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Defiant New Iranian Leader Threatens U.S., World Energy Supplies; New Iranian Supreme Leader: Strait Of Hormuz Will Stay Closed; Trump Claims "We've Won" War In Iran As Strikes Continue; U.S. Intel. Assessment: No Signs Iranian Regime Is Collapsing; Crude Oil Jumps 9 Percent As Iran Keeps Up Threats On Strait Of Hormuz; Average Price Of Gas Hits $3.60, Up 62 Cents Since War Began; Sources: U.S. Likely Hit Iranian School Due To Outdated Intel. Aired 12-12:30p ET

Aired March 12, 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]

DANA BASH, CNN HOST, INSIDE POLITICS: Crude oil prices spike. Is Iran issues a new threat to wield the world's oil supply as a weapon? I'm Dana Bash. Let's go behind the headlines at Inside Politics.

We start with a chilling warning, purportedly from Iran's defiant new supreme leader. The first message since Ayatollah Mostafa Khamenei was picked to replace his late father, although we didn't actually see him or hear his voice. Instead, Iran Ian state TV read a statement that said, in part, quote, certainly, the lever of closing the Strait of Hormuz must continue to be used. Studies have also been conducted regarding opening other fronts where the enemy has little experience and is highly vulnerable.

The supreme leader's statement also threatened Iran's neighbors in the Middle East, if they don't shut down U.S. bases. Quote, we targeted them without attacking those countries themselves, if necessary, we will continue to do so. Now, crude oil prices are spiking again. Today, they're up about 10 percent.

I want to turn to CNN's Nick Paton Walsh who is in Amman, Jordan. Nick, if it is, in fact, the leader, and I guess regardless, if it is the leader or somebody else, it's coming through Iran state TV. So, this is a message from this regime. It doesn't sound like this regime is ready to surrender.

NICK PATON WALSH, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: No, absolutely, far from it. But I think what we see here is Iran failing to meet the moment of proving that its new supreme leader is both alive and healthy. Now there's no evidence to suggest, necessarily that he's incapacitated. But clearly the world and clearly the White House too frankly, looking for this first address to show him on camera, or release at least hear his voice, and we had none of that.

Instead, we had a note, which appears, according to state TV, to have been written by his own hand, read on air by a female news anchor. Now that is to some degree odd, frankly, and it may be a security related decision. It may be the sheer logistics of trying to keep somebody who is a target clearly of Israeli air strikes potentially away from danger, but it really adds to the questions about his health and his functionality.

And perhaps the questions too about how Iran is functioning now with Mostafa being the hardline choice, the man that Trump said he did not want to see in that job, and perhaps the IRGC using this figure to get much more of their agenda accomplished.

What did he actually say? Well, he pointed out there three key things, essentially saying the Strait of Hormuz will remain closed, and leveraging that to the idea that the Gulf nations, who he says he's only attacking because they have U.S. bases on them, despite the attacks being across broad infrastructure for many days.

Even this morning, that they should reject the United States a little far fetch, frankly, under this kind of attack, that you're going to kick American military out to a part of your defense, also suggesting that Iran should have reparations. That's a little far fetched, frankly, as well, given the current state of the conflict. And finally, hinting that surprise, you might call them soft targets, may be the next things that Iran tends to go for.

So, some elements of policy here, nothing surprising. We've heard most of it before, frankly, but the ultimate surprise being, we didn't see the new Mostafa Khamenei himself. At the same time, Dana, we are seeing an escalation here in between Hezbollah and Israel. We've just heard of an enormous increase of the evacuation order in southern Lebanon forcing civilians to leave their homes and their towns.

And now strikes or warnings of strikes in the very heart of Beirut. One I've just seen from the IDF, a matter of 100 meters away from a very key government prime ministerial building. Startling to see how fast that's escalating, Dana.

BASH: Yeah, it sure is. And I just -- I think it's so important to underscore the point that you made, which is that we did not see, we did not hear from Iran's new supreme leader at all that -- and it is interesting that it came through a female news reader. That's maybe for another discussion later. But I really appreciate reporting as always to you and your team, stay safe.

