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Anderson Cooper 360 Degrees
Trump Claims, "This War Has Been Won" Amid New Wave Of Strikes; Iran Has Expressed A Preference For Negotiating With VP Vance; NTSB: Fire Truck Involved In LaGuardia Deadly Collision With Plane Had No Transponder, Limiting Ability To Track It; CNN Reports From Southern Lebanon Amid Israel Airstrikes; Sources: About 1,000 Soldiers From 82nd Airborne Expecting To Deploy To Middle East. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired March 24, 2026 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WILL RIPLEY, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: And back in Pyongyang, Kim is honoring families of fallen troops doubling down on nuclear weapons and telling his military and his people to prepare for war.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
RIPLEY: And tonight, Erin, there are still signs that diplomacy may not be completely off the table. Just this month, South Korea's Prime Minister sat down with President Trump in the Oval Office, raising the possibility of another meeting with Kim Jong-un.
Now, Trump has made clear he's pretty open to it, and Kim is actually signaling, despite the rhetoric, that he could be, too. But with one major condition, Erin, North Korea's nuclear weapons, they say, are not up for negotiation.
ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: All right, well, thank you very much and thanks so much to all of you as always for joining us. AC360 starts now.
[20:00:41]
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST, "ANDERSON COOPER: 360": And good evening, tonight in our Global War coverage from the newsroom, more American ground forces headed to the Mideast even as the President talks about a peace deal. Teases what he calls a, "big present" from Iran and declares victory again.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I don't like to say this. We've won this, this war has been won.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: For someone who doesn't like to say the war is won, he has said it several times now. Nevertheless, bombs are still very much falling and missiles firing. (VIDEO CLIP PLAYS)
COOPER: That is another Israeli strike today on the port city of Tyre in Southern Lebanon, part of it's expanding offensive in the area. American forces also continuing to pound Iran. This is new video from Central Command, which says the U.S. has destroyed more than 9,000 military targets inside the country.
Elsewhere tonight, Kuwaiti authorities say drones hit a fuel tank at Kuwait International Airport. We don't yet have video of that. And a CNN crew today captured video of an Iranian strike over Tel Aviv. Those may look like fireworks, but they are definitely not. Those are cluster munitions, small ball shaped explosives, which are designed to scatter across an area, widening the kill zone from a single rocket. We have no reporting on what damage may or may not have been done or any injuries.
Now, as I mentioned, we got a new indication late today that the U.S. continues to bolster its capacity for ground operations. About a thousand troops with the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division are expected to deploy to the region in just a matter of days. They'll include a battalion from the division's immediate response force, which is a brigade that's ready to deploy and fight within hours of getting the call.
They'll join two Marine Expeditionary Units, totaling about 4,500 personnel also headed toward the Gulf, also equipped and trained to be ready for action on short notice.
Now, word of this new deployment capped off another day of some hopeful talk from the President about negotiations with Iran.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: They're going to make a deal. They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present and the present arrived today. And it was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. And I'm not going to tell you what that present is, but it was a very significant prize. And they gave it to us and they said they were going to give it. So that meant one thing to me, we're dealing with the right people.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Unclear what that present he's talking about actually is, though he did later say it had to do with the Strait of Hormuz and was oil and gas related. Purported gifts aside, though gas prices rose again today to $3.98 a gallon, just $0.02 shy of the $4.00 mark and a full dollar a full dollar a gallon more than the day the war began.
So, there's breaking news as well tonight on who the Iranians would prefer to talk to. CNN's Kylie Atwood joins us now by phone with that. So, what have you learned about whom Iran prefers for any negotiations with the U.S.
KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so, the Iranians have made clear through interlocutors that they're, you know, talking to the United States through at this point that they don't want to be negotiating anymore with Steve Witkoff, who's special envoy, and Jared Kushner, the President's son-in-law. That's according to two regional sources that I spoke with. And in fact, they prefer to deal with Vice President Vance.
Now, obviously, the Iranians don't really have a say at who this administration chooses to send to the table for negotiations. But Vance, in contrast to Witkoff and Kushner and even Secretary of State Marco Rubio, is viewed by regional players as being more sympathetic to actually wanting to end this war.
One source told me the perception is that Vance, the Vice President, would be intent on wrapping up this conflict, and though they recognize that it could be a risky proposition for the Vice President to get involved, because this isn't going to be easy to negotiate. They are wanting to get him to the table. Theres a proposal on the table right now from Pakistan for a meeting between the U.S. and Iran later this week.
