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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Second Night Of Attacks On U.S. Embassy In Iraq; Iran Confirms Top Security Leader And Head Of Paramilitary Force Killed; Interview With Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA); Trump Blasts NATO Over Iran, Says U.S. Doesn't Need Help; U.S. Dropped 5,000 Pound Deep Penetrator Bombs Near Strait; Trump Predicts It Won't Be "Too Long" Before Strait Of Hormuz Is Secure; Trump: U.S. Avoided Kharg Island's Oil Reserves "But It May Not Stay That Way"; Zakaria: Iran Is An Imperial Trap; Trump: Not Ready To Leave Iran "Yet" But Will In "Near Future". Aired 8-9p ET
Aired March 17, 2026 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DONIE O'SULLIVAN, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Also, finally, I should mention that he is very critical of Israel. And again, that is something that were seeing with younger people, especially under 30 in the online space that is resonating with him as well.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: Yes, I've seen that in some of the polling. All right, thank you very much, Donie. And Donie's full story is streaming online you can find it by scanning the Q.R. code or of course at CNN.com/watch. Thanks for joining us. AC360 starts now.
[20:00:42]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Good evening, topping our CNN Global War coverage tonight. The Air Force is using so-called bunker buster bombs to blow up Iranian missile sites, threatening ships in the Gulf. And for a second straight night there are strikes on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
(VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)
COOPER: According to Iraqi security officials, it was targeted by at least four projectiles including two drones, with at least one hitting in the vicinity of the compound. Last night, one hit farther away from it.
Late today, the State Department warned all American diplomatic outposts around the world to urgently review security measures where they are.
Within the last hour, Central Command announced it had dropped what it says were multiple 5,000-pound deep penetrator munitions destroying hardened Iranian anti-ship cruise missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz. With more on the ongoing threat to shipping in a moment. Iran, for its part, is now confirming the deaths of two key figures. A top defense official, Ali Larijani, also Gholamreza Soleimani, the commander of the Basij paramilitary force.
Now, Israel claims responsibility for both killings and says they will do the same to Iran's Supreme Leader. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BRIG. GEN. EFFIE DEFRIN, IDF SPOKESPERSON (through translator.) Mojtaba Khamenei's fate is unknown. We neither see nor hear from him. But I can say one thing we will continue as we have proven. We will continue to pursue anyone who poses a threat to the state of Israel, and anyone who raises a hand against us is not immune from us. We will pursue him, find him and neutralize him.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, back home, a top National Security official became the first senior administration member to quit over the war. Joe Kent is his name. He headed the National Counterterrorism Center, quoting now from his letter to the President, "Iran posed no imminent threat to our nation, and it is clear that we started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby".
Joe Kent is a former Army Green Beret whose wife was killed in the Syrian Civil War. In the past, he's made news for amplifying conspiracy theories about January 6th. He's also had to disavow past interactions with the Nazi sympathizer and a holocaust denier. His wife a naval officer, was killed by a suicide bomber in Syria in 2019.
For his part, the President today said, and I'm quoting him here, "I always thought he was a nice guy, but I always thought he was weak on security". He also offered several updates on the war.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We had to do a little excursion, if you don't mind. A little excursion to take care of nuclear weaponry in the hands of maniacs. But other than that, and a couple of weeks and won't be much longer, its moving along fast. We're way ahead of schedule. Did you know that, Mr. Speaker? I'm trying to save a lot of money by being ahead of schedule. We're way ahead of schedule.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: The President connecting the current operation to Iran's nuclear program, which he also claims to have obliterated last summer. Listening to some of his statements, though, on the subject recently, including today, he appears to be blurring the distinction between then and now.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We're doing very, very well Iran knocking the hell out of them, and you have to do that. We can't let them have a nuclear weapon. They were two weeks away, in my opinion, two weeks away from having a nuclear weapon. If those beautiful magnificent machines, those B-2 bombers, if they didn't do their job seven or eight months ago, they would have had they would have had a nuclear weapon and there would have been no talking to them, no talking at all.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: The President today, again, sounds like he's blurring last summer's operation against Iran's nuclear program with current fighting. Not the first time he did it yesterday, while also invoking the specter of World War III.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They're sending thousands of missiles into countries that didn't expect to be in the war because they wanted to take over the Middle East.
If I didn't decimate, I call it their nuclear dust, they would have had a nuclear weapon within one month after that bombing took place, and they would have used it on first Israel and then the Middle East. Had we not done this, you would have had a nuclear war that would have evolved into World War III. And more important, this is a war that there would have been nothing left.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:05:02]
COOPER: In any case, CENTCOM's bombing announcement tonight makes clear the problem now is missiles, drones and naval mines and the threat they pose shipping the gulf especially the Strait of Hormuz. Today, the President acknowledged that our European allies want no part in the fight despite, he says acknowledging the threat.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: All of the NATO allies agreed with us but they don't want to, you know, despite the fact that we helped them so much, we have thousands of soldiers in different countries all over the world and they don't want to help us which is amazing.
