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New Wave of U.S. Strikes as Iran Expands Gulf State Attacks; Zelenskyy Faces Pushback over Defense Minister's Firing; Britain's Next Prime Minister; DHS Secretary Threatens to Jail State Election Officials; Mexico Bids Bittersweet Goodbye to World Cup. Aired 4-4:30a ET

Aired July 18, 2026 - 04:00   ET

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

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SALMA ABDELAZIZ, CNN ANCHOR AND CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hello and a very warm welcome to our viewers joining us from around the world. I'm Salma Abdelaziz in London. Let's get into the headlines.

No sign of slowing down. The U.S. military carries out a seventh straight night of strikes on Iran. We're going to go live to Jerusalem with the latest on the conflict.

And Ukrainians protest President Zelenskyy's ouster of his own defense minister. We're going to speak with a former deputy defense minister about what that move means for the battlefield.

Plus, a look at U.S. relations with China moving forward after president Trump accused Beijing of election interference.

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UNIDENTIFIED MALE (voice-over): Live from London, this is CNN NEWSROOM with Salma Abdelaziz.

ABDELAZIZ: The U.S. has wrapped up a new round of airstrikes against Iran. This marks a full week of nonstop attacks. Now the U.S. military says it hit surveillance sites, military logistics hubs and underground weapons depots, while Iran claims that the U.S. targeted several bridges and tunnels.

Tehran is striking back in the region. Jordan reported intercepting 10 Iranian missiles in Bahrain. Its military says it repelled several attacks. And Kuwait announced that Iran hit another power generation and water desalination plant.

A military adviser to Iran's supreme leader is warning, quote, "If the U.S. attacks continue for another two or three days, we will enter a phase of full-scale offensive operations. No political border will be secure against Iran's offensive forces," end quote.

As the war intensifies, the U.N. Is sounding the alarm.

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FARHAN HAQ, U.N. SPOKESPERSON: The secretary general remains deeply concerned by the continuing military escalation between Iran and the United States of America. He's particularly concerned about attacks on civilian infrastructure in Iran and across the region. Such attacks are unacceptable.

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ABDELAZIZ: I want to bring in now CNN's international diplomatic editor, Nic Robertson, live in Jerusalem.

Good morning first of all to you, Nic. So a full week of airstrikes now carried out by the United States. Tehran, of course, retaliating as well. But as you heard there, Iran now says, if this continues, it's going to be full-scale war.

Is there any pulling back from the brink here, Nic?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN SENIOR DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: There is. There are escalations that haven't happened yet. One of the things Iran is threatening to do is to target countries that are supporting the United States.

At the moment, Israel has not been involved in striking Iran but Israel is a base for some U.S. military air refuel supply assets that are understood to be involved in ongoing operations.

So Iran has the excuse, if you will, to escalate against Israel but it hasn't chosen to do that. Israel, for whatever reason, they deny reports that president Trump asked them to stay out of the war is staying out. So there's a whole avenue of potential escalation that Iran seems to be staying away from, that the United States is staying away from.

But escalation there has been nevertheless. The strikes while the missile warning alerts that were put out in Saudi Arabia last night are an indication of that. No impacts, no damage that we're aware of.

But in the west of Saudi Arabia, the port of Yanbu, which is hugely important for Saudi Arabia to export oil from, that pipe literally across the Arabian Peninsula from the Gulf to the Red Sea, to allow it to export, that location had sirens going off last night.

And another location not far from the capital, Riyadh, which is very close to the area where Prince Sultan Air Base is, an airbase that U.S. forces have used in the past, against Iran, that Iran has targeted, successfully targeted in the past. Those two places in Saudi Arabia appear to have been destinations for Iranian missiles last night.

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That's an -- that is an escalation. Again, we are definitely in a phase of escalation. And there is no sign of it stopping. And as you say, that sites that the United States has been hitting

inside of Iran indicate trying to sort of -- they hit the main highway between Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz and a town north of there, blocking a tunnel that will diminish Iran's ability to bring in military or other assets to the port or the port to the rest of the country.

