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Attacks Escalate On Ships In Strait Of Hormuz; Bam Adebayo Scores 83, Second-Most Ever In NBA History; Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL): "President Has No Interest In Troops On The Ground." Aired 7:30-8a ET

Aired March 11, 2026 - 07:30   ET

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

[07:30:00]

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF: In fact, I was actually fairly close to the airport at about 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning when there were two sirens warning of incoming ballistic missiles. And then as we looked up into the sky, we saw that telltale red splitting up of fireballs -- of either clustered warheads splitting up in the skies over central Israel or perhaps a missile that was intercepted and breaking up as its parts fell here. There were no reports of injuries or damage as a result of that.

Iran has continued to be able to launch ballistic missiles even as Israel and the U.S. have tried to go after their ballistic missiles, arrays, and launchers. Iran has retained some of that capability and they use it and space out those launches throughout the day and throughout the night as we have repeatedly seen. Many of these have not gotten through. Even as the Israeli military has said about half of the ballistic missile launches are using cluster warheads Israel has largely been able to intercept and handle those although some have gotten through.

But it seems the real cause -- the real goal of these ballistic missiles, especially with those cluster munitions -- those cluster warheads that split up -- is to cause panic, confusion, and disruption of the -- throughout the day and the night here.

We -- it looks like we will see that continuing here as Israel and the U.S. continue to go after Iranian regime targets in the capital of Tehran and in other parts of the country.

KATE BOLDUAN, CNN ANCHOR: Yeah. Oren, thank you so much for your reporting.

Let's get to Zach Cohen now. He's working his sources on the very latest here. Zach, what are your sources telling you? What are you hearing about these attacks now in the Strait of Hormuz and what the administration is going to do about it?

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: Yeah, Kate. Maintaining control of the Strait of Hormuz is clearly a key part of Iran's defensive strategy here, and U.S. intelligence suggests that they've already started deploying some of its arsenal of mines into the waterway as part of that effort. Now, we're told by multiple sources that Iran has not really taken extensive steps yet to deploy some estimated 5,000 mines that it has at its disposal, but they have laid a few dozen in recent days. And obviously, this has gotten the attention of U.S. President Donald Trump who warned Iran to immediately remove any mines that it placed in the Strait of Hormuz or face the consequences.

Now, we're told that the U.S. military has made a dedicated effort to start targeting Iranian minelaying boats, saying that they -- CENTCOM saying that they've destroyed 16 such vessels in recent days. But as -- estimates suggest that Iran still has 80 to 90 percent of its minelaying vessels still left so it could deploy hundreds of mines if it chooses to do so going forward. And this is just one of the many capabilities that Iran has at its disposal to make the Strait of Hormuz as dangerous as possible for oil tankers and potentially U.S. Navy escort ships trying to pass through.

Now obviously, as you mentioned as well, the Pentagon revealing yesterday that 140 U.S. service members have been hurt -- injured in this conflict so far. Obviously, seven U.S. service members have been killed, including six in one of those initial strikes on a U.S. operations center in Kuwait.

A survivor from that attack recently speaking out and sharing his experience about what occurred. Take a listen.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SGT. FIRST CLASS CORY HICKS, DRONE STRIKE SURVIVOR: I remember turning my head to the left and I seen the nose of that drone pop through. And as soon as it did, I knew what it was. It was either a missile or a drone. So I turned to my right and that's when it blew up and just blew the whole building apart. I looked around and I saw everything was just smoke and fire, and crazy and chaos.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COHEN: So whether it's drones, Iranian missiles, mines, U.S. service members in the region facing significant danger as this conflicts continues.

BOLDUAN: Absolutely. And also, as that soldier is describing, they had no warning ahead of that -- ahead of that drone coming in. That's for sure.

Zach, thank you so much. Oren Liebermann, as always, appreciate it -- Sara.

SARA SIDNER, CNN ANCHOR: All right, thank you, Kate.

Overnight Israel's military launched a new wave of strikes in and around Tehran a day after our CNN team on the ground witnessed heavy arterial bombardment.

CNN operates in Iran with the permission of the Iranian government as is required under local regulations, but CNN maintains full editorial control over our reporting.

Senior correspondent Fred Pleitgen is on the ground there describing what he has been witnessing.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

FREDERIK PLEITGEN, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voiceover): There's been heavy bombardment in Tehran over the past 24 hours as we both heard and felt. This morning we visited a site but all of a sudden, it was targeted again.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I think we should go.

PLEITGEN: Yeah, we should go.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We go, we go, we go.

PLEITGEN: Yeah. OK, we're hearing jets overhead. There's anti-aircraft going over. They told us we've got to get out of here as fast as possible.

