that Iranian girls' school, this as we're getting new pictures showing what appears to be U.S. missile fragments at the site.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer. Pamela Brown is off today. You're in The Situation Room.

We're following multiple breaking news stories this morning. Iran is now listing U.S. tech companies, yes, tech companies operating in the region as potential targets. According to the Iranian state media, that includes offices of Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and others.

Also, investigators are digging into the background of the two terror suspects accused of throwing homemade bombs near New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's home. Authorities say this attack was ISIS-inspired.

And right now, Jeffrey Epstein's longtime accountant is testifying behind closed doors up on Capitol Hill. CNN is outside the hearing room and will bring you all the latest developments as we are learning them from inside of that room, the testimony coming up.

But let's start with the war with Iran. There's a lot going on at this hour. We have teams of our correspondents in Qatar, Kuwait, Jordan, London, and here in Washington, bringing all the latest developments from the frontlines.

And this morning, for the first time since the war with Iran began, we're also hearing from one of the injured service members, KSTP spoke to Sergeant First Class Cory Hicks, who was injured in a deadly Iranian drone strike on U.S. troops in Kuwait this month. He's currently recovering from those injuries at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center outside Washington in Maryland.

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HICKS: Last night I was in the SICU at Walter Reed, and today I am at the general care floor, so I'm making strides.

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BLITZER: The Pentagon says about 140 U.S. troops have been injured since the beginning of the U.S. and Israel joint military operation. And to-date, seven U.S. service members have been killed in action since the war began. Six were killed in that Iranian drone strike in Kuwait. The drone hit a makeshift operation center at a civilian port.

Hicks described the attack. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HICKS: Seeing the nose of that drone pop through, and as soon as it did, I knew what it was. It was either a missile or a drone. So, I turned to my right and that's when it blew up and just blew the whole building apart.

She was literally five feet from me when that happened. I think the -- if I looked -- when I looked over my left shoulder, the drone impacted basically right above her.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: Of the 140 U.S. troops injured, the Pentagon now says eight are severely injured and are receiving the highest level of medical care. Here's Hick's message to people back home.

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HICKS: I just want everybody to know to don't take anything for granted. Life is precious. Life is short.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: A chokepoint in the world's oil supply, a flashpoint in the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. Sources now telling CNN the Tehran is laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. Watch this remarkable video from the U.S. Military Central Command. It shows the U.S. military destroying several of Iran's mine-laying ships near the world's most important shipping route for oil.

[10:05:06]

President Trump had warned Iran against blocking the international flow of oil.

Let's go live right now to CNN's Bijan Hosseini. He's in Doha, the capital of Qatar, for us. Bijan, we're getting late information confirmation on those two vessels that were attacked in the Strait of Hormzu today. What can you tell us?

BIJAN HOSSEINI, CNN SENIOR PRODUCER: Yes, Wolf. Well, we know when this conflict started around 12 days ago, at least 13 vessels have been attacked near the Strait of Hormuz. Today, we're getting confirmation from Iran's IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard, that they attacked two vessels today. The first one, a Thai-flagged bulk carrier called the Mayuri Nari.

We heard from Thailand's Ministry of Transport that this vessel had a crew of 23 people. After an explosion hit the engine room, they were asked to abandon ship. 20 of those crew members were rescued by the Omani Navy, but three are missing and unaccounted for. The Ministry of Transport confirming that those three did -- were indeed working in the engine room.

The second vessel that Iran attacked today, according to the IRGC, was a Liberian-flagged vessel called Express Rome. Iran says these attacks came after multiple attempts and warnings that the vessels ignored and insistently tried to pass through illegally through the Strait of Hormuz, is what Iran's IRGC said.

We know that one of the attacks was just 11 miles north of Oman's Musandam Peninsula. This is the narrowest gap in the Strait of Hormuz, just, you know, tens of a couple miles separating Iran from its Gulf neighbors there.

