Iran unrest intensifies as U.S. stance appears uncertain (Full Transcript)

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: We begin tonight with Iranian authorities closing their airspace for several hours this evening and the world waiting for what, if anything, might come next. The airspace reopened just before airtime, but take a look. This is what the skies over Iran looked like also as of a few moments ago. As you can see, air traffic is going north and south of the country, not over it. Now, a number of Western countries have also advised citizens to leave Iran using, as Spain's government put it today, any available means. Additionally, some personnel at the U.S. airbase in Qatar had been urged to leave, according to a U.S. official who spoke to CNN earlier. Also tonight, a warning from Iran and a chilling assessment from its hardline regime of its crackdown on dissent, which has now taken upwards of 2,400 lives. That's according to a U.S.-based human rights group. The full number may not be known. Here's what Iran's foreign minister told Fox News' Bret Baier.

[00:00:54] Speaker 2: My message is do not repeat the same mistake that you did in June. You know, if you try a failed experience, you will get the same result.

[00:01:03] Speaker 1: Well, the foreign minister is talking about the strikes on his country's nuclear sites, which Iran claims did not significantly set back their effort, though President Trump says otherwise, obviously. And here's what the foreign minister said about his government's bloody repression of the biggest uprising since the revolution that swept Islamic hardliners into power in 1979.

[00:01:23] Speaker 3: After three days of terrorist operation, now there is a calm. We are in full control.

[00:01:33] Speaker 1: Whether that's true or not, graphic evidence has certainly emerged showing what the regime has been doing to try and regain control. Images like these, the dead in body bags overflowing morgues lined up row after row outside Amnesty International, which analyzed video and photos from 10 Iranian cities, including Tehran, said today that, quote, mass unlawful killings, in their words, are being committed on what it calls a, quote, unprecedented scale, which, as you know, the president has repeatedly suggested could trigger an American military response.

[00:02:07] Speaker 4: Well, no, they're starting to, it looks like, and there seem to be some people killed that aren't supposed to be killed. These are violent. If you call them leaders, I don't know if they're leaders or just they rule through violence, but we're looking at it very seriously. The military is looking at it and we're looking at some very strong options. We'll make a determination.

[00:02:31] Speaker 1: That was Sunday night. By yesterday morning, he was on social media saying, quote, Iranian patriots keep protesting and telling them in all caps, help is on the way. Now he repeated those words on camera later that afternoon.

[00:02:44] Speaker 4: All Iranian patriots keep protesting, take over your institutions, if possible, and save the name of the killers and the abusers that are abusing you. You're being very badly abused. I say save their names because they'll pay a very big price. Then I've canceled all meetings with the Iranian officials until the senseless killing of protesters stops. And all I say to them is help is on its way.

[00:03:12] Speaker 1: Well, the president also said the United States would take, quote, very strong action if the regime hanged a 26-year-old protester named Irfan Soltani. Tonight, in that interview on Fox, Iran's foreign minister said there will be no hanging in his words today or tomorrow. As for the president, he signaled as much this afternoon appeared to back away from any red lines.

[00:03:35] Speaker 4: We have been notified and pretty strongly, but we'll find out what that all means. But we've been told that the killing in Iran is stopping. It's stopped. It's stopping. And there's no plan for executions or an execution or executions. So I've been told that a good authority will find out about it. I'm sure if it happens, we'll all be very upset, including you will be very upset. But that's just gotten to me some information that the killing has stopped, that the executions have stopped. They're not going to have an execution, which a lot of people were talking about for the last couple of days. Today was going to be the day of execution.

[00:04:23] Speaker 1: Well, that said, when pressed, he declined to take military action off the table, saying instead he would, quote, watch and see what the process is. We start tonight with Kaitlin Collins, CNN's chief White House correspondent, the anchor of The Source. So is it clear where the president stands tonight on possible military action? Why he seems so confident that the Iranian regime won't execute protesters?