They've asked Vice President Vance to attend that. It's unclear if that meeting is going to actually happen or if the White House has agreed to it. When we asked The White House about our reporting here, the Press Secretary, Karoline Leavitt, referenced the President's remarks earlier today, saying that President Trump is going to be the one who determines, who negotiates on behalf of the United States. And he has said that Vice President Vance, Secretary Rubio, Special Envoy Witkoff and Mr. Kushner will all be involved.
We know that all of these players are still engaged, but the point is that the Iranians are making it clear that they want someone else at the table who they haven't negotiated with in the past.
[20:05:28]
COOPER: All right, Kelly Atwood, thanks very much. CNN's Jeremy Diamond joins us now from Tel Aviv. So, what's the latest on Iranian strikes in Israel and vice-versa?
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, at this hour, the Israeli military is conducting yet another wave of airstrikes over the Iranian capital. We do not yet know what the targets are but certainly we've seen in the last several weeks, as Israel has continued to try and degrade Iran's ballistic missile capacity, both its production of those missiles and also those ballistic missile launchers.
But yet again today, the Iranians showed the capacity that they still have to fire those ballistic missiles and to actually get them to pierce Israel's air defenses. We've seen about a dozen separate waves of ballistic missiles being fired at Israel over the course of the last 24 hours or so. It began this morning with a direct impact of a ballistic missile in Tel Aviv, not far from where I'm standing right now.
No serious injuries as a result of that one. Then there was some shrapnel that fell in the Negev Desert, injuring several individuals, putting one man in serious condition. And then tonight we saw those cluster munitions that you were just referencing coming down over the Tel Aviv area, resulting in at least nine people who were wounded, six of them who were children.
COOPER: And the Israeli Defense Minister said he ordered the destruction of all bridges that link Southern Lebanon to the rest of the country. It was yesterday we saw that video by from Israel of a bridge being blown up around Tyre. We saw another strike in Tyre today from the IDF. What are you learning about their strategy there?
DIAMOND: Yes, the Israelis say that they have blown up five separate bridges across that Litani River, which separates the southernmost area of Lebanon, which is considered to be Hezbollah stronghold, a Shia-majority area from the rest of Lebanon. The Israeli military says that it is to prevent Hezbollah from smuggling weapons into Southern Lebanon where Israeli troops are increasingly encroaching on Lebanese territory.
But Lebanese officials say that this is also posing a humanitarian problem, preventing people from eventually being able to return to that area and preventing those who are still living south of the Litani River from getting the essential supplies that they need in order to live.
And this all comes as the Israeli Defense Minister and other top Israeli officials are indicating more and more that the future holds a ground operation for the Israeli military, a significant offensive into Lebanese territory. We know that Israeli troops are already operating a few miles into Lebanese territory, but we heard yesterday from the Israeli finance minister, the far-right minister, Bezalel Smotrich, today from Israel Katz, both of them kind of pointing at this strategy of controlling the entire area up to that Litani River holding the territory in the future.
And we don't yet know if that means using ground troops to do so. But it does come as the Israeli government today raised the cap for the number of reserve soldiers that they can have up to 400,000 from 280,000, doesn't mean they're going to call all of them up, but it certainly does give the Israeli government the option to do so if they wanted to carry out a major offensive in Lebanon -- Anderson.
COOPER: Jeremy Diamond, thanks very much.
I want to get some perspective now from former Trump National Security Advisor, John Bolton. He also served as U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. during the George W, Bush administration.
So, ambassador, how do you square the President again today, declaring the U.S. has won the war with the news about 1,000 soldiers from the Army's elite 82nd Airborne Division are going to head over there?
JOHN BOLTON, FORMER TRUMP NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: Well, I think he's been looking for a way to declare victory and get out for some time, I think particularly after the Strait of Hormuz was effectively closed, it could be that the delay in negotiations or delay in the deadline for further strikes on energy targets inside Iran is to give time for whatever forces need to be assembled for whatever objective they're looking at taking on, and that would make the delay more understandable.
But I have a more general sense that things are being done on a day- by-day basis, that the new plans are evolving, and it reflects a lack of strategic thinking before the attack began.
COOPER: Well, to your point about the President wanting to look for a way to just declare victory, he also has described again today that what happened in Iran as regime change. And I just want to play that for our listeners.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We killed all their leadership and then they met to choose new leaders and we killed all of them. And now we have a new group and we can easily do that, but let's see how they turn out.
It's -- we have really regime change. You know, this is a change in the regime because the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with that created all those problems. So, this was, I think we can say, Jason, this is regime change, right?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
[20:10:25]
COOPER: There's a lot of folks I've talked to have said, yes, their people have changed, but the regime is actually maybe more hardline than it was before. I'm not sure if you agree with that, but is this the regime change that you were hoping for?
