‘It’s over’: Trump cancels Iran ceasefire after fresh strikes

[0:00] President Trump just a short time ago, hours ago, declared that, in his view, the U.S. ceasefire with Iran is over after the two countries traded a barrage of new strikes in just the last 24 hours. Watch this. [0:13] Is the ceasefire done? Is the MOU dead? [0:15] It's a very interesting question. To me, I think it's over. I don't want to deal with them anymore. They're scum. You know what scum is? They're scum. They're sick people. They're led by sick people. [0:29] And they're vicious, violent people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, they'd use it. As far as I'm concerned, it's over. [0:39] The memorandum of understanding between the two countries apparently collapsing now as President Trump attends the NATO summit in Turkey. [0:46] The president has also now reimposed sanctions on Iranian oil sales. [0:52] That's a key reversal of a big concession that was part of the latest ceasefire, was part of this memorandum of understanding. [1:00] Trump also called the negotiations with Iran a waste of time. [1:04] Overnight, there were large explosions and fires seen at multiple ports in Iran. [1:09] Those strikes are said to be the U.S. response to Iran launching a series of attacks on commercial ships near the Strait of Hormuz this week. [1:18] Let's get to CNN's Kristen Holmes. She's live in Turkey for us following the president's travels. [1:23] Kristen, what are you learning about this right now? [1:28] I mean, Kate, President Trump was incredibly angry. [1:30] He was only meant to do some welcome remarks coming into NATO, and you saw him completely let loose. [1:36] Part of what he seems to be angry about is this idea that the United States gave some space to the Iranians [1:41] so that they would be attending the supreme leader's funeral, and then instead they were striking these commercial vessels. [1:48] So now you have him saying that he believes the MOU is over, but he did leave the door open for potential negotiations, [1:55] which is making a lot of this much murkier. Take a listen to what he said. [1:58] They want to negotiate. They're good people. Steve Whitcoff, Jared Kushner, but they have to come back to me. [2:07] As far as I'm concerned, it's just a waste of time dealing with them. They're liars. [2:11] They're bad people. And frankly, I don't want to waste my time with them. [2:18] And later he called them lying guys. He said they were a cancer that needed to be cut out. [2:21] They're evil and sick. And you can just see this escalation from President Trump, who really has had this war in Iran, [2:28] hanging over most of his presidency now for much longer than he anticipated. [2:33] I want to bring in now Kurt Volker, former U.S. Ambassador to NATO. [2:38] Thank you so much for being here on what is now turning into an eventful day. [2:42] The president saying that the ceasefire that they had negotiated, their memorandum of understanding, [2:48] is over after some attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz. [2:52] I want to play a bit for the president for you to hear, and then we'll talk on the other side. [2:57] They can talk, but I think they're wasting their time. Frankly, I don't want to waste my time with them. [3:05] Now, I'll let our wonderful negotiators keep talking if they want, but I don't see it. [3:10] Okay, Ambassador, you know what it's like to have to keep talking. [3:15] What does this mean for people who had been tasked with continuing this conversation? [3:22] Right. I think President Trump is just trying to ratchet up the visible frustration, [3:27] try to put more pressure on the Iranians, see if he can get them back to a situation [3:31] where they're not attacking anything. [3:34] What happened is the Iranians attacked some vessels that were trying to go through the Omani side of the Strait of Hormuz. [3:40] The Iranians don't want that. They want them to go through Iranian waters [3:43] where they can gradually establish a regime of control. [3:46] Of course, we don't want that. [3:48] But the problem is that we may want it or not want it, [3:51] but if we are not prepared militarily, physically, to defeat the regime [3:57] and prevent them from doing this sort of thing, this is where this is going to go. [4:02] I don't think President Trump really wants to restart the war. [4:05] He may get forced into it, but I don't think he really wants to. [4:08] So he's trying to be tougher now to back up his negotiators [4:12] to see whether he can get things back where they were with this MOU a few weeks ago. [4:16] Yeah, you were asked, I think just last night, about Greenland, [4:20] and you said that Trump has a kind of routine. [4:23] He complains, he criticizes, he