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Israel Vows Iran Will Pay for Unprecedented Missile Attack; State Department Says, U.S. Will Coordinate With Israel on Response to Iran; New Harris Ad Highlights Damning Non-Answer from V.P. Debate. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 02, 2024 - 13:00   ET

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

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[13:00:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN ANCHOR: As the world awaits Israel's response to Iran's ballistic missile attack yesterday, the IDF ramping up its ground war in Lebanon. Another major question amid heightened tensions, what role will the U.S. play?

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN ANCHOR: Plus, the vice presidential candidates are back out on the trail after a debate that was Midwest nice. Both campaigns kicking into high gear for the final 34 days of this race. We're going to assess what may have changed after last night and what comes next.

We're also covering the southeast. Hundreds of thousands still without power, food and clean water still hard to come by in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, as President Biden is on his way to see the devastation firsthand.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN News Central.

KEILAR: The world is anxiously waiting to see how Israel will respond to Iran's unprecedented missile attack as the Israeli military intensifies its ground war in Lebanon. Across the region, violence is escalating with fierce clashes between Israel and Hezbollah forces. The IDF says that it plans to send additional troops. Already eight Israeli soldiers, by the way, have been killed in combat.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is vowing Iran, quote, will pay for yesterday's aerial assault, which Iran says was in response to the killing of Hezbollah Chief Hassan Nasrallah and other leaders. A big question now is, what role would the U.S. have in all of this?

Here's what President Biden said a short time ago about whether he supports an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, U.S. PRESIDENT: The answer is no. And I think there's things -- we'll be discussing with the Israelis what they're going to do, but all seven of us agree that they have a right to respond, that they should respond in proportion.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Let's go live now to CNN's Nic Robertson. He is in Tel Aviv. Nick, what is the latest there?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yes. President Biden is saying that he will speak relatively soon with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. And that is the big open question, the one you're talking about that precisely what Israel will choose to strike back at. The prime minister here has been very clear the response will come. It will be strong. It will look like a deterrence to Iran to dissuade them from attacking again. And but the scale and scope is very likely to determine the potential for escalation in the region.

And a very deadly day as Israel has been pressing its ground offensive into Lebanon for the second day. Hezbollah is saying that they targeted Israeli troops in three different villages at the border. The IDF now saying that eight soldiers have been killed, a number of others injured. A hospital near the border in the north of Israel early this morning declared a major a major casualty event. And we understand troops from those clashes with Hezbollah were taken to a number of different hospitals across the north.

But this is perhaps a very tough reminder for the IDF, for the prime minister of Israel's previous experiences in 2006, in 1982 until 2000, when it pulled troops out of Lebanon, about the cost of having ground troops go inside Israel. We would just talk -- to go inside Lebanon.

We were talking yesterday at the border with a lady living at the border. She actually refused to evacuate. She makes food for all the soldiers, and she told us, and we were overlooking the area of one of the attacks before the attack happened, she told us yesterday she was really worried about the troops going across. She wants and believes that they can deter Hezbollah, but she said she knows it's going to be dangerous for them because Hezbollah has been expecting the troops to come across.

So, this casualty toll, the prime minister offering his condolences to the families, but it is significant that it comes so soon in this ground operation.

KEILAR: Nic, thank you for that report from Tel Aviv. We appreciate it.

Now to CNN National Security Correspondent Kylie Atwood, who is at the State Department for us.

[13:05:01]

Kylie, earlier, we heard President Biden saying he doesn't support an Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites. What are you hearing about what role the U.S. is going to take in all of this?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Brianna, that's an incredibly noteworthy comment from the president, because what we heard yesterday from the national security adviser, from the State Department spokesperson here at the department, was effectively that the United States was giving Israel a very large degree of decision- making space in terms of how it responds to this attack from Iran. They weren't counting anything in, they weren't counting anything out. They said that they were going to be ongoing close discussions with the Israelis.

But now today, it's very clear that even though the United States does expect, U.S. officials do expect that Israel is going to respond, they're not trying to prevent them from doing that, with the national security adviser saying yesterday that there will be severe consequences for Iran here. The United States doesn't feel that everything should be on the table in terms of what that response looks like because President Biden is saying very clearly, no, he does not support Israel going after Iran's nuclear facilities in response to what we saw occur yesterday.

What he said was that he spoke with his counterparts from the G7 and they agreed that Israel has a right to respond. It should be a proportional response. That is noteworthy.

So, what we'll watch for now are the ongoing discussions between the U S and Israel on this topic. President Biden said that he is expecting to speak with Prime Minister Netanyahu in the near term here. They have not notably spoken since the end of August. That's more than two months now. So, watch and see what comes out of that conversation.