BOLTON: Absolutely not. I mean, look, this is a regime that's based on a radical Islamist ideology, and it's deeply inculcated in the ranks of the ayatollahs in the civil government, in the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Trump doesn't have a philosophy, so I don't even think he understands what motivates these people. The faces may change, but the ideology remains the same.
The regime will change when the Ayatollahs and the Revolutionary Guard are gone. And we're not at that point yet, quite obviously. But it's another way for him to say that we have won the objective and therefore victorious and can leave. And when you say regime change is defined by changing the regime, you know, that's easy to do.
COOPER: I wonder what you make of the CNN reporting, according to two sources in the region, Iranian representatives have expressed a preference for negotiating with Vice-President Vance rather than Marco Rubio or Steve Witkoff or Jared Kushner. If that's accurate. What does that doe's that -- does that mean much to you?
BOLTON: Sure, they're going for the softest, highest-level negotiator they can find based on Vance's own statements going back to the '24 campaign, if not before, they think he didn't want to get into this to begin with. Therefore, he's the softest touch to deal with to get out.
COOPER: We mentioned CNN's reporting that Saudi Arabia wants the war to end when Iran's missile capabilities are degraded as much as possible, according to a source in the region. Do you think there is a realistic deal to be made that would please Iran, the U.S., Israel, Saudi Arabia and other allies in the Gulf?
BOLTON: Well, I don't think so. I think there's other reporting that says that MBS, the crown prince, the de facto ruler of Saudi Arabia, has actually pushed Trump to effect regime change. And I think that's a actually a growing feeling among the Arab regimes, because what Iran has now demonstrated in the in the geopolitical struggle in the Middle East and in the struggle for hegemony within Islam is they can close the Strait of Hormuz at will. And that puts the Gulf Arab States in a very precarious position.
They may not have wanted this war to start, but they've always favored regime change in Iran if they could get it without too much fuss or bother, that unfortunately, they weren't able to achieve. There is fuss and bother, obviously, but I think they still want regime change.
If you leave this wounded animal in Tehran able to recover, it will return to the nuclear weapons program, return to its terrorism. And now it's third big threat, closing the Strait of Hormuz.
COOPER: Ambassador Bolton, I appreciate your time tonight, thank you.
Up next, we've got breaking news in an election in President Trumps backyard. The Democrats have just flipped a deep red Florida state district that includes a Mar-a-Lago and a special election. The winner is Emily Gregory, there on the left, John King will join us with an update on that.
And later, more on what the President said today about regime change in Iran, namely, that the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes have already accomplished it. We'll talk about the implications of that when we continue.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:17:55]
COOPER: Got some breaking election news. You can see it there, CNN can now project the winner in tonight's special state house election in Florida. The seat is a district which includes Mar-a-Lago. CNN's John King joins us now with more. So, how significant are these results? Because, this isn't -- hasn't always been a Republican District.
JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Right, Anderson, just for starters, I've been texting some Democrats waiting to come on the air since we projected Miss Gregory as the winner here, the Democrat flipping this seat in Florida. And suffice to say, Democrats are not tired of losing. They like to borrow that phrase because of what they hear from the Trump White House.
You do not want to overstate this. To your point, if you go through most of the 2010s the seat was held by a Democrat. So, you don't want to overstate it. It's not, wow, Democrats have never won here before.
However, you also don't want to understate it. The Republican who had that seat, who stepped aside when Ron DeSantis pointed him to another job. So, they had to have the special election. He won his last election by 20 points. Donald Trump carried this legislative district in the Presidential race a couple of years ago, and then put it in the context of everything else that has happening. Democrats are winning local elections everywhere throughout 2025 and now throughout 2026, and they're doing it all over the map.
In ruby red states like Florida, in Georgia, in Mississippi, in Texas, in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. So, Democrats, clearly the facts just speak plainly the math, speaks plainly as day. Democrats have huge enthusiasm behind them right now, and republicans keep losing in places where just in November of 2024, they were winning big. And so, Democrats believe that they had a good year set up because it's a midterm year. You have a Republican President. His poll numbers are down. They thought they had a good year and they think actually, as we start to move through the early spring here, the opportunities are getting even bigger and wider, broader, if you will.
COOPER: Was there a particular issue that she ran on that that seemed to work, or is there too much? I mean, is I guess, there's a risk also, Democrats reading too much into this.
KING: Democrats have to be careful, obviously, you have to understand where you are. But the issue that was at play in this district was the issue that's at play everywhere, and that's affordability.
I'm at a place I shouldn't be. I'm in Asheville, North Carolina tonight. You know this area well, but I was out in the mountain towns. I was out in hot springs today. I was out in Marshall today, places that got pummeled by Hurricane Helene 18 months ago.
