Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

U.S. F-35 Damaged by Suspected Iranian Fire Makes Emergency Landing at Middle East Air Base; Iranian Missile Strikes Major Refinery in Northern Israel; Gabbard Says U.S. & Israel Have Different Objectives for War With Iran; Intel Chiefs Testify on Worldwide Threat Assessment; Gallon of Gas Up $0.90 Since War With Iran Began; Epstein Lawyer Says He Had No Knowledge Whatsoever of Sexual Abuse. Aired 2- 2:30p ET

Aired March 19, 2026 - 14:00   ET

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

[14:00:00]

MEG TIRRELL, CNN MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT: -- a lot of people to afford. They are becoming more accessible, but that is still a problem, we hear from a lot of patients and a lot of doctors.

KEILAR: All right, Meg Tirrell, thank you so much for that news. The new hour of "CNN News Central" starts right now.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": A $200 billion price tag. We're learning much more about how much the war in Iran could cost as Americans see the cost of war at their local gas station with oil prices going higher and higher.

Plus, a search overseas. Spanish police now retracing the last known movements of an American college student who disappeared following a night out in Barcelona. And we're watching wait times at airports across the country as more TSA agents call out amid the partial government shutdown.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": We are following multiple breaking headlines on the war with Iran. President Trump, while meeting with the Prime Minister of Japan in the Oval Office, was asked about some new Reuters reporting that he's considering deploying thousands of American troops to the Middle East. And here's how he responded.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, (R) PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: No, I'm not putting troops anywhere. If I were, I certainly wouldn't tell you, but I'm not putting troops.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Now that denial amid the intensifying conflict in the Middle East. For the first time since the beginning of the war, Iran appears to have hit an American aircraft. Sources say a U.S. F-35 fighter jet was forced to make an emergency landing at an American airbase after it was struck by what is believed to be Iranian fire. We're told the pilot is in stable condition and the incident is under investigation.

And today, Iran striking a major oil refinery in northern Israel. This escalation coming after Israel targeted Iranian facilities at the world's largest natural gas field yesterday. Arab countries have condemned this Israeli strike, with Qatar calling it dangerous and irresponsible.

President Trump says he knew nothing about it, but sources contradict that claim he made. An Israeli official telling CNN, Israel carried out the strike in coordination with the U.S. Just a short time ago, America's top intel official said this about the war.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TULSI GABBARD, DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE: The objectives that have been laid out by the president are different from the objectives that have been laid out by the Israeli government.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Oren Liebermann is in Jerusalem and is with us now. Oren, tell us about these differing goals between the U.S. and Israel when it comes to the war.

OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN JERUSALEM BUREAU CHIEF: Well, after a lot of questions about what the U.S. goal really was at the beginning of the war, the Trump administration has tried to lay out clear military goals dealing with Iran's Navy, its ballistic missile program, its nuclear file as well, whereas Israel has gone after the regime itself, targeting not only, obviously, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the beginning of the war, but has continued to go after some of the top targets of the regime.

And Israeli officials have continued to make clear that anybody Iran puts in charge is still very much a viable and high-end target for Israel. So Israel is not just going after military targets, although we have certainly seen that, but going after, or at least trying to, the stability of the regime as well.

Now comes the question of energy and oil infrastructure after we saw Israel strike the South Pars natural gas field of Iran, and that has led to not only surging gas prices in the U.S., but Iran's retaliation striking oil and gas facilities and refineries around the Middle East.

That has led to effectively President Donald Trump, trying to say that the U.S. wasn't aware of it, even though we have not only Israeli officials, but also American officials telling us that there was coordination and the U.S. was aware of that. Still, when asked about the knowledge beforehand, this is what Trump said in the White House a short time ago.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: I told him, don't do that, and he won't do that. We didn't discuss. You know, we do -- we're independent, we get along great. It's coordinated, but on occasion he'll do something, and if I don't like it, and so we're not doing that anymore.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

LIEBERMANN: Now Trump may not want Israel to strike any more gas or oil facilities, but take a look at this video from northern Israel. This is a short time ago, an Iranian ballistic missile striking the Bazan refinery near the city of Haifa in northern Israel.

Israel may at this point, and that is, Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu may at this point feel he has no choice but to continue to strike Iranian energy and oil infrastructure. For Israel, it is considered what they see as a legitimate target because Iran uses it, the regime uses it for stability and for money.

