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Interview With Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT); Trump Offers New Justification For Iran War. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired March 03, 2026 - 13:00   ET

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

[13:00:00]

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: I just am very excited.

(LAUGHTER)

HOLMES: I think this is like a really fun one to start the entire midterm season with. I mean, it's fun on both sides. It's a lot of intrigue. So it'll be great to see what happens.

DANA BASH, CNN HOST: Yes, it sure is.

Thank you all. Appreciate it.

Thank you for joining INSIDE POLITICS today.

"CNN NEWS CENTRAL" starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: We start this hour with breaking news on the U.S. and Israel's war with Iran.

Just moments ago, President Trump defended his attacks, offering a new justification for launching them.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: We were having negotiations with these lunatics. And it was my opinion that they were going to attack first. They were going to attack. If we didn't do it, they were going to attack first. I felt strongly about that.

And we have great negotiators, great people, people that do this very successfully, and have done it all their lives very successfully. And based on the way the negotiation was going, I think they were going to attack first. And I didn't want that to happen. So, if anything, I might have forced Israel's hand.

But Israel was ready, and we were ready. And we have had a very, very powerful impact.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Right now in the Middle East, the bombing is intensifying, with Israel hitting the compound of the group responsible for choosing Iran's next supreme leader. The strike reportedly obliterated a compound where an Iranian council was supposed to elect the new ayatollah.

Now, Iran's state media is reporting that it was evacuated before the attack and President Trump is saying that it's now even more unclear who might next lead that nation.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

QUESTION: Do you have someone in mind right now? As you have said all the people you do have in mind have been taken out. What do you think...

(CROSSTALK)

TRUMP: Well, most of the people we had in mind are dead. So we had some in mind from that group that is dead. And now we have another group. They may be dead also, based on reports.

So I guess you will have a third wave coming in. Pretty soon, we're not going to know anybody.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: We are standing by this afternoon for the full Senate to receive its first briefing on the war, as the White House and Pentagon have offered shifting explanations.

Let's go live now to Haifa, Israel, with CNN's Nick Paton Walsh. He's there for us live.

Nick, we have seen emergency crews today -- as your shot is getting adjusted, we have seen emergency crews across Israel today responding to damage caused by missiles that have been intercepted. What do you see where you are?

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, we have just in the last minutes here in Kiryat Shmona on the border with Southern Lebanon here in Northern Israel seen a rocket pass over, the first we have seen of the day.

And it took a while for it to land. But there was some distant, it seemed, impact in that particular direction. Throughout the day, we have seen a muted response, frankly, from Hezbollah to this latest Israeli move against them.

They're not describing the ground move as necessarily an invasion at this particular point. Instead, they're referring to how they need to increase the buffer zone along the border area. But we have seen occasional impacts on the hill line here, but significantly less, frankly, than what we have seen here in late 2024, when the Israelis first launched a significant assault against Hezbollah, diminishing their capabilities.

Just back to what you were saying, Boris, too, about the strike in Qom in Iran, that is an extraordinary moment, certainly. Now, Iranian state media have suggested that the building in Qom was indeed evacuated prior to that strike, but President Trump now clear he believes that they have been hit very hard.

It's unclear if he's referring to perhaps what he's read in the news media or separate intelligence about this particular strike. He later referred to reports during that particular speech. But this appears to be the second time in which an Assembly of Experts building was hit.

Another one was hit in Tehran. What is the Assembly of Experts? It's 88 senior clerics who gather to select the new supreme leader. Now, there has been an extraordinary leadership vacuum, frankly in Iran, it's fair to say, for over the last three days.

Yes, we have a temporary council of the relatively moderate president, Masoud Pezeshkian, and a jurist and a senior cleric who are running the show until the nearly 90 senior clerics select the new ayatollah.

But, ultimately, the question has to be if the United States are looking for an off-ramp, somebody to negotiate with, who is that at this particular point? Is there a reticence amongst Iran senior figures to name somebody in case they indeed are struck by another Israeli airstrike as well?

And on the Iranian side as well, there have been suggestions from senior Iranian officials that parts of the military are acting on previously issued orders. That was something we heard in the early hours of this particular conflict.