And another site further east of Bandar Abbas, again, linking it along the Strait of Hormuz. So it's all shaping operations around the Strait of Hormuz. Another maritime monitoring site, if you will, for the Iranians in Larak (ph) Island, that was also hit in the Strait of Hormuz.

Excuse me.

So for the U.S., it really is focusing around the Strait of Hormuz and putting the battle there and stopping Iran, trying to stop or building toward trying to stop Iran having control there.

ABDELAZIZ: Nic Robertson there on the escalating tensions.

But you say there is still an offramp there. Thank you so much for those updates from Jerusalem.

Now Israel says it's reviewing reports that its military has hit unintended victims in Gaza. Now just a warning, the images you're about to see here are very disturbing.

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ABDELAZIZ (voice-over): Palestinians say at least seven people are dead and 20 more are injured after the IDF hit a funeral procession on Friday. Local journalists say the funeral was for a man who was killed in a separate Israeli strike just hours before.

The IDF says the second attack targeted an Islamic Jihad cell in central Gaza. Israel and Hamas signed a ceasefire last October. But a father whose children were injured in Friday's attack says he doesn't see any truce on the ground.

MAHMOUD LABAD, FATHER OF WOUNDED CHILDREN (through translator): They say we're in a truce.

Where is this truce they're talking about?

This is not a truce. This is a war. Blood is everywhere, from a child, from a tree, from a boy, from absolutely anything, blood is just pouring down. They haven't spared a tree. They haven't spared a piece of land. They haven't spared a child. They haven't spared a home. They haven't left anything.

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ABDELAZIZ: Let's go now to Ukraine, where the president is facing a potential political firestorm over the removal of a very popular defense minister.

Mykhailo Fedorov was dismissed this week despite a track record of success on the job. He had pushed for military innovation, particularly the development of Ukraine's drone program. But analysts say he clashed with the military's old guard, including armed forces General Oleksandr Syrskyi.

In a rare display of opposition, demonstrations have grown in Kyiv since Fedorov's dismissal. On Friday, protesters called for Syrskyi to be removed.

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ANDRIY, UKRAINIAN COMBAT MEDIC (through translator): So we see that big changes have happened. Syrskyi had conflicts not only with the defense minister but also with brigade and corps commanders. If he stays, we will simply be ineffective. We could simply lose this war. We could lose.

NINA, WIFE OF UKRAINIAN SOLDIER (through translator): Syrskyi is in fact part of the old system while Fedorov is young, intelligent and a man of conscience.

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ABDELAZIZ: Alina Frolova, a former deputy defense minister of Ukraine, joins us live now from Kyiv. She is now a deputy chair at the Center for Defense Strategies.

Good morning, first of all, to you. Thank you so much for joining us to help us understand this issue, because I think the controversy might be difficult to understand for those outside of Ukraine.

Why did president Zelenskyy fire this very popular defense minister, Fedorov, and how has Fedorov responded since he was fired?

ALINA FROLOVA, FORMER DEPUTY MINISTER OF DEFENSE OF UKRAINE; BOARD DEPUTY CHAIR, CENTER FOR DEFENSE STRATEGIES: Good morning. Thank you for inviting me.

First of all, the problem is that no one clearly understands why the president Zelenskyy fired the minister. And this is one of the requests which society and protesters are putting to explain us.

What are the principles which you use on firing one person and obtaining another one?

However, Fedorov is really popular because during his stay on this position, obviously he was a first minister for many years who had the vision and understanding of what he would like to do. And he specifically claimed the goals and he was like moving to these goals and reporting the results, which was quite transparent for the society.

That's why he has this support, because people do understand what he wants and where he moves. [04:10:04]

So and the society reacted. Ukraine is like a very vibrant democracy. The good thing is that we have a lot of young people protesting now all over the country. And these young people openly declare their position and they support -- they are not against.

But they are supporting the minister and the course which he had, which for country in war is really important and vital for many people.

Fedorov made a final press conference. He gathered media and he reported about all the progress he reached. And he said that he made this press conference to some kind -- to secure those very important changes, which he wants to be continued.

