Sen. Tom Cotton, Sen. Ted Cruz, Sen. Chris Murphy

15:25Margaret Brennan:Senator Cotton, we appreciate you in your role in oversight of the Intelligence Committee making the case for the administration. We have more questions and we would love to put them to the administration as well. Thank you very much for your time this morning. Face the Nation will be back in one minute. Stay with us.

15:45Ted Cruz:Another app for inventory. One for CRM. Oh, don't forget accounting. Wait, which login was that?

15:52Chris Murphy:Or you could use Odoo. One fully integrated system that does it all without the hassle.

16:01Chris Murphy:Ditch the app overload. Get everything your business needs on one platform. Try Odoo free today at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com.

16:14Ted Cruz:This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. What if comparing car insurance rates was as easy as putting on your favorite podcast? With Progressive, it is. Just visit the Progressive website to quote with all the coverages you want. You'll see Progressive's direct rate, then their tool will provide options from other companies so you can compare. All you need to do is choose the rate and coverage you like. Quote today at Progressive.com to join the over 28 million drivers who trust Progressive. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Comparison rates not available in all states or situations.

16:47Ted Cruz:Prices vary based on how you buy.

16:52Margaret Brennan:Joining us now is Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy. Good morning. Good morning. You have called for Congress to return to Washington and to vote on whether to try to essentially halt this military action. No war powers resolution has ever overcome a presidential veto. Why do you think you need to take one?

17:11Ted Cruz:Well, nobody in this country is asking for war with Iran. Just like months ago, no one in this country was asking for war with Venezuela. This president is intentionally tanking our economy. He's the most corrupt president in the history of our nation. And Americans want him to focus on the crises here at home. Instead, he is busy getting us involved in quagmires overseas that already are becoming deadly to American soldiers. This is a disaster. It is illegal. And the president is obligated under the Constitution to come to Congress and ask for an authorization of military force. He wouldn't get that authorization if he asked for it.

17:53Ted Cruz:Congress wouldn't vote to give him the permission to do it, but he's obligated to come to Congress.

17:57Margaret Brennan:The administration would argue Venezuela was a limited military operation. They seem they're not explaining to the public yet beyond that Twitter video exactly what the plan is here. But the president has tweeted in a way describing this as an open ended conflict until peace is achieved. You're using the term war. You do consider this to be a war.

18:17Ted Cruz:Oh, of course. We are engaged in regular ongoing military strikes that