But the fact that the president is now saying that the United States doesn't support going after Iran's nuclear facilities is noteworthy, particularly given the rhetoric that we're seeing out of Israel right now. We're hearing from some former officials, former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who is saying that they should go for Iran's nuclear program. If they don't do it now, they may never do it.

So, the United States does see a need, does support Israel responding, but they are, in these conversations, at least publicly and -- excuse me, at least privately, and now we know publicly with these comments from Biden, making it clear that they don't want this to get too far out of control where it turns into an all-out war. Brianna?

KEILAR: Right. Kylie Atwood live for us at the State Department, thank you for the report. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Let's expand the conversation now with CNN Military Analyst and retired Army General James Spider Marks. General, thank you so much for being with us.

You heard President Biden there saying that Israel should respond proportionally. What would that look like?

MAJ. GEN. JAMES SPIDER MARKS (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Boris, I think it's fair to say that Israel certainly will choose when and where they want to respond, and I would say they're in no rush. They can do this at a time of their choosing. So, we're all leaning forward, trying to anticipate. I think it's also fair to understand that Israel wants to ensure that Iran feels some increased pain. No one, and I would say either in Tel Aviv or in Tehran, that they want to escalate this thing much further. There seems to be this proportional tit for tat type of a response.

Bear in mind, I think it's fair to say, bear in mind that Israel is an incredibly resilient nation. And what we saw yesterday with the attacks from Iran, there really is a sense of business as usual on the ground in Israel. Certainly, there was some tragic loss of life and some property. But this is what they've lived with for the longest, longest time.

So, there's going to be a response on the part of Iran. And I also think that response, it will not be a decapitation of the Iranian leadership, although I must say, they probably know they're on a hit list. They're on notice. And I don't think it will be an attack against kind of the nuclear R&D facilities. I think that's much beyond the scope of what Israel needs to do right now to ensure they don't want to achieve any symbolic response. They want to impose some additional pain on the Iranian regime, and they can do that.

SANCHEZ: What would you say is the drawback from the calls from some, including Naftali Bennett, for Israel to attack those nuclear sites? I mean, couldn't that wind up backfiring? But if it is successful, doesn't that immediately limit Iran's capabilities as a threat to Israel more broadly?

MARKS: Yes, really good point. I mean, there's always the temptation to put the Iranian development of a nuclear capability off the table, remove it from the table. All you're going to do is achieve some time in that regard.

[13:10:0]

Iran will still, I think, in some case, try to redevelop that.

Now, the Iranian regime has not decided that they want to go forward with a full militarization, weaponization of nuclear capabilities. They're developing that, but there's been no evidence or a declaration from the leadership that that's an objective.

So, in this particular case, I think you can put that to the side. Let's address what is the immediate challenge Israel feels from Iran, and that is kind of unlimited use of drones or ballistic missiles or rockets, in the case of rockets, we saw most of those yesterday, which are very, very difficult to go after. It can penetrate the Iron Dome and the arrow system. That needs to be addressed.

And then that kind of establishes what I think is kind of a status quo moving forward. I don't think either side wants this thing to blow up to the point where we now have Russia more violently and more openly getting involved, or China more openly involved, or North Korea acting in a really spontaneous and disruptive way. The United States doesn't want to be dragged into this. Both of those nations understand that there can be some limits to this engagement, and I think they're both working on that, fair to say. But we also have to -- if I can one more thought, it's going to be a decoupling of what's taking place in Lebanon right now, relative to the response that Israel's going to impose against Iran. And so this is the discussion about deterrence. Iran wants to achieve deterrence. They haven't done it with this response. Israel will try to punish Iran some more. But, again, I think in terms of deterrence, Israel clearly has the upper hand and the capacity to ensure that, not so with Tehran.

SANCHEZ: To the point you're making about deterrence and the incursion into Lebanon and these raids by the IDF on Hezbollah targets, eight IDF soldiers were killed in combat already. How do you assess the effort behind this incursion into Lebanon?

MARKS: Israel wants to be able to push Hezbollah and any part of the infrastructure that supports their military efforts, whether it's -- and let's be frank again, everything in Lebanon is essentially tied to Hezbollah. That's how it's just embedded in the society. They want to get it north of the Litani River.

That's a wonderful objective. In fact, the United Nations Security Council resolution has indicated that it must be done. U.N. has never been able to enforce it. I mean, they can't. Lebanon hasn't enforce it. They've chosen not to. So, Israel said, we got it. We're going to push these borders north.

There is going to be a cost associated with that. And Israel has been working desperately to try to and very aggressively to try to identify those targets that they want to go after as a result of their decision to invade Lebanon. They want to try to keep it limited, but bear in mind a limited incursion also involves Hezbollah.