says people aren't doing enough, [4:27] and he keeps threats on the table. [4:29] And I thought, gee, that's kind of applicable to this exact moment. [4:33] Yes, it is. No, that is the playbook here. [4:36] He will do that, and he'll never concede anything. [4:40] So even with Greenland, for example, [4:42] I don't think he was planning to bring up Greenland at this summit at all, [4:45] but somebody asked him about it. [4:47] So he says, yes, of course it's still on the table. [4:49] Of course it should be ours. [4:51] And I think that is what he's going to do with the Iranians here, step by step. [4:55] Keep putting the pressure on about the strait. [4:57] Keep putting pressure on about the nuclear issue. [4:59] Try to get to something that he can actually live with, [5:02] which is no fighting so that oil prices and gasoline prices stay down. [5:06] If the ceasefire is over, does that mean Israel still has a kind of green light [5:14] to continue its fight with Hezbollah in Lebanon? [5:18] Well, I think that's a very good point [5:20] because the Israelis will certainly take it that way. [5:23] I think President Trump would like to feel that he's in the driver's seat. [5:26] And so if Israel is going to attack or not, [5:28] he would like to be the one who says so. [5:31] But I think the Israelis are going to look at this and say, [5:34] okay, if anything happens, Hezbollah does anything at all, [5:38] we have a green light. [5:40] We feel free to go after them again now. [5:43] It's interesting that this NATO summit is happening in Ankara. [5:47] People look at Turkey in a lot of ways as a sort of gateway [5:50] between the East and the West. [5:52] And it is at the center of this kind of Gordian knot [5:56] of international issues, right? [5:58] You've got Zelensky there trying to get support in its war against Russia. [6:04] You've got Turkey asking the U.S. for access to F-35 fighter jet, [6:09] kind of the most advanced fighter jets in Israel, [6:11] saying, no, don't give it to them. [6:14] It feels like the president actually, [6:15] there's a lot of spinning plates here. [6:18] Yeah, well, there are. [6:19] And just look at the geography. [6:21] I mean, if you pull up a map, [6:22] you've got the Black Sea, Ukraine and Russia to the north. [6:25] You've got Iran and Iraq to the east. [6:28] You've got Syria and Lebanon to the south. [6:31] Further down, you've got Israel on the other side of the Mediterranean. [6:34] It is a region that has a lot of issues. [6:37] And Turkey is a very large country, [6:40] very capable country militarily, economically. [6:43] And they play a role in all of these issues that we care about. [6:46] Most of the time, U.S. and Turkish interests are actually aligned. [6:50] But there are a few cases where they diverge. [6:52] And in all of these cases, [6:53] it's really important that we are talking to the Turks [6:55] and working with them because it could go very badly if we don't. [7:00] And we should say, despite their requests, [7:01] we're seeing reports, CNN reporting now that [7:04] the Defense Secretary Hegseth has actually cancelled his trip to Israel, [7:08] where he was supposed to sort of soothe concerns about this potential sale. [7:13] What are you going to be listening for now? [7:15] Is it J.D. Vance that has to come out and say, [7:18] technical talks are still going? [7:20] If the Iranians play nice, is it Hegseth? [7:24] Kind of what are you expecting to see today? [7:27] Well, a couple of things. [7:28] One of them, let's not forget, it's the NATO summit meeting. [7:31] So I think it would be important for NATO to say something condemning [7:35] the Iranian attacks on shipping and supporting freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf. [7:41] Very important that NATO stay aligned with the U.S. as we go through this, [7:45] even if they're not contributing militarily to show the direction that we want to go in. [7:50] The second thing is, I think the Iranians are going to listen to President Trump and try to judge. [7:56] Is this just one more threat that he then winds down a couple of days from now? [8:01] Or is it going to be something different this time? [8:04] They're going to be watching that. [8:06] And in doing so, I think they're going to stand down on any attacks for a little while. [8:11] They had a quick one just recently, but I think they're going to stand down [8:16] and see whether the U.S. really wants to escalate this or not. [8:20] They're probably betting that we don't. [8:22] And I think things will be quieter for a while. [8:25] With us now, CNN National Security Analyst Alex Plitzis. [8:28] Alex, good to see you this morning. [8:30] Look, the exchange of fire between the United States and Iran, [8:33] the