I think NATO's making a very foolish mistake and I've long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So, this is a -- this was a great test because we don't need them, but they should have been there.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, that answer, as you might imagine, prompted this question, namely, what he intended to do about it.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
REPORTER: Are you rethinking the United States relationship with NATO, possibly getting out?
TRUMP: Well, I'm disappointed in NATO that we spend trillions of dollars on NATO. Think of it, trillions over the years, many trillions of dollars. It's one of the reasons we have deficits and we help other countries. And when they don't help us, I mean, it's certainly something that we should think about. I don't need Congress for that decision as you probably know, I can make that decision myself.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Well, keeping them honest, he can't. The reason he cannot lies in bipartisan legislation that was passed in 2023 forbidding any President from unilaterally pulling the country out of NATO without Senate approval or an act of Congress. The bill's Republican co- sponsor, by the way, was then Florida Senator, now Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Meanwhile, we are just getting word that two people have been killed in Iranian ballistic missile attack in central Israel. That's according to Israel's emergency response service, CNN's Jeremy Diamond joins us now from the scene. What more can you tell us about the attack, Jeremy?
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Anderson. We are in Ramat Gan, just outside of Tel Aviv, where two people were killed in the latest Iranian ballistic missile attack. This is as a result of what appeared to be cluster munitions that Iran has increasingly been outfitting to the warheads of its ballistic missiles. And at this scene, one of those smaller bomblets appears to have made a direct impact.
I want to pan up here to that balcony that you may be able to see that is destroyed there, part of that apartment as well, suffered a serious blow. Two people, apparently in their 70s, an elderly couple were killed by the blast. Paramedics said that they arrived on the scene and found them both unconscious without any sign of life, and pronounced them dead at the scene. They did not make it into a bomb shelter, as those air raid sirens sounded.
But Anderson, this is just one of what appeared to be multiple impacts across the Tel Aviv area. We've seen videos in neighboring communities outside of Tel Aviv as well. We also saw one of Tel Aviv's train stations that appears to have been hit by one of those cluster submunitions. And from the videos that we saw earlier tonight of those of that ballistic missile coming in this appears to be a larger variety of Iran's ballistic missile.
They have something called the Khorramshahr in their arsenal that can deploy up to 80 of these cluster submunitions, as opposed to the normal 24 bomblets that we've been seeing with the missiles that they traditionally use in their attacks here. And this brings the total now of people killed in Israel due to Iran's attacks to 14.
And Iran showing once again that despite the fact that some 70 percent of their ballistic missile launchers have been destroyed, their air defense capacity is obliterated, so much of their military infrastructure devastated they are still showing capacities to exert a price on both the U.S. and Israel. And here, getting through Israel's air defenses and in this instance tonight, killing two people -- Anderson. COOPER: Has the pace of I mean, I assume the pace of incoming Iranian attacks has certainly slowed since certainly since the start of this. Have they decreased much in recent days?
DIAMOND: You know, there hasn't been a huge change in recent days, but we've been seeing multiple ballistic missile barrages fired at Israel. What has changed is the number of missiles. We're sometimes seeing just single ballistic missiles being fired by Iran but again, they're outfitting many of those missiles with these cluster munitions that can deliver smaller impacts across a wide area as much as seven or eight miles in certain instances. We're also seeing Iran increasingly coordinating its attacks with Hezbollah, which today alone fired dozens of rockets in a single barrage towards Northern Israel.
Sometimes Iran and Hezbollah firing their rockets and missiles at the same time to try and overwhelm Israel's air defenses. We're certainly not seeing the kinds of impacts in Israel from direct hits of those larger warheads on the ballistic missiles from Iran, likely because they don't have the capacity to fire such large barrages. So that one of those missiles perhaps makes it through and instead they're resorting to these cluster munitions, which, again, if people stay in their shelters, are likely not going to be deadly.
Those shelters do protect quite well against what is a relatively small explosive here. But in this case as you can see, a couple in their 70's apparently didn't make it to the bomb shelter and were killed directly on impact. It would seem, from one of those smaller cluster submunitions.
[20:10:31]
COOPER: Jeremy Diamond, appreciate it, thank you, Jeremy.
I want to get perspective now from former Trump National Security advisor John Bolton. He also served as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations during the George W. Bush administration.
Ambassador, how big a blow to the Iranian regime are the killings, you think, of those two high level security officials, particularly Ali Larijani, who was seen as the country's de facto leader in recent weeks?
