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New Cancer Treatment Blood Test Approved; Price of Oil Surges; Iran Negotiations Stall. Aired 10:30-11a ET

Aired September 14, 2026 - 10:30   ET

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

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WOLF BLITZER, CNN HOST: Happening now: A second federal judge has blocked President Trump's attempt to limit mail-in voting. This is all tied to the president's executive order earlier this year that would put additional restrictions on mail ballots. The issue is likely headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Kennedy Center is warning of bankruptcy. Officials say the center is facing -- quote -- "certain fiscal collapse" unless President Trump's name is added back to the building. "The Washington Post" says the center could close as soon as tomorrow.

And his name was removed in June, but the center voted in August to add it back. The center has previously said in court filings it would have to return millions of dollars if Trump's name isn't on the building.

And an incredible rescue in Michigan. The U.S. Coast Guard saved this 70-year-old hiker who had been missing for a week. The man had taken a solo hike on a remote island in Lake Superior. He was injured and suffering from hypothermia when he was pulled to safety and taken to a hospital.

PAMELA BROWN, CNN HOST: Well, Wolf, happening now: What would have been a critical meeting between officials from Oman and Iran is now back in limbo. They were supposed to discuss fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. was not going to be part of these talks.

But to learn more about what happened here, I want to bring in CNN national security correspondent Kylie Atwood back in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Welcome back, Kylie.

So what happened here?

KYLIE ATWOOD, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Yes, so, essentially, not all of the countries were actually going to show up. And so the Omanis, who were organizing this, made the decision that, if you weren't going to have all the Gulf countries coming to the table, it wasn't going to effective to have the meeting.

But to take a step back here, the meeting was to discuss a new mechanism that the Omanis have put together to try and organize traffic through the strait, to get the traffic through the strait up and running in a regular way, because there is a widespread recognition that the postwar status of the Strait of Hormuz is not going to look like what the prewar status looked like.

There's not going to be a world in which there isn't a mechanism that has to do with the routes going through, the safety protocols, potentially fees that need to be paid by tankers now, which didn't exist before.

Now, the Trump administration has publicly said that they're OK with the status quo right now. There are those military escorts that are getting oil through. But sources in the administration do acknowledge that that's effectively a short-term fix.

And Vice President Vance actually spoke about this meeting that was supposed to happen today not happening, making clear that the U.S. still has its eyes on these conversations about what the long-term solution is going to look like. Listen to what he said.

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J.D. VANCE, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Concern, certainly. It's something that we're keeping pretty close tabs on. We have been in constant contact with the Emiratis, the Saudis, and others who are affected in the region.

So it's something the United States administration is very much on top of. We have also been engaged in direct conversations with the Houthis themselves. So we actually feel like we are on top of the situation. It's a very fluid and dynamic thing, but we're going to keep on monitoring it, making sure that America's best interests are represented.

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ATWOOD: So, as you can see there, the vice president making it clear that the administration wants the region to really focus on what the solution would look like long term.

We will have to watch and see what these backdoor conversations look like, because these amendments have now been shared with the Omanis putting this mechanism together, and we will have to watch and see when this meeting actually does happen after it was supposed to happen today.

BROWN: Yes, if it happens.

All right, thank you so much, Kylie Atwood.

And continuing this conversation, the price of oil is surging again after a weekend attack on a Saudi oil pipeline. It's been key in bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, where traffic is still at a trickle. The pipeline shutdown is also contributing to near-record diesel prices.

Meanwhile, President Trump this weekend appeared to blame Ukraine for diesel costs.

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DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. Has he has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia. Let him go after targets, but not diesel, because he's causing a shortage of diesel. This isn't done by the Middle East. This is done by what's happening with Russia and Ukraine.

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BROWN: CNN's Matt Egan joins us now.

So, Matt, diesel is breaking price records. How bad is it? And where is it headed?