Those places when I started doing this 40 years ago, they were represented by Democrats. Now, they're represented by Republicans. But Democrats think they have a chance to broaden the map, that Florida race is another example, they say, we can broaden the map and win in places were not supposed to, why?
Because in rural America, especially if you live in rural America, you have to drive, a lot more than people who live in the city and the close in suburbs, we're driving these roads throughout North Carolina this week. Gas is approaching $4.00 a gallon. It's $3.60 a little bit more. Sometimes you see $3.80 or $3.90. That's all happened in three and a half weeks since the Iran War.
Already, Anderson, groceries are still high. Transportation costs are already higher in rural areas. They have to ship things in to get them there. So, your groceries have still been high, your heating costs are high, your health care costs, because the Obamacare subsidies are gone.
[20:20:48]
So, Democrats think a map that was good for them a month ago is even better now because of the Iran War and the effect on energy prices, without a doubt, any effect on the Trump base. They believe some Trump voters, and it doesn't take much in a midterm election year. Some Trump voters will look at what's happening and say, that's not the America first resident of peace that we voted for.
COOPER: All right, John King. John, thanks very much, appreciate you coming on.
More now on the war and the President's claim today that regime change in Iran has actually already happened. I want to just play that again, what President Trump had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TRUMP: We killed all their leadership and then they met to choose new leaders and we killed all of them and now we have a new group and we can easily do that. But let's see how they turn out.
It's -- we have really regime change. You know, this is a change in the regime because the leaders are all very different than the ones that we started off with that created all those problems.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
COOPER: Those comments come after Iran appointed a new top security official who's a veteran Iran revolutionary guard corps commander and a major hardline figure to replace Ali Larijani, who was killed last week in an Israeli airstrike.
I'm joined now by CNN global affairs analyst Karim Sadjadpour. So, let's talk about this new replacement for the head of the, the guy who was assassinated last week. What's his story?
KARIM SADJADPOUR, CNN GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: So, it's not a regime change. It's personnel change, Anderson. Essentially, you have a new group of individuals who share the same ideology and we call them hardliners. They call themselves principlists because it means they're loyal to the principles of the 1979 revolution.
COOPER: Do they actually, I mean, that's the term they actually --
SADJADPOUR: Yes, in Persian they Osul-Garayan so principalist and those principles are essentially now a couple of things, death to America and death to Israel.
COOPER: Hasn't it always, I mean, those have always been kind of guiding principles, haven't they?
SADJADPOUR: They've been the guiding principle since 1979, and it hasn't evolved at all since 1979.
COOPER: Is it -- are they more hardline though? I mean, that's that has been the argument that. Yes, okay, it is technically, I guess, regime change because there's new people there. Is it a regime that is harder against Israel in the U.S.? SADJADPOUR: I think it's a regime which is even less flexible than before, even more brutal than before, because they know that that's the only thing that they have left to stay in power as brutality, given their lack of legitimacy.
COOPER: How much confidence do you have about their willingness to actually negotiate, their willingness to actually try to end this.
SADJADPOUR: Over the last 47 years, this regime has only agreed to really two compromises, and it agrees to compromise when it faces that existential pressure coupled with kind of a clear diplomatic exit. I think they have felt existential pressure over the last four weeks. I don't think they've yet sensed a clear diplomatic exit.
COOPER: The talks that the President is talking about, and he seems to indicate there's somebody maybe he can he can deal with. Do you know who that is? What do you think about that?
SADJADPOUR: What the press has reported is the person that the President Trump has in mind is the current Speaker of Parliament. Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who is former Senior Revolutionary Guard Commander, close advisor to Mojtaba Khamenei. I actually, by happenstance met Ghalibaf in Davos at the world economic forum in 2008. And he's someone who kind of in his heart wants to be a modern strongman, but no individual can change the ideology of this system.
COOPER: Why is that?
SADJADPOUR: Why can't they change the ideology?
COOPER: Yes.
SADJADPOUR: I think that this is a regime which understands that if they open up to the world, that's actually an existential threat to them, because their ability to control Iran is much easier when you don't have the forces of international capitalism and civil society in it's a regime which for 47 years has been premised on hostility towards the United States. And they actually fear normalization with the United States more than they fear conflict with the United States.
COOPER: But you're also indicating that it's a regime that one individual who may be particularly charismatic or powerful, whatever it may be, does not necessarily have the ability to completely make a U-turn in the policies of the regime.
[20:25:13]
SADJADPOUR: I think, especially in the aftermath of the last four weeks when so many of their top leaders have been assassinated, they've doubled down on ideology. And we now have a system in which those who want to deliver, those who want to deal with the United States can't deliver, and those who could potentially deliver don't want to deal with the United States.