JOHN BOLTON, FORMER TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: Well, I think both are significant. Larijani was the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, which is a pretty important position. But he was also clearly functioning very close to being a deputy to the now deceased senior leader, Khamenei, perhaps even more important than the civilian President of the country who has been kind of sidelined.
So, the loss of Larijani is another big hole in the top of the leadership and the killing of the commander of the Basij militia I think is also significant because that's the force of really armed thugs that have enforced discipline in the streets of Iran's cities who are primarily, I think, responsible for killing 30,000 or more Iranian civilians last year for demonstrating. When you combine killing the commander of the Basij with what Israel and the U.S. have been doing, targeting Basij's checkpoints in major cities like Tehran, destroying them as they're manned in the streets. I think it says to the Basij, they're very much in the in the bullseye here. And I think that could have a profound effect on him.
COOPER: It does seem like the IDF is targeting, as you point out levers of control over the population in Iran. I don't know if that's to try to foment or make more possible the idea of some sort of regime change from some sort of a popular uprising. If the U.S. were to stop, their side in this, do you think Israel would continue with that?
BOLTON: Well, I think it's possible, although many in Israel say, look Trump started the war, Trump will end the war. That's what happened last summer in June, when the Israelis were on their 12th day of bombing campaign. Trump had the U.S. drop 14 bunker busters on one day and then said, okay, the war is over.
Israel still had a very long target list, and the bombing of the Basij, as in all of the attacks on the Revolutionary Guard, are intended to destroy the instruments of Iranian power that both threaten us externally and threaten their own people internally.
So that by destabilizing the regime in that critical area, it causes the regime to fracture at the top. They're losing leaders hand over fist. Personal animosities, ambition, family connections now all start to play a big role. And as the regime comes apart hopefully the opposition can begin to take advantage of it and see the regime collapse internally.
COOPER: The President seemed to indicate yesterday that he had not been briefed on the potential that Iran might strike out at its neighbors or try to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. Is that conceivable to you that he would not have been briefed on those potential repercussions?
BOLTON: Well, I know for a fact that he was aware of those potentials. I raised the option of regime change in Iran several times during the time I was National Security advisor. I never persuaded the President to adopt that position. And one reason was that others had different views and every time I raised it, they raised a whole long list of difficulties that are entailed by a regime change campaign and that if you're going to embark on it, you better have answers to them.
And certainly, closing the Strait of Hormuz was always one of them. And so were attacks on the Gulf Arab States, particularly their oil infrastructure. So, he knew about it in his first term. I find it hard to believe that he forgot about it in the intervening years.
COOPER: His comments about NATO today and his, you know, anger or whatever however you want to describe it over NATO allies not jumping to support this operation. Do you think this has long lasting impact on his relationship with NATO and the U.S. relationship with NATO?
[20:15:03] BOLTON: Well, he talks about NATO as if it's some organization separate from the United States. What he's complaining about is not NATO. He's complaining about the decision of European members of NATO.
And, you know, usually when you want a coalition to help you in a war, you form it before the war starts. I mean, that's just sort of experience speaking. And he made no effort to do it and it's also the case that European leaders are tired of being criticized by him. It's a juvenile performance by the President. But I will say I think the Europeans make a mistake by responding to that kind of juvenile behavior with juvenile behavior of their own.
A number of European leaders, including Kaja Kallas, the European Union's Chief Foreign Policy official, have said expressly, Iran is not our war. That's very dangerous way to put it because it invites Donald Trump. It almost teases him to come back and say, well okay, Iran is not your war. Ukraine is not our war. It's very dangerous to approach Trump in the same way he behaves.
COOPER: Ambassador Bolton, I appreciate your time, thank you.
Coming up next, the ranking Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee on the President's antipathy toward NATO allies and his talk today about leaving the alliance.
And later, CNN Nic Robertson on how Gulf States are coping with the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, not for their oil exports, but for everything else. They can no longer bring in by sea or air.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:20:57]
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
(VIDEO OF LATEST STRIKES TARGETING THE U.S. EMBASSY IN BAGHDAD.)
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: That's one of the latest strikes targeting the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Iraqi security officials saying the area was targeted tonight by at least four projectiles, including two drones, with one landing in the vicinity of the compound.
Also, Central Command saying U.S. Forces dropped 5,000-pound penetrating munitions to blow up Iranian missile sites threatening shipping in the Gulf.
Joining us now is Democratic Congressman Adam Smith, the ranking member on the House Armed Services Committee.
