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Early Start with Rahel Solomon
War With Iran; Dangers Of AI; Tornado In Indiana. Aired 4:30-5a ET
Aired March 12, 2026 - 04:30 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[04:31:15]
RAHEL SOLOMON, CNN ANCHOR: Welcome back to EARLY START. I'm Rahel Solomon live this morning in New York.
BECKY ANDERSON, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Becky Anderson here in Abu Dhabi with the very latest on our breaking news coverage of the war with Iran. At least eight people have been killed after Israel conducted large scale strikes on Beirut's suburbs. They began after Hezbollah fired rockets from Lebanon.
And amid a wave of Iranian attacks across Gulf states, at least one person was killed and dozens rescued after two foreign oil tankers were attacked off the coast of Iraq. Meantime, the International Energy Agency will release millions of barrels of oil into the market. President Donald Trump touted that announcement during an event in Kentucky.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD TRUMP, UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: The International Energy Agency agreed to coordinate the release of a record 400 million barrels of oil from various national petroleum reserves around the world, which will substantially reduce the oil prices as we end this threat to America and this threat to the world. We don't want to leave early, do we? We got to finish the job, right?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
ANDERSON: Well, emergency crews have been battling a fire at the port of Salalah in Oman. Take a look at this video. It does appear to show an Iranian Shahed drone hitting a fuel storage tank at the port Wednesday, causing a massive explosion.
Iran's armed forces are calling the incident highly suspicious, saying Iran is investigating. That's according to Iranian state media. Oman's foreign ministry says the Omani sultan condemned strikes in the country while speaking with Iran's president on Wednesday.
CNN producer Antoinette Redford joining me now live from Doha in Qatar, of course, where Qatar Energy has called a force majeure. LNG exports from there have stopped, which is also important when we consider the impact on the energy markets, Antoinette, around the world from this region. Just let's start with the very latest where you are.
ANTOINETTE REDFORD, CNN PRODUCER: So, Becky, the latest that we have here in the region is, as you say, as we near the two week mark of this ongoing war, the focus from Iran has shifted to be energy infrastructure in the region. Overnight, two oil tankers were hit in the Persian Gulf, in Iraqi waters.
Iran has claimed responsibility for that hit. They said they used underwater drones to strike the oil tankers. Video showed enormous fires following the impact. Lots and lots of smoke billowing from the scene. Thirty eight people were injured. One person was killed in the strike.
Now separately in the Persian Gulf, a container ship off the UAE was hit this morning too by an unknown projectile. And yesterday, three other vessels came under attack in the Gulf. So in just two days, there have been six attacks on vessels in this region.
Now, another country that has had its energy infrastructure particularly impacted by Iranian strikes is Bahrain. A fuel tank is on fire this morning in Bahrain following an Iranian strike overnight, and during the week in Bahrain to its desalination plant was hit, as was a oil refinery, prompting Bahrain's national oil company to issue a force majeure.
Now, I think as well, as you mentioned, you spoke about Salalah. And I think that this is an interesting thing to mention at the moment, because Salalah is a key tourism infrastructure in Oman. Lots of people travel to Salalah every year, thousands of people to visit it for its natural beauty.
[04:35:06]
And this morning, it was hit by what appears to be an Iranian Shahed drone. Now, this warning comes on the same day that a leading tourism body says that the Middle East is losing up to $600 million a day to its tourism sector as a result of this ongoing conflict. So Salalah kind of embodies one of the reasons why that is.
It's a place that people would travel expecting safety, expecting, you know, natural beauty that has now been flipped in head. People no longer have that confidence in the area. And that applies to the Gulf more broadly. The Gulf has really built itself a reputation as an area that is safe, and people now have less confidence in traveling here.
ANDERSON: Antoinette, it's good to have you. Antoinette Redford is in Doha. And the impact of this expanding war and its effect on the energy markets, very clear when we bring up the oil price here.
The global benchmark Brent trading as we speak at around $95. That spiked at $100 yesterday despite President Trump, who you heard a little earlier, suggesting that oil prices would come down and that things were under control. So just an FYI for you there as we keep a keen eye on these oil and LNG prices.
Well, these pictures, live pictures coming out of Beirut, Lebanon, where Israel is ramping up attacks on Hezbollah. Israel says it is targeting the Iranian-backed militant group with a large scale wave of strikes on Beirut's suburbs. New video shows the aftermath of a deadly drone strike on Beirut's seafront. Lebanon's health ministry says at least eight people were killed.