MATT EGAN, CNN SENIOR REPORTER: Well, Pamela, this diesel spike has been historic, and it's something that really all of us are going to feel because diesel is the MVP of the fuels, right? It's the fuel that's powering the trucks and the trains hauling the goods we buy online.

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It's the fuel that's powering the tractors that farmers use to harvest the food that we eat. And it's also powering the boats and the construction vehicles at the heart of the modern economy. And diesel has never been more expensive than it is right now.

Last week, it crossed over $6 a gallon for the first time ever. Look at this. Now it's well above that $6.23 a gallon, a new record high, dramatically more expensive than it was before the war started.

Now, the president is right that the Russia-Ukraine war and those attacks on Russian oil refineries is contributing to this spike, but that's not the whole story, right? This is also being driven by the war with Iran and the fact that China is restricting its own exports to prevent fuel shortages at home.

But the risk is that diesel is going to get even more expensive, because look what's going on in the oil market. We're seeing a 4.5 percent increase for Brent today, above $109 a barrel, flirting with the highs of late last week.

Now, this oil jump today reflects the latest violence in the Middle East, in particular this East-West Pipeline shutdown. Now, this is not a household name, but this is a big deal because Saudi Arabia has been using this pipeline to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. Normally, its oil goes through the strait and out to the rest of the world.

But because the Strait of Hormuz has been stuck due to the war, they have been using this pipeline to get out to the Red Sea through the Suez Canal and to the rest of the world. But now the pipeline is shut down. This is a big deal because the pipeline, its capacity is seven million barrels per day.

That's about 7 percent of world supply. Now, we don't know yet when it's going to reopen. Reuters is reporting it could take five to six weeks. Some analysts are hopeful that the pipeline could start flowing again, even as repairs are being done. Veteran analyst Bob McNally, he told me that, if this is a prolonged shutdown, it would be -- quote -- "truly calamitous."

And it has a direct impact on what everyone pays at the gas pump. Look at this, the new national average $4.32 a gallon. That's not just a three-month high for the price of gasoline. That's the highest price ever during the month of September, dramatically higher than before the war, when gas was below $2.90 -- was below $3 a gallon.

And oil analyst Andy Lipow, he told me that he thinks the national average could go to $4.50 a gallon if the East-West Pipeline remains down for a significant amount of time. One other point for you, Pamela, is home heating could be getting a lot more expensive. Experts are forecasting a 9 percent increase in home heating costs overall this fall and this winter.

But it really depends on what kind of fuel you use. If it's natural gas, you're looking at about a 6 percent increase, 9 percent for electricity, but home heating oil, 31 percent more expensive than last winter. Now, thankfully, this is pretty rare. Only about 4 percent of homes in the U.S. use home eating heating oil, but this is really common in New England and in the mid-Atlantic.

So, bottom line, whether it's gasoline, diesel, or home heating, you are looking at significantly higher prices. And a large reason here is the war with Iran -- Back to you.

BROWN: Matt Egan, thanks so much -- Wolf.

EGAN: Thanks.

BLITZER: If you drive around the D.C. area, as you and I well know, a lot of gas stations are selling gas now at more than $5 a gallon for regular gas.

BROWN: Yes.

BLITZER: Pretty depressing.

BROWN: Not good.

BLITZER: No.

Also with us now, CNN military analyst retired U.S. Air Force Colonel Cedric Leighton.

Colonel, talks never happened, the important talks that are supposedly supposed to be going on. What's going on behind the scenes that has led to all of this? COL. CEDRIC LEIGHTON (RET.), CNN MILITARY ANALYST: Yes, Wolf, well,

one of the things is that, between Iran and Oman, there's some dispute as to whether or not the new regime for the Strait of Hormuz can actually be made to work.

And as Kylie pointed out in her reporting, one of the key things that the Omanis are concerned about is that they really have the buy-in of all the other Gulf states. So that would mean states like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates.