Congressman, I appreciate you being here. I want to get your reaction, first of all to this U.S. Embassy in Baghdad being attacked by drones for the second time in as many days. It's obviously a heavily fortified compound. Are you surprised though, that Iran or its proxies can still reach American targets? REP. ADAM SMITH (D-WA): Not really. I mean, that's the thing about drones as we've seen in Ukraine, certainly, but in fights elsewhere, it's really hard to wipe out an adversary's drone capacity. And they're small cheap, easy to get through. We have defenses but, you know they do find a way through.
So, that's the difficulty here is, we can certainly weaken Iran's military capacity, and we have substantially. But even a weak opponent still has cards to play drones and they even still have missiles and eventually one or more of those things will get through as long as this war continues. Our troops and all of our people who are in that region are definitely at risk.
COOPER: I want to play you some sound of a Fox reporter, Peter Doocy, asking a question to the President about whether he was briefed on the possibility of attacking its neighbors and the Strait.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
PETER DOOCY, FOX NEWS CHANNEL SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Are you surprised that nobody briefed you ahead of time that, that might be their retaliation?
TRUMP: Nobody, nobody. No, no, no, no, the greatest experts, nobody thought they were going to hit. They were, I wouldn't say friendly countries. They were like neutral. They lived with them for years. Peter, they were going to take over the Middle East.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Do you believe that the President was not actually briefed on the possibility that Iran would strike out at neighboring countries? He didn't mention the Strait there, but also hit the Strait.
SMITH: Yes. No, no, I don't. I agree with John Bolton. It's impossible to believe. And I know Chairman Caine fairly well. Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff. I have no doubt whatsoever that he was briefed on all these possibilities. We've all been briefed on all of these possibilities for, gosh, going on 10, 15 years now. As Ambassador Bolton mentioned this was something contemplated during the first Trump administration. It's been contemplated for a while because of the challenge and the threat that Iran poses.
Now, what everyone else has concluded is the cost outweighed the benefit and the ability to do anything more than gain a tactical advantage. I mean, to get an actual strategic victory would be very difficult to achieve, and it would come at precisely the cost that we have seen in placing at risk everybody in the region, which is exactly what's happened. So, there's no possibility that President Trump wasn't fully aware of those possibilities.
COOPER: Do you still believe it's impossible to get a full victory, a strategic victory, which I assume would mean some sort of regime change?
SMITH: I don't know that it's impossible but it is highly unlikely. And this is something that we knew. I mean, Iran's a country of 93 million people. This regime has been dug in for 47 years. They have layers upon layers of support for this regime. And they have the power, they have the guns, the ability to substantially change that regime, particularly with just an air campaign.
Air campaigns are notoriously unable to bring about regime change. So, this is the decision were at now, Anderson, that's so interesting and dangerous is, does President Trump escalate? Does he move to other steps? Does he begin to target Iranian infrastructure to try to weaken them further? Does he put ground troops in?
You know, when he's confronted with the reality that the strategic victory of substantial regime change is unlikely to be achieved with what we're doing right now, does he try to declare victory and go home, or does he escalate? I hope that he tries to declare victory because I don't think escalation is going to achieve that objective either, and it will simply up the cost for us and everybody else in the region.
COOPER: Do you think that European allies, their reaction to the request for sending in ships to the Strait, their lack of interest in that at this point, do you think that's going to have blowback on U.S. relations in NATO?
[20:25:30]
SMITH: I think it sort of continues the theme and the direction that it's been going in since President Trump came back into office.
Look, he's belittled and insulted all of those allies. He's threatened them, he's threatened Canada, he's threatened Denmark through Greenland. He constantly mocks them and insults them. I mean, that's not a recipe for a healthy relationship no matter what is going on.
So, I think we were headed in a bad direction. This certainly doesn't help. But the other key part of this to understand is for quite a while now, I mean, beginning with the speech that the Canadian Prime Minister gave in Davos, our allies are going to start to de-risk America. You know, Donald Trump's made it perfectly clear he doesn't like him. He doesn't think much of him. He's not particularly inclined to help them. So, they're going to start looking for other options.
Now, that doesn't totally sever the relationship, but it fundamentally changes it and it weakens the most successful military alliance that the United States of America has ever been a part of and that's a big problem.
COOPER: Congressman Adam Smith, I appreciate your time, thank you.
Coming up more on the breaking news, as the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad comes under attack for a second night in a row. President Trump today said leaving NATO is certainly something that we should think about. That's next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:30:52]
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Iranian regime has told Sky News if you put boots on the ground in Iran, it will be another Vietnam. Are you afraid of that?
DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: No, I'm not afraid of -- I'm really not afraid of anything.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: That's President Trump on comments from Iran's deputy foreign minister when asked what if thousands of U.S. Marines were sent there to Kharg Island, the epicenter of Iran's oil industry. Military targets on the island were pounded by the U.S. airstrikes on Friday, according to CENTCOM, but the oil infrastructure was left unharmed.