Hezbollah, I think, would love to get entangled into the Israeli fight, so Israel ends up getting, to some degree, bogged down, much like they were in Gaza. Israel doesn't want to do that. So, they've said, we're going to go after very specific targets. We have good intelligence on where those targets are. We want to attrit those, in some cases, not only to attrit. We want to destroy those and we want to push destroy as much Hezbollah fighting infrastructure and fighters as we can, destroy those, defeat as best we can and push them north of Litani, bearing in mind that the missiles that Hezbollah has will still be able -- you know, north of Litani, will still be able to reach much of Israel.

SANCHEZ: How realistic is that, General, to limit the potential for mission creep when we've seen it specifically at that border become and metastasize into something larger than Israel had previously planned in 2006, for example, and when you have, as you noted, the incentive from Hezbollah to try to bog that down and make it a much broader conflict?

MARKS: Yes, bingo, that's the question. Israel stated a priori, it's going to be limited. That's great. That's an objective statement on their part. Hezbollah has got to vote in this. Hezbollah is going to do their best to try to make it very difficult for Israel to keep it limited, because at the end of this -- not at the end of this, but as this thing progresses, look, global condemnation of Israel has been so persistent since essentially the second week after the invasion on 7 October, and they realize, the Hezbollah realized, if we can globally wear Israel down, we may not be able to eventually really threaten the sovereignty of Israel, but we can get them into a box that works to their advantage and the world becomes apologists for these terrorist organizations, which is difficult for us to believe, right?

[13:15:06]

But that's exactly what Hezbollah is trying to achieve.

Military operations like this always have invariably numerous variables that you cannot predict. And one of those clearly is going to be the time element and then the cost element.

SANCHEZ: General Spider Marks, I always appreciate your perspective. Thanks for being with us.

MARKS: Thank you, Boris.

SANCHEZ: Still ahead this hour on CNN News Central, find out who viewers think won last night's very civil, very nice vice presidential debate, and perhaps more importantly whether it might actually change votes.

Plus, the true scale of Hurricane Helene's destruction is still coming into focus as officials start gaining access to areas that were previously cut off. We're actually going to talk to a North Carolina restaurant owner who's working to feed people there despite being unable to reopen her own business.

And we've learned more than 100 men and women plan to file lawsuits against Sean Diddy Combs in the coming weeks. The youngest victim said to be just nine years old.

These stories and many more all coming up this hour

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[13:20:00]

KEILAR: Today, the Harris-Walz campaign is attempting to capitalize on a key exchange from last night's vice presidential debate with a new ad that highlights a particular moment where Ohio Senator J.D. Vance refused to say if former President Trump lost the 2020 election, which, of course, he did. Here's a portion of the ad.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GOV. TIM WALZ (D-MN), U.S. VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He is still saying he didn't lose the election. I would just say that. Did he lose the 2020 election?

SEN. J.D. VANCE (R-OH), VICE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: Tim, I'm focused on the future.

WALZ: That is a damning non-answer.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: And M.J. Lee is with us now. MJ, I wonder how this debate was received by people who watched it.

M.J. LEE, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes. You know, Brianna, as far as these events go, this was not a debate that showed a lot of fireworks. You know, there wasn't personal name calling, there wasn't, you know, personal insults that were traded back and forth. Mostly for 90-plus minutes, we saw the two vice presidential nominees sparring on important issues, like foreign policy, the economy, immigration, reproductive rights.

And our polling of the debate seems to indicate that as far as the voters who were watching was concerned that there wasn't a clear winner. If you take a look, pretty evenly divided on the question of who actually won the debate. A couple other interesting notes, more people said that Walz seemed in touch with voters and more people also said that Walz shares their vision for America. And also interestingly, Brianna, a bigger percentage of Trump supporters than Harris supporters, that's 14 percent, said after the debate, they would reconsider their support for Donald Trump.

As you know, last night could have been the very last debate before Election Day and both campaigns are very aware that they need to make every day between now and then some five weeks left count. And that is why, at least for the Walz campaign, they want him to really hit the ground the campaign trail again. Of course, he had been really at debate camp for a number of days now preparing for last night.

And if you look in the coming days between Harris and Walz, they're going to be traveling to a number of places. This includes a bus tour for Governor Walz that will take him through Pennsylvania and New York. And I should note that the vice president is herself was initially supposed to join the governor on this bus tour, but her schedule got changed.

She is going to be traveling to Georgia to assess the hurricane damage. This is a good reminder, of course, that for the vice president, it is very important for her to be out on the campaign trail but it's also important for her to be balancing her day job, and in recent days, that has included monitoring the situation in the aftermath of the hurricane, and also getting briefed on the situation in the Middle East, which is something we saw her having to do yesterday. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. M.J. Lee, thank you for that report. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Let's discuss with Republican Congressman Dan Meuser of Pennsylvania. He's also the co-chair of the Trump campaign's Pennsylvania leadership team. Congressman, thank you so much for being with us.