U.S. hitting targets on the Iranian coast, [8:36] the Iranians hitting inside Kuwait, inside Bahrain, [8:39] the types of things we saw for several months [8:42] but haven't really seen that much of the last month. [8:45] What do you think this will do, if anything, to influence Iranian behavior? [8:51] So by itself, I don't think it has influenced Iranian behavior in the past. [8:58] And that's the reason we saw a larger number of strikes yesterday. [9:01] And that's because the Iranians had been hit back after they struck ships previously [9:05] and they continued to strike because we saw more strikes yesterday. [9:08] So the president ordered strikes on about 80 targets, as you just mentioned there, [9:11] along the coast really to degrade Iran's capabilities to strike ships. [9:15] And in response, Iran struck 85 targets, or at least they claimed to have struck. [9:19] There doesn't appear to have been any damage at our Ali al-Slim Air Force base in Kuwait, [9:23] and then the Fifth Fleet, our naval headquarters in the area in Bahrain. [9:26] If you look at the numbers, it's largely proportional. [9:28] The signal from the Iranians is it's proportional. [9:30] We're not looking to escalate. [9:31] But based on the president's comments this morning, he's extremely frustrated. [9:35] Look, and I will say this all has to do with controlling the traffic out of the Strait of Hormuz, [9:40] the Iranians firing on vessels that are going out there, [9:42] the U.S. not liking that. [9:44] Iran still wanting to control to a certain extent the traffic there. [9:47] Alex, this is exactly what most critics of the MOU said was going to happen, [9:53] that Iran was going to drag its feet, Iran was going to muck it up along the way. [9:57] They're doing it. [9:59] They're doing it. [10:00] So what good is it? [10:02] What would be enough to force the Iranians to change the way they behave? [10:09] Well, that's a good question, because at this point, [10:11] they believe that they are acting in good faith in the sense that their version or understanding of the MOU [10:16] is that they control the navigation of the Strait of Hormuz. [10:19] And when ships do not obey their commands, they somehow have the right to fire on them. [10:23] I was told by regional mediators after the last round of negotiations that went on pause for Ayatollah Ali Hamidi's funeral [10:30] that the Iranians were trying to impose their vision of that. [10:33] And so it's clear that U.S. military strikes to date have been insufficient to dissuade the Iranians of that. [10:38] So I'm not sure if more strikes are going to do it. [10:41] The last time we got to this position, if it was, if you couldn't change the game, change the players. [10:45] So it's unclear whether or not the president's going to take more military action. [10:48] We did decide to put the sanctions back on Iranian oil yesterday to hit them in the wallet [10:53] to try a different approach because the Iranian economy is hurting. [10:56] So we'll see if that measure has a little bit more influence. [10:59] And again, we're talking about the Strait of Hormuz, so we don't have the map here. [11:03] They're showing the live traffic here, but I can show you this version of it here. [11:05] This is a much closer version of it. [11:07] Iran obviously wants the oil to get out. [11:09] Iran wants to sell its own oil through the Strait of Hormuz, [11:13] but control what other oil passes through here. [11:16] And there has been, there has been some traffic, not up to what it was before the war, [11:20] but there has been some traffic over the last few months. [11:23] And I'm not sure it's going to stop completely. [11:26] Given that there is this trickle of traffic, does the United States have what it wants in the Strait of Hormuz? [11:32] Does it need to do much more other than just allow a few ships to pass every day? [11:39] Well, the problem is if the Iranians continue to attack ships, [11:42] it's going to dissuade the larger shipping companies from sending boats through, [11:45] because the shipping company owners that I've spoken to said the red line is crew casualties. [11:49] Unfortunately, the Iranians are still firing on ships and they're actually hitting them, [11:53] which is the real problem here. [11:54] So, you know, the Strait has been quasi-open, still under duress from the Iranians. [12:00] It hasn't been completely clear without strikes for any sustained period of time. [12:04] And this really gets back to the Iranians needing cash. [12:07] This is all about them looking to get tolls and fees and get their funds unfrozen, [12:11] because the combination of the war, the sanctions, and the blockade are actually having an impact. [12:15] So, let's look at the