The brinksmanship from both Iran and the United States continues to ratchet up, further complicated by many U.S. allies deciding or declining President Trump's demands for military aid, which led the president today to openly muse about the United States leaving NATO.
I'm joined now by CNN Senior Political and Global Affairs Commentator Rahm Emanuel. He's also served as President Obama's first chief of staff and U.S. ambassador to Japan in the Biden administration. Do you think it's going to have ramifications for NATO once this is over?
RAHM EMANUEL, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL & GLOBAL AFFAIRS COMMENTATOR: Well, the Trump administration -- under President Trump, already has. We've made our NATO allies feel more insecure, more unworthy, when they've been actually very, very supportive of the United States and other initiatives. So I do think it will impact from his perspective.
I mean, you cannot, as Adam said earlier, belittle people, ridicule them, attack them all the time. As I've said to you before, he has this instinct to punch down on people. And now that literally America needs and we need their resources, their capabilities, the Brits have a long history with Iran.
Nobody's going to come running to us because this is also, get back to the fundamentals, this was a war of choice. It was not a war of necessity. And NATO is a defensive entity, not an offensive entity. And this is offensive.
COOPER: It is also -- I mean, this administration has, you know, prided itself on just, you know, moving fast, acting unilaterally. There is something to be said --
EMANUEL: Sometimes impulsively.
COOPER: Well, impulsively, yes. There is something to be said for building coalitions. It's boring. It requires work. It takes time. It takes some patience.
EMANUEL: And discipline -- yes.
COOPER: None of which this administration seems to have. EMANUEL: No, I mean, look, you can go to Operation Desert Storm in the early 90s. That's model A of a perfect effort. I mean, I'm not supportive of what President Bush 43 did in Iraq, but there was a coalition there. This is the problem of America, quote unquote, "alone" or leading here and not building and hearing other people.
Other people would give you different perspectives. And he's not only ignored them, it ridiculed them. Most importantly, he's surrounded himself inside the White House by people who don't question him.
I mean, I have sat in the Situation Room where you debate every which situation from all the different angles and everybody has the ability to give their opinion. And I -- like, take the Strait of Hormuz. This was not a pop quiz. It's been in every plan. It's been out in every paper that if you do something, most importantly, threaten the government itself, not the military piece, but the political piece, they have a vote here and they have a response. They have now got a veto power on the entire world economy.
COOPER: And, I mean, the idea that he was not briefed on the potential of the neighbors being attacked by Iran is just ludicrous.
EMANUEL: Let me say, beyond the fact that it's in every plan that's ever been developed, it's in the newspaper. Google it. I mean, it's not -- this is not a strategic question. It has been in every newspaper for 20 years if you could get to a military confrontation, which is why, Anderson, Prime Minister Netanyahu has gone to President Clinton, President Obama, President Bush, President Biden and President Trump.
Nobody signed off on this because the equities don't weigh out to a net positive. Nobody did this.
COOPER: You said a year ago that the Pentagon had been, quote, in your words, "caught flat footage" during the drone revolution. You're talking about the war in Ukraine. We're certainly seeing that here as well.
EMANUEL: Yes, I mean, this was prior to President Zelenskyy's famous meeting about three weeks prior to that. I said, don't ask for their mineral rights. Nobody knows they exist and they're 10 years out. They have drone technology that our military industrial complex has been flat footed and the Pentagon's been flat footed on.
Get access to battle tested ideas. They produce in four weeks. Well, we can't produce in four weeks. We can't even do an RFP for a procurement in four years. That technology now, we have found ourselves at the -- not at the mercy, but we -- what Ukraine is an ally.
[20:35:02]
That's a friend. Russia is a foe. And the president of the United States doesn't know the difference between friend and foe. Ukraine's technology is the most battle tested, most sophisticated technology on both drone offense and drone defense. And the United States not only our military, but our military industrial complex flat footed. And we could have actually treated them like a friend and brought that technology into our capacities to defend our troops.
COOPER: When you hear the president urging China to help in the Strait of Hormuz, does that make sense to you?
EMANUEL: Well, it does, but why would China help the United States given everything we've done? No. I mean, it makes -- it does make sense in the sense that it shows how desperate we are. And it shows that we hadn't thought through that there's a step one, two and three. You've got to play chess here, not checkers.
And you're asking China to come to our defense. Everybody's watching this process and seeing the United States. Yes, its military is doing unbelievable. But politically, strategically, which is where the commander in chief comes into play, has -- is being humbled and everybody wants to see it happen.
COOPER: Rahm Emanuel, thanks very much. Appreciate it.
