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Damage Near Tel Aviv in Israel; U.S. Embassy Warns of Imminent Threat; Trump Comments on Iran; Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) is Interviewed about Iran; Trump Called Kurdish Leaders. Aired 9-9:30a ET

Aired March 03, 2026 - 09:00   ET

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

[09:00:00]

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Take cover immediately. That's the new directive from the U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia to Americans. The U.S. embassy there also warning of the threat of imminent missile and drone attacks coming from Iran. And already two U.S. embassies in the region are shut down.

And the new message now coming in from President Trump, declaring this morning that Iran's air defense, air force, navy and leadership is gone. Is that the reality on the ground? And what, then, is the president's endgame?

And it's election day in key primaries today, with races in Texas being closely watched as a powerful Republican senator is facing his most serious challenge yet.

I'm Kate Bolduan, with John Berman and Sara Sidner. This is CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: We begin with breaking news this morning, the U.S. embassy in Saudi Arabia sounding the alarm and warning there is a threat of imminent missile and drone attacks in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran. The Trump administration is now telling U.S. citizens they're not to come to the U.S. consulate, and take cover immediately. That U.S. embassy in Riyadh and another in Kuwait are shut down after suspected Iranian drone attacks there. There's also this video showing a massive fire at one of the world's largest oil refineries in Saudi Arabia.

While inside Iran, new images are showing blasts and destruction across the country. The U.N.'s nuclear watchdog is now confirming the first damage to an Iranian nuclear facility since the bombing campaign began. President Trump is warning the largest strikes are yet to come.

Also this morning, the president posting this about Iran, quote, saying, "their air defense, air force, navy and leadership is gone. They want to talk. I said, too late."

Today, top Trump administration officials will be briefing Congress on the ongoing operation. Our CNN news teams are following all of this, all the developments from across the Middle East to the White House.

Let's start with Jeremy Diamond. He is in a suburb of Tel Aviv.

You have some breaking news that you are going to share with us now. What is happening?

JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN JERUSALEM CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right, Sara. We are in the city of Ramat Gan, on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. And the scene that you're going to see behind me, there is a lot of destruction. But mind you that this is not even a direct impact of one of these missiles. This is just what can happen. The kind of destruction that can happen when one of those ballistic missiles is intercepted and shrapnel falls in a residential area.

You can see in particular on the top of this home here, part of the roof has caved in. And so you can imagine that that was likely quite a large piece of shrapnel that fell. Keep in mind, these ballistic missiles are huge. And so, when we're talking about shrapnel, that can sometimes be something as big as a car in length that is falling on a building.

We're told that there were only seven injuries here. Most of them were light injuries. One person is in moderate condition as a result of some of that shrapnel.

We were actually among the first to arrive on the scene here because we were traveling with Israel's Magen David Adom rescue service. We sped down here in one of those emergency vehicles with a paramedic and arrived on the scene to find people who were really in shock, but relatively OK, particularly when you consider some of the scenes that we've been reporting from in recent days where some of these missiles made direct impact, like in Beit Shemesh on the outskirts of Jerusalem a couple days ago where nine people were killed.

Now, the question that Israelis are asking themselves is, how much longer is this going to continue? We know that Israeli and American officials certainly have the appetite for at least a couple of weeks of continued airstrikes in Iran and the Iranians have vowed to continue to retaliate. But I've also been told by Israeli officials that the strikes that we've seen over the course of the first four days of this war, and particularly the last 24 hours, are expected to significantly reduce Iran's ballistic missile capabilities. And so, I'm told that as of tonight, they expect that there will be a significant drop off in Iran's ability to fire ballistic missiles and in the kind of impact sites that we see like this here.

But for now, it's clear that that threat of Iranian ballistic missiles is still a very real one. And we'll have to see whether those Israeli expectations of a diminishment in Iran's ballistic missile capability actually come to fruition over the course of the coming hours and days.

Sara.

SIDNER: Yes, it's important that you point out just how big these missiles are. And, you know, I know that Israel has a lot of places for people to go to try and take shelter. But even those shelters, those bomb shelters, can't always protect you from just the enormity of the explosions from these missiles.

Stay safe out there, as safe as you can, with you and your crew. Thank you to you, Jeremy.

Let's go now to Nic Robertson, who is in Saudi Arabia, where there is an imminent threat.

[09:05:01]

Tell us what's going on there.

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: An imminent threat in and around to the U.S. consulate in the east of Saudi Arabia, about 200 miles east of here, Dhahran. That's right sort of in the heart of the oil producing area of Saudi Arabia, much closer than this city is to Iran.