Those countries are critically important if they're going to agree to some kind of a new regime for the Strait of Hormuz. You know, right now, this is basically unknown territory because international law is being changed when this particular body of water, which is a natural body of water, is now subject to controls by specific countries.

BLITZER: How much are the recent attacks on Saudi Arabia specifically, Saudi Arabia, close ally of the United States, complicating any attempt at these talks?

LEIGHTON: I think that may have a big, big impact, Wolf, because the way the Saudis had hoped to keep their oil pipelines, the East-West Pipeline that Matt was talking about, out of harm's way, that basically has failed.

So you have Houthi attacks against many of the installations in Saudi Arabia, and you have the other attacks purportedly coming from Iranian proxies in Iraq against the East-West Pipeline. That really makes it much more difficult. And what it does is, it basically brings Saudi Arabia in even further into this war between the U.S. and Iran.

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And the Saudis do want protection. They want protection from the United States. That protection was rejected when the crown prince, MBS, Mohammed bin Salman, spoke with President Trump. Trump has basically told him that we're not going to step in except for providing intelligence support.

So that's going to have a major impact on the Saudis' ability to defend themselves and also could potentially force the Saudis into some kind of accommodation with the Iranians.

BLITZER: Are the Saudis potentially going to go on the offensive and go after those Iranian-backed Houthis that are undermining a lot of what's going on?

LEIGHTON: That's a possibility. However, the Saudis have had some difficulty going after the Houthis. Right now, their desire is to absolutely go after them and try to stop attacks on their oil infrastructure and on their bases in the southwestern part of the country.

But the problem is, is that the Saudis have not been very effective going after the Houthis. They tried for several years to actually destroy the Houthi military capability, but that was not a successful endeavor, and they're basically gun-shy trying to go after the Houthis by themselves.

BLITZER: While you're with us, Colonel, a quick question about the operation to rescue those two U.S. airmen whose jet was shot down over Iran.

I want you to listen and want our viewers to listen to what the U.S. military Central Commander, CENTCOM commander, said. Listen to this.

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ADM. BRAD COOPER, CENTRAL COMMAND COMMANDER: That second operation had about 92 people on the ground. This would be the first U.S. boots on the ground in 46 years.

NORAH O'DONNELL, CBS NEWS: In Iran.

COOPER: In Iran. We had about several hundred in the air, and there were probably 3,000 to 5,000 supporting overall. It was an operation inside an operation.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: We saw that report on "60 Minutes" last night. What kind of training do these service members actually get in how to deal with a situation as sensitive and as explosive potentially as this one?

LEIGHTON: Yes, what Admiral Cooper was alluding to when it came to this kind of operation is that the training has become much more extensive than what U.S. military forces had back in 1980, when we had the abortive rescue mission that ended at Desert One, the so-called Operation Eagle Claw, where service members were killed in a tragic accident on their way to try to rescue the American hostages in Tehran.

So we have seen a vast improvement in our ability to conduct combat search-and-rescue operations. And Admiral Cooper's efforts there and CENTCOM's efforts, as well as the Air Force's efforts, were absolutely critical in getting those two airmen out, those two air crew members out.

They have pararescue troops, they're so-called P.J.s from the Air Force. They have special tactics squadrons as part of Air Force Special Operations Command. And those elements are trained exquisitely to go in and rescue people from denied territory, and Iran certainly was denied territory.

Training is extremely extensive, and they're among the most elite combat forces that the Air Force has.

BLITZER: Those two U.S. pilots who were rescued code named Alpha and Bravo.

LEIGHTON: Yes.

BLITZER: I thought that was significant.

All right, Colonel Leighton, thanks as usual very much -- Pamela.

BROWN: All right, Wolf, coming up: new hope in the fight against breast cancer. We will speak to the CEO of a company that just got FDA approval for its new blood test, and we will also get perspective from a breast cancer surgeon.

We will be right back. Stay with us.