[00:04:41] Speaker 5: Not really, Anderson. And that moment was from when we had first gotten in the Oval Office. The president gave us that update on Iran. Later, when he was taking questions from reporters, I asked him who it was that relayed that information to him that the killings have stopped there, because obviously there's been a major blackout, a huge internet outage there. We really haven't been able to get a ton of reliable information out of what's happening on the ground in Iran. We've seen snippets of it. The president never disclosed who told him that the killing had stopped. He said it was from a source with information. He made the reference that it was coming from Iran. And obviously, the question is raised by that, that if it is the Iranian regime, whether or not the president can trust them, given they have been historically incredibly unreliable and have lied outright about a lot of the things that they're doing. And so we know what we've seen on the ground. We've seen these images of the body bags that have already been out there. And just to be clear on where the president's line on this was over the last two weeks, Anderson, it wasn't if there are executions for people who have been demonstrating and protesting that then the U.S. would get militarily involved. The president had already said about 12 days ago that if Iran was using lethal force and killing these protesters, that he said the U.S. military would intervene. That was a threat that he repeated multiple times, something that we know that has happened, given we've seen the body bags that have been on the streets. And so that already in and of itself has changed. And so the question was how the president would respond, what that would look like. There's not a lot of military buildup in the area like there was last summer during those strikes. And so right now, it's just not clear, Anderson, on what this next step is going to be and whether or not the president was looking for an off-ramp with those comments that he made to us today.

[00:06:19] Speaker 1: Yeah. Kaitlin Collins, thanks very much. Kaitlin, we'll be back obviously at the top of the hour with the source. Joining me now is John Bolton, former national security adviser during President Trump's first term. He also served as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President George W. Bush. Ambassador, how do you read what the president is now saying versus what he has been saying?

[00:06:37] Speaker 6: Well, I think that's the sound of Donald Trump walking backward. That doesn't necessarily indicate what he's going to do. I think this is this is Trump saying one thing one day and another thing the next day. There's no doubt that there were mass murders of protesting civilians on Saturday and Sunday night. And the figure of 2,000, 2,500 dead, I think, will turn out tragically to be very low, 10,000, 15,000. When you get reports from all over the country, it was bad. Now, the number killed on Monday and Tuesday night was much lower because people were not going out in many of the places that Western journalists and others can identify because they didn't want to get killed. So it doesn't mean that the conduct of the regime has gotten better. It means people stayed indoors. But I think without some American action to to underline what Trump has previously said, if we basically do nothing, I think it will be a blow to his credibility because he did draw red lines and the regime did cross them. And as of right this moment, we haven't done anything in response.

[00:07:48] Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, to Caitlin's point, he had said, you know, if you're killing people in the streets, that was one kind of red line. And then suddenly it became executions. Essentially, I mean, they have been executing people in the streets. The security services, as as we know, as you said, we don't know the full number, but whether it's execution by hanging, as was going to be the case in Mr. Soltani, by all reports or whether they're being slaughtered in the streets, it's still executions.

[00:08:18] Speaker 6: Sure, but it's Trump looking for the off ramp.

[00:08:21] Speaker 1: Yeah. To what extent do you think has the president backed himself into a corner with those vows on social media, you know, telling Iranian protesters to keep doing what they're doing, to try to take it, to get into the streets, to keep protesting?

[00:08:36] Speaker 6: Yeah, look, the famous Obama red line in Syria was if I see them moving chemical weapons around, we're going to do something about it. And he didn't to to our detriment. And I think the same thing applies here. Look, it is true. And I think acknowledged almost universally at this point that the regime is at the weakest point it's been since it came to power in the revolution in 1979 for a variety of reasons. The economic reasons we see manifest in these protests, but because of dissent by the youth, ethnic conflict, women who staged massive protest over two years ago after the murder of Masi Amini, the regime is deeply unpopular. It's thoroughly corrupt inside. This is a moment when we could have regime change. I think the U.S. could assist that in multiple ways, which we're not doing. And if we miss it this time, there may not be another occasion until the supreme leader dies and they have to find a new supreme leader. And in the meantime, Iran will continue its nuclear weapons program, continue its support for international terrorism and continue repressing the people of Iran.

[00:09:47] Speaker 1: What do you think the U.S. options would be militarily or through intelligence means or other means in terms of trying to get about regime change? Right.

[00:09:58] Speaker 6: Well, I think first you have to decide on your objective and my objective would be regime change. So what I would look for would be strikes, at least the opening strikes, that would impair the power of the regime to repress the Iranian people and that would instill in the people the feeling that at least the United States is prepared to do something to help them. So that would seem to me after clearing away whatever air defenses Iran may have to safeguard any planes we're going to be sending in, I would go after headquarters for the Revolutionary Guard and their besieging militia, who are really the thugs killing most of the people in the streets. I'd go after their bases and facilities and we'd be very discriminant in how we tried to do that. I would go again after the nuclear program, the ballistic missile production program. I'd go after the Iranian Navy. I'd say to the regime, we are going to take you apart piece by piece.