COOPER: So, the -- I mean, that sounds very pessimistic about the chance for some sort of off ramp to this. SADJADPOUR: I'm very pessimistic about the prospect of a normalization. You know, President Trump's hope of turning Iran from an adversary into a partner, as we saw in Venezuela. But I think there is potential for going from a hot war back to a cold war.
COOPER: One in which Iran though still controls the Strait of Hormuz.
SADJADPOUR: I don't think the President can end this war so long as Iran is controlling such a critical artery of the global economy, and how he reopens the strait is going to be a very difficult question. Whether he can do it with diplomacy or whether it requires mobilizing U.S. Forces.
COOPER: Karim Sadjadpour, thank you so much, appreciate it.
We're again going to briefly step away from the war.
Next, bring you what investigators have already learned about the deadly collision between that regional jet. With 76 people on board and a fire truck at New York's LaGuardia Airport. What the NTSB is already saying about technology that may have averted that disaster.
Also, in our CNN Global War coverage continues report from Southern Lebanon, where Israeli forces are fighting Hezbollah. But at no small cost.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: It's extraordinary devastation. Just helps explain how the south is being emptied. Ultimately, a strategic part of the Israeli campaign here.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:31:05]
COOPER: Less than 48 hours since Air Canada Express Flight 8646 hit a fire truck on landing in New York's LaGuardia Airport. Investigators have already identified a number of potential factors in the crash. Both pilots of the CRJ 900 regional jet were killed. CNN's Pete Muntean joins us now with more. So what did the NTSB say about the situation, the control tower at the time of the crash?
PETE MUNTEAN, CNN AVIATION CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, this is really the most information yet that investigators have given us since this crash late Sunday night. And the NTSB now says there were only two air traffic controllers in the tower cab here at LaGuardia during the moment of that fatal collision, which is very interesting because that means that some of the duties of those controllers were combined.
NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy says was the standard practice here at LaGuardia during the overnight or the mid shift. Those controllers came online about 10:30 or 10:45, not long before this crash started. There's some really big questions here about why that was standard practice.
And I asked the NTSB chair if that was safe. And she says her air traffic control experts have repeatedly warned for years that the FAA combining air traffic control positions is not a safe position to be in. You have to remember there is an incredible shortage of air traffic controllers nationwide.
Mostly full staffing are the reports here at LaGuardia at the tower here. But there's still a shortage of hundreds, if not thousands of air traffic controllers nationwide compounding this problem. And the NTSB says it's a little too soon to say it's fatigue that may have been the cause here, even though they are often worried about controllers working overnight because it affects their circadian rhythm so much.
COOPER: How unusual is it for a fire truck on the tarmac to not have a transponder?
MUNTEAN: Well, that's a big thing that came out from the NTSB today as well, that this fire truck that was responding to an unrelated incident on this side of the airport going back to the firehouse on the other side of runway four did not have technology to broadcast its position to ground collision warning radar live.
The NTSB Chair Homendy says it's 2026. Controllers who are stretched to the max need the best technology that they can get. The transponder on ground vehicles at airports across the country is not required. It is only recommended or encouraged by the Federal Aviation Administration. The NTSB can't change the regulations either.
They can only recommend safety related changes. It's really up to Congress sometimes to essentially works as the board of directors for the FAA to make a change. We will see if there is a major call to action here way too early to pin this on any one specific thing, Anderson. But some big red flags are being raised at this very early stage in this investigation.
COOPER: Pete Muntean, thanks very much.
I'm joined now by Chris Gallant, a former air traffic controller at JFK Airport. He's also a Black Hawk helicopter pilot, serves in the Army National Guard, and is running for Congress in New York. Does it make sense to you that emergency vehicles on a tarmac would not have a transponder?
CHRIS GALLANT, DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE FOR CONGRESS IN NEW YORK: Currently right now, the fact that the busiest -- one of the busiest airports in the United States is functioning with vehicles that often travel across runways doesn't have a transponder. It just shows it's a systematic failure of our government and investment in safety features.
And these are the things that really cause stress on these systems. The system -- the ASDE-X, which is the Airport Surface Detection System, is designed to alert controllers if a vehicle or an aircraft is about to go onto a runway when an airline or a plane is about to depart or take off. And like, if these systems aren't there or available, in this instance, if this didn't have a transponder, it didn't alert the controller.
[20:35:09]
COOPER: I mean you've been an air traffic controller. Can you put us into that tower at night, only two people? That's -- the pressure of that has got to be intense.
GALLANT: It is, because lives are on the line all the time with air traffic controllers. I mean thousands of lives are on the line at that moment. And yes, it is very intense. And at night, the visibility is extremely reduced. This ASDE system actually provides an extra set of eyes in areas the airport might not be visible.