So that just goes to show how fast things can turn bad here. We were filming at a site that was apparently -- let me get rid of this mask -- struck yesterday.

[07:35:00]

PLEITGEN (voiceover): Earlier, we'd spoken to folks caught in the attack.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I was in the basement, and I was thrown against the opposite wall. I was under the rubble. That's it. I don't know what else to say. I'm sorry.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

JOHN BERMAN, CNN ANCHOR: Our thanks to Fred Pleitgen who, of course, is inside Iran, and his team.

With us now is CNN national security analyst Beth Sanner, and with us CNN military analyst and retired colonel Cedric Leighton.

And Beth, I just want to start with the latest news from what we've been seeing inside the Strait of Hormuz. This is one of the cargo vessels that's been hit. This is a new image we're getting in.

BETH SANNER, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST, FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE FOR MISSION INTEGRATION: Yeah.

BERMAN: You can see the smoke coming out of that. It is one of three vessels hit. You know, one, two, three over the last 12 hours or so.

So what does this tell you? If the Iranians are doing this to ships --

SANNER: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- in this key shipping lane, what does it tell you about what they're capable of and what their plans are.

SANNER: Right. So what we're seeing now -- so we started off with this idea yesterday that they were going to start putting mines in. And I think that we have to understand here that mines are part of a system, right? So it's mines, drones, rockets, missiles, right?

And so in this very small area -- and the only place that you can pass here is really on two miles, not 20 miles. And so when you have this much concentration what the Iranians are telling us is, like, we're in, right? This is now -- they have made a decision that they are shutting their own access here by laying these mines. They're shutting themselves in essentially and it's worth it for them. So they're all in now.

BERMAN: One of the things they've been saying in the papers this morning is the Iranians are showing they have a vote in all of this.

And just to give you one more sense of what this is -- them shutting down the waterway -- you can see ships here on one end of the strait, ships here on end of the strait. But by and large this area here -- this most narrow area, 20 miles wide, but the shipping lane itself really just two miles -- that all but empty.

Cedric, I want to go to you with one other development overnight. This is inside Iraq, right? Inside Iraq a key U.S. diplomatic support center was struck overnight. I'll put the -- well, it was right here. You can see it right here.

What, again, does that tell you about what the Iranians have in mind and what they are still capable of?

COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON, CNN MILITARY ANALYST (via Webex by Cisco): Yeah. So John, good morning.

What they're doing is they are actually looking at all the different important targets. They've had a real opportunity to in essence case all these targets. They know exactly where our diplomatic facilities are. They know where our -- some of our CIA facilities are. They know where our military facilities are. And the reason they are doing this is this is their way asymmetrically of going after us.

You know, on the one hand, we measure things like number of aircraft taken out. We measure things like number of vessels taken out and, you know, how many we've put to the bottom of the Persian Gulf. That's all great but the problem is the Iranians are fighting with other means. And as Beth was pointing out, they are using things like drones, missiles, and mines to take that asymmetric effort forward. And in some cases, they have an asymmetric advantage.

And so going after, you know, areas like logistic centers like they did in Kuwait, going after Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, and going after that diplomatic support center in Baghdad is exactly part of the Iranian playbook.

BERMAN: And as they try to show -- oh, go ahead, Beth. SANNER: Yeah. So what I want to add to that -- and I think Cedric you can jump in and disagree if I'm wrong here -- but I mean, it's very, very likely that this was taken -- that this was done by Iranian- backed militias that are Iraqis, right? We have not seen them join the fight. We have Hezbollah committing suicide in Lebanon, literally, because, you know --

BERMAN: That's up here.

SANNER: -- Israel is --

BERMAN: That's Lebanon.

SANNER: -- you know, beating the crap out of them. And now we have Iraq joining in. Are we going to have Yemen join in? Are we going to have the Houthis join into this fight which would, you know, move us to the Red Sea? They haven't done that yet because it's not exactly in their interest right now to draw fire. They're kind of on their back heels right now domestically.

But this is, again, an expansion of the war that we -- you know, we were kind of waiting for. It hasn't happened but maybe this is it.

BERMAN: Cedric, when we go back to the straits --

LEIGHTON: Yeah. I think -- yeah.

BERMAN: Go ahead, Cedric. Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Go ahead.

LEIGHTON: Oh no, that's OK. What I was going to say is yeah, Beth is right. And I think we need to look at the possibility that the Houthis will get involved at some point in time. And that would then mean that two different chokepoints -- the Persian Gulf chokepoint, the -- you know, at the Strait of Hormuz, and the Bab-el-Mandeb who as the Red Sea empties into the Indian Ocean.