And this morning's new message from Iran undercuts what President Trump said yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: We've won. Let me say, we've won. You know, you never like to say too early you won. We won. We won the bet. In the first hour it was over.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

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BASH: I'm joined here by a terrific group of reporters. Natasha, I'm going to start with you as somebody who covers the Pentagon. I said that the statement undercuts what President Trump said. Clearly that was intentional on the part of whomever it is that put out that statement from Iran.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yeah. And I think there's a real confusion, not even just internally here in the U.S., but also amongst the U.S.'s allies in Europe, for example, about what exactly the war being over means and what the objectives are.

For the military, for the Pentagon, the objectives are very clear cut, especially if you're, you know, Secretary Hegseth, and you're trying to convey to the American public that there is a certain target set here, and the U.S. military is hitting those targets. And when that's finished, then you know, their objectives are going to be over things like ballistic missile sites and Iranian navy vessels and, of course, mine laying vessels that are interrupting the Strait of Hormuz, for example.

But when it comes to the political objectives, which originally was, you know, regime change, which is what President Trump had been saying for quite a long time, you know, it's unclear if that's actually happened.

BASH: Let me just get in there and just put up some headlines, which I'm sure sort of dovetail from a lot of what you're hearing from your sources. Reuters, U.S. intelligence says Iran government is not at risk of collapse. USA TODAY, Iran's new leader vows to keep the Strait of Hormuz blocked.

BERTRAND: This was the fear going into this kind of war, and something the intelligence community had been warning about, and something that Secretary of State Marco Rubio also acknowledged to lawmakers prior to this war, which is that they weren't sure that this would actually be successful in deposing the regime and they weren't sure, even if they did, what would come next. And if it would just be more hardline than what they previously had, the previous ayatollah.

And so that seems to be coming true right now. And we have CNN matched that reporting that the regime does not appear to be at imminent risk of collapse here. And so that raises the question of, OK, well then what is victory? What is mission accomplished?

BASH: Right. Especially since the Strait of Hormuz, according to the energy secretary -- Trump's energy secretary is still very much closed down. Let's just listen to a little bit of what the president said about this issue last night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: It's an excursion that will keep us out of a war, and the war is going to be -- I mean for them, it's a war. For us, it's turned out to be easier than we thought. We don't want to leave early, do we? We got to finish the job, right? The main thing is we have to win this. They win it quickly but win it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: That's clear. PHIL MATTINGLY, CNN ANCHOR & CHIEF DOMESTIC CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, nice. I think that that -- again, as we kind of all try and figure out, what does excursion mean versus war versus we're in a war versus it's an easy war versus we've lost seven service members up to this point. What is actually going to happen going forward as they kind of go further down the target?

BASH: And what does win mean?

MATTINGLY: And I think what all of this kind of underscores in this moment is the U.S. has capabilities in the U.S. and Israel in their combined actions, have capabilities that can dramatically reduce Iran's abilities to produce ballistic missiles, to do all of the things that they -- that Marco Rubio has repeatedly gone up to Capitol Hill and said, these are our goals. These are our primary kind of objectives here.

It doesn't mean Iran can't really hold the entire global economy hostage for as long as it deems necessary, which is the moment that we're in right now. And I think when the president talks about how quickly this is going to end or what type of a conflict this actually is, until you factor in, the absolute worst-case scenario for the international economy that energy analysts point to constantly saying, this is this hypothetical thing that would never actually happen. But if it did, we would all be really, really screwed, it's happening right now.

BASH: And let's listen to the energy secretary himself. He was on with Kate Bolduan this morning.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CHRIS WRIGHT, ENERGY SECRETARY: We need to de fang, and we are defanging Iran's abilities to threaten American troops in the areas, its allies, its neighbors, and global energy markets. So, yes, you've got to go through short-term pain to solve a long-term problem.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Well, the pain that we're talking about can be illustrated in this graphic that our team made and it shows the traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, look at that, Phil. It just kind of illustrates exactly the point, the worst-case slash nightmare scenario, economically with regard to the oil markets, that is happening right now.

MATTINGLY: Yeah. And just to frame what you're looking at in that chart right there, I was talking to a long-time energy analyst, one of the best in the business, about five or six days ago. Said, when we have rookie analysts come in, we give them the Strait of Hormuz shuts down scenario as like, just to mess with them, because it was so incomprehensible prior to the last two and a half weeks.

[12:10:00]

And to try and plan around that as an analyst or try and figure out kind of how supply chains would shift or be modified. How you could try and make up the 20 million barrels per day that that would drop, let alone the kind of second and third order effects down to food and other elements farming on some level as well. It was a joke because it was just something you couldn't fathom. It could never actually happen.