COOPER: So do air traffic controllers actually, if they're in a tower with glass all around, are they actually looking out, or is it all just looking at screens?
GALLANT: No, they do look out, but the ASDE-X is a backup. In cases of when visibility is very poor, where you actually can't see maybe even a quarter mile outside the tower cab, this ASDE-X system is what they utilize to see where aircraft actually are moving on the runways and on surface areas.
COOPER: So what kind of things do you think the NTSB is looking closest at right now? Obviously, there's the issue of what happened in that air tower. Like, was a human error person distracted, and there's also the technological stuff.
GALLANT: The biggest thing is I think that not having a transponder on vehicles that are regularly on the runway surface area or the taxiways, I think that's really going to be one big factor because, again, that's really a safety issue. That's a failure of our government.
COOPER: You talked about lights on the runway, I think it was when we last spoke, and is it clear whether those warning lights were on or not?
GALLANT: If the ASDE system is active, those lights are generally on. Those were probably active, and again, the NTSB is going to have to investigate something like that. But, you know, staffing is also an issue. When we talk about there are only being two people in the tower cab at this time, staffing has been an issue with the FAA consistently. And if you think about it, these controllers are overworked.
They are -- they only have four days off a month right now. And so when you're working six days a week and 10-hour days, and then you add the travel, affordability is still a problem with them as well. They have to -- they can't afford houses very close to this area because it's very expensive. So they're looking at houses that are, say, 40 and 50 miles away. Now you're adding an hour and a half of travel time or an hour travel time, especially with Long Island traffic. Those are key factors that kind of all play into that. COOPER: Chris Gallant, I really appreciate it. Thanks very much. Good to have you back.
How the war between Israel and Hezbollah is intensifying the humanitarian crisis in southern Lebanon. CNN's Nick Paton Walsh is there on the ground. He joins us next.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:41:58]
COOPER: That's an Israeli airstrike today in the southern city of Tyre, Lebanon, as the IDF targets Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia. Israel's military saying it is also bombing fuel sites as it cuts southern Lebanon off from the north. This is the aftermath in Beirut's southern suburbs after airstrikes last night. The death toll in Lebanon continues to rise, with now over 1,000 people killed since Hezbollah fired projectiles into Israel towards the beginning of the war.
That sparked Israeli retaliation. Now the humanitarian crisis is growing. Here's CNN's Nick Paton Walsh with a look at the war's impact in southern Lebanon.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WALSH (voice-over): Something familiarly awful is happening here. Israel said leave to the town of Nabatieh two weeks ago. Now life is ground out of its streets.
WALSH: This extraordinary devastation just helps explain how the south is being emptied. Ultimately a strategic part of the Israeli campaign here and those blasts distant.
WALSH (voice-over): Even higher up still no calm.
WALSH: They deal with the constant noise of jets around them here but also just overnight intensification of airstrikes. And because they're up on the hill here they feel and see everything. And of course the injured from it come into here as well.
DR. HASSAN WAZNI, GENERAL DIRECTOR, NABATIEH GOVERNMENT HOSPITAL: All strikes we hear here.
WALSH: You hear everything up here?
WAZNI: Everything, yes, we hear everything. Like yesterday was horrible. Yesterday many, too many strikes.
WALSH (voice-over): There are fewer people below so fewer patients than at the start.
HUSSEIN NADAR, NURSE, NABATIEH GOVERNMENT HOSPITAL: Once we've got nine children together have been injured. Three of them died and the rest lost their families. Eighteen people martyred in that strike, all civilians. WALSH (voice-over): The burns unit treating a rescue worker who ran headlong into the carnage.
AHMED AWADA, RESCUE WORKER (translated): When we moved towards it, the missile hadn't exploded yet. But the building was full, more than30 or 40 people. We started evacuating them, and so on. Eventually, the missile went off.
WALSH (voice-over): And doctors' families have moved in as it's safer here.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (translated): Are you getting scared here?
GIRL (translated): No, I don't get scared.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (translated): She isn't getting scared. I stay strong for my kids. So they don't feel fear.
Everything changed for them. They used to have a playroom. They played in the garden, rode their bicycles. Here, there's nothing.
WALSH (voice-over): To the south, near Tyre, where we also filmed with Hezbollah's permission, life, too, is being squeezed out. Sunday, Israel warned twice it would blow up all the bridges to the south, sparking panic. Which one would they hit first?
WALSH: There's a shouting warning about the jets, which we've been hearing over the last half hour now. This one particularly, though.
[20:45:12]
WALSH (voice-over): This, the force used. And they would hit it twice again later.
Yet more isolated now in Tyre is the entire village of Majdal Zoun, who we met earlier, and fled their homes to this school.