The European Union is giving $115 million in aid to Lebanon as the country faces a humanitarian crisis. Lebanese officials say more than 800,000 people now have been internally displaced.
Iran claims it has inflicted painful blows in the latest wave of strikes on Israel. The statement says more than 50 targets were hit in a coordinated attack with Hezbollah from Lebanon on Wednesday. That is happening as Tehran ramps up the use of cluster munitions. CNN's Jeremy Diamond saw firsthand the damage these smaller bomblets can leave behind.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN REPORTER: Their orange glow streaks across the night sky, each speck of light, a small bomb, carrying up to 11 pounds of explosives and raining down indiscriminately, sometimes in densely populated areas. They are cluster munitions, and Iran is increasingly packing the heads of its ballistic missiles with dozens of them aiming to pierce Israel's sophisticated air defenses.
One of those small bombs struck the roof of this residential building. And you can see the hole, is only a few inches wide. And yet this is the kind of destruction that just one of those small bombs can cause. One of multiple impact points from a single missile.
We confirmed nine separate impacts from that one missile. They include this strike on a Tel Aviv car wash that severely wounded one man and another in a neighboring suburb. The impacts are spread out across seven miles of mostly residential neighborhoods, illustrating why using these munitions in populated areas violates international law.
The next day, another cluster missile attack sends bomblets tumbling south of Tel Aviv. At least five impacts scattered across eight miles. One bomb hit a street here. Nearby, two construction workers were killed, the first fatalities in Israel caused by these weapons.
Israel's military, which has itself-deployed cluster munitions in other wars, says about half of Iran's missile attacks use these munitions. Vehicles overturned, shrapnel sentiment slicing through anything near the impact. Iran's missiles are more destructive when equipped with a single large warhead, but the clusters are much tougher to intercept.
TAL INBAR, SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, MISSILE DEFENSE ADVOCACY ALLIANCE: It's a mechanism to bypass active missile defense. In some cases, you can hit the target with an arrow or with a THAAD missile, for example, but the bomblets will continue and will get to the target.
DIAMOND: The Israeli military does try and intercept these bomblets, expending a costly and finite quantity of interceptors in the process.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: So if there is a strategy here by Iran, that could be it to try and deplete Israel's air defenses, right?
INBAR: We know it. In some cases, the solution by Iran is a salvo of a very large quantity of even single warhead ballistic missiles, and try to fire and coordinate the launch sites.
[04:40:10]
I think Iran doesn't have the capability at the moment of orchestrating a large barrage of ballistic missiles. So if Iran wants to cause a lot of damage even with a small number of ballistic missiles, then submunition missiles with bomblets will be the weapon of choice.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DIAMOND: The weapon of choice as Iran pursues a war of attrition, one missile at a time. Jeremy Diamond, CNN, Tel Aviv.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ANDERSON: You're watching CNN's breaking news. I'm Becky Anderson, we will be right back.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[04:45:22]
SOLOMON: Welcome back. As generative AI becomes more sophisticated, so our attempts to fool the public with fake news. The technology has taken a bigger role in widespread misinformation, especially when it comes to global conflicts. CNN's Daniel Dale has more on the best practices for spotting fake videos in the digital age.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: We've got a big two part problem. Number one, because of AI, the fakes we're seeing today are just much better than the fakes we used to see just a few years ago, for example, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022. And number two, because AI tools are so widespread and often free, we're seeing many more fakes than we used to. Dozens, if not hundreds of them are sp online amid the Iran war.
Now, the fakes we saw after the Russian invasion a few years ago tended to be crude fakes, bad photoshop jobs, video game clips, or old clips wrongly labeled as new clips from the war. We're still seeing that kind of crude fakery amid the Iran war, but it has been joined by quite sophisticated a custom made video showing things like missile launches, explosions, people fleeing in terror, people mourning, even captured soldiers supposedly being held on the ground in Iran. So this is wild stuff.
I'll give people one example to watch. This is an AI generated fake supposedly showing Iranian missiles raining down on the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Tel Aviv. I can't believe this.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
DALE: Or take a look at this fake supposedly showing captured US Special Forces troops being held at gunpoint by Iranian troops. That is quite good fakery, but it's not perfect fakery. And thankfully for us, AI is not perfect today, even though it continues to get better.