So Israel may have no choice now or feel it has no choice now but to continue these strikes on energy infrastructure, Brianna, as we see this escalation continue pretty much unabated.

[14:05:00]

KEILAR: All right, Oren Liebermann, live for us in Jerusalem. Thank you so much. Boris?

SANCHEZ: Let's bring in Republican Congressman, Dan Crenshaw of Texas.

Congressman, thanks so much for being with us. I want to start by getting your thoughts on a portion of DNI Gabbard's written remarks yesterday. She said that as a result of last year's strikes, the Iranian nuclear program was obliterated. She said that there had been no efforts since then to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.

Today, she tried to clarify by saying that Tehran still maintained the intention to eventually rebuild uranium enrichment. Does that sound like this nuclear program was an imminent threat to the United States?

REP. DAN CRENSHAW, (R-TX) INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: I'd say it's a persistent threat. I mean, everyone is really getting hung up on the word imminent. And let's be clear about the word imminent, it's a subjective word. I mean, having worked in intelligence, having done analysis, having done intelligence collection myself in my prior career, you're going to be careful before you make a very final statement on something being imminent.

And so when Tulsi says to Congress and to the public that it's ultimately up to the president whether it's imminent, that's not that crazy of a thing to say. It's up to the intelligence community to provide the facts as they see them. And it is up to the political class in the White House to assess that and make decisions based upon that.

So when you have the Iranians working, again, working to rebuild those deep down bunkers for, you know, it's kind of strange to have very deep bunkers for peaceful nuclear means, by the way, and also producing missiles daily and Shahed drones daily at a rate that would completely overwhelm our ability to defend them, I would classify that as a pretty imminent threat. I mean, heck, they've been a persistent threat at least since 1979.

So everyone's getting hung up on this, and I'm not sure why. I don't view this conflict with Iran as just a rash decision by the president. I view it as something that was much more inevitable.

SANCHEZ: I guess, Congressman, part of the concern is that the president is only supposed to act unilaterally, without input from Congress, if there's going to be an imminent strike on Americans. In other words, if there is an immediate danger to American lives, that's different than saying that Iran has a persistent threat or eventually may have the capacity to harm Americans on the mainland, no?

CRENSHAW: I don't think it's different at all. I think that you phrased the same thing in two different ways. That's like, just -- having been looking at Iran since I was a SEAL and my entire time in Congress, it has been consistently a threat to Americans, killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq, constantly practices targeting our American bases in the Persian Gulf, bombing the Beirut embassy, taking our people hostage.

(CROSSTALK)

CRENSHAW: This is not some kind of new threat. And here's the other thing. What is imminent is the idea that you might have another North Korea. And so you're at a point in history, again, this has nothing to do with Trump and who's in office. You're at a point in history where you either decide that you're not going to have another North Korea, or you are.

And right now, the only way to prevent the second North Korea, a madman with a bomb, is to use conventional means, and that's exactly what they're doing.

SANCHEZ: The other aspect to concern over this conflict is that while the U.S. and Israel have decimated the leadership in Iran, it appears that the structure and disposition of the regime remain in place. So I wonder how the U.S. can walk away from this conflict, claiming success, if the leadership in Tehran remains committed to funding terror, and perhaps even more committed to obtaining a nuclear weapon.

To your point, to be more like North Korea, in a position where the opportunity cost of going after them makes it impossible.

CRENSHAW: Well, I disagree with the premise a little bit. Their command and control structure is in complete disarray. There's various components that operate autonomously. They want to give off the idea that they are still a cohesive unit, that it's functioning well, but that's very much not the case.

There's increasingly a disgruntled population, especially in the regular armed forces outside the IRGC. And also, we're not walking away yet. Nobody is talking about walking away yet. There's still various military targets that need to be taken out, especially to secure the Straits of Hormuz.

And personally, I would like to see more effort put into convincing those regular Iranian army recruits that this is their time to rise up and change their own regime. These are people who are not getting paid. They're from various different ethnicities.

[14:10:00]

They're not the IRGC. And that's a very real possibility. That's not currently our policy goal. I would suggest that that at least needs to be part of the discussion.

SANCHEZ: I also wanted to get your thoughts, Congressman --

CRENSHAW: -- because that would reflect (ph) success.

(CROSSTALK)

SANCHEZ: I understand. I wanted to get your thoughts on what we've learned from two sources and what the Pentagon confirmed that it is investigating, that an F-35 fighter jet made an emergency landing after being hit by what is believed to be Iranian fire. Does that mean that Iran's air defenses have not been flattened, as the Pentagon is suggesting?