[07:40:05]

That is the kind of area that we actually could see some efforts and that is something where the proxies -- just like Beth said in Iraq, the proxies are going to play a role in this. And this is, you know, definitely an expansion of the effort and the Iranians are controlling that narrative along with their proxies, of course.

BERMAN: Yeah. And just so you can see what we're talking about, regionally this is the Strait of Hormuz. This would be the Red Sea right here. The Houthis operating right here, perhaps shutting down some of the shipping in and out of that region.

One other thing. You know, we were talking about the mines, right? The idea CNN was reporting that the United -- that Iran may be laying mines in the Red Sea. Then CENTCOM -- sorry, in the Strait of Hormuz. Then CENTCOM released this video they say is of U.S. warplanes and missiles striking the Iranian minelaying ships.

Is this enough -- SANNER: Yeah.

BERMAN: -- to disable them? I think we think the Iranians have, what, 5,000 mines that they could use. Would this be enough to stop efforts to mine the straits?

SANNER: You know, I mean, it's -- obviously it helps, but I mean, we're talking about a 1,000-mile coastline and we're talking about a capacity of Iran to use all manner of ships -- dhows. You know, things that look like fishing ships. Yeah, you can't -- you can't do that at scale, but you can certainly throw one or two over the back of the boat and you won't -- no one will know that. It's very, very hard to track down these very small vessels that can lay --

BERMAN: Yeah.

SANNER: -- mines.

So I think it's kind of whac-a-mole and we've only whacked, you know, one mole.

BERMAN: Yeah.

SANNER: I mean, it's not a lot.

BERMAN: Just so people see, it's 1,000 miles of coastline here. This is all Iran inside the strait, inside the Gulf itself, and then outside. And there are some reports the Iranians have been able to ship some oil out of the parts that are already outside the strait.

Beth Sanner, Cedric Leighton, this has been great. Thank you both so much for being here -- Kate.

BOLDUAN: So there is new surveillance video now coming in of one of the two terror suspects accused of throwing homemade explosives during a protest near the New York City mayor's official residence. The surveillance video is from a fireworks store in Pennsylvania and what it shows is 18-year-old Emir Balat buying a 20-foot-long safety fuse typically used to set off fireworks.

Now, this was just days before he tried, along with another man and is accused of trying to carry out what police say was an attempted terror attack inspired by ISIS. That Pennsylvania store provided the video at the request of the FBI.

The two men face charges of providing material support to a terrorist organization and using a weapon of mass destruction.

Also, the race to replace former Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene is not over yet but it is down to two in the special election for Georgia's 14th congressional district. Republican Clay Fuller and Democrat Shawn Harris -- they now head to a runoff scheduled for April 7.

The Democrat here, Harris -- he got the most votes in a district that President Trump won by 37 points in 2024. But something to consider, there were 12 Republicans running so the Republican vote was somewhat split.

Fuller received Trump's endorsement in that crowded Republican field, though Harris was able to raise more than four times as much as his nearest Republican competitor. Now, whoever wins will serve out the remainder of MTG's term, which ends in January -- Sara.

SIDNER: In the words of Kendrick Lamar, "Bing-bop-boom-boom-bop-bam." Miami Heat center Bam Adebayo scoring the second-most points ever in an NBA game last night. He finished with 83 points.

Joining me now is CNN's Andy Scholes. Just wow. I am marveling at this.

ANDY SCHOLES, CNN SPORTS ANCHOR: Wow is right, Sara. You know, the list of things that could have happened last night in the world of sports, Bam Adebayo scoring 83 -- that was not near the top of the list, but this was a historic performance from Bam. It did have some silliness at the end of the game. We'll show what happened though.

Bam -- he scored 31 points in the opening quarter. He had 43 by halftime. He got up to 62 by the end of the third quarter. But at the end of the game the Wizards were double-teaming him, even triple- teaming him, trying to stop him from scoring. But the Heat -- they were determined to have Bam beat Kobe's modern-day record of 81 points and they were even fouling the Wizards to get the ball back.

But Bam got to 83 points on free throws and boy, did he shoot a lot of those. He made 36 of his 43 free throw attempts. He was 20 of 43 from the field.

The Heat won 150-129.

Bam celebrating with his girlfriend, WNBA star A'ja Wilson and his mom there on the court. And here he was after his historic night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BAM ADEBAYO, CENTER-FORWARD, MIAMI HEAT: It's a pretty emotional moment. Like I said, I wish I could relive it twice. So this is a -- this is a special moment. It's, uh, Wilt, me, then Kobe, which sounds crazy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

[07:45:05]

SCHOLES: Yeah. So here are the top-scoring games now in NBA history. As Bam said, he's right behind Wilt's historic 100-point game and in front of Kobe's 81-point performance.

