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ICE Pausing Traffic Stops; Trump Seeking Control of Strait of Hormuz?. Aired 11-11:30a ET

Aired July 14, 2026 - 11:00   ET

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

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ANNOUNCER: This is CNN breaking news.

WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: 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.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: And, this morning, we're monitoring several breaking news stories.

Right now, two Supreme Court justices are testifying on Capitol Hill about the need for more security. And they have revealed some shocking details about threats they face. This is a rare appearance on Capitol Hill for the justices.

Plus, the new chairman of the Federal Reserve, Kevin Warsh, is also testifying on Capitol Hill for the first time since he became head of the Central Bank.

BLITZER: But let's begin this hour with more breaking news.

At any moment now, President Trump is set to welcome Iraq's new prime minister to the White House, Iraq's prime minister. They will hold a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office this morning. We will have live coverage of that coming up.

BROWN: Also, this morning, the military says it launched a new wave of strikes across Iran overnight. Iranian state media is reporting explosions in Bandar Abbas. That's a key port city on the southern coast.

And then, later today, President Trump says the U.S. will officially resume its naval blockade on Iranian ports.

So let's go straight to CNN senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak.

Kevin, President Trump says he wants the U.S. to become the -- quote -- "guardian" of the Strait of Hormuz. What more is he saying this morning, particularly when it comes to imposing that 20 percent reimbursement fee?

KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Yes.

And just how this is all managed, I think, is an open question at this point. The understanding when the president first announced this yesterday was that that fee, that 20 percent fee on the value of all cargoes that are passing through the strait, would in fact be paid by shippers.

But, yesterday afternoon, the president said that, in his view, the fee would be paid by countries who are bordering the Persian Gulf, countries like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, all staunch U.S. allies, but all recipients, in the president's mind, of U.S. security in this highly critical waterway.

It all gives you a sense of how much this memorandum of understanding has completely collapsed at this point, President Trump saying yesterday that, in fact, this memo, which he touted only three weeks ago, now doesn't mean much, and that, in his view, it was perhaps a mistake to go to this memorandum of understanding, instead of trying to reach a broader deal with Iran that the two sides have been trying to negotiate.

Now, it is a break from previous administrations' stances on the idea of fees in the Strait of Hormuz. You have heard from a number of officials over the last month who said, in fact, that no tolls should be imposed on vessels who are trying to transit.

Listen to a collection of what administration officials had been saying about this idea before yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE: These are -- it's an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That's existing international law.

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: First of all, we believe international waterways should be free of tolls, and that's been our position. That's what you see, of course, in the 60 days of the MOU.

RUBIO: I know of no country on the planet that supports tolling or a fee for the use of the straits.

PETE HEGSETH, U.S. DEFENSE SECRETARY: And trying to impose a tolling system. Iran's plan, a form of international extortion, is unacceptable.

RUBIO: There is zero support, zero support among the Gulf countries for any sort of toll or fees or anything that charges for the use of international waters. The president's made it clear that's not going to happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIPTAK: Now, when it comes to this blockade, that goes into effect at 4:00 p.m. Eastern time today.

So, the president clearly moving away from the carrots part of this deal, the incentives towards Iran and moving towards the sticks, trying to impose this blockade, insisting on strikes against Iran, which he says will continue today.

But, at this point, it's not clear what the pathway out of this is. The president has not articulated that. And I think it all leads to some open questions about just how serious the U.S. engagement will be in Iran and around Iran for the foreseeable future.

[11:05:06]

BROWN: All right, Kevin Liptak, thanks so much. We appreciate it.

And with us now is CNN political and global affairs commentator Sabrina Singh. She is the former deputy Pentagon press secretary.

Good morning to you.

So, here we are again, right? Tensions with Iran have clearly escalated. We're seeing several new strikes. The U.S. is set to resume the blockade of Iranian ports hours from now. What needs to happen to get both sides back to the negotiating table?

SABRINA SINGH, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Well, I think that's what remains to be seen, and we really don't know.

I think one side would have to feel such economic pressure and military pressure that coming back to the negotiating table is the only option. I do think both sides do not want to resume a full-scale war. However, both sides, both Iran and the U.S., both feel that the MOU that was signed last month has essentially collapsed and are willing to try and run out the clock on each other.

The difference here, or maybe something that's continuous is that Iran does have more time on its side. I mean, this administration is running up against the midterms come November, and this is a deeply unpopular war back here at home. And Iran knows that.

So if Iran can continue to jack up oil prices, that is going to make it very hard for this administration to continue to justify this war and continue it for an undefined period of time.