And we know that the Strait of Hormuz, as you said, is absolutely vital to the global economy. A fifth of the world's oil passes through there. And we heard Iran say a couple days ago that they would attack American, Israeli and their ally ships as they pass through. And we're seeing that play out today. Wolf?

BLITZER: Bijan Hosseini on the scene for us in Doha, Qatar, thank you very, very much.

We also have new reporting this morning on more potential Iranian targets, major U.S. tech companies, yes, tech companies with operations in the Middle East. Those are the targets. Iranian state media published a list entitled Iran's new targets. The list includes offices affiliated with Google, Amazon, Microsoft, NVidia, IBM, Oracle, and Planitir -- Palantir, I should say, in Israel and indeed around the Middle East region.

Here with us now is CNN Cybersecurity Reporter Sean Lyngaas. Sean, what more are you learning about this? Very disturbing,

SEAN LYNGAAS, CNN CYBERSECURITY REPORTER: Yes, Wolf. I mean, for years these types of U.S. tech giants have had to worry about Iranian cyber attacks. Now, with this warning from Iranian state media, they have to worry about physical kinetic attacks, drone strikes, and the like. They're saying that these companies are legitimate targets in the war. They'll have to take precautions in terms of their employees in the region.

But also some of these companies, notably like Palantir, are instrumental in how the U.S. military is attacking Iran. So, this war is really shifting to civilian targets and to ones that have helped the Pentagon prosecute this war in Iran.

And we've seen that it doesn't take much for a data center that Amazon has, for example, in the region to be disrupted, to cause disruptions in how that company provides services to people in the region. So, it's a concern for folks living in the region who are not just the employees of the companies, but also citizens of those countries who use those services.

BLITZER: So, just to be precise, Sean, what the Iranians are threatening is to go after not just the buildings where these companies operate from in the Middle East, in the region, but to kill people who are working there, they want to kill these people?

LYNGAAS: Presumably, that would be the risk, yes. I mean, the state media said that they -- those are legitimate targets, in their view, so I think they see the company as legitimate targets and that's going to be concerned.

BLITZER: I also want to ask you about your new reporting you have on the way the Trump administration's sweeping cuts to the government workforce at the beginning of Trump's term has hampered its ability to guard against these kinds of cyberattacks.

LYNGAAS: Look, we saw this wide-scale cuts from Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency at the very beginning of Trump's second term.

BLITZER: DOGE.

LYNGAAS: DOGE, as they call it. And they took what some call a sledgehammer rather than a scalpel to a lot of these agencies. So, you're cutting lots of specialists who have been tracking threats that come from Iran. We saw -- we reported just around the time that the U.S. conducted its military operation against Iran, FBI Director Kash Patel fired about a dozen people that work at the FBI on counterterrorism and other threats coming from Iran.

So, there's been these sweeping cuts and even some Republicans are telling us on the record, GOP Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick telling us that he thinks it's gone too far and that we don't really know, we don't have a sense of the national security threats here on the homeland because of these threats.

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Wolf?

BLITZER: Yes. Some of these people who were removed from the government were the leading experts in the government on dealing with these potential threats.

LYNGAAS: That's right.

BLITZER: All right. Sean Lyngaas, thank you very, very much.

And there's more breaking news. CNN is now learning that Iran's new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, has -- did in fact suffer a fractured foot on the first day of the war with Iran. That according to a source who said Khamenei also had facial lacerations. An Israeli source previously told CNN that the new supreme leader was injured in an assassination attempt last week. He has not been seen in public since his appointment. Iranian state media and propaganda networks have made extensive use of archival footage and A.I.-generated images of the new supreme leader.

Iran state broadcasters are releasing new photos that appear to show fragments of a U.S. Tomahawk cruise missile at a girls' school that was struck in Southern Iran, that according to a CNN analysis. State media says 168 children and 14 teachers were killed in the February 28th strike. It's not possible to know if the debris is actually from the school or a strike at a nearby naval base.