Coming up next, what we are just now learning on the bombs CENTCOM says were used to destroy Iranian missile sites, threatening ships in the Strait of Hormuz. We'll have more on that ahead.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:40:53]
COOPER: We're learning more tonight about the type of bombs that CENTCOM tonight says it dropped on Iranian missile sites near the Strait of Hormuz. A U.S. official tells us they are GPS guided, so they work in all weather and are designed to destroy heavily reinforced, deeply buried targets. Tonight's strike, successful though it may be, will not be the final word, of course, on threats to the Strait or Iran's neighbors.
Joining us now at the map table, CNN Global Affairs Analyst Brett McGurk. He served in senior national security posts under the last four presidents, including President Trump's first term, and Retired Army Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt.
General Kimmitt, let's talk about these 5,000, there are 5,000 pound deep penetrator munitions on hardened Iranian missile strikes near the Strait of Hormuz. We don't know the exact locations. How significant would that be in neutralizing part of the threat to ships in the Strait?
BRIG. GEN. MARK KIMMITT (RET.), U.S. ARMY: I think that's right answer part of it, but I think we've still got to remember there are hundreds, if not thousands of speedboats that are hidden along that coastline in coves, camouflaged in open site as commercial vehicles --
COOPER: Literally speedboats, the kind you would see out recreationally.
KIMMITT: Yes. What you'd see, cigarette boats that basically can shoot missiles at big ships, our ships, tankers. So until we can eliminate that threat, I still think we're not going to be considered militarily successful through the strait and the commercial success won't be for --
COOPER: I mean, with the USS Cole, we saw what one speedboat like that can do to a vessel.
KIMMITT: And our tankers are much, much larger. During the tanker war, it took three or four different hits on a tanker to sink it. But nonetheless, when you've got a couple of hundred, if not thousands speedboats, they can put a lot of pain on those tankers.
COOPER: And Brett, you've worked on building international coalitions before, even if European allies started to decide to get involved, what kind of a time frame does it -- how long does it take?
BRETT MCGURK, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. We're here on day 18. I think my main headline is this is not going to end anytime soon. I just don't see the -- I wish I could say I saw the end game. I think we're kind of at the halfway point. What I --
COOPER: I mean, the wild card is the president of the United States could very well just say --
MCGURK: True.
COOPER: -- we've won, call it a day.
MCGURK: He could, but I don't think he has that off ramp because Iran -- I mean, imagine you do that, you declare victory. Iran keeps shooting, Strait of Hormuz is close. There's three conflicts going on. There's a vertical conflict, that means force on force.
We're hitting Iran. They're trying to hit our bases. That is obviously I think we're doing very well there. There's the horizontal. They're trying to get the Gulf countries involved. We talked about that. That is not work. And there's the asymmetrics. And the asymmetrics is a Strait of Hormuz.
And I -- what I can see happening over the coming -- I would say three weeks. And that strike tonight was kind of shaping the hope that you can set military conditions to retake the Strait of Hormuz. Might be with a coalition. I know the Brits are talking to us or it might -- we might have to do it on our own.
The UAE today said they might participate. But what's happening now is trying to shape the conditions for that so that we can basically overcome that asymmetric challenge.
COOPER: And so this would be one of many potential strikes on potential targets in and around the Strait.
MCGURK: I think over the next three weeks, CENTCOM will continuous targeting campaign to just uproot the defense industrial base of Iran to methodically take apart their missile drone storage production, everything. And with increasing focus now on this. But look, these are the Zagros Mountains.
So you have your flatlands, but then you have mountain ranges. And, you know, they have tunnels in there. It's a very -- the distances are vast. It's a huge military challenge.
COOPER: General, do you also agree that this is likely to go on for weeks?
KIMMITT: Yes, especially if we do try to form a coalition. It's important to understand that we don't have nearly the capability to bring up the mines, to escort the tankers, to escort all the equipment that we did in the first tanker war. We've got about 50 helicopters that can spot them, but we only have four boats, four entire boats in the Navy that can actually do mine countermeasure.
Huge numbers, probably 10 times that amount in other countries, especially among the Europeans. We can't open the Strait of Hormuz --
COOPER: Is that because we've had just haven't put much emphasis on mine clearing?
[20:45:09]
KIMMITT: Yes, I had a Navy guy tell me the other day that the last thing a surface warfare would ever want to do is work in a wooden hulled boat. And those are wooden hulled boats to avoid the magnetic signatures.
COOPER: So in terms of the Kharg Island, the president has not ruled out the potential of other strikes on Kharg Island. I think we have a map of that. What is the significance of Kharg Island? It's interesting to --
MCGURK: So Kharg Island, Anderson, there it is, a very small island. It's about half the size of Manhattan, about 8 square miles. It is the heart. If the Strait of Hormuz is the global artery for the global economy, this is the heart of Iran's economy. It's 90 percent of all their oil exports.