And the imminent threat there, a warning put out by the embassy here, which, as you said, is now closed, the embassy saying, don't go out, stay inside your residence, shelter in place, that there's an imminent threat of possibly missile or drone strike around the U.S. consulate in Dhahran.

Now, overnight, four different drones, two separate incidents, impacted around the U.S. embassy here in Riyadh. That resulted in the embassy being shut down. It resulted in warnings being put out by the embassy for U.S. officials to shelter in place. Extended as well to the Jeddah consulate. That's right in the west of the country here. It does seem to indicate that the United States has a line of intelligence that gives it some level of certainty about when these strikes are incoming, and also some specificity about what they're actually targeting.

Now, Saudi Arabia has had a lot of missile defenses active. It shot down two drones that were approaching a big oil refinery not close -- not far away from Dhahran yesterday. Some shrapnel fell. Big fires started. Part of that facility had to be shut down. Five intercepts around a major Saudi military airbase just outside the capital yesterday as well.

But look, it leaves a diplomatic tightrope for the Saudi leadership to walk here. They don't want to get drawn into what's perceived as a U.S.-Israel war, yet Iran is continuing to threaten them, and they're using very strong diplomatic language that they reserve the right for response to aggression against them, that they will protect their kingdom. But also, other questions are being raised. You know, what is the level of protection that the United States is going to help afford Saudi Arabia if this war continues? And it raises questions as well about Saudis being able to shoot down missiles at the oil facility, at the airbase here, the military air base here, but not able to intercept all of those going to the U.S. embassy. It's a fragile situation.

SIDNER: Yes, we're looking at some of the video from Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia, where an oil refinery was hit and the huge plumes of smoke that were billowing from that.

Thank you to you there. Please try to be safe as this threat is imminent there in Saudi Arabia.

Let's go now to Alayna Treene. She is at the White House.

We are getting new bits of information from the president who is posting on his Truth Social account. What are you learning?

ALAYNA TREENE, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: That's right. We saw the president this morning post both about, you know, munitions, saying that they have a strong level of munitions. He said that they support -- that wars can be fought, quote, "forever and very successfully" because of the stockpiles that they have. But then also talking about the different objectives as well for this war.

But I do want to get into, you know, what we heard from the Trump administration yesterday, because one of the key criticisms in my conversations with lawmakers, for example, over the weekend, Sara, had been that really the messaging from the administration had been very inconsistent. And yesterday we really saw them, for the first time, try and specifically lay out what the objectives are for these strikes on Iran and also the justification. And again, though, still a little bit of mixed messaging. And one of the key things I think that many people, particularly when you look at the president's own supporters, people in his MAGA base, one of the key concerns that they have is that they are wary of being involved in another foreign war for a very long period of time.

I'd remind you that multiple times throughout the president's, you know, being on the campaign trail in the lead-up to the 2024 election had repeatedly called for no endless wars, no forever wars. Well, that is something we heard the vice president, J.D. Vance, try to address last night in an interview with Fox.

Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: There's just no way that Donald Trump is going to allow this country to get into a multi- year conflict with no clear end in sight and no clear objective.

It's pretty clear, it's pretty simple, and I think that means that we're not going to get into the problems that we've had with Iraq and Afghanistan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

TREENE: Now, I would remind you that Vance is, of course, a veteran. He was involved in the Iraq War. We also heard from Pete Hegseth yesterday, the defense secretary, also a veteran, making a similar claim, that this is not going to be a protracted military involvement.

[09:10:02] However, I'm not so sure that those words are going so far with people because we've also been hearing from the president that we haven't even seen the biggest wave yet of strikes, and that we can see this going on for at least four to five weeks. But the question of regime change and everything else could make this a much longer type of conflict that we are involved in. So, a lot of questions still I think people have for the administration today, Sara.

SIDNER: Yes, so we're just at the beginning of it.

Thank you so much to you, Alayna Treene, to Jeremy Diamond in Israel, and to Nic Robertson in Saudi Arabia.

John.

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, with us now is Senator Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon. He serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Senator, thanks for being with us.

Congressional leaders have been briefed by administration officials. The rest of Congress will be over the coming days. What questions do you have about what the president and his administration are calling this war?

SEN. JEFF MERKLEY (D-OR), FOREIGN RELATIONS COMMITTEE: Well, the president began with a conversation with Netanyahu, and Netanyahu was asking for American permission to attack ballistic missiles. And over time, that evolved into Trump deciding, well, let's join them. And the definition of what the objective was kept changing, from ballistic missiles to taking out their fleet, the Iranian fleet, that could attack the oil tankers, to supporting the protesters, to regime change.