YOUSSEF SHUHEIMI, MAYOR OF MAJDAL ZOUN: Fifty families, 51 families. About 240 persons.
WALSH (voice-over): Five of the men dead, two girls here without fathers, who sleep with their grandmothers here, but are still girls.
SHUHEIMI: I want to tell you a secret.
SHUHEIMI (translated): They were fighting but they made up.
WALSH (voice-over): Although Zainab keeps pushing Yasmin's arm away still.
GIRL (translated): We built a secret bakery her and me. We can show it to you. It was ruined by the cats.
WALSH (voice-over): A million are forced from their homes in Lebanon and into anger. Imagination where these girls hide from horror even in the mud. But no calm here either. WALSH: So they say that four days ago they got what must have been a fake warning, a telephone call to the people here to get out as quickly as possible. So they say they ran out down here as fast as they could and hid down on the beach for five hours until the threat had passed.
WALSH (voice-over): The city's old ruins sit silent and powerless as it keeps getting new ones.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
COOPER: That was Nick Paton Walsh, and he's joining us in Beirut tonight. Under what circumstances do people there think this war could end, Nick?
WALSH: It seems an exceptionally distant prospect right now. Remember, Anderson, this is essentially Israel taking the opportunity of Hezbollah avenging the death of the Iranian Supreme Leader to escalate its long-running bid to disarm Hezbollah behind here.
It's goal very clear at this stage, and as we're well over 1,000 dead civilians here today too, Israeli officials clear the defense minister that they want to sever or have severed all the bridges across the Litani River that mark a boundary to a southern exclusion zone, an evacuation, forced evacuation zone from which they've told Lebanese civilians to leave. Just as you say, we're hearing drones and jets above us for much of the night so far. Another one returning behind me here.
There were seven strikes on the Dahieh suburb, where Hezbollah have a very strong presence just last night. We may be in for another loud night here. But down in the south again, the concerns today have been that we're likely to see an increase in Israeli bids to occupy parts of the land along the border there.
There have been moves in, not particularly fast, but the ambition has been said by Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, that they might occupy all the way up to that Litani River, where I said just now they were cutting the bridges systematically. You saw one of them get blown up there. Others have been hit over the last 24 hours as well.
Also hit in southern Lebanon is the key city of Tyre. That was hit by three strikes today. One very close to the ruins you saw at the end of that package there, 24 people injured in that. And fears being that that city, having not been hit for a week or so, that's depopulated as it is. There are civilians sheltering there, terrified by these renewed strikes, Anderson.
COOPER: Nick, extraordinary courage and risk you took doing that report. Thank you very much, Nick Paton Walsh and your team.
Some perspective now going to day 26 of the war. Joining us is former JAG officer and Army combat veteran Margaret Donovan and retired Army Major General James Spider Marks. Just looking at Nick's report, I mean, the U.S., Margaret, has laws about how it conducts strikes in war times, traditionally we have at least. You deployed as a JAG officer in Iraq and in Syria to make sure those laws were followed. Does the U.S. have influence over its allies about how they conduct operations?
MARGARET DONOVAN, U.S. ARMY COMBAT VETERAN, SERVED IN IRAQ AND SYRIA: Yes, definitely. So we would be prohibited from providing support, air support or otherwise, to allies who are violating the law of armed conflict themselves. And typically we go through something that's actually called Leahy vetting, pursuant to a Leahy amendment that says that we can't provide that type of support to a foreign security force unless we have first verified that they are not committing war crimes.
Now, that type of work is usually done before you partner with a country going into a conflict. But certainly, if you identify those types of offenses as the conflict is ongoing, as a United States soldier, you would have, or an officer, you would have an obligation to report that.
COOPER: Is that still the case? I mean, that's still even --
DONOVAN: Yes, that is still current law and policy. Yes.
[20:49:56]
COOPER: And General Marks, you heard the Israeli defense minister saying today that they wanted to occupy a swath of southern Lebanon. How difficult a military operation would that be? I went out with Israeli troops in southern Lebanon in 2006, and it was incredibly difficult. I mean, just moving inch by inch in armored vehicles because of, you know, roads that were mined.
MAJ. GEN. JAMES "SPIDER" MARKS (RET.), U.S. ARMY: Right. The difficulty with that clearly is you put your troops at risk. So in order to do that, you have to move to the northernmost or furthest most boundary, and then you have to work your way back. In other words, you have to isolate it. That simply takes time.
And again, anytime you put boots on the ground, you enhance the risk. If I can also go back to what Margaret said, in advance of that, there clearly is intelligence that has to be provided to your partners if they are, in fact, going to execute some operations. That's all part of it as well. And again, you want to be able to do the diligence and the vetting in advance, so you know what your partners are all about. Because you're going to share, in this particular case, we're going to share with the Israelis, and they're going to share with us in advance of any strike or any operation.
