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Trump Considering 45-Day Ceasefire in War With Iran; Today, Artemis II Makes Record-Breaking Lunar Flyby; Sources Say, CIA, Special Ops Among Those Involved in Airman Rescue. Aired 10-10:30a ET

Aired April 06, 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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PAMELA BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Happening now, breaking news, last ditch proposal. A 45-day ceasefire draft is still waiting for President Trump's approval as Iran wants a permanent end to the war, the new CNN reporting from the White House.

And inside the harrowing rescue mission to save the U.S. airmen and enemy territory, I have some new reporting on the elite teams involved.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, the FDA commissioner, Dr. Marty Makary, will be here. We'll ask him about a dangerous virus for children that's spreading later into spring than usual.

And historic flyby, the Artemis II crew will soon see parts of the moon no human has ever before, a look at today's timeline.

Welcome to our viewers here in the United States and around the world. I'm Wolf Blitzer with Pamela Brown, and you're in The Situation Room.

And we begin with the breaking news. CNN has learned that countries working to end the war with Iran are now calling for a 45-day ceasefire. A White House official says the president has not signed off on the proposal. It comes as the president is threatening to escalate the conflict, demanding that Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil shipping route, by tomorrow evening. He tells Axios that if that deadline expires, and I'm quoting him now, I am blowing up everything, end quote.

BROWN: Also new this morning, an Israeli strike has killed the intelligence chief of Iran's Revolutionary Guard. Israel says the general was directly responsible for the death of Israeli civilians.

And this morning, Israel says it will destroy Iran's infrastructure if Tehran continues to target civilians. At least four people were killed by an Iranian strike on a residential building in Israel.

BLITZER: That was in Haifa, in fact.

And this is the view from Tehran. Iran state media is reporting that six children were among those killed in overnight strikes by the U.S. and Israel. And this morning, we're counting down to a news conference with President Trump as he trades major new threats with Iran.

BROWN: We're also learning more about the daring rescue of a U.S. airman, whose fighter jet was shot down over Iran. Right here is the wreckage of two U.S. special operations aircraft that had to be destroyed after being damaged. And I have new reporting on that incredible rescue mission. I've learned that the operation included the Army's Delta Force and Navy SEAL Team Six, the elite special ops team that killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011, according to a source briefed on the executive summary of the rescue.

And we have learned that the crashed F-15 was attached to the 48th fighter wing out of the Royal Air Force Lakenheath Base in Eastern England, according to people I've spoken with.

BLITZER: Well, good reporting. We're covering all the angles of this developing story from here in Washington out to the Middle East.

Let's begin with our White House Correspondent Alayna Treene. Alayna, first of all, what can you tell us about this proposal for a 45-day ceasefire in the war?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. Look, this is one of many ideas, the White House says, or at least one White House official we spoke with says that this is one of many ideas that the president is considering. He has not yet signed off on this. And this was really drafted, Wolf and Pamela, by those critical intermediaries who are really a continuing communications and passing messages between the United States and Iran. Countries like Pakistan, Egypt, and Turkey, they are the ones behind this.

And we're told that this ceasefire proposal is really a last ditch effort to try and delay a potential escalation in this war from the United States going off of, of course, that remarkable Truth Social posts we saw from President Trump yesterday laced with profanity and threatening to blow up several different energy infrastructure sites, civilian infrastructure sites inside Iran, if they do not reopen the Strait of Hormuz by the new deadline. He has said it was initially tonight, he extended it until 8:00 P.M. Eastern, Tuesday night.

Now, I will say, again, the White House, it says he has not yet signed off on it, but we're also hearing the Iranians saying that they are not on board with it either.

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Instead, they're saying they do not want a temporary ceasefire. They want a much more long-term lasting type of proposal. This is from the Iranian Foreign Ministry. They said that essentially they're calling for an end to the war and for preventing its recurrence.

Now, you mentioned this 1:00 P.M. press conference day. I think there's going to be so much that rides on it, so much we want to hear from the president about really whether or not he believes the negotiations that are happening could actually lead to a diplomatic pathway, but also the timeline of this war. He recently said it would be two to three weeks that he expects for it to wind down. Is that still the case after everything we saw in the last couple days? We'll have to see.

BROWN: We will have to see. All right, Alayna Treene, thanks so much.