All of this was a war of choice, and all of it violates the Constitution.

BERMAN: What Secretary Hegseth said, and what the president suggested late yesterday, was that there are three goals here. One, destroy Iran's missiles. Two, destroy Iran's navy. Three, disable whatever nuclear program or ambitions they have.

But then Secretary Rubio added this last night to the question of why now, exactly. Listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARCO RUBIO, SECRETARY OF STATE: We knew that there was going to be an Israeli action. We knew that that would precipitate an attack against American forces. And we knew that if we didn't preemptively go after them before they launched those attacks, we would suffer higher casualties.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BERMAN: How satisfied are you with that explanation of the why now?

MERKLEY: That is a profoundly disturbing explanation. First, Netanyahu came and asked for American support for an Israeli action, indicating that they wouldn't be acting unless America supported it. So that just violates what Rubio just said, that somehow, we didn't have any agency in this conversation.

And in fact, think about this. What essentially he's saying is that Netanyahu was leading Trump around by a nose ring. This is like, basically, we're like, we're the puppy on the leash and Netanyahu yanks the leash and we have to act.

That is horrific. What's happened to this great United States of America that Netanyahu decides what we do and we have no influence over what Israel does? I don't take that explanation for a moment.

BERMAN: What about the impact of what has actually happened? The Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is gone. Do you believe the United States is safer today with him gone than it was with him in power on Friday?

MERKLEY: Well, we certainly know that there's a long record of horrific human rights violations, so few tears to be shed. But also, when you plan an assassination of both a political leader and a religious leader, you don't know what the consequences are going to be. Who will come in after the fact?

I mean, let's go back to 1953 when we took out their democratically elected leader, Mosaddegh, and look what it's led to, 70 years of conflict. We were an ally and friend of Iran before that 1953 action. So what will this assassination do?

I think the story has to be written, but there is certainly plenty of possibility that unpleasant, undesirable things for America evolve from this action.

BERMAN: So there will be a War Powers vote in the Senate, maybe tomorrow, which would limit the President's ability or some of the actions he could take going forward. I assume you are going to vote to limit the President's authority.

MERKLEY: Yes, that vote will, as it's written, call for the immediate cessation of military activity and that it cannot be renewed without an authorization explicitly from Congress, an AUMF, an Authorization for the Use of Military Force. Realize that not only does it take a majority vote to draw it from committee, then a majority vote on the floor, and then it's subject to a presidential veto and a veto override. So realize that in the end, this is not going to be adopted in a fashion that constrains Trump, but it is an essential conversation for the American people to know where we stand and to carry on a real debate about the wisdom or the lack of wisdom of what's happened.

BERMAN: My question then, you teed it up perfectly, is when, frankly, it fails, which it likely is one way or another. What then? What power do you have then as a U.S. Senator?

MERKLEY: Well, we have power over the purse, and that is extremely difficult to utilize when we have American troops in the field, but it's another opportunity for debate and consideration as we wrestle with exactly what should be funded and whether the Department of Homeland Security should be funded.

[09:15:18]

So at least there's an ongoing analysis and discussion.

But realize this, I mean, this whole situation, Congress is very weak and powerless because the president has already chosen to violate the Constitution. The Constitution says it is up to Congress to declare war, and Madison and the founders debated this at length and said, you know, executives, as we have seen from a long record of European powers, are way too tempted to go to war for reasons that don't serve the home state. So therefore, with due deliberation, we are placing this with Congress, with a group of individuals.

And that doesn't mean that that group decision is perfect. Certainly, the decision to go to war against Iraq and take out Saddam Hussein was very troubling in the end. But there was a debate, and they did get -- Bush did get an AUMF, an authorization, to go to that war.

There was no such process here. So unlike the more constitutional route that Bush took, this is an unconstitutional violation that leads us in a situation where we're saying, look, Trump took the power of the purse, he took the power of taxation, now the power of war, all things dedicated to Congress and our Constitution. Are we really -- do we have a Constitution that means anything anymore?

BERMAN: Senator Jeff Merkley, we will see what happens this week and going forward. Thank you very much.

MERKLEY: Thank you, John.

BERMAN: Kate.

BOLDUAN: There is new video coming in from Iran. Thousands of people said to be gathering to mourn the deaths of some 168 children killed in U.S.-Israeli -- in a U.S.-Israeli attack on a girl's school there. What the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is now saying about it.

And we're also getting new video in from an airport in Thailand. Thousands of travelers just stranded as they're trying to get home to the Middle East, and what they're left to do now.

