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Fresh Strikes Hit Persian Gulf Country; Trump Sends Mixed Messages On When War Could End; Trump Calls Iran War A "Short-Term Excursion"; Average Gas Prices In U.S. Hit $3.54, An 18-Month High; Hegseth: Iranian Leadership Is "Desperate And Scrambling"; Sources: Ground Force Likely Needed To Seize Enriched Uranium; Georgia Voters Decide Who Will Replace Marjorie Taylor Greene. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 10, 2026 - 12:00   ET

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

[12:00:00]

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DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: A battlefield of narratives. Is the war in Iran pretty much complete, or is this only the beginning?

I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We start with Secretary Pete Hegseth, warning today that the U.S. will unleash the most intense wave of U.S. strikes in Iran since the war began. This new video from west of Tehran shows what's likely the aftermath of one of those strikes, as explosions shake the region. There are still mixed messages from the Trump administration over how long the war will last. Here is Secretary Hegseth today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PETE HEGSETH, DEFENSE SECRETARY: We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated. But we do so. We do so on our timeline and at our choosing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That comes on the heels of President Trump appearing with to have some contradictory remarks on the war's timeline, over the course of just a few hours yesterday. First, he told CBS quote, I think the war is very complete, pretty much. Then came these comments.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: I think you'll see it's going to be a short-term excursion. We will not relent until the enemy is totally and decisively defeated. We've already won in many ways, but we haven't won enough. We're achieving major strides toward completing our military objective, and some people could say they're pretty well complete. I could call it, or we could go further, and we're going to go further.

(END VIDEO CLIP) BASH: CNN's international diplomatic editor Nic Robertson just arrived in Kuwait. Nic, you traveled to Kuwait from Saudi Arabia. What's it like on the ground there right now?

NIC ROBERTSON, CNN INTERNATIONAL DIPLOMATIC EDITOR: Yeah. I think it's still a city that's living on edge. There is plenty of traffic as you drive around the city but not like it normally would be. A lot of people are staying at home. A lot of government workers are working from home because government buildings here have been hit in strikes.

It's a small country that -- but there have been more than 200 ballistic missiles, more than 400 drones, four service members, Kuwaiti service members have died here. An 11-year-old girl died here. More than 90 people have been injured. More than 60 service personnel here have been injured.

And this, of course, was the place where three F-15 Eagle -- fighting Eagle U.S. Air Force aircraft were accidentally shot down, trying to defend -- as the Kuwait is trying to defend against incoming attacks, and of course, here six U.S. service personnel were killed as well and many others injured.

Kuwait's really felt at the forefront. Last night was the first night where it was almost -- they would consider it a light night, just one drone intercepted and two ballistic missiles. But everyone is on edge about what happens tonight. They can see that there's this diminution in the level of attacks, but they can also see their oil tankers offshore here. The government is decreasing oil production, decreasing oil refining.

This is, you know, they can't get their oil products to market, and that is such a major part of what Kuwait is about. And they're home to several large U.S. military bases. Tonight, will be, I think, a test for people. They will hope, of course, there are no missiles, but they know that the war here isn't over by a long stretch.

BASH: All right. Nic, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it. I'm sure we'll be checking back with you throughout the day and night. And the American public, they're not yet sold on this war. A brand-new poll shows 53 percent of voters oppose the U.S. military action against Iran.

I'm joined now by a fantastic group of reporters. And Abby Livingston, I'm going to start with you, and I want to bring up a quote from a column by our colleague here, Stephen Collinson, this morning. He said, the messaging disconnect goes beyond Trump's flood-the-zone rhetoric and odd tendency to commentate on his own actions. It reflects fast escalating political and military pressures, bearing down on a president who gambled his legacy on a war that has spawned a global energy and geopolitical crisis.

[12:05:00]

ABBY LIVINGSTON, CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Well, I think when you look back to the most recent war that we can compare to this, the Iraq war, while the Bush administration misled the American public. They did sell the case to Congress. And so, when they did that, they had a Senator John Kerry, a Senator Hillary Clinton, who had to share in the blame when things went wrong.

This is as good as it's going to get in the war, polling, most likely. Some things can change, but I have a hard time seeing how this improves. If there are increased American casualties and if gas prices keep going up.