[13:05:06]

Is there a diminished command-and-control at this point in the Iranian military? Unclear at this stage, but the retaliation across the region from Iran has been so, frankly, seismic and widespread. But I'm sure there must be some beginning to wonder exactly when Tehran chooses to tone its essentially onslaught against most of its neighbors down.

But here in northern Lebanon, Boris, it's been a day in which clearly Israel is pushing forwards now on its second front in this war, Hezbollah deeply weakened. They've lost their key sponsor in the Iranian ayatollah and now seem to be having an Israel coming for them, whose defense minister just said they won't stop until they're disarmed, Boris.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right, Nick Paton Walsh, if you can stand by for us there in Israel.

And Erin Burnett is with us now.

Erin, you are there in Tel Aviv. And, obviously Iran, maintaining its ability very much to target what it wants to target, targeting broadly, as its neighbors are very much on defense right now, even as they are on offense.

ERIN BURNETT, CNN HOST: That's right. And some moving to offense, I think that's the crucial way that you

phrased it, Brianna. Sources in the United Arab Emirates, which second to only where we're standing right now, has taken the ferocity of the Iranian onslaught, they are still very much in the mode of they're going to maintain a defensive posture, as opposed to turning more to offense, as we've seen, for example, from Qatar.

So we'll see how long that lasts. You can probably not hear, but in the sky above me, we do hear a jet. It's very rare. Anything that you do hear here is obviously military. And a moment ago, as you were going to Nick, Nick Paton Walsh, just north of where we were, we had a lot of sirens.

So we were preparing to go to shelter. The explosions were immediate. And the implications of that, Boris and Brianna, of what we just heard, and there was a lot of loud bangs, was that they were coming from the new front in the war, the north, Hezbollah, where Israel, just as of this morning, we understand, does have ground forces going into Lebanon to fight Hezbollah.

But, again, as I said, the time difference between the sirens that we just heard and those explosions, we believe indicate that those may have been coming from the Hezbollah-Israel new front. But what we've heard during the day here is sirens after sirens.

When you hear the sirens and there's a gap of three to, say, even eight or nine minutes, those are coming from Iran, the heavier-duty, some delivered by drone, but obviously also cruise and ballistic missiles. We've seen there was one that got through today. There were injuries just outside of Tel Aviv, where we're standing.

We don't know that there were any dead, although, as we've said, this has been the most deadly onslaught against Israel so far, including last summer. And Nick mentioned one of the biggest events of the day, and that is, of course, the strike on Qom and on that meeting that senior clerics were holding to elect a new supreme leader.

As Nick said, what we're hearing from the Iranians, and we are still able to speak to them, they are saying that that was evacuated before the actual strike. Now, we don't know whether that's the case, whether they're just saying that. We're unable to ascertain at this point, but obviously that meeting was targeted, hugely significant.

And, Boris and Brianna, as I pass it back to you, I'll say one more thing. When you talk about what you're seeing in the markets and what you're seeing in energy prices, talking to a tanker CEO today, I've been monitoring this, when they have three of the largest tankers that there are in the Gulf heading into the Strait of Hormuz.

At this point, he described it as they're essentially hiding, and they're waiting for the United States to do something. They say it is up to the United States to provide the safety of the strait, to provide convoys, to do something to try to open it.

But, right now, the best that they can do with the biggest ships in the world is to -- quote, unquote -- "hide them" so that they don't get hit -- Boris and Brianna.

KEILAR: All right, Erin, thank you so much for that.

The U.S. is closing some embassies in the Middle East as strikes are ramping up in the region, and the State Department has urged Americans to leave 14 different countries because of serious safety risks. But this hour, the air space over the region remains largely closed.

SANCHEZ: CNN national security correspondent Kylie Atwood is with us now.

Kylie, what more is the State Department saying about how Americans are going to get out of there?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Well, this is a pretty complicated picture, so let's just kind of break it down in groups here.

First, when it comes to the U.S. embassies in the region, right, there are seven embassies that have gone on mandatory departure. So that means that people are working at that embassy that aren't essential personnel, aren't emergency personnel and their family members, they have gone on mandatory departure right now.

Those countries where those embassies are located are the UAE, Jordan, Bahrain, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, and Lebanon. You can see those in the map in red. Then, in purple on this map, we have countries where they have closed the U.S. embassies there. That's Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Lebanon.