CRENSHAW: I don't know that specific case. Obviously, it's being investigated as to what possibly could have caused that. But, yeah, we don't completely own the skies over Iran. Because when it comes to air defenses in Iran, surface-to-air missiles, it's not like these are stationary objects that we always know where they are. OK? It's not Top Gun 2.

These are mobile devices that are hidden, they're moved around, and we're constantly targeting them. That will continue to happen.

SANCHEZ: It sounds the way that you're describing it is somewhat different from what we've heard from the Pentagon, and that's why I ask. Lastly, you heard President Trump a moment ago, we played the soundbite, saying that he asked Benjamin Netanyahu for Israel to stop striking some Iranian energy facilities.

We got our report just a moment ago that it seemed like some of those attacks had continued. Do you have concerns about divergent goals between the United States and Israel when it comes to how they would like to see this war end, and on things like attacks on energy infrastructure?

CRENSHAW: I don't think our goals are all that divergent. It's a constant conversation. I heard the clips from the president. I agree with that. I think he disagrees with some things the Israelis do. Sometimes he joins them in what they're doing. But when it comes to energy infrastructure, it's a leverage tool. Now, if Iran's energy infrastructure simply disappeared, well, there'd be pros and cons to that.

I mean, on the pros' side, well, that's a pretty big blow to China since a decent portion, I think 10 to 15 percent of their oil, actually comes from Iran at a discounted price. Now, the cons would simply be that Iran becomes more desperate, perhaps. Also, if you do -- if we are lucky enough to see some kind of overthrow of the regime internally, well, they're going to have a harder time actually rebuilding this new regime that would hopefully be friendly to the U.S. So it is pros and cons, and I think our policymakers are constantly assessing that.

SANCHEZ: So would you support a request from the Pentagon, a potential request from the Pentagon for an additional $200 billion? Do you think it would have enough votes to pass?

CRENSHAW: I don't know. $200 billion was an estimate that was thrown out. We don't have an exact number. We don't have an exact request yet. I think it should be clear to everyone that there's going to be some kind of request for a supplemental, which I will support.

SANCHEZ: Do you think it has enough votes to pass in Congress?

CRENSHAW: I'm not the whip. I don't know.

SANCHEZ: Congressman Dan Crenshaw, we do appreciate your time nevertheless. Thanks so much for joining us.

CRENSHAW: Thanks.

SANCHEZ: Still to come, the White House says rising gas prices are a temporary blip, but do economists agree? Plus, we have the latest on the search for an American college student who went missing after a night out in Barcelona. And later, we're following long wait times at airports with more TSA agents calling out as they're asked to work without pay.

That and much more coming your way on CNN.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:18:19]

KEILAR: Gas prices keep climbing. Today, regular unleaded is averaging $3.88 per gallon, according to AAA. That's up $0.90 per gallon since the start of the Iran war 19 days ago. Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent says the administration is weighing more options to help bring down costs, including opening up Iranian oil.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCOTT BESSENT, UNITED STATES TREASURY SECRETARY: In the coming days, we may unsanction the Iranian oil that's on the water. It's about 140 million barrels. So depending on how you count it, that's 10 days to two weeks of supply.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: Bessent also said they're considering another release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

We're joined now by CNN Business & Politics Correspondent, Vanessa Yurkevich. Vanessa, what kind of impact could these types of moves have?

VANESSA YURKEVICH, CNN BUSINESS & POLITICS CORRESPONDENT: Well, we actually have a recent case study that we can look at to see just what a release from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would actually do. Last week, on March 11th, the EIA, which is a group of 32 key countries, announced a historic release of 400 million barrels of oil.

So look at that line chart right there. You're looking at Brent, the international benchmark, and then WTI, which is U.S. crude. You can see that actually oil prices started falling before March 11th in anticipation of this release.

But then you can see they quickly climbed again, moving out of that $80 a barrel, closer to that $90, even up to $100 a barrel. And that is because, Brianna, 400 million barrels, while it sounds like a lot, does not go a long way. 400 million barrels, if you divide it roughly by the amount that the world consumes, 100 million barrels a day, that's four days of supply.

[14:20:00]

So while an SPG release does sound good for investors, for oil markets, it's not doing much because it's just a short-term solution. What they're really looking at is for a long-term solution, which would be bringing this war to a close or safely reopening the Strait of Hormuz.