So -- and with this intention, he made a public of those principal points and those principal directions, which he consider need to be supported by the next minister or next team who will come at his place.

ABDELAZIZ: But I think what surprised me about the stories, he's only -- he was only appointed in January, so he was only in this position for a few short months.

What did he accomplish in just about six or seven months here that garnered this much popularity?

What did he do that would elicit this response?

FROLOVA: Well, the -- unfortunately, the tradition in Ukraine is like a very often change the government, which is not bringing this some kind of stabilization. But this is how we live. So this is not something like unusual, yes, in many cases.

But Fedorov actually was involved very actively even before he became a minister of defense. He was involved very actively in transformation of defense sphere. Actually, he was the person who started all this focus on UAV industry development.

He invented with his team a few very nonstandard approaches when they made digital platforms for distribution of the budget, when every producer or startup can apply for a budget and therefore customize its production. They introduce a lot of innovations. They made less bureaucratic system of mobilization through the digital instruments.

So when he came to the position of the minister, actually he was involved in many process already.

And for this last period, we saw that declared focus on the technologies and relocation of the budget of Ukraine, which was targeted at defense from some kind of old school approaches to innovations, brought quite substantial results. For today, we see that each force or each third Russian soldier is killed by UAV.

So we decreased the level of losses in Ukrainian army because less infantry involved, more robots involved in this war. For example, this is very simple but we also have this special dedicated operations like we see now in the Black and Azov Sea, where the logic behind is the understanding what is the theory of victory of Ukraine.

So we want to hit the logistics. We concentrate on hitting the logistics. We put all the efforts and resources on that. And we see how the isolation operation of Crimea is going on.

And we have multiple cases like that. When we have a figures of results and the -- which is most important, what I would like to underline, this is the -- his -- he has a vision. He knows what he wants to reach, which has not very often happened in the ministry of defense for the last year.

ABDELAZIZ: Alina Frolova there on the controversy that has broken out since president Zelenskyy fired his defense minister.

Thank you so much for breaking that down for us.

FROLOVA: Thank you.

ABDELAZIZ: For the seventh time in a decade, Britain will usher in a new prime minister on Monday. Andy Burnham will succeed Keir Starmer. Burnham was confirmed on Friday as the leader of the ruling Labour Party.

Now he returns to Parliament after winning a crucial by-election last month. Burnham says that when he moves into 10 Downing Street, it will not be business as usual.

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ANDY BURNHAM, INCOMING U.K. PRIME MINISTER: I will work to build a new politics. The country is crying out for it. We might enjoy the point scoring against others. The public don't.

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How can politicians point fingers when living standards are falling?

And politics as a whole isn't working for them. It infuriates them and makes them switch off.

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ABDELAZIZ: Coming up, U.S. immigration agents walk away in the middle of an arrest after they're confronted by onlookers at a Las Vegas airport. That story and more just ahead.

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ABDELAZIZ: The Trump administration is doubling down on its push for state voter data, threatening election officials with jail time if they refuse to hand over sensitive voter records.

Homeland Security secretary Markwayne Mullin repeated President Trump's claims that non-citizens are registered to vote in four separate states. But letters the DHS sent to those states acknowledged that the numbers are not verified.

So far, the administration's efforts to seize voter information have been struck down in more than a dozen courts. Despite those legal setbacks, Mullin threatened state election officials with prosecution if they refuse to comply.

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MARKWAYNE MULLIN, DHS SECRETARY: The states have to do their part.

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I will tell you if the states that choose not to participate with the same program and they choose not to participate in securing the elections. We will make sure that we make those states a priority.

If the election officials, once we gave them the information they need to secure their elections and they chose not to. Then those individuals can also be held accountable by fines, by penalties and even depending on how far it goes, prison time.

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ABDELAZIZ: Now during president Trump's primetime address on Thursday, he claimed China was behind what he called the largest compromise of election data in history. But despite that accusation, officials say a state visit to the U.S. by Chinese leader Xi Jinping is still in the works. CNN's senior White House reporter Kevin Liptak has more for us.

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KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: A White House official says Chinese president Xi Jinping's state visit here at the White House, that's planned for late September, is still continuing apace.