I want to now go to Jeremy Diamond in Tel Aviv, Israel. Jeremy, Iran's foreign minister is railing against President Trump's threats to Iranian infrastructure. What more can you tell us?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's exactly right. In a call with a French foreign minister, Iran's foreign minister said that the threats that President Trump is issuing about striking Iran's infrastructure amounts to the, quote, normalization of war crimes and genocide. He also says that the consequences of the United States carrying out strikes on Iran's infrastructure will not just be limited to Iran and the region but will affect global -- the global economy, the global oil markets and that the responsibility for such effects will lie only with the United States and what he calls the aggressors.

The Iranians are clearly trying to draw a red line here, saying that if the United States carries out the strikes that President Trump is threatening to do here, that that will have far reaching consequences and the U.S. will have -- will be the one to blame here.

We are already seeing that Israel is carrying out a number of strikes on Iranian infrastructure, including striking multiple airports today, as well as a petrochemical facility that is responsible for about 50 percent of Iran's petrochemical production. The Israeli defense minister said that should Iran continue to target civilian areas here in Israel, as we have seen numerous times over the course of the last 24 hours alone, then Israel will promise to strike more and to destroy more of Iran's infrastructure in that country.

And we are seeing that this is continuing to escalate. We've seen an increase in Iran's pace of ballistic missile fire over the course of the last 24 hours, multiple air raid sirens sounding one after the other here in the Tel Aviv area overnight and this afternoon. Last night, we also saw a strike in the northern Israeli city of Haifa. Four people were killed there. It took hours for rescue workers to actually find their bodies.

But, extraordinarily, it could have been much, much worse because the ballistic missile warhead that actually struck that building did not explode, according to Israeli officials. Had it exploded, you would be seeing a much larger fatality count than those four individuals. Wolf, Pam?

BROWN: All right, Jeremy Diamond, Alayna Treene, thank you both.

BLITZER: And today is the day for astronauts on the Artemis II mission with the world watching as they make their historic lunar flyby. Minutes from now, they will begin day six and prepare for a moment that has not happened in more than 50 years. The crew inside the Orion will take the first photos of the moon's far aside, traveling further into space than any human has ever been.

Let's go live right now to CNN National Correspondent Randi Kaye. She's over at the Johnson Space Center in Texas.

Randi, Mission Control says the astronauts have already experienced what's called moon joy as they get closer and closer. What are they expected to see today?

RANDI KAYE, CNN NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Okay. Yes, Wolf, I think we're all experiencing a little bit of moon joy here at Johnson Space Center, for sure. When the crew went to bed last night, they got this gorgeous view of the moon, and they're going to get even closer today. We have a picture that they snapped last night just before bed.

But here's a rundown of the lunar flyby as it's set so far for today. At 1:56 P.M. Eastern Time, the Artemis II crew will pass the Apollo 13's distance record. And then at 2:45 P.M., that's when the window opens for the lunar flyby. So, it starts up then at around 6:45. That's when they are expected to lose some communication for about 40 minutes with Mission Control here in Houston. That is when they will go behind the moon. At 7:02 P.M., that'll be their closest approach to the moon, about 4,070 miles. And then at 7:07 P.M., they will be at their maximum distance from Earth, more than 252,000 miles away from Earth. And then at 9:20 P.M., the lunar flyby will conclude.

They are looking at trying to see about 35 different lunar targets. And I spoke to a lunar scientist here in Houston about how they're going to do that. Here's what she said.

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DR. CINDY EVANS, ARTEMIS GEOLOGY TRAINING LEAD: We will be able to see the whole disc of the moon.

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It'll be about the size of a basketball that you hold at arm's length. But they have a nice long lens on their camera system.

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KAYE: Now, we don't know exactly what we'll see from the Artemis II crew during the lunar flyby, but we do know from NASA they expect to take about a thousand pictures, Wolf. So, we hope to see some of those as soon as possible.

BLITZER: It's all so, so exciting. Randi Kaye, thank you very much.

And to our viewers, you can catch full coverage of the historic lunar fly by beginning at 1:30 P.M. Eastern on CNN All Access.

BROWN: Wow, incredible.

Still ahead here in The Situation Room, emotional return. Savannah Guthrie makes her return to the Today Show as the search for her mother continues.

BLITZER: And then there were two, Michigan versus UConn. We're live from Indianapolis just ahead of the tip off to tonight's Men's National Championship matchup.

Lots going on, you're in The Situation Room.

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BLITZER: And this is just coming into The Situation Room right now. Just a short time ago, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to drop the criminal case against Steve Bannon. President Trump's former White House adviser was convicted back in 2022 of defying a subpoena from lawmakers. Federal prosecutors already moved to drop the indictment brought during the Biden administration. Bannon asked the Supreme Court to toss out an appeals court ruling upholding the conviction. Pamela?