You posted on social media, much like we saw in that poll that you thought the senator won last night's debate. His favorability rating actually improved among debate watchers. But as we're showing on the screen now, most of those asked still saw him as slightly more unfavorable. Their opinion of him was slightly more unfavorable. Why do you think that is, sir?

REP. DAN MEUSER (R-PA): Well, hey, great to be with you Boris. Yes, I think J.D. had a chance to express himself. So, as people saw him very much other than how the media frankly -- much of the media has portrayed him as, quote/unquote, weird, I mean, there's nothing weird about him. In fact, he's very, you know, intelligent and articulate and, you know, in a large degree has lived the American dream, you know, grew up real poor and what put him through some school, was enlisted in the Marines, went to Yale law school and, you know, came back to Ohio to serve. So, I mean, he's got some great qualities, and that came out last night.

I do think, as well, he was just confident in the fact that he's talking about policies that are in the interest of the vast majority of Americans, where, frankly, the Walz-Harris plan is not in the interest of Americans.

[13:25:02]

You know, I feel -- I got the sense that Walz is doing, and Harris, everything they can to make people not know who they are, and yet J.D. Vance and, frankly, Trump want people to know who they are. That to me is what's happened.

I think his favorables probably went up quite a bit last night and, you know, it's going to take a little while. After people hearing all these crazy things that supposedly he did and said, you know, it takes a little while for people to believe who he really is.

SANCHEZ: He did soften his rhetoric from what we've seen on the campaign trail. He not only had these collegial exchanges with Governor Walz, he also softened his tone around immigrants and childless women. Do you wish he would do more of that?

MEUSER: Well, I absolutely want to express ourselves in an honest, trustworthy manner. So, as people believe what we're saying and have the fortitude and the facts and the right plan that's in the interest. And I honestly knew J.D. was going to be that type of order and articulator of America first, of what it means to make America great again. I had faith, you know, people sort of criticized, oh, why did he pick J.D.? I knew him enough to know that he would be able to put things out in a common sense manner that, you know, made common sense for the common good, for the common man, if you will.

SANCHEZ: Sure. The Harris team put out an ad highlighting Vance declining to directly answer whether Trump lost the 2020 election. They overlaid video of January 6th on that ad. We've seen in polling that this issue still drives a substantial number of voters to Harris. So, to your point about him answering honestly and directly and leveling with the American people, what did you think when you saw that response?

MEUSER: Well, you know, I think he answered it. I think he knows clearly who is in the White House. Though the individual, Joseph Biden, who received the most votes, was inaugurated as the president and has served there, unfortunately, for close to four years. So, Joe Biden won the election.

Was there some disputes and questions here in Pennsylvania? Oh, yes, we could do a whole show on that, Boris. But the fact is Joe Biden won the election, and now we fortunately have gotten through that time period. Now, we're on to the next election.

SANCHEZ: Do you wish he'd responded the way that you just did?

MEUSER: You know, I think that J.D. knows how to choose his words, and that, I think, in the end, he acknowledges, as we all clearly do, because Joe Biden has occupied the White House. So, look, it's one of those things that it's not necessary. It is a yes, but there's more to it explaining. And I don't characterize it any way. Forget the fraud, forget this, forget that, you know, but it does deserve, you know, what happened, like in Pennsylvania, election rules were changed two or three weeks before the election by an appointed secretary of state that favored one side over another.

Now, it got through we have a very liberal Supreme Court in Pennsylvania, so they didn't say, oh no, time and place and manner is up to the state legislator, which they should have said, so it got through. So, it gets a little, it gets a little difficult to some people to just acknowledge that straight out without having questions to be associated with the answer.

SANCHEZ: I think part of the difficulty there, Congressman, is that there were substantial claims of fraud. And, respectfully, not everyone has accepted, as you noted, that Joe Biden got more votes than Donald Trump, namely Donald Trump himself. Nevertheless, do you think Trump has to debate Harris one more time before Election Day?

MEUSER: You know, Boris, I mean, that's obviously up to them. I mean, I know you're asking me my opinion here. The campaign needs to do what we need to do to win. It's really that simple. You cannot govern if you don't win.

SANCHEZ: Do you think he needs to debate her one more time to win?

MEUSER: I don't know. That's what's being calculated, right? I mean, the plan is to win. Now, if the plan is to accommodate to the Harris campaign, if that doesn't help us win, then, no, we don't need that accommodation.

President Trump makes himself extremely available at his, as does J.D., Boy oh boy, rallies, he takes questions from anybody who's got one, as does President Trump. So, I think the American people have a good understanding of who he is. And I think the Harris campaign is looking for another opportunity to express platitudes rather than engage in a real policy discussion.

[13:30:08]

I mean, come on.