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BROWN: A new Women's Health Watch this morning, a first-of-its-kind approval from the FDA that could change how doctors treat certain cancers.

The agency gave the green light to a series of blood testing meant to work as a companion diagnostic tool to detect tumor mutations. Biotech company Guardant Health says these tests serve as a liquid biopsy that avoid invasive tissue biopsies.

And its clinical trials showed this treatment lowered the risk of disease progression or death by 56 percent for certain breast, colon and lung cancers.

Joining us now is Guardant Health CEO Helmy Eltoukhy.

Helmy, thank you so much for coming on.

So, help us better understand how a simple blood draw can reveal changes happening inside a tumor.

HELMY ELTOUKHY, CEO, GUARDANT HEALTH: Yes. No, thank you for having me on, Pamela.

It's really groundbreaking the way this study works. When you think about essentially most treatments in cancer care, you're sort of waiting for the cancer to get visibly worse on a scan. You're sort of -- you're waiting for that three-alarm fire to essentially happen, and then physicians decide, OK, let's switch therapy. Now let's find something else.

This trial was very different, where essentially we monitored those patients with a blood draw. Our blood draw can see the genetic underpinnings of the disease, of the cancer. And as soon as you see that cancer, as soon as you see that tumor trying to change its molecular makeup, essentially, we're looking for this ESR1 mutation.

As soon as you see that, then the therapy was switched. And that's what led to this groundbreaking approval for AstraZeneca's drug Etcamah. And this is essentially what we believe will be the future of medicine, where you instead have a test like ours that is a sort of molecular smoke detector before the fire breaks out and is uncontrollable.

BROWN: So, how many blood draws would you need to get then to know if that tumor is changing?

ELTOUKHY: Yes, so the -- in this trial, it took an average of two to three blood draws. The blood draws were taken every two to three months.

If you think about it, right now, the way the treatment paradigm works in oncology is, patients get these invasive biopsies, and then they get these very sort of complicated scans where they have to go in and so on every two to three months.

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And so the future of medicine, the future of oncology is really going to be essentially looking at the underpinnings of the disease through a blood test, monitoring those patients with a blood test, and then changing therapy based on some of the molecular data that those blood tests are able to provide.

BROWN: So, bottom line, what does this mean for patients who are currently undergoing treatment, say, for breast cancer? Should they expect a shift in their protocol?

ELTOUKHY: Yes, for a certain subset of ER-positive patients. There are about 37,000 women that are living with this type of disease where this drug could be effective for them.

And so we think this is a sort of canary in the coal mine in terms of cancer care, where, if you think about medicine, it's been a field where we hardly measure and we cut three times, and that's why it's so expensive. We think this is the shift of moving to measuring twice and cutting once, like we do in every other industry.

And so this is not just the future of breast cancer. It's the future of cancer care and probably the future of precision medicine.

BROWN: Quickly, before we let you go, what about the cost? Because that's always a concern, right? Is it covered by insurance and Medicare? What more can you tell us about that?

ELTOUKHY: Yes, that's a great question.

The Guardant360, the test that this is based on, is covered for over 300 million lives in the U.S. And what we found -- we did studies in the U.S. and the U.K. And the NHS, which you know is very cost- conscious, just adopted Guardant360 for all lung cancer patients there because they found that, by measuring up front, you save a lot of money downstream, actually millions of pounds per year for the system, and have better outcomes.

And so we think this will be overall very cost-effective for the entire health care spend.

BROWN: All right, Helmy Eltoukhy, thank you so much for coming on.

And now I want to turn to a breast surgical oncologist, Dr. Lucy De La Cruz. Doctor, I'm just curious what your reaction is to this development and

this blood test that is now FDA-approved, and then what you're -- what are you telling your patients about -- who come in with breast cancer?

DR. LUCY DE LA CRUZ, BREAST SURGICAL ONCOLOGIST: So I get this question often. Obviously, I'm a surgical oncologist, so most of the time when I see patients, it's post-operative or before getting surgery.