The planning is still going on, despite the president's claims this week that China is carrying out, quote, "the largest compromise of election data in history."

Nor does it appear, based on my reporting, that the president is thinking about any other punishment for China, for the claims that he made.

The White House wouldn't say today, when we asked whether the president was considering new sanctions on China or even new indictments on Chinese officials that the president alleged had illicitly acquired 220 million U.S. voter files.

And I think it just underscores that the president is not interested at this moment in upending his relationship with Xi Jinping. In fact, on Friday, during a speech in New York at a World Cup reception, the president even mused that the next time the U.S. hosts the World Cup, it could be in conjunction with China.

Now certainly, the documents that the president unveiled this week showed no evidence that China had changed any votes or had committed a serious election fraud. But they did reinforce just how voracious Chinese intelligence services have been in hacking Americans' data, including the 2020 campaign of Joe Biden.

President Trump didn't make any mention of that in his speech this week. Instead, his focus on punishment and on repercussions were on American election and intelligence officials, who, he said, withheld all of this information from him during his first term in office.

He tasked four separate federal agencies with investigating them, firing them and potentially firing filing criminal charges against them -- Kevin Liptak, CNN, the White House.

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ABDELAZIZ: Amid renewed criticism of Immigration and Customs Enforcement tactics after two deadly incidents this month, video obtained by CNN shows ICE agents leaving a man partially handcuffed after onlookers challenged them.

The video was recorded at the Las Vegas airport on Monday. It shows a man in a light blue polo shirt, you can see it there, shouting as two plainclothes ICE agents hold him down to the ground.

The agents then walk away as witnesses question them, saying nothing to a TSA officer's attempt to control the crowd. Some bystanders briefly followed the agents. It is unclear what happened after or before this video was recorded.

But officials say the man, an Australian national, was taken into custody the next day.

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ABDELAZIZ: Spain and Argentina are putting the final touches on their strategy before they fight it out for the World Cup title on Sunday. The match pits the title defender against the reigning European champions. They'll play at the New York -- New Jersey stadium.

Rain ahead of the match is expected to clear the heavy smoke from Canadian wildfires that's gripping much of the northeastern United States.

One of the three host nations, Mexico is bidding a bittersweet goodbye to the tournament. Mexico's team was eliminated by England in the round of 16 but the World Cup gave the country something else a sense of hope, unity and patriotic pride. Valeria Leon explains.

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(MUSIC PLAYING) VALERIA LEON, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Mexico didn't lose the World Cup, the World Cup lost Mexico. The phrase swept across the country after it emerged as the tournament's most memorable host, with massive celebrations that captured the world's attention. One question came to define Mexico's World Cup.

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What if we do, encouraging millions to believe that this time, things could turn out better than expected?

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): I think we can do it. I really hope we can.

LEON (voice-over): And for a moment they did. Mexico made it to its fifth World Cup match for the first time in four decades. but the dream ended against England.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): I thought they were going to win. I let myself believe too much.

LEON (voice-over): The tournament left behind something bigger than the score, a sense of collective optimism. Even its most unlikely symbol became part of the story. Merlin, a pet duck that went viral, was named a FIFA host city ambassador.

For a few weeks, the headlines changed. Just months earlier, streets in Jalisco state had been marred by burning vehicles and cartel violence after authorities killed one of the country's most powerful criminal leaders, Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes. But during the World Cup, visitors experienced a different reality.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE (through translator): The only risk visitors found was falling in love with Jalisco and the only thing that was stolen from them was their hearts. That's what many of them told us.

LEON (voice-over): The celebration took flight. A new tradition emerged as fans launched people into the air. Those celebrations were marred in part when the festivities grew so large that four people were crushed to death in the crowd in Mexico City's historic center.

Despite this, when the tournament came to an end, what remained was the image of a country that surprised the world and even itself -- Valeria Leon, CNN, Mexico City.

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ABDELAZIZ: Thank you so much for watching. I'm Salma Abdelaziz. "CNN CREATORS" is next. Then I'll be back at the top of the hour with more CNN NEWSROOM for you.