BROWN: All right, Wolf. I want to get back to this morning's breaking news, two U.S airmen are lucky to be alive after they were forced to eject from their plane over Iran Leading to daring rescue missions. Sources tell me that the elite Army Delta Force and the Navy SEAL Team Six were among hundreds of military and intelligence operatives that worked together to rescue that second crew member, an Air Force colonel.

The F-15E Strike Eagle was shot down during a night mission in southwestern Iran, I'm told. The jet was from the 48th fighter wing out of Royal Air Force Lakenheat Base, a source told me. Senior officials also described the recovery effort of the second crew member as one of the most challenging combat search and rescue missions because of the terrain, a hostile Iranian pursuit and post-recovery complications.

So, to better understand all of that, we're joined by Colonel Blake George, director and deputy of Air Force Special Warfare, and former commander of the 48th Rescue Squadron. You actually recently retired, but you did this for years, these daring rescue missions. So, you have the perfect perspective to help us understand all of the logistical challenge when you have two airmen and enemy territory, two very different locations. Walk us through how risky and challenging all of this was.

COL. BLAKE GEORGE, DIRECTOR AND DEPUTY, U.S. AIR FORCE SPECIAL WARFARE: So, one thing with rescue, and I think it's probably what draws a lot of people into rescue across special operations to do a mission like this. First, it becomes a moral kind of imperative. When a rescue mission happens, most everything else stops and it's something we focus on because it's what everybody wants to get behind.

The second part of that is, is really the dynamic part of it, is you want to get to something that's super dynamic that's going to be ever evolving because it's really kind of a challenge and it's to be able to bring somebody home to apply all those different special operations skills that we all train for, to be able to do that to, no kidding, bring somebody back to their family. So, it's amazing.

BROWN: So, based on what you know about this second rescue mission, tell us more about all the complications and logistical challenge, even just making sure that this was the actual location of the airmen and not the Iranians trying to throw off U.S. officials, and, I mean, there's so much that goes into it.

GEORGE: Yes, absolutely. It can really be a trap. And our enemies know how we do some operations. So, it's something we dynamically look to involve how we plan our evasion plans and what we do to be able to pick up. But we call that a SAR trap, a search and rescue trap that we always have to be on watch for.

So, when we go in to look for that, key indicators of the things that member was supposed to do, the way they were supposed to communicate, timing they're supposed to communicate, authentications and things that they need to say. So, it tells us we've got the right person in the right place and we need to go.

BROWN: And you've actually run these operations. You've been involved in them many times from what I've read in very risky missions, but you've also run them. I mean, it just seems like it's one of the more complicated rescue missions and history based on what we're learning.

GEORGE: It definitely was pretty rescue. There was -- and there's multiple missions going on. We had the A-10 pilot that was picked up in the water. We had the first, the pilot that was picked up from the F-15 and that those were done in daylight, pretty amazing missions of their own. And that led to the third person being picked up at night with a larger special operations contingent because we know as these go on, they could get more risky.

BROWN: Yes. And because the Iranians were in hot pursuit, I'm told you had, the IRGC looking for them. You had these voluntary Iranians who volunteered to do this kind of thing, who were also in hot pursuit in that terrain.

GEORGE: Yes, absolutely.

BROWN: Tell us -- try to paint a picture for us what that probably was like for the search and rescuers.

GEORGE: I don't know all the details of the exact one because I don't work, you know, I'm retired now from the military. But I can tell you based on some historical kind of evidence with that, at least my thoughts on it, that these things really do become dynamic in that kind of way. We're going to have an enemy that's going to pursue. We're going to try to throw them off in different ways. So, there's ways the intelligence communicate can work together with the operators, a lot of overhead intelligence, things like that, all come together with a lot of different operators to be able to get to the right place at the right time, and to be able to make those actions happen where we need them to.

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BROWN: President Trump is expected to speak this afternoon about the rescues. What questions do you still have about what happened here and what are you hoping to hear from him? GEORGE: What I would like to see is, you know, we're going to learn more over time of exactly what happened, what caused this. We know over time as we keep going into a certain place or into a certain country, risks get higher. As well too, when we have manned air crews, we know risks are higher in that too.

So, what are we going to do to keep the pressure on that we need to, but also to be able to keep our people safe.

BROWN: Yes. Do you have concern this will happen again?

GEORGE: It always can. We just never really know what's going to happen. We have amazingly trained people. We have an incredible amount of equipment that does just amazing things, but there's always that chance. You just never know what. Sometimes they call like a Golden BB. You just never know when it's going to get through. Whether it's a stealth aircraft or anything else, you just don't know.