We do have testing this of this type of ctDNA, which is happening right now under clinical trials. We have several trials open at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital that are looking at this in the pre-treatment setting, and then they monitor the patients even months and years after.

And, right now, it's really, truly under clinical trial. There are some medical oncologists who are doing it in the community for monitoring it. Now, the SERENA trial that Dr. Helmy -- I mean, Helmy was talking about is really about patients who have metastatic disease that are hormone receptor-positive that are being monitored for the treatment of aromatase inhibitor with a CDK4 inhibitor.

And they were acting on essentially a change on the ctDNA versus before seeing anything on imaging study, which is what he was talking about.

BROWN: That seems to be significant to be able to catch it before imaging can catch it, right, because then you can take action.

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DE LA CRUZ: Yes. And that's probably going to be the future.

I think clinical trials right now are trying to answer if that change of treatment is going to impact survival, which we don't have data for, but there is early data that shows that it is promising, and that obviously this kind of targeted, kind of personalized treatment for patients, it's probably going to impact not just their recurrence or disease-free survival or progression of a disease, but actually eventually hopefully also overall survival.

BROWN: Right, because, if you have breast cancer, you realize you have a tumor, you leave the doctor's office, you're sort of wondering day to day, is the tumor changing? Is it growing? Is it -- what's happening, right? I know you hear that from patients.

DE LA CRUZ: I do.

And, obviously, it also gives them an umbrella. So, for patients who don't have metastatic disease, patients who had surgery who are on endocrine therapy or who are on HER2 blockers therapy, they want to have something that gives them security that, OK, my scans are clean, but is also the rest of my body, is there something that's brewing, which is really what this ctDNA...

BROWN: And breast density can have an impact, right? DE LA CRUZ: Breast density can have an impact, but what really a lot

of patients are concerned about also for distant disease, meaning bone, lung, liver. These are things that sometimes patients don't get C.T. scans routinely because they have early stage breast cancer, and maybe this test is what they feel it could be an umbrella for them.

Again, these are trials that are being looked at for ctDNA or the liquid biopsy to see how useful are they, how sensitive are they, and are they helpful to change treatment, but also guide what the next step is for treatment patients?

BROWN: I quickly want to ask you before we let you go about how you're using robotics now and doing mastectomies, because this is a big deal.

DE LA CRUZ: So it's also about de-escalation of treatment. We're trying to de-escalate or better shift or better target patients base by base, so it's not like generalized umbrella that a box -- we put everybody in a box for medical treatment, but also surgical treatment.

And robotics is there to do that, right? So, when I started treatment of breast cancer 14, 15 years ago, we used to do mastectomies, we used to do lumpectomies the same way.

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And now we're shifting away from open, bigger incisions to minimally invasive, more thoughtful for recovery, for pain, for also sensation, and for preserving not just the skin, but also the nipple-areolar complex, which has to do with improved quality of life, as well as sexuality and well-being for women after breast cancer.

BROWN: All right, De La Cruz, I know you have a busy day of surgeries coming up, so thank you so much for coming on.

DE LA CRUZ: Thank you for having me.

BROWN: We appreciate it -- Wolf.

BLITZER: Very helpful information indeed.

And here's what's coming up all new right at the top of the hour.

A private island, oceanfront villas, and an unusual wedding guest who reportedly bankrolled it. An investigative report finds that a Russian oligarch with very close ties to Vladimir Putin paid for a big part of Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding, but why?

Plus, Pennsylvania officials are now investigating a third death tied to the measles. What we're now learning about the 40-year-old woman who died with the contagious disease.

And mayday: A plane carrying a Wisconsin congressman loses power and is forced to land in a lake. How he and the pilot managed to survive.

That's all new right here in THE SITUATION ROOM in the next hour. (COMMERCIAL BREAK)