This is shallow water, so it's deep water ports, and it's how they export all their oil. And we have a marine expeditionary unit coming in to the Middle East from the Asia-Pacific region. It will arrive in about a week or so. I would assume that is to give the president options, and CENTCOM is surely working this.
If we decide to challenge the asymmetric problem we have, we are going to seize or destroy the heart of Iran's economy. Now, there are all sorts of challenges, Anderson. Even if -- imagine if we take it, you can take it, you have to defend it.
And it's 20 miles from the Iranian coast, about 40 miles from these mountains. So, again, now three weeks from now, you might have set the conditions. I'm sure Brad Cooper, who is the admiral running CENTCOM, I've worked with him in the past, you know, I'm sure he's working this to give the president options. But that could be an option, and the president is talking about it -- COOPER: If you had to defend Kharg Island, are you talking about a, I
mean, a sea invasion, you know, sea forces from Iran?
KIMMITT: Yes. They are an amphibious unit, but the fact remains is, I don't we're going to -- we shouldn't put American troops on there. We can easily take that island by simply knocking out the electricity to the pumps, and it would be much easier to repair those pumps. And probably less of an impact on the international community and the international economy if they knew we could turn it off and then turn it back on without any serious damage.
MCGURK: And even there, Anderson, Iran will get a vote, because then they can start attacking, you know, in a greater way the energy infrastructure in our -- in Saudi Arabia and all the -- on the other side of the Gulf, so.
KIMMITT: Which they will do in --
COOPER: Assuming they have the capabilities, but you would say that even if a bombing campaign is successful, they're still going to have something we'll get through.
MCGURK: I think the hope is in three weeks and up for now, there will be significantly degraded, particularly missiles. But the drones they have are pretty plentiful. Drones are easier to defend against. But the expectation now has been finish the military campaign in three weeks, set the conditions for some of these options, open the Strait.
If you can't open the Strait, that's where Kharg Island comes into play. You can see it's flat, it's industrial. Think of a big international airport.
COOPER: It's a runway, I assume.
MCGURK: Yes, it's basically an oil -- it's an oil facility. So, yes, we could seize it, but holding it, that's really difficult.
COOPER: What about the Houthis in Yemen? I mean, they have fired on ships previously in the Strait.
MCGURK: A challenge I've dealt with in the past in the Red Sea, Anderson, so far the Houthis, which are supplied massively right down here, this is the Bab al-Mandab, translates about the gate of tears. The Houthis, which are here in these mountains, armed with Iranian missiles, and they fired anti-ship missiles at our ships going Mach 4.
I mean, it was by the skill of our sailors that we didn't have massive losses on our ships. This is incredibly gnarly territory. We built an international coalition. It was pretty successful. But to build the confidence of these commercial shippers, it takes time and time and time and patience. It is hard, hard work. So far, the Houthis have not joined this fight.
COOPER: Why is this?
MCGURK: So there's different theories. One, it's a card that Iran is holding back. Another is they have been pounded. I mean, they've really been pounded by U.S. strikes and Israeli strikes, particularly last fall, that maybe they don't want to mix it up again.
But if they started to shoot into this passageway, I think we would then have a dual challenge. So I'm watching that very closely.
COOPER: General Kimmitt, just in general, what are you watching right now? Like, what's -- what should people be watching?
KIMMITT: To me, we've got to understand that the Iranian government is not fighting a war, they're fighting resistance. And in a resistance operation, you win by not losing. And they think we're losing by not winning. So what I'm watching more than anything else is what's going to happen with the government.
Are they going to fight or are they going to resist until the last man? I think that's why Brett says this is going to take at least three weeks. But the enemy has a vote, and they may want to drag this out as long as they can.
COOPER: In a sense, are we -- is the U.S. fighting an insurgent?
KIMMITT: They are fighting, in very many ways, the standard insurgency tactics, which is you've got the watches, we've got the time.
COOPER: Right.
[20:50:07]
MCGURK: Iran is trying to have global -- think of it that way. And they are trying to -- and their strategic culture is we can take a lot of pain. They all go back to the Iran-Iraq war. I mean, I've worked with the Iraq -- met with the Iranians, I've been across the table from the hardliners and Revolutionary Guards.
The Iran-Iraq war, eight years of massive, massive casualties, Anderson. They go back to it as kind of their foundational experience. And so they -- their doctrine is we will suffer, take the pain. We will outlast any aggressor as they see it. But we'll see.
They're also taking a beating. And large -- they just lost Larijani today who was -- they don't have any indispensable people, but he's about as close as it comes in their system.