All right, Team USA, meanwhile, has put themselves in a bad spot in the World Baseball Classic after losing to Italy last night 8-6 in their final full play game. The Italians jumping on the U.S. in the second inning with two home runs. And the American rally fell short with Aaron Judge striking out to end the game. The final was 8-6. So here is the scenarios for Team USA now. If Italy beats Mexico

today, the USA will advance to the quarterfinals. But if Mexico beats Italy and scores four runs or less, the U.S. is going to be out of the World Baseball Classic, which would certainly be a big disappointment for them.

All right, in the NHL, meanwhile, Olympic gold medalist Charlie McAvoy -- he was sent into the glass here in the second period and lost teeth for the second-straight week. McAvoy though is tough as they come. He rallied and he came back into the game in the third period, then he scored the winning goal in overtime for the Bruins.

After the game the 28-year-old said his mouth could not feel worse. But luckily, the Bruins have a really good dentist.

All right. And finally, last week the Ravens traded two first-round picks for Raiders' star defensive end Maxx Crosby, but last night the Raiders tweeted the Ravens backed out of the deal. Now, ESPN is reporting that Baltimore backed out due to medical concerns with Crosby.

But Sara, you know, all these wheels were already put into motion. All these teams were operating as if Crosby was on the Ravens. Lots of -- the Raiders made a lot of big free agent signings. You know, this is something really rare you see in the NFL -- a big trade like this being walked back a couple of days later. You know, we'll see what the Raiders --

SIDNER: Yes.

SCHOLES: -- do know -- if they're still going to try to trade Crosby or not. But now teams are going to be like well, what's going on with his medicals because the Ravens certainly didn't like him.

SIDNER: That's a big mess. But you know what's a bigger mess? The mouth of McAvoy -- ow. I can't even -- it's hard to watch. I cannot even. But he's amazing and got back in the game.

SCHOLES: Yeah. I could never play hockey --

SIDNER: What can you do?

SCHOLES: -- I'll tell you that.

SIDNER: Never -- John.

BERMAN: We're tough in Boston. Teeth optional. We've got teeth optional in Boston.

SIDNER: Yeah, you do.

BERMAN: All right, a big change in the airports today. What might make your life easier, but what could soon get harder.

And attempted thieves caught on camera trying to steal gas from a U- Haul. One problem -- that. They set it all on fire. (COMMERCIAL)

[07:52:05]

BOLDUAN: The breaking news, oil prices are rising again on the news of attacks on ships near the Strait of Hormuz. There's new pictures just into CNN showing a Thai cargo ship that caught fire after being hit by what is so far being described as an unknown projectile. A rescue operation is underway. Thai media is reporting that 20 crew members on that vessel have been rescued and three more remain missing.

That ship is one of the three that we have learned were struck today near that vital shipping channel. Also near the strait, the U.S. military says that it has destroyed more Iranian Navy vessels, including 16 minelayers. And sources earlier told CNN that Iran has begun laying mines in the strait.

This very real threat to shipping traffic is exactly why the waterway has effectively been shut down since the war began, causing oil markets to go just wild and pushing gas prices here in the United States higher and higher.

Let's talk about the latest with this war. Joining me right now is Republican Sen. Rick Scott of Florida. He sits on all the relevant committees -- Armed Services, Foreign Relations, and Homeland Security. Senator, thank you for coming in.

Armed Services was briefed --

SEN. RICK SCOTT (R-FL): It's nice to be with you.

BOLDUAN: -- yesterday on the latest of the war. I want to run through just a few items, especially with the Strait of Hormuz.

Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy left the briefing and he said this. "On the Strait of Hormuz, they had no plan. I can't go into more detail about how Iran gums up the strait, but suffice it to say, right now, they don't know how to get it safely back open. Which is unforgiveable because this part of the disaster was 100 percent foreseeable."

Do you -- does the administration have a plan or not to get the strait back open?

SCOTT: Well look, clearly, they have a plan.

But it's -- this is really simple to me. The Democrats believe in appeasement. They never want to hold Iran accountable. Now, if you actually believed, which President Trump did and I do, that Iran wanted to use a nuclear weapon when they got it to destroy Americans, if you knew that they were building ballistic missiles to destroy Americans, then the president had to take this action.