BLITZER: It's interesting, Sabrina, because President Trump suggested that the United States can now provide safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz, but in exchange for a 20 percent fee on cargo moving through the waterway, he suggested that the U.S. will be reimbursed for protecting part of the Strait of Hormuz.

Listen to what the president just said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We're taking out all of the capability for anything having to do with the strait, with the Hormuz Strait.

And I think, in the end, we will end up just controlling the whole thing. We're protecting a very rich portion of the world. We're spending money. And so what we have done is, we are going to be reimbursed for protection.

We will have it under control very quickly.

RUBIO: It's an international waterway. No country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That's existing international law. That's the way it is in international waterways all over the world, and that's the way we expect it'll be here.

QUESTION: How strenuously will the U.S. fight to keep tolls out of the strait and keep any fees away from the future strait, commercial traffic? And are you going to leave it to the Gulf states to kind of fight this battle?

VANCE: Well, first of all, we believe international waterways should be free of tolls.

TRUMP: We want it free. We don't want tolls. It's international. It's an international waterway.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: So, what do you make of that contradiction,the different statements coming from administration officials on tolls or fees for trying to protect ships going through the Strait of Hormuz?

SINGH: Well, it's a complete 180 from what even President Trump has said, is that there would be no tolls for the strait.

And this is something for centuries that the United States has fought for, the idea of freedom of navigation, being able to uphold that in any international waterway. So I think what we got yesterday was this deep sense of frustration from the president about how this war is going.

And he knows and Pete Hegseth knows this war is taking such a financial toll on our military as well. I mean, Pamela was just out there on the USS Lincoln covering what our sailors and Marines are going through every single day.

To essentially quote the president and be a guardian of the strait, that is going to cost so much money. And so the president knows this, and so I think he's just frustrated and saying that. If they're going to impose a 20 percent cost, not only is that going to double the price of oil coming out, because shipping companies might have to pay that, they're also going to shift that cost to the consumer.

So oil prices will still remain high. So I don't think this is feasible. I think what we saw from the president is frustration.

BROWN: So, actually, you teed me up for the next question, Sabrina, about the cost of war fighting and the calculations that have to go into it, right, particularly when it comes to taking down these threats with these cheaper made weapons.

Take a listen to what the commanding officer of a destroyer told me, as well as an admiral, explaining how they think about this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REAR ADM. ROBERT LOUGHRAN JR., USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN: It's definitely an evolution in warfare, right, to see lower-cost drones that are able to impose costs on expensive weapons systems.

We are able to push our defenses pretty far out and use our lower-cost weapon systems. I would say that we continue to want to evolve into even more low-cost weapons systems to take down some of these drones, because the cost exchange ratio is still something that we watch really closely.

BROWN: Was that something that surprised you early on, that -- how the Iranians were using these drones in warfare to try to deplete our armaments and cause us to lose those expensive weapons?

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LOUGHRAN: Yes, I think it's something that we had thought through after watching Ukraine's experience and recognizing how fast the technology of drones are evolving and how that does potentially impact our ability to shoot them down with weapons that are more expensive than the drones themselves.

CAPT. CASEY MAHON, COMMANDER OFFICER, USS FRANK PETERSEN JR.: The thing that really stresses the system the most is that mass attack, right...

BROWN: Yes.

MAHON: ... the mass attack, because there's only so many weapons we can put out at any one -- any one time. So we really -- we're trying all the time to counter that.

Now, again, if we detect it early enough, then you have a lot of time to do it.

BROWN: Yes.

MAHON: So it's -- I'm always looking, hey, my fight really starts at that Iranian coastline and comes all the way back. I don't wait for it to come to me. I go out and I try to meet that threat.

BROWN: Go out and try to meet that.

MAHON: Yes.

BROWN: Yes. And there's also just thinking about what weapons they are going to use, for example, a cheap drone.

MAHON: Yes.

BROWN: Do you use a multimillion-dollar missile to take it down?

MAHON: Yes.

BROWN: There's a lot of calculation, I imagine.

MAHON: So I -- yes, it's definitely the case of I'm very -- missile conservation is one of my biggest things. And I really don't want to use our really super high-end missiles for threats that don't require it.

And sometimes that means we have to wait a little bit, right? The -- sometimes, it means, hey, you know what, I could shoot right now with a destroyer's missile, but if I wait five minutes, I could have the aircraft from the Abe up with their somewhat less expensive missile, still expensive, but not as expensive as one from the ship.