BASH: Yeah. And let's hope neither of those things happened. And then I want to play a couple of sound bites clips from President Trump, one from yesterday. And I want you to sort of listen to it and compare it to what he said during his last campaign in 2024.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: On the very first day, I came down the escalator in 2015, I said, quote, I will stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons and all I'm doing is keeping my promise. They said he will start a war. I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: So, correct me if I'm wrong, but -- and maybe I'm overthinking this, or maybe not. That it sounds like the latest messaging yesterday was an attempt to connect the military action in Iran with his promise to end wars. It's -- there's a little bit of a or a big pretzel, narrative pretzel happening here. But he's very confident in his ability to sell things to the American people.

EVAN MCMORRIS-SANTORO, REPORTER, NOTUS: Yeah. These politics are very, very difficult for this president. I mean, Abby talked about what the last war was like. Well, the other one is that the entire -- the entirety of the conservative movement was behind Bush in the last Iraq war. Trump still has a problem with his base. You can go online right now. I can point out a number of top-level conservatives who are complaining about this war, complaining about how they got into this war. They feel surprised. They feel duped.

He hasn't convinced them. And so, he still has to convince them before he can convince everybody else. And as you can see, it's a big struggle. I mean, I covered that campaign, and a lot of people here covered that campaign. When you went to a Trump rally, when you talk to people who are really excited about Trump, none of them said, I can't wait for us to go into a war in Iran. They were thinking they were getting something else by voting for Trump. And that's not what happened.

BASH: Yeah, which is why I think, Shane, you saw and heard the president try to make that connection here. And it isn't just for the general public. No question is for those very loud voices that have very big platforms in his sort of -- in his ecosystem and in the echo chamber that is the conservative movement. Although, I'm sure you're hearing, as I am, from people in and around the president that their internal polling shows that MAGA is still very much with him because when the president says MAGA is what I say it is, he's not wrong. SHANE GOLDMACHER, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: It has been for about a decade. But what is striking and connects everything, everyone has said so far is that he didn't sell this in advance, right? This was a surprise strike. It wasn't just a surprise for Iran. Even if there was a military buildup, there wasn't a public relations build up.

And so, what you saw yesterday as he's going down to visit with House Republicans is a post facto sales job of this military action, not even using the word war. And when you don't sell something in advance, you don't build public support. You see the weaknesses in your argument, and you strengthen them by testing it in public. And he just absolutely did not do that in the run up here.

BASH: Because of the question of what is the argument, and the differing arguments? You know, at the beginning, whatever it was, 11 days ago, we didn't hear the term regime change, but the president was leaning into the notion of that, and you don't hear that anymore. You do hear him say, well, I want to have a say.

And Secretary Hegseth saying that the U.S. wants to have a say in who the next leader is, but he's still getting pressure, despite what you're hearing from sort of the hard right MAGA from the more traditional neoconservatives, if you want to call them that, like Lindsey Graham, who pushed the president in the beginning to attack Iran. To say, no, no, we can't just end it at getting rid of their nuclear program or military sites. It's got to be more than that. Listen to what he said today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. LINDSEY GRAHAM (R-SC): There's no way you can say you won this war with an ayatollah in charge. No way you can say that. If anybody like him is in charge, we've degraded their capability, but we have not gone to the source of evil.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Last week, on Friday, when I spoke briefly to the president. He said, I don't mind a religious leader as long as it's somebody we can work with.

OMAR JIMENEZ, CNN ANCHOR & CORRESPONDENT: Well, and what's interesting is sort of about, you know, the talk of selling this from a public relations standpoint leading up to it. The messages have been mixed from the beginning. We're talking about mixed messages now. But remember when this was first launched, Secretary of State Marco Rubio was talking about, well, we got into this because Israel -- Israeli intelligence indicated that Iran may have launched a strike. He sort of backtracked a little bit on that.

[12:10:00]

When the president got, it went in a different direction on that. Then it was about the nuclear proliferation ability. When we all know last year the arsenal, according to them, was obliterated. Then it was talk of regime change and or, as you mentioned, no regime change.

And now it's sort of even with another hominin in office, as we understand from Iranian officials, the picture has not quite changed on those tent poles yet, but what has changed is on one of the main issues that got the president elected was the economy, with gas prices going up, the longer this drags on. It does leave an issue on people's wallets at home, when some might think, oh, the war is far away. Those -- that voted for him are now feeling it a little bit closer --

BASH: So, let's talk about gas prices. First, oil prices, and I think we can show some of the president's comments, perhaps Abby, in suggesting yesterday that, you know, things will end soon, have calmed the oil -- the crude oil markets. You can see that the price is down just a bit. When it comes to gas prices, in which there's always a bit of a delay. They're so high. Today the average gas price is $3.54 and that it's up from last week, which is $3.11 and last month $2.92.