These videos often have telltale signs that they're not real. For example, if you go back and look at that video of missiles supposedly hitting Tel Aviv, you'll see some oddly shaped kind of morphing images, some sound that doesn't quite sound realistic. So there are subtle signs if you look. Sometimes those signs are more than subtle, they're obvious.
For example, if you watch this video, people supposedly fleeing an Iranian attack on an Israeli airport, you'll see a man waving his arm in a strange, unrealistic way. You also conspicuously see suitcases moving themselves down a hall, so obviously not true.
But often it's not that easy to tell something is fake. So what do you do in those cases? Well, I spoke to one expert, an academic named Hanifa Reed, not a journalist, who said, look, if you want to avoid being tricked amid wartime, do not get your wartime news from randomly scrolling through random social media accounts. Go read and watch credible established media outlets with a record of truth telling.
Of course I like that advice as a mainstream media reporter, but even I am often aimlessly scrolling in wartime. So what else can you do? My number one tip is take a breath before believing and certainly before sharing a sensational wartime video. Ask yourself, does anything just feel seem off about it? Does it square with what we know about the war?
Is there anything strange about the images, the audio? Often you'll have a gut feel. Number two, do a few seconds of searching to find if any credible media outlet or subject matter expert has addressed the veracity of the video. You can even check the comments on the post.
Yes, average users can deceive, but often they're raising good skeptical questions. In the addition, there are AI detection tools that themselves are not perfect, but they can help. Now one thing not to do is ask X's Grok AI chatbot whether a video is real or fake. Repeatedly during this war, it has told people that real videos are fake and fake videos are real.
So we have an AI chatbot worsening the problem of fakery by AI video. It's not an ideal situation. Daniel Dale, CNN.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SOLOMON: Our thanks to Daniel. We'll be right back. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: This is CNN.
[04:49:13]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
SOLOMON: Welcome back. The Storm Prediction Center has issued a new tornado watch for parts of the south as powerful thunderstorms move east across the region this morning. Since Tuesday, the ongoing storms have killed at least two people and devastated some small towns Indiana. CNN's Whitney Wild is there and has more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
WHITNEY WILD, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A series of violent and deadly tornadoes wreaked havoc across Indiana, Illinois and Texas Tuesday into Wednesday, leveling some rural communities south of Chicago. Several areas saw a downpour of damaging, possibly record sized hail with some the size of softballs.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Wow.
WILD: Two people are dead in Lake Village, Indiana. Officials say several others were hospitalized as the town experienced "total devastation."
ROB CHURCHILL, LAKE TOWNSHIP VOLUNTEER FIRE DEPARTMENT CHIEF: There were houses that were collapsed. There were people trapped in houses. There's livestock loose. Pretty much anything you can imagine. You've seen before on newscasts, on videos. It's out there.
WILD: Residents awoke to blocks of destroyed homes, uprooted trees and downed power lines.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was that quick. It was there, and the wind must have been at least 100 mile an hour. Then it was gone.
STEVE TRAVIS, INDIANA RESIDENT: I was looking out front window and I seen a dumpster fly by, that's when I went for cover.
WILD: Steve Travis says he hid in his closet when a tornado hit his home. The lifelong resident says he's lost everything.
TRAVIS: And debris was everywhere. I mean, the place is destroyed. Windows blowed out, my front door was wedged into the wall. That's how hard that sucker hit.
[04:55:08]
WILD: Another twister tore through Kankakee, Illinois, damaging homes and buildings in that area. Jim Horsham was emotional when recalling his close encounter with the tornado.
JIM HORCHEM, RESIDENT, KANKAKEE, ILLINOIS: You know, I can't say it was that loud, but I knew it was bad when I seen the water coming underneath the bathroom door. And I said, this is not -- I -- I really thought this is -- we're going to die.
WILD: Officials warn that the danger is not over. Storms will continue through Wednesday with the storm system moving eastward, prompting tornado watches across nine states, potentially impacting 19 million people.
Officials here say 235 buildings were in the direct path of that tornado. 32 of them were destroyed. Many more homes outside that direct path were affected. Whitney Wild, CNN, Lake Village, Indiana.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
SOLOMON: All right. That'll do it for this hour of EARLY START. I'm Rahel Solomon live in New York. We'll have more coverage after this break.