CNN's Alayna Treene is over at the White House for us. Alayna, the president, has previously blamed Iran for the strike on that school. What are you hearing today?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. And I do want to go back, you laid some of this out, Wolf, but I want to go back through what we know about this at this moment, according to a CNN expert analysis of this strike.

So, missile debris that was claimed by Iran to be recovered from the school appears to be from a U.S.-made Tomahawk cruise missile. And, currently, we cannot confirm if the fragments that we have seen were from the school or perhaps a nearby IRGC naval base or elsewhere. But what we have seen, what the CNN expert analysis does show, is that a Tomahawk missile does appear to have been used at least in one strike on an IRGC base near, or, I should say, next to the school. Again, that is according to CNN analysis of video which had captured this hitting a building.

Now, to get into what the White House is saying about this, we know that the Pentagon is conducting an investigation into what exactly happened. And we heard the White House say yesterday that they're going to be releasing that report and that essentially President Trump is going to abide by whatever that report says. Now, what we have heard though from the president, and this is where a lot of the questions come into, you know, effect is that over the weekend, President Trump on Saturday had suggested that perhaps it was Iran. Who had sent this missile that attacked the school, and then he was asked about it directly during a press conference on Monday. He appeared to soften that, saying that, you know, he just doesn't know enough about this and said that he's, quote, willing to live with whatever the Defense Department's report says on this.

But I will also note that, you know, we have heard the president claim that, you know, other nations buy Tomahawks. But what we do know about U.S.-made Tomahawks is that only a small number of countries actually buy them from the United States. That list includes the U.K., Australia, Japan, and the Netherlands. But Israel and other countries in the Middle East are not part of that. They do not buy U.S.-made Tomahawks. So, keep that in mind.

And I do want you to hear, because the press secretary yesterday was addressing this directly at the White House briefing. Listen to what she said.

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KAROLINE LEAVITT, WHITE HOUSE PRESS SECRETARY: The Department of War will do that. The investigation continues. And as the president said yesterday at his press conference, he will accept the conclusion of that investigation, whatever it may be.

REPORTER: Why did President Trump say yesterday that Iran may have Tomahawk missiles when there are only three other U.S. allies, plus the U.S., that have those missiles?

LEAVITT: We're not going to get ahead of the Department of War and the conclusion of that investigation. The president has a right to share his opinions with the American public, but he has said he'll accept the conclusion of that investigation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: So, essentially, Wolf, where this leaves us, is waiting for this report by the Pentagon to be dropped. And I will say we have heard from a number of lawmakers who said that this is, of course, very concerning if the United States was behind it. But, again, we're waiting to see what exactly the Pentagon says about this and how the president continues to message it.

BLITZER: Is there a scheduled White House briefing with her today?

TREENE: There's not. There was one yesterday, but I will say the president is traveling to Ohio today for a domestic speech on the economy. Hopefully, we'll have a chance to ask him questions directly when he departs.

BLITZER: And do we have any idea at all when the Pentagon might release its final conclusion on that girls' school? TREENE: So far, what we've heard from the Defense Department, Wolf, is that this investigation is ongoing. They have not laid out a timeline, but I think there are many people, of course, who are eager to know what exactly happened. And since there are so many questions on this, I can assume that they want it to be released sooner rather than later.

BLITZER: We shall see. All right, Alayna Treene at the White House for us, Alayna, thank you very, very much.

And still ahead, what the potential injury to Iran's new supreme leader signals about the status of the war.

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We'll discuss.

And later, at least two people are dead as dangerous storms tear through the Central United States, where the severe weather threat is heading now.

Stay with us. You're in The Situation Room.

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BLITZER: Breaking news, we're learning new details now on the health, the health of Iran's new supreme leader. Sources telling CNN that Iran's new supreme leader suffered a fractured foot during a U.S. Israeli bombing on the first day of the war. This comes as the son of Iran's president says, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei is safe, telling an Iranian news agency, quote, there are no concerns as questions over the 56-year-old leader's whereabouts continue to grow.