COOPER: In terms of the Strait of Hormuz, what are the big difficulties? I mean, can the Strait of Hormuz be, I don't know if secured is the right word, opened for business without some sort of boots on the ground, whether it's on the coastal areas alongside the Strait or on an island somewhere in the Strait?
MARKS: I think the short answer is yes, but it's very difficult. You'd have to have enhanced targeting that would be to the north knuckle, the north end of the Strait of Hormuz, into those Zagros Mountains in Iran. And all of the locations that the IRGC and other security forces have in that area are in mountain aedits.
They have dug-in positions, very difficult to get to those. Putting boots on the ground would give you a level of certainty, but this would be more an artful term that I'd prefer to use, is this is a soldier suck. You put soldiers on the ground or Marines on the ground there in that type of a terrain, it is a long engagement in order to achieve the results you want, which is to push the enemy back so their fire cannot affect transit through the Straits.
COOPER: We're going to take a short break. I want to talk to both of you about a bunch more stuff in the region. Our conversation continues as does CNN's global war coverage from the Newsroom. We'll be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:56:38]
COOPER: With about a thousand more troops from the 82nd Airborne heading into the region, and gas prices approaching $4 a gallon here at home, we are back with Margaret Donovan and Spider Marks. So, Margaret, sources say roughly 1,000 U.S. soldiers from the 82nd Airborne, as we said, are expected to deploy. From -- if they, in fact, did deploy on Iranian soil, from a legal standpoint, which is what you do, how does that change the equation for them?
DONOVAN: So, for me, I think it's helpful to remember that we actually don't have affirmative congressional authority to be engaging in this war. Only Congress has the power to declare war, and they haven't here. And so the way that the executive branch has basically been getting around that is by saying we're not technically at war, we're just engaged in hostilities, or just less than hostilities, we're just doing airstrikes, and we're not committing serious numbers of troops to any type of ground force invasion. Well, you're kind of out of that excuse when you hit that. So --
COOPER: Even if it's just a couple thousand troops?
DONOVAN: Yes. I mean, that is expressly what Article I is meant, and the War Powers Resolution is meant to prevent commitment of significant ground troops to a region without having congressional input, without having basically the people approving that through their legislators.
COOPER: What -- to you, what does a deployment like that, I mean, what do you do with a deployment like that?
MARKS: Well, it goes back to the notion of legality in terms of this deployment, and what are your rules of engagement? How have they been affected? Have you limited the ability of a soldier, not primarily to provide self-protection, to protect himself and his buddies, but to engage in an operation to achieve the effects of the mission? How is the mission accomplishment going to be affected by the fact that we're unclear in terms of rules of engagement? Your hands will be tied.
COOPER: But having now, having 1,000 82nd Airborne Troops and having 4,500 other expeditionary forces, Marines, what does that give you now that you didn't have before once they get there?
MARKS: In terms of capabilities?
COOPER: Yes, capabilities.
MARKS: You've got tremendous leverage. First of all, they're in the region. It gives a combatant commander optionality. Where do you want to use these folks? And in my mind, essentially there are three very clear missions that you would put these ground forces, apply them to. That could be Kharg Island, if in fact that's a mission, Straits of Hormuz on the north side, and also securing the highly enriched uranium. But the key with the uranium is, where is it? I mean, having gone through that in Iraq, I mean, we really didn't know where it was, although we've secured all those locations that were identified as weapons of mass destruction sites.
What we found out is stuff had grown legs and had migrated elsewhere. So that would be a very tough mission. But those are three examples, and the 82nd would be very much a part of that engagement. The Marines are still en route. Bear in mind, the 82nd, that portion of the 82nd is going to be, if it were given an execute order now, it could be on station within 48 hours. It's just travel time and the amount of time to get ready to go at Fort Bragg and then show up.
COOPER: We only have about 45 seconds, but President Trump had talked about targeting power plants in Iran. From a legal standpoint, that raises all sorts of ethical questions if those facilities are being used for civilian use, right?
[21:00:01]
DONOVAN: Correct. Yes. Yes, absolutely. So those are what is known as a dual-use facility. So there may be some military advantage to taking out a power plant, but you have to very clearly define that. And so to threaten taking out a power plant simply for the purpose of wreaking havoc on a civilian population for leverage, that is not a proper use of targeting a dual-use facility. There has to be a true analysis of military advantage before that can happen.
COOPER: All right. Margaret Donovan, appreciate it. And General Spider Marks, appreciate it as well. The news continues. That's it for us. The Source with Kaitlan Collins starts now. See you tomorrow.