And I can engage with that, or maybe even go in for a gun kill kind of thing. And so we if wait, if we're doing that tactical patience, that helps out a lot with missile conservation. But when we first came out, that was a learning curve, because when we first -- the first few days, you're like, oh, we got to go take care of it right now, because that's your human reaction kind of thing.

BROWN: Yes.

MAHON: And as time went on...

BROWN: And you still don't know what their capabilities are in this.

(CROSSTALK)

MAHON: Correct, yes, yes.

BROWN: And then you learn.

MAHON: Exactly. Exactly.

BROWN: Yes.

MAHON: Like, you don't really know. But now that we have kind of been here for a while, we have gotten used to what we're seeing, we know the pattern of life, we're always on the tip of our toes.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BROWN: And as we just listen to that conversation, Sabrina, and the financial toll of this war, the president just tweeted out that he is replacing the 20 percent reimbursement fee with trade and investment deals that the various Gulf states will be making to the United States.

So he's standing down on that fee, Sabrina.

SINGH: Yes, I think 24 hours, I think probably he got a lot of calls from various oil and gas companies, saying, hey, this is just not feasible. But I think to the point that you were making, and I mean, incredible

reporting, just being able to talk to those sailors, the Marines, the captain, just the toll that this is going to take when it comes to the decision to fire a multimillion-dollar missile at a cheap Shahed drone that costs maybe anywhere from between $15,000 to $40,000, and our men and women in uniform are having to make that calculation of, do you wait an extra five minutes until it gets closer and fire something that's cheaper?

I mean, these are the people that are putting their lives at risk for us every single day. And if the president wants the U.S. military to be -- quote -- "the guardian of the straits," that is going to cost so much, and we are adapting in this environment of cheaper drone warfare.

And we're catching up, and we're learning from Ukraine. And just yesterday, we saw unmanned surface vehicles strike a port in Iran, the first time that this was being done in the war. We're going to have to adapt, but this is going to take a lot of time, a lot of money, a lot of investment. And it's going to cause a readiness strain to our military.

BROWN: All right, Sabrina Singh, thank you so much.

And we want to thank the commanding officer, Mahon, as well as Admiral Loughran, for talking with us and bringing this behind the scenes -- Wolf.

BLITZER: A lot of dramatic developments unfolding, specifically the president now dropping his 20 percent fee that he wanted Gulf Arab allies of the United States to pay for allowing ships to go through the Strait of Hormuz...

BROWN: Yes.

BLITZER: ... and says that will be replaced by trade and investment deals. He still wants money from Kuwait and Bahrain and Saudi Arabia...

BROWN: Yes.

BLITZER: ... and Qatar and these other friendly Arab Gulf states, but he's eliminating the fee, which he and other administration officials had repeatedly said in recent months was contrary to international law.

BROWN: And I think, just from talking to sources, and as you well know, Wolf, talking to your sources, the feeling among these Gulf states was, wait a second, this was not a problem we created. We didn't create this mess. And now you're going to try to impose a 20 percent fee for protection that was started through this war that we didn't even necessarily want in the first place.

And so now clearly there is a lot of pressure on the president, and it comes as he's actually meeting with Iraq's new prime minister, so an interesting development here, Wolf. BLITZER: And the Iraqi prime minister, the new prime minister, Ali

al-Zaidi, has just arrived at the White House. You see him there being welcomed very warmly by the president of the United States. They're going to be going into a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office.

This is pretty extraordinary, the prime minister of Iraq, a country that the U.S. went to war with only a few years ago, as many of us, of course, remember, now being welcomed warmly at the White House. We will have live coverage of this bilateral meeting in the Oval Office.

[11:15:10]

We will hear what they say in response to reporters' questions as well. That's coming up -- Pamela.

BROWN: And, Wolf, we were talking about the financial toll of war. Coming up, we're going to talk about what American service members in the Middle East told me about the psychological impact of staying battle-ready around the clock, as part of my exclusive reporting from two U.S. ships in the Arabian Sea.

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BLITZER: All right, we're keeping a close eye on the White House. That just happened moments ago, the president warmly welcoming Iraq's new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, to the White House for a bilateral meeting that's supposed to begin moments from now in the Oval Office.

We will have live coverage of that coming up. We will hear what they both say about this war that the U.S. has ongoing with Iran right now, what Iraq's role in all of this is, and we will also hear them answer reporters' questions in the Oval Office. Stand by for that -- Pamela.

BROWN: And, Wolf, breaking news, a major reversal from the Homeland Security Department and its law enforcement tactics.

Let's go live now to CNN's Priscilla Alvarez.

What more can you tell us, Priscilla?