So, when that drops down to zero, the issues here are multiple, which is, one, it's not just a matter of the president is declaring the end of the war and then all of a sudden that opens up. Iran gets a vote in this too. Even if there is a clear kind of insistence on both sides that there will not be attacks on vessels going through, that doesn't mean the vessel operators are necessarily going to send them through as well.

The solution has been naval escorts. At some point, as Secretary Wright made very clear to Kate Bolduan today. That is not in the near term, both because of the risks to those naval assets, but also because of just the scale of U.S. force posture that would be needed to actually carry that out in the midst of the war that they're prosecuting day to day as is.

BASH: Manu, you just got back from Florida, where House Republicans are having a retreat. President visited at the beginning of the week, talked to a lot of members. I just want to play one of the interactions that you had. This is with Congressman Carlos Gimenez.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

REP. CARLOS GIMENEZ (R-FL): I think this is temporary, and then I think the gas prices will go down.

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: If it doesn't end quickly.

GIMENEZ: Yeah. I'm saying -- I'm saying, your premise is wrong. It will, OK. I'm saying that --

RAJU: You're just -- you're just -- you're hoping.

GIMENEZ: And so are you.

RAJU: I'm not hoping. I'm just -- I'm positing the question.

GIMENEZ: I'm not hoping. I am confident that this is not going to last a long time, OK, and that's -- and I'm confident of that. And at the end, I guess, let's say, about a month from now, we'll have this conversation again and see who was right.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

RAJU: I mean, that's really what the Republican plan is to deal with gas prices, hope, hope that this ends sometime soon, hopes that the economy, well the crude oil market will stabilize, hope gas prices will come down, and hope that it does not undercut their own affordability message come November. But you talk to other Republicans, they say, hope is not a plan. Josh Hawley, being one of them, told me that they need to act, do something now, look like they're doing something, at least, otherwise voters are going to really take it out on Republicans.

And the question is, have they even convinced voters that this is a sacrifice that they need to make? That's another thing I heard from a lot of Republicans too, like Congressman Mark Alford from Missouri, saying that we need to convince voters that they may have to pay 30 cents more per gallon at the pump because it's worth it. And Lindsey Graham, I asked the same question today to him. I said, what about these gas prices? So, it'd be much worse if Iran had a nuclear weapon. And so that's the convincing that they have to do. But they're all over the place and they're not making their case to the public.

LEIGH ANN CALDWELL, CHIEF WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, PUCK: Yeah. Absolutely, as far as the nuclear weapon is concerned, it's really hard to make that case. When Donald Trump, just six months ago, said that their nuclear program was obliterated. Republicans that I talked to for the most part, echo what Manu got and are still with the president for now, but there is not a long runway. They're willing to give them a few more weeks.

If this -- if gas prices are still high, if this war continues, if the -- if it gets messy or if there's a threat of boots being put on the ground, that's when it gets really, really problematic for Republicans. They say, they can tell me they trust the president for the most part right now. And as Manu said, they just hope this wraps sooner than later.

BASH: So, there's the economy and the way that people are suffering with the oil prices and gas prices going up. And then there is another nightmare scenario, big nightmare scenario, as the war escalates, whether or not, Tehran's threats could reach the U.S. homeland. We'll talk about that after the break.

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BASH: President Trump says the FBI is investigating an unverified claim of a possible revenge plot by Iran targeting California.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Have you been briefed about how many Iran sleeper cells there could be inside the U.S. right now?

TRUMP: I have been and a lot of people came in through Biden with his stupid open border, but we know where most of them are. We've got our eye on all of them, I think.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: Now California Governor Gavin Newsom says he's been alerted about the unverified claims, but that there's no imminent threat. This morning, a statement purportedly from Iran's new supreme leader threaten to attack American interest on, quote, other fronts if the war continues.

My panel is back now. Leigh Ann, that's pretty scary stuff. I mean, never mind the politics of it, just the sort of human response here in America. I mean, I know that this is as we -- as we heard, unverified, but still hearing that, especially given what we heard from inside Iran this morning.

CALDWELL: Yeah. I mean, the United States has been protected from the wars that we have fought in for decades and generations, I guess, or hundreds of years. But the thing is, except for, I guess, 9/11, so I should take that back absolutely. But they're -- my call -- the thing I'm thinking about are these young male voters.