KEILAR: And Vanessa, the Trump administration keeps emphasizing that these high prices are going to be temporary, they'll subside. Do economists and investors agree, though?

YURKEVICH: Right. Well, temporary is duration, right? So temporarily higher prices, yeah, as long as the war goes on. When prices increase, they're a lot slower to come down, to fall. Arguably, the nation's chief economist, Jerome Powell, the Head of the Federal Reserve, said that even he and members of the board don't know what the impact of this is going to be. And he even warned that any projections that the Federal Reserve makes is subject to change.

Listen to how many times he had to go over this with reporters just yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JEROME POWELL, FEDERAL RESERVE CHAIRMAN: Take the forecast with a grain of salt because subject to just very high levels of uncertainty. Really want to emphasize is that nobody knows, you know, the economics effect could be bigger, they could be smaller, they could be much smaller or much bigger. We just don't know.

It's just we don't know what the effects of this will be, and really no one does. We don't know how big these effects are going to be, and I don't want to characterize them in any way.

I just want to just remember that we don't know. And we shouldn't assume it's going to be one thing or another. We're going to see. (END VIDEO CLIP)

YURKEVICH: So don't know and uncertainty was really the name of the game in that press conference. And that is what the Federal Reserve members believe, and that is what a lot of economists and analysts believe as well. We just don't know the long-term impacts of this.

And that is essentially, Brianna, why the Federal Reserve decided to leave interest rates unchanged, because they very much are in that wait-and-see mode just to see how this plays out. Obviously, that's not comforting for many consumers, but everybody, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve, is watching this all play out along with the rest of the world. Brianna?

KEILAR: All right. Vanessa Yurkevich, thank you very much. And police in Barcelona say they have found the cell phone of a missing American student as they're trying to piece together his last known movements. We have the latest on the search, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:27:06]

KEILAR: Today, Jeffrey Epstein's personal lawyer and co-executor of his estate told lawmakers he had no knowledge whatsoever of Epstein's sex trafficking operations. Darren Indyk testified as part of the House Oversight Committee's investigation into the late convicted sex offender.

Documents reviewed by CNN show Indyk represented Epstein for nearly 25 years, including during Epstein's incarceration. One Democrat on the committee says he thinks Indyk likely perjured himself.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. DAVE MIN, (D-CA) OVERSIGHT COMMITTEE: He claimed, and I think this is in the statement you all received, that he had no knowledge of any women or girls. And yet, that doesn't account for the fact that numerous women have described how he helped them fix their problems. One woman had described how he had helped her get an apartment. He helped women with their immigration issues.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KEILAR: We're joined now by James Marsh. He's an attorney who represents several survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's abuse. And thank you so much for being with us.

I do want to read to you something that we have just learned, and that is Chairman Comer has said that Indyk testified, saying he said that Epstein told him it was a mistake, meaning after the 2008 plea deal that he agreed to. He said it was a one-time deal. He didn't know the girl was underage, the one that he got convicted of in West Palm Beach.

And Indyk said he convinced him he would never do it again and that he had remorse. So that was about it. What do you think hearing that?

JAMES MARSH, ATTORNEY FOR EPSTEIN ACCUSERS: Look, by 2008, anyone who could Google or look up any information about Jeffrey Epstein could see a long history of his shady involvement with things like Tower Financial, some of the other frauds and crimes that he'd committed.

So I think, like all of the other witnesses that were in Jeffrey Epstein's orbit, the excuse that I didn't have actual knowledge, didn't know, couldn't know, shouldn't have known, it really rings hollow. And it's an insult to the victims and survivors that we represent and other women who experienced Jeffrey Epstein's sex abuse, trafficking, and crimes.

These were the people who had responsibility for enabling Jeffrey Epstein, for promoting Jeffrey Epstein, and for helping to cover up his wrongdoing. So I think in terms of credibility, these people have very little to none.

KEILAR: What are you hoping comes out of this? What are you hoping to learn from Indyk, considering that according to a report from "The Wall Street Journal," he was never questioned by federal authorities while Epstein and Maxwell were being investigated?

MARSH: WELL, as a lawyer, it would be very unusual, I think, for federal officials and law enforcement to question him. There's the attorney-client privilege that even survives Jeffrey Epstein's death. So I'm not sure if he raised that today at all. Certainly, none of these people are pleading the Fifth because that makes them look guilty.

Much easier to prevaricate and say, well, I had no actual --