COOPER: Brett McGurk, General Kimmitt, thank you so much. Really appreciate it.
KIMMITT: Thank you.
COOPER: Fascinating. More on this moment and the bigger picture that it is part of. I'll talk with CNN's Fareed Zakaria when our CNN Global War Coverage continues.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:55:38] COOPER: The president lashed out at NATO allies today for rejecting his call for help against Iran. Fareed Zakaria is with me now. He's the host of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS. And he's written an op-ed in The Washington Post with the headline, quote, "Iran is an imperial trap. America walked right in."
What do you mean by an imperial trap?
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST, FAREED ZAKARIA GPS: Well, you know, when you're a superpower and you can do stuff all over the world, you have to be relentlessly focused on, does this rise to the level of something that affects the core interests, values and prosperity of the American people? And this one just doesn't feel like that. Iran was a manageable problem. It was being contained.
And it reminded me of those many times that Britain, when it was the global superpower, would get dragged into places like Iraq, places like Afghanistan, and kind of squander away its superpower status while America and Germany were building their industrial might. And if you look at what the United States has been doing for the last 25 years, three wars in the greater Middle East, while China is building up its industrial might, the historical parallel is kind of eerie.
COOPER: Why is -- do you think the president is calling this an excursion? I mean, they insisted on calling the, you know, Department of Defense the Department of War. The Secretary of Defense wants to call himself the Secretary of War, and yet they're afraid to use the word war.
ZAKARIA: That is truly bizarre, right? Like they've renamed it the Department of War because they want to emphasize we don't, you know, use euphemisms.
COOPER: Right.
ZAKARIA: We call things what they are. It's a war. Except now they're saying it's not a war, even though it plainly is. The excursion thing I've heard is fascinating.
Apparently, Trump was briefed on -- a number of times on the Iran war, and it was called an incursion. He started to --
COOPER: An incursion into Iran --
ZAKARIA: An incursion into -- right, right.
COOPER: -- which would make more sense.
ZAKARIA: He started to call it an excursion, which is a brief trip organized for leisure activities. And maybe this tells you something about the way the White House works. No one has the courage to just gently and politely --
COOPER: Is that really true?
ZAKARIA: -- correct the president. Well, you tell me. COOPER: I mean --
ZAKARIA: You've watched the White House. Those camera meetings, Anderson, do you think any of them are saying, Mr. President, you misspoke?
COOPER: Actually, the word is incursion, not excursion. Yes, I mean, if they won't correct their shoe size --
ZAKARIA: Exactly.
COOPER: -- with the shoes he's given out, Marco Rubio is running around in oversized shoes, which is surreal. The NATO alliance, what does this -- I mean, I've been asking everybody tonight, but I think it's a very real issue. Whatever does this -- whatever happens in Iran, this -- to the president, proves his point that NATO is not there for the United States.
ZAKARIA: It's a largely bogus charge that the president is making. Remember, NATO did not participate as NATO in the Iraq War. NATO did not participate as NATO in the Vietnam War. There are many times when NATO has not participated in American wars.
And in this case, he never asked NATO. He never consulted them beforehand. He never tried to build a coalition to do it. So it's hardly surprising. And, by the way, let's not forget, it's only about a month ago, six weeks ago, that he threatened to invade a NATO country.
So, you know, the whole idea that NATO should be falling all over itself to join in here --
COOPER: Do you think it's a mistake, though, by some of these European countries not to, in some way, render some kind of assistance to the U.S. in this?
ZAKARIA: Well, look, if they are trying to manage their relations with the U.S., maybe, you know, it would make sense, and that's why the British and the French have been more --
COOPER: Yes.
ZAKARIA: -- willing. But I think that, you know, the way alliances are meant to work is you consult them, you talk to them, you -- I mean, Trump has, you know, constantly bad-mouthed them, constantly denigrated them. So it's hardly the moment to suddenly say, oh, I feel like I'm in trouble now, I need your help. We know -- you know, when life -- when that happens, when you do that, you don't get a great response.
COOPER: We've got about 40 seconds left. Brett McGurk was saying he sees this potentially going on for another three to four weeks, particularly if you want to build some sort of coalition to deal with the Strait of Hormuz.
ZAKARIA: We're all trying to psychoanalyze one man. Is he willing to find a diplomatic off-ramp? And he could. Trump can easily reverse himself.
COOPER: He could say tomorrow it's a victory.
ZAKARIA: Tomorrow, and his base will be fine with it. Or is he emotionally now charged in that way that people often do in these imperial traps, where he wants to throw good money after bad, where he has to in some way show that he's won.
COOPER: Fareed Zakaria, thanks so much. Appreciate it. We'll see you on GPS.
That's it for us. The news continues. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now. Thanks so much for watching.