[13:10:07]

Obviously last night we saw those horrific pictures of the drone hitting the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, hitting the roof there. That embassy is one of those that is closed in the region right now. And Israel, that is in this in this map right here in blue, they went on authorized departure last week.

That means effectively people who are working at the embassy can leave using their own discretion. When it comes to the message that the State Department is sending right now to Americans in the region, yesterday, they told Americans in the region in 14 countries, as you said, that they should be leaving now.

They have a 1-800 number for those Americans to call to get information about what the U.S. government is potentially going to be doing here to provide assistance. Let's just read that number, so viewers in the region know. It's 888-407-4747. There is the list of countries on the screen there where, if Americans are there, the State Department is telling them they should leave.

Now, we should note however that there aren't commercial options that are readily available for these Americans. So we're seeing a lot of Americans on social media saying, the State Department is telling me to leave, but I don't have a way of leaving right now. And when you call that 888 number from the State Department, they do say that at this time the U.S. government is not providing evacuation flights, that these Americans should not be expecting that. But in the last hour, President Trump was just asked in the Oval Office why there weren't plans for these evacuations.

He effectively said that this got going so quickly that there wasn't time to put those orders in place. But we just saw in a tweet from the White House spokesperson saying -- and I want to read this to you, because it's important -- "The U.S. State Department is actively working on plans to help Americans in the Middle East return home."

So we are watching to see what they're potentially going to stand up here, but obviously it's a very dangerous situation for any flights to be getting in and out.

KEILAR: Yes, certainly.

Kylie, thank you so much for that update.

And we're also following more breaking news. Fears are growing on Wall Street that the war with Iran could escalate further.

SANCHEZ: A lot of red across all three indices.

Let's get straight to CNN's Vanessa Yurkevich at the New York stock market.

What are you hearing there, Vanessa?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS AND POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Yes, investors are really telling me the market swings that they have been seeing in the last two days are shocking, one investor saying they're kind of dumb founded, because, yesterday, we saw the Dow opening down 500 points, then really crawling back a lot of the losses, and then, today, the Dow hitting a low of 1,200 points, but rebounding a little bit.

I'm just looking over my shoulder here, the Dow down about 529 points. Here's what changed, according to investors. One, after markets closed yesterday, we heard from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the worst was yet to come with Iran.

Number two, Iran's reaction for some investors has been a lot stronger than expected, hitting key oil sectors, key oil structures and infrastructures that are boosting oil prices. I'm looking over my shoulder again, U.S. crude prices up 4 percent, Brent crude up 4, nearly 4.5 percent.

So that is making investors nervous about oil supply. And then sort of the third thing that I'm hearing from investors right now is, what does this all mean for inflation right here in the United States? Higher oil prices on the markets means higher gas prices for consumers. So what does that mean for inflation?

And then does that push a potential rate cut from the Federal Reserve down the line even further? I will note, though, we are seeing the Dow down just over 1 percent. That is not dramatic. It's a bit tame compared to what we could be seeing, investors, guys, telling me that the real concern is, do we go into correction territory the longer this lasts?

That's a 10 to 15 percent correction of the markets. Not there yet, investors still trying to parse through just how long this conflict goes on, but seemingly today believing that it will go on longer than they at least expected yesterday.

KEILAR: Yes, that's what the markets are thinking. Very interesting.

Vanessa, thank you for that.

Still to come: Top administration officials are about to brief lawmakers on the war with Iran. A senator on the Armed Services Committee will join us next.

SANCHEZ: Plus, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog chief says that Iran was not days or weeks from having a nuclear weapon. That flies in the face of what the Trump administration has said about their capabilities. We will dig into that reporting.

And, later, the verdict is in, in the trial of the father of a Georgia school shooter. We will break down the latest details in the case when we come back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[13:18:45]

KEILAR: Soon on Capitol Hill, top Trump administration officials will be briefing both chambers of Congress on the ongoing war with Iran. And many lawmakers are pressing for clearer answers about the justification for the objectives of these U.S.-Israeli attacks.

We're joined now by Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

Senator, can you first off just react to what you heard from President Trump today? He said that he had a feeling Iran was going to attack first and he may have forced Israel's hand.