And polls are open in Texas, North Carolina and Arkansas. The first primaries of the midterm elections.

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[09:21:22]

SIDNER: This morning, Iran is launching new strikes on U.S. targets and U.S. allies in the Middle East. And now we're getting an up close look at the missiles and drones that Iran is raining down on cities across the region.

A short while ago in the United Arab Emirates, a top military official revealed some of Iran's attack weapons that they have destroyed with their defense forces.

Let's take a look at this.

Since the war began, the UAE says it has intercepted about 169 missiles out of 182. They say they have also intercepted 645 drones with an additional 44 hitting their territories. Nearby, Kuwait says it has intercepted 178 ballistic missiles and 384 drones. Bahrain reports intercepting 70 missiles and 76 drones. And Qatar has intercepted 101 missiles out of a total of 104, as well as 24 out of 39 drones. It also says it's shot down two Iranian bomber aircraft. The defense has been largely successful in the region, but how long can they sustain this and how soon might they run out of interceptors? That is a question that's going to have to be answered, Kate.

BOLDUAN: Yes, important questions there.

Joining us right now to talk about kind of the state of things and his new reporting, CNN political and global affairs analyst Barak Ravid of "Axios."

It's good to see you.

You have new reporting in this morning. Barak, of president -- well, a lot of new reporting, including this, that President Trump spoke by phone with Kurdish leaders on Sunday about this U.S. war with Iran and also about what might come next. Talk to me about the significance of this phone conversation and what you're learning they discussed.

BARAK RAVID, CNN POLITICAL AND GLOBAL AFFAIRS ANALYST: Yes. Good morning.

But just before that, there's some breaking news that I think is worth mentioning. The Israeli air force has just conducted a strike in Tehran on the building of the council of experts. why it matters? Because this is where at this -- at the time of the strike, there was the vote count on the appointment of the new supreme leader of Iran. And an Israeli defense official told me that the strike was intended to basically sabotage the vote and the counting of the votes. And this is why this strike took place. I think it's a very interesting development just a few minutes ago.

BOLDUAN: Which also, of course, do they know the result of that strike yet? I mean what they -- the damage assessment of how successful it was?

RAVID: I think the -- as far as I know, the building was significantly damaged. And so if there was a vote count at the same time, I don't think we will ever know the result.

BOLDUAN: That is significant and also speaks to just the ongoing operations that are going -- that Israel is conducting from the air to hammer Iran really at every turn, you can say, from the first strike -- from the first strike on this weekend that took out the ayatollah, to now what we're talking about, this, the council of experts, Barak. This just kind of shows that this is unrelenting from the Israelis.

What more are you hearing about the kind of -- the what next, if you will, even just from Israel and the scope of the operation, because President Trump has said just yesterday that the big wave, that hasn't even come yet from the U.S.

RAVID: Yes, I think what we see, at least from the Israeli side, is ongoing efforts to destabilize the regime.

[09:25:03]

This is why they conducted the strike. I think they're -- they are going to try and take out every member of the Iranian leadership, past, present and future. This is why we saw that kind of strike right now on the council of experts. I don't think the Israelis want a new supreme leader to be appointed. I think they want to continue the disarray, the confusion and the chaos in the Iranian leadership in order to create the conditions, maybe for the collapse of the regime.

And to your question earlier, what my colleague, Mark Caputo and I, reported on "Axios" was that President Trump, on the -- on Sunday, 24 hours after the war started, spoke over the phone with the leaders of the two main Kurdish factions in Iraq to discuss the war and what might come next. We heard it from three sources with knowledge of that call. And I think it's significant because big part of the border between Iraq and Iran is controlled by the Kurdish minority in Iraq. And in that region, there are several Kurdish-Iranian opposition groups that have bases there. And while I cannot confirm that President Trump spoke to those two Kurdish, big Kurdish faction leaders about some sort of a operational issue, it is definitely, I think, the context here could definitely be how those groups from Iraq, on the border with Iran, might join the fighting at this point or another.

BOLDUAN: Important reporting and context always from you, Barak. Thank you so much for jumping on and bringing us that breaking news that you have just been learning and coming in.

Barak Ravid of "Axios." Really appreciate it.

John.

BERMAN: Kate, we're standing by for the opening bell on Wall Street. Just a few minutes away. What you're looking at right here is stock futures, which are down substantially. These are meaty declines, which we could see just a few minutes from now when markets open. Almost two percent in some cases. Obviously the concerns over war and a surge in oil prices. We'll get the very latest for you on all of this.

And we are on verdict watch in the trial of the father accused of murder in a deadly school shooting allegedly carried out by his son.

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