PRISCILLA ALVAREZ, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, Pamela, I am now learning that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have been directed to largely suspend vehicle stops.

That is a huge reversal in recent immigration enforcement tactics. And, of course, it comes on the heels of those two ICE-involved fatal shootings this week in Maine and last week in Houston, both of which included vehicle stops.

Now, according to my source, this guidance applies to enforcement and removal operations officers. They're known as ERO officers. It's a branch within ICE that arrests undocumented immigrants and is charged with their deportation. There is some exception here for agents who are executing a criminal

warrant. If they are to initiate a vehicle stop, the guidance tells them to work with partner agencies. But this, again, is a significant development, because, under pressure to ramp up immigration arrests, ICE agents have been frequently leaning on these vehicle stops, something that they really didn't used to do in the past.

Instead, they would usually do door knocks, going to houses that they had been surveilling. But, recently, we have seen the uptick in these vehicle stops. And then, last week, there was the death in Houston, again, of a Mexican national who is not the target of the immigration enforcement operation, and again in Maine just yesterday.

So now ICE agents are learning that these vehicle stops are largely suspended moving forward. It does not have a date, according to my source, of when they will resume, so clearly a big shift here given these two fatal shootings.

BROWN: Absolutely.

Priscilla Alvarez, thank you for bringing us that latest reporting -- Wolf.

BLITZER: A lot of dramatic developments unfolding right now.

BROWN: Sure.

BLITZER: We're covering it all.

We're also standing by to hear directly from President Trump. He's about to hold a bilateral meeting with the new prime minister of Iraq, Ali al-Zaidi.

It's amazing, Pamela, what's been going on, the improvement in U.S. relations with Iraq, the improvement in U.S. relations with Syria right now, a lot of dramatic developments in the aftermath of the start of this war with Iran, and we will see how all of that unfolds.

BROWN: Yes.

BLITZER: We will hear what they have to say. We will have live coverage of the bilateral meeting in the Oval Office. That's coming up.

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[11:27:34]

BLITZER: All right, we're keeping a very close eye on the White House right now. Only moments ago. President Trump warmly welcomed Iraq's new prime minister, Ali al-Zaidi, to the White House. So they're about to hold a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office.

We will have live coverage of that once it begins. Stand by. This could be very important, especially once they start answering reporters' questions. We assume they will. BROWN: And we have some more breaking news. President Trump just

announced that he is replacing a 20 percent fee for protecting ships in the Strait of Hormuz with investment deals.

BLITZER: He posted this on his social media: "Based on highly productive conversations with Middle East leadership, I have decided to replace the 20 percent United States a reimbursement fee with trade and investment deals that the various Gulf states will be making into the United States. Those investments will be massive, but, at the same time, extraordinarily good for them and their future" -- end quote.

That was the president speaking out on social media.

BROWN: And, as you know, as all this is going on, Wolf, I spent last week aboard the crucial aircraft carrier the USS Abraham Lincoln, as well as the destroyer the USS Frank Petersen Jr., and I saw their operations firsthand in the Arabian Sea.

BLITZER: What was it like? You were based on board. You spoke to a lot of the members out there. What surprised you in your conversations? And I know they got very personal with a lot of these sailors.

BROWN: They did.

And one statistic that surprised me was that nearly 50 percent of the crew members are 24 years old and younger. A lot of them have big roles to fill on this ship, including this 20-year-old enlisted sailor I spoke to.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BOATSWAIN'S MATE SEAMAN BRYAN CAMACHO, U.S. NAVY: It's been like something like nobody could say they experienced in their life. And I feel able to grateful to have this opportunity.

BROWN: And you're how old?

CAMACHO: I'm 20 years old.

BROWN: Twenty years old.

CAMACHO: Yes, ma'am.

BROWN: And you're supervising driving of the ship?

CAMACHO: Yes, ma'am.

BROWN: That's a big job.

CAMACHO: Yes.

BROWN: What does that feel like to have that kind of responsibility at such a young age? CAMACHO: Honestly, my parents always told me, put yourself in

uncomfortable positions. It'll help you learn and understand what you're doing in life.

BROWN: What have been some of the challenges being out here at sea for so many consecutive days?

CAMACHO: Honestly, the only thing challenging has been, like, mental challenges, like trying to manage my sleep, stuff like that.

BROWN: What are you most looking forward to when you get home?

CAMACHO: Oh, seeing my family, my brother, my dad, and my mom.

BROWN: What do you want American people to know about you and the other sailors on board this ship and the work you're doing?

CAMACHO: Don't be scared. You're part of the best Navy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)