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): Brianna, I'm going to be demanding answers in this briefing, because a feeling about some imminent attack is hardly justification for launching this escalating, spreading, widening war that has embraced the entire region and put at risk American lives.

My foremost concern is the men and women in uniform who are in harm's way along with their families and growing numbers of American civilians who are calling my office. The chaos and incompetence of planning for enabling American citizens or others to exit the region is absolutely staggering.

[13:20:00] And I think Americans ought to be outraged that some feeling about preemptive attack somehow was the basis for launching this war. We have been given all kinds of explanations. The administration's all over the place. It can't get its stories straight. In fact, it seems to be test-marketing an explanation that will best justify this war.

But I'm going to be demanding also answers to the question about, what is our objective? What is our exit strategy? What is our endgame? We need strategy, not just strength.

KEILAR: Is there anything that you can learn at the briefing today that will convince you of this mission, of the merits of this mission?

BLUMENTHAL: Never say never.

But I want to know, most importantly for me, what is our path toward regime change? Obviously, there's been change within the regime, but not regime change. And the president and his teams keep talking about regime change.

For me, that objective is deeply concerning, in fact, frightening, because there's no way to accomplish regime change from 30,000 feet. Bombing has never accomplished a change in governance. It would require troops on the ground.

And the prospect of American boots on the ground, I think, is an anathema to Americans. It should be. It's unacceptable to me, as a member of the Armed Services Committee, and I think that this administration owes the public, not just congresspeople in a confidential, classified briefing -- it owes the American public an explanation for whether we're attacking ballistic missile capacity or nuclear capability or engineering regime change or some other feeling.

What is the feeling? What is the factual basis for the feeling of the president of the United States, the commander in chief, for putting our men and women in harm's way?

KEILAR: If Iran, as it existed prior to this, able to fund proxies, able to quash dissent so stridently, so violently, able to be a potential nuclear threat to wreak havoc in the region is no longer, even without full-on regime change, is that something that justifies some of this or how this is being done? What do you think?

BLUMENTHAL: Let me say, I have no tears for the death of the Iran theocratic leaders who perished in the last few days.

And I find the idea of a nuclear-armed Iran totally unacceptable. Iran has been a malign and toxic influence and actor in supporting those proxies, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis. I have seen personally the results of their terrorist brutality.

And I am fully supportive of destroying both the weapons and the capability of these proxies, as Israel is doing right now with Hezbollah. Israel has a right to defend itself. It should take action against these proxies. I have yet to see a scintilla of evidence that there was an imminent

threat to the United States, to our homeland, to our bases. And I think that is a very important consideration here, because, ultimately, we have to ask, what is the objective?

We can decide we don't want to prolong this war, but the enemy has a vote.

KEILAR: Can I -- you said there's no imminent threat.

Do you believe -- Secretary Rubio, it was interesting as he was on the Hill yesterday, he sort of -- he said something we hadn't heard him say before. And his justification was that Iran posed an imminent threat because it was expected to retaliate against the U.S., that it was poised to basically pull the trigger on that as soon as Israel took action against Iran.

Do you believe that?

BLUMENTHAL: I want to see whether there's any factual basis for it, Brianna. And the question is not whether I believe it. It's whether, is it supported by the facts, the knowledge on the ground on the part of the intelligence community, on the part of our allies' intelligence?

We work closely with Israel. And I want to know, in this briefing, what was the factual basis for it? The American people deserve to know.

[13:25:00]

KEILAR: Senator Richard Blumenthal, thank you so much. We certainly are curious to know how this briefing turns out. Thanks for being with us.

BLUMENTHAL: Thank you.

KEILAR: And, ahead, what we're learning about the Americans who died in this war with Iran, we're going to have that.

We will have more on an Israeli strike on the compound of the group that chooses Iran's next supreme leader.

Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: The death toll of U.S. service members killed at an American operations center based in Kuwait is now six. They're the first U.S. troops to die in this conflict.

And while their names are not yet being released, a source says that they were killed by a direct hit from an airstrike at that civilian port on Sunday.

Let's get more from CNN national security reporter Haley Britzky. Haley, you're getting new details on security at that site, in part

because it was a concern before this even happened.