LIVINGSTON: Well, I think gas prices are something that Americans feel so acutely, and I think it even matters more than egg prices, like last cycle. And I'm just kind of intrigued with how the administration frames this war as something, it's almost like an on and off switch the president can use. And, you know, I've never seen an American president who can fully control the Middle East.

And so, I think there are questions about that. And gas prices are going up at a very crucial time in the electoral cycle, as a lot of Republicans are debating whether or not to run for reelection. And that is not an easy thing to have hanging over them.

MCMORRIS-SANTORO: But the two things really are connected, right? Because they've tried, now saying, hey, it's a small sacrifice, these gas prices, but they're going to come right back up. That sacrifice has not been sold. I mean, we've never seen this before, right? This is every day of this war. We start with a blank sheet of paper that is like war. What is this about? What are we doing? When is it going to be over? How are we doing it? What's -- how's it going affect your life as an American?

This is an active, you know, combat situation with actual U.S. forces doing things. And when the president keeps changing his narrative and changing the story all the time, the idea that it's just going to be about gas prices, this is a real question of, like, what are we doing there? And people don't really know the answer yet.

BASH: Well, I'm going to have a guest up next who's going to hopefully be able to speak to that. Sources tell CNN a significant ground operation would likely be necessary to eliminate Iran's nuclear stockpile. I will speak to retired General Mark Hertling about that possibility and the question that Evan just posed. Plus, who is going to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in Congress. Voters in Georgia are deciding that today.

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[12:15:00]

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BASH: Desperate and scrambling. That's how Secretary Pete Hegseth described Iranian leadership this morning, adding that their military is being systematically degraded and annihilated. He would not say whether his three-to-eight-week estimate laid out last week will hold.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

HEGSETH: This is not endless. It's not protracted. We're not allowing mission creep. The president has set a very specific mission to accomplish. And our job is to unrelentingly deliver that. And so, it's not for me to posit whether it's the beginning, the middle or the end. That's his, and he'll continue to communicate that.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: I want to bring in our good friend, retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling. Thank you so much for being here. I want to see if you can answer the question that we were talking about in the last segment, which speaks to some of what we heard from Secretary Hegseth, which is, what is your understanding of the actual goals of this war?

LT. GEN. MARK HERTLING (RET.): Yeah. I can answer that question because it has been repeated so many times in many different ways, Dana. And you know, what's interesting about that the military wants an order. We want a task. We want -- here's what we're trying to achieve. Here's the end state. And in watching it over the last two weeks, what I've seen is multiple end states. It keeps switching back and forth.

As a military commander, I think what -- I know, what Admiral Cooper is trying to do is basically bring kinetic activity against the enemy.

BASH: Admiral Cooper in the --

HERTLING: -- Admiral Cooper in the region. And it's being translated, I think, very well, by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Caine. But once that happens as a military guy, I'm always thinking, OK, what's next? What situation do I have to establish so that the politicians come in? Because war is politics by other means, and you eventually will get back to politics. I don't see where it's going, and that's it -- that's the part that concerns me.

BASH: Well, yeah. I mean, obviously every war or every kinetic situation is different, but you have been involved in two wars, and you've been a leader and a commander in two wars in the Middle East, where at least the first one there was a very clear goal, right, when you were in the Persian Gulf War. The second one changed a bit over time.

HERTLING: Yeah, yeah.

BASH: And is it -- do you see questions about ground troops are obviously playing into this. But are you worried about the kind of mission creep that Secretary Hegseth says is not going to happen?

[12:20:00]

HERTLING: Yeah. Because I think there's going to be a time when they say, OK, we've completed the destruction of the things we wanted to hit, the missiles, the rockets, the launchers, all the kind of things that they're bringing to bear, the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps. But there will be a time when they'll say, OK, we've unleashed chaos, which is what they have destroyed a lot of Iranian territory. Now what's next?

You know, the president has said several times, we want leaders to step up. You're not going to get a whole lot of leaders to step up after their cities have been destroyed, their leaders who have stepped up in the past have been killed. So that's a recurring theme of, how do you plan for the next stage of this, the so-called phase four.