BROWN: And it's remarkable that this happened without anyone -- I mean, there were hundreds of people involved and you had -- you actually had a ground incursion by special operators. I mean, it's amazing no one was killed in the actual operation to save this one airman.

GEORGE: I think that's a credit to the training we have and the equipment that we have. There's a lot of people came together to be able to make this happen, not just the operators that were on the ground an incredible armada of aircraft that were in there to support, but all the intelligence that fed into that as well too. It made it happen where it was a choosing of our place. We chose the time. We chose the place to be able to go in and get him off get him out of the area. And we chose those conditions so it didn't create further problems and risks.

BROWN: And talking to sources about this rescue mission, they pointed out that it was unusual that this was a colonel. You're a colonel.

GEORGE: Yes.

BROWN: And you -- one person I spoke to said, you know, it's rare for a colonel to be in that position. There could be a scenario where, you know, the colonel stepped up to help out because everyone was so tired just trying to give his guys a break, you know? Tell us what your thoughts are on that the fact that this was a colonel in that role.

GEORGE: Yes. So, I've had to do that myself. As a deployed commander, when we were in Afghanistan one time, I would take a shift at different times from some of our younger guys that were on alert all the time to give them a little bit of a break. And I would go on. And if a mission happened during that time, I'm still fully qualified, even as a squadron commander when I was out there, so I could still execute that mission.

In this --

BROWN: And actually you took on a firefight. I remember you telling me one time when you --

GEORGE: I did. No, we did. Yes, it was in Southern Afghanistan and bastion, that in the middle of that is pretty unlikely. But as the squadron commander, you still got in a gunfight even involved with that. So, it doesn't surprise me completely. It's not normal that we have a colonel out flying missions like that, but they're still qualified, and especially in an aircraft like an F-15, a weapon systems operator, like he's a leader, but he's a warrior and they can still get into action.

BROWN: And he used his SEER training clearly to survive. He was injured, we're told, doing well. He's in stable condition, but he used his training to communicate back in a very strategic way. And he was ultimately rescued alive, fortunately.

Thank you so much for giving us your perspective, Colonel Blake George. I think there's just so much interest in how this all went down and hopefully we'll learn more at 1:00 from the president. Thank you.

GEORGE: Yes, absolutely.

BROWN: Wolf?

BLITZER: Lots going on, indeed.

Coming up Savannah Guthrie makes a return to the Today Show. Her a message, that's next.

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BLITZER: More than two months after her mother disappeared from her Arizona home, Savannah Guthrie returned to the anchor chair on NBC's Today Show this morning. Her on-air reunion with co-host Craig Melvin and the rest of the show staff was low key, but very heartfelt.

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SAVANNAH GUTHRIE, NBC NEWS HOST: Pretty shot of the sun coming up. Good morning. Welcome to Today on this Monday morning. We are so glad you started your week with us, and it is good to be home.

MELVIN CRAIG, NBC NEWS HOST: Yes, it is. Good to have you back at home.

GUTHRIE: Well, here we go, ready or not.

CRAIG: Yes.

GUTHRIE: Let's do the news.

CRAIG: Yes.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BROWN: Guthrie's return to work comes as a search for her 84-year-old mother seems to have grown cold. Authorities believe Nancy Guthrie was taken from her house in Tucson during the overnight hours of February 1st.

BLITZER: Officials say the case is still active, but no suspect has been identified and no clear leads have been made.

BROWN: Our Omar Jimenez joins us now with more. Omar, some really poignant moments this morning for Savannah Guthrie and her co-host. It must be so difficult for her coming back.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT: Obviously, so much anticipation coming into today once we found out that this was the day that Savannah Guthrie is going to return, not just for her Today Show family, but obviously the many viewers who follow her and have watched her for some time.

And you showed a little bit of how the show started. It wasn't quite matter of fact, but it was brief and they got right to the news after that, as they typically do in that hour. When the next hour came, that was really when we first sort of saw a little bit of the glimpse of what might be going on behind the scenes and the support that many have had for her over this saga. You mentioned the date. It's almost hard to believe that the last time her mother was seen was January 31st, the 84-year-old, Nancy Guthrie. But in that second hour, they were out on the plaza. And that's, of course, when supporters of the show are able to be there.

And I just want to play you a little bit of what that moment was like as Savannah Guthrie stepped out onto that plaza.

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AL ROKER, NBC NEWS HOST: And it's a special Monday morning for us and for this crowd as well, special because we're welcoming back our North Star.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes.

ROKER: S.G., come on out here. Come on back out.