Now, is it going to be easy to get the Strait of Hormuz open? It never was going to be easy, right? Iran has a lot of small ships. They can put out mines. It's going to be -- it's going to be very difficult. Nobody wants to see gas prices up. It's fascinating to me that

Democrats now talk about gas prices. Under Obama and under Biden they tried to destroy the U.S. oil and gas industry.

So we want prices to come down. I think, unfortunately, prices are going to be up for a while until this ends. But with Venezuela coming on, with American oil and gas coming on, with hopefully a positive resolution to this conflict, then prices will come down even further.

[07:55:00]

BOLDUAN: Senator, if it were possible to do so safely at this point why isn't the U.S. Navy escorting ships through the strait?

SCOTT: I can't tell you the answer to that, but I think it's -- quite now it's still a dangerous situation. We have -- with their -- it's going to take a while for us to get control over the Strait of Hormuz.

The most important thing we can do right now, and our job right now is -- we'd love to get gas prices back down but the most important thing is destroy Iran's ability to, you know, produce a nuclear weapon, destroy their military, their ballistic missile capability, and hopefully, right, we end up with a country that wants to work with the world community and not be constantly destroying through all their proxies.

So, I mean, we all want gas prices to come down. Nobody wants gas prices higher. This president doesn't want gas prices higher. But we have to be realistic.

If you believe that Iran was going to use nuclear weapons against us, we had no choice but to do this. And they're a problem short-term.

BOLDUAN: Let me ask you about -- you said hopefully at the end of this you have a country that wants to work with the world community.

I want to play for you what Sen. Blumenthal said leaving this briefing yesterday because his suggestion is that in order to bring about regime change, if that's the goal, American troops are going to be sent in. Let me play this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. RICHARD BLUMENTHAL (D-CT): We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BOLDUAN: Senator, do you think the administration is on a path to sending in ground troops?

SCOTT: No. I mean, this president hates forever wars. This president has no interest in troops on the ground. So these Democrats that say this, they're being disingenuous. And these are the same people that just appeased, appeased, appeased Iran and got us in this situation where we have to do this to stop this -- these nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.

So the president is going to do everything he can. We don't want any troops to be lost. My heart goes out to the seven service members -- one in Florida, Cody Khork. I hope all the 140 that have been injured have a full recovery.

But let's all remember why this is happening. They want to destroy us. They -- they're chanting "Death to America." You don't appease people that do that.

So there's nothing in this briefing that said that we are going to put troops on the ground. There was nothing.

BOLDUAN: There's clearly a difference of interpretation coming out of the briefing but important to get that interpretation from you.

Blumenthal and Jeanne Shaheen -- they both said after the briefing that in their view, "We know that Russia is already providing Iran with help, actively and intensively providing intelligence to Iran in its retaliation."

CNN has reported that Russian intelligence has included intelligence about the locations and movements of American troops, ships, and aircraft.

Do you believe any Iranian attacks can be linked to Russian targeting intelligence?

SCOTT: Well first of all, I believe that Putin is helping Iran. I mean, Putin hates our guts. He's not a friend to the United States, so you have to assume that he's doing it. And he's complete liar. So I assume he is doing it and I assume he's going to do everything he can to help destroy Americans and our way of life, right?

So I -- look, we have -- here's the problem. We have enemies. The government of China is an enemy. Russia is an enemy. North Korea, Iran, they're enemies. They are not going to do anything to help us. So we can either sit here and appease them, or we can say this is -- you're not going to do it to American citizens. This president is doing the right thing to protect American lives.

BOLDUAN: We know that Congress is waiting for a request from the White House for more funding for this war. I've seen a pretty wide range of estimates.

What's your estimate of how much they're going to ask for? Fifty billion or more?

SCOTT: I don't know. I assume it depends on how long this goes on. The -- hopefully, this won't go on a long time. I know that's not what the president wants. And, you know, we've got a great ally with Israel that's doing an unbelievable job, so hopefully it won't go on.

I support our military. The most important thing we can do as elected U.S. senators is support the people that want to defend the freedom of this country. It's the most important thing we can do. And we need to give them the resources to be able to do their job.

BOLDUAN: Senator Rick Scott, thank you for coming in -- John.

BERMAN: The Trump administration is restoring global entry at participating airports today after shutting it down last month they said because of the partial government shutdown. Global entry, of course, deals with people after they land.

As far as takeoff, there have been some growing lines at TSA security checkpoints with TSA employees working without pay during this partial shutdown.

This morning charges filed against the woman who allegedly fired gunshots at Rihanna's home. The singer and her family -- they were there at the time of the shooting. No one was hurt, luckily. Ivanna Ortiz is charged with 14 counts, including attempted murder and assault with a firearm.