Let's discuss this and more now with an expert on politics in Iran and the greater Persian Gulf and Middle East area, Dr. Sanam Vakil is joining us.

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She's the director of the Middle East and North Africa program at Chatham House. That's an international affairs think tank based in London. She's also an adjunct professor at the Bologna campus of the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, in Bologna, Italy, by alma mater, by the way. Dr. Vakil, thanks so much for joining us.

Does it strike you as unusual at all that we haven't seen or directly heard from the new ayatollah since his appointment this past weekend?

DR. SANAM VAKIL, ADJUNCT LECTURER, JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY SAIS EUROPE: Nice to be with you, Wolf. So, as you laid out, he is injured and he was likely in the room when the strike took out his father, his mother, his wife, and most of his family on February 28th. So, it's unclear what injuries he really does have, and part of the reason why we haven't seen or heard from him beyond questions of his health is that we know very well that there is a target on his back. And so the regime in Iran is trying to keep him safe and trying to prevent another killing of a supreme leader.

BLITZER: The U.S. military says it's destroyed Iranian naval ships near the Strait of Hormuz after sources tell CNN Tehran has begun laying mines in that critical waterway. Do you believe the Iranians want to make this a maritime war now?

VAKIL: Well, I think that Iran has certainly got plans to continue to escalate this war. And so, you know, mining or trying to formally close the Straits of Hormuz that have not been shut down yet, but traffic, of course, is ground practically to a halt in their over 300 tankers building up in the Persian Gulf.

You know, Iran has achieved its same without really having to do the hard work. But if it does move towards trying to formally close, that is a serious escalation. And the regime is trying to, of course, spread the pain and the cost of this war for President Trump but on markets and investors and Gulf countries more broadly.

BLITZER: President Trump just told Axios Correspondent Barak Ravid in a brief phone interview that the war with Iran will end soon, his word, soon, because there's practically nothing left to target. What's your reaction when you hear that?

VAKIL: Well, I'm a little perplexed because actually an Israeli government official also announced today that the war is going to go on for weeks. So, for me, this raises questions about how aligned the United States and Israel is in this joint campaign. And, certainly, the United States and Israel together have the capability as formidable military powers to keep pummeling Iran.

But, you know, President Trump hasn't quite made clear what the off- ramp is. Is the off-ramp sort of job done, we've killed the old supreme leader and we've targeted everything we need to target, so thereby we're done? And how does this war really end? Because it's important to think about the Islamic Republic here. They are not going to accept a ceasefire similar to what we saw last year during the 12- day war.

On the last day of the 12-day war, the U.S. struck Iran's nuclear facilities and then Iran responded by striking a U.S. base in Qatar, and then we were done. But for Iran, that end left the door open to further strikes. So, they're going to be looking for a guarantee that this doesn't happen again. And so this ceasefire is going to have to result in something more meaningful. And here, the objectives of the U.S., Israel, and Iran all need to be understood and taken into account.

BLITZER: Good point. Dr. Sanam Vakil, thank you so much for joining us. We'll continue this conversation, to be sure.

And coming up inflation holding steady, but the war with Iran could change that as gas prices went up more overnight. We're making it make sense. That's next.

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BLITZER: Breaking news, President Trump just spoke with Axios' Barak Ravid, who's also a CNN political and global affairs analyst. And Barak joins us now. So, what did the president have to tell you, Barak?

BARAK RAVID, CNN POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Hi, Wolf. Good morning.

President Trump told me in a phone call just like 45 minutes ago that he thinks the war with Iran is going to end soon, but he did not go into specifics about what's the exact timetable for ending this war. And President Trump told me that there is, I quote, practically nothing left to target in Iran, and this is why he thinks that the war could be over soon.

And he said there are still here and there, some stuff. But, overall, he feels confident that most of the objectives that he's laid out at the beginning of this war are going to be achieved. And he said the war will end when I decide that it ends.

He also said that he spoke to Prime Minister -- Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu on Tuesday. And when I asked him, what did you talk about? He said, we talked about how much we're winning this war.

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