BASH: Let me ask you about CNN new reporting that seven current and former officials familiar with military planning agree that capturing Iran's highly enriched uranium would require a large ground force in Iran. Do you think that's true? You agree with that?

HERTLING: Absolutely. And here's why. You know, the administration has said we're going to send in special operators. That's great. They've used them before, but that's a relatively -- that's a scalpel compared to a fist like they're using now. And when you're talking about a country that's the size of Iran, three times larger than Iraq. It's a big territory with mountains and underground facilities. Unlike Iraq, which was desert.

You not only have to have the special operators to go in to find the things and take them out, but when you do that, you've got to have security forces, you have to have logistics for them, you have to have medical aid, all the other enablers, as they call them, will be around them. So suddenly you see the force creeping and creeping, and if they're acting alone, you have to ask the question, how are they going to get there? What re-supplies are they going to have? How long can they stay?

You know, in northern Iraq in 2007 and '08. The last time I was in combat, we had JSOC, the Joint Special Operations Command, with us. They were doing excellent work, and it was a large body. But we were providing the conventional force, which was providing a lot of support for them, food. I mean, I'll just go logistics, yeah, supply chain.

BASH: Well, that's exactly what Secretary Hegseth says that he's going to try to avoid. We'll see. I have a lot more to talk to you about, including and especially this new book, which is out today. It's fantastic. You're going to come back later in the show and talk about it.

HERTLING: I will.

BASH: OK, thanks General.

HERTLING: All right. Thank you.

BASH: Up next. President Trump claims that almost everyone he endorses wins and wins big. Will that be true today in the race to replace former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene? We are live in Rome, Georgia, next.

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[12:25:00]

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BASH: It's special election day in northwest Georgia. Voters there are deciding who will replace Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who resigned from her seat in Congress. It's a free for all. 17 candidates are on the ballot in this ruby red district that includes three Democrats, 12 Republicans, one of whom local prosecutor Clay Fuller has President Trump's coveted endorsement. So, with so many candidates, the race is primed to send the two top vote getters into a runoff next month.

CNN's Ryan Young is there in the heart of the 14th District in Georgia, Rome, Georgia, to be specific, quite a fight there, Ryan?

RYAN YOUNG, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Quite a fight. I think you would love being here today. The people who we've talked to so far have been so engaged in this political process. They wanted to be here to vote. We chose this polling area because this voting area right here has over 7000 people who are registered to vote, and the last time, 63 percent of the folks who voted here voted for Donald Trump.

But we've heard everything today, from people being worried about gas prices to kitchen table issues to also people talking about being worried about the debt and Israel. So, the folks came here pretty informed. In fact, they said they're kind of happy to see Marjorie Taylor Greene how to step aside because they want to focus on the issues and get back to common sense. We talked to some of those voters today who were ready to cast their vote.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: There's a lot of things going on in this world. Needs to, you know, people need to listen to God, OK. He stood for Israel, and we need to also. And I know what that takes, what shape that takes. We just need to do our part.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We need to literally work on the federal debt. I mean it, $40 trillion is way too much. You know, we're supposed to leave, leave things better for our kids and grandkids. It's not happening, man.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

YOUNG: Yeah. I talked to a woman who said she identifies as a Democrat. She said, I know you probably won't find many of me here today, but her whole idea, she wanted to fight for healthcare, and she actually identified with the former Congresswoman talking about the fact that healthcare prices were going up. But there is a dog fight between all the candidates involved in this, we know this could go to a runoff. That's the big belief here. One candidate did get an endorsement from Donald Trump.

We talked to two of the leading candidates so far. Take a listen to what they had to say on the trail today.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHAWN HARRIS, (D) GEORGIA, CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: The only reason I'm in this race is because it was Republicans that came to my farm in the very beginning and recruited me to run against Marjorie Taylor Greene. However, they wanted me to run as a Republican. And I told -- I said, guys, I'm a Democrat. And they took him a few minutes, and they said, we still want to support you, Shawn, because you got what it takes.

CLAY FULLER, (R) GEORGIA, CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: I feel like I'm the most dangerous candidate in the race. That's how I feel. We've got the president's endorsement. I spent my morning with. My pastors, who feel like God's on our side, and we just got to get out there continuing to contact voters and make sure that they're getting out and voting. So, we feel really confident, and feel really great.

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