[12:20:00]

I've done some reporting about Trump supporters, who -- and this is politics, but who are really upset with the president about his foreign interventions. My colleague just did a big story about this too, with focus groups, and this is a massive fear among young men, especially not only retaliation here in the United States, but also fears of draft and having to go to war.

And so, this is a -- this is something, even if this is unverified, this is the real threat of war that people are actually thinking about and fearful about. And it goes along the same lines as the fear of nuclear weapons too. And why, perhaps, for some groups, the war in Iran is more popular because of a fear of Iran's nuclear capability. And so, it all comes back to our own safety and security.

BASH: Yeah. And not to mention that the Department of Homeland Security is still shut down because of differences over funding for ICE, which still has money.

RAJU: Yeah. And I talked to a lot of members today about this very issue, about whether there's going to be any movement now that there are these real threats to the homeland, and not to mention longer TSA lines, travelers having encountering all sorts of problems. The short answer is there is no movement.

Their Democrats are very much dug in into their position. They want changes to the way ICE ages are being deployed. That's what's led to the government shutdown to begin with. The White House is moving nowhere near their demands. And as a result, both sides are rolling the dice at this really, really dangerous time.

BASH: I want to turn Natasha, I mean, all of you to what happened in the early days. I think it was even on the first day of the U.S. military strikes on Iran, and girls' school, hitting a girls' school where almost 200 people, I believe, were killed, including girls' students and teachers.

Let's just listen to some of what we have heard from the president in trying to explain what happened over the past few days.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We think it was done. We think it was done by Iran. Because they're very inaccurate, as you know, with their munitions. They have no accuracy whatsoever. It was done by Iran.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You just suggested that Iran somehow got its hands on a Tomahawk and bombed its own elementary school on the first day of the war, but you're the only person in your government saying this. Why are you the only person saying this?

TRUMP: Because I just don't know enough about it. I think it's something that I was told is under investigation, but Tomahawks are used by others, as you know, numerous other nations have Tomahawks.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BASH: And just to be clear, 168 children are believed to have been killed in that. What are you hearing at this point from your sources about what really happened?

BERTRAND: Current and former officials are just kind of baffled about how this could have happened because intelligence is updated pretty consistently to try to avoid this very thing, to try to avoid civilian casualties. And that's something that the top general in Europe testified to just this morning to lawmakers. He said, you know there could have been a chain of events where just a series of things went wrong, but ultimately, this targeting information and the intelligence that we use that goes into, it's supposed to be updated very regularly.

BASH: Isn't the issue that it wasn't?

BERTRAND: Right. So that is the question is, why wasn't it? Was AI involved? Because AI has been involved in past operations to select targets, and was there just no, you know, human back up to this to verify that there were no civilians present at the time. But one of the big questions that I have as well is, how could you not have known, given that we do have, the U.S. does have pretty superb overhead surveillance capabilities that this was not -- how do you not establish a pattern of life to show that there were civilians and children who were coming and going from that school on any given day.

I mean, CNN even had satellite imagery from December of 2025, showing children playing in the courtyard of the school. So, the question is, how were there -- how many steps were overlooked here in an effort to move very quickly that could have potentially prevented this?

MATTINGLY: All of which underscores the importance of being candid, forthcoming, and actually conducting an in-depth investigation. One, to understand what went wrong, to understand if capabilities went haywire, if there was human error. But two, because this is a really important moment for the United States and what it represents, regardless of who is the leader, whenever, whatever administration it is, that this is what the U.S. military does differently.

This is what the U.S. military when they make a mistake, they acknowledge the mistake. This isn't to play got you, or to indict service members or anything like that. This is what should separate the U.S. military from counterparts around the world is their ability to be accountable, to show what went wrong. And then to fix it, particularly if there are operational issues in this very kind of new era that we're in and warfare, hopefully going forward.

[12:25:00]

I think that's why Sean McCarthy, The New York Times reporter, is asking that question. Why it was such an important question? This isn't about playing games or trying to dodge blame or anything like that. This is about accountability because it shows well for the U.S. armed forces, and it allows for fixes to change something that enables us to not happen again.

BASH: And innocent civilians, including and especially children and so many of them is devastating and accountability is incredibly important. All right. Up next. Finally, there is some bipartisan action in the U.S. Senate, a landmark piece of legislation. So, the question is whether or not this means that we're going to see some law. And we're talking about a piece of legislation that is about affordability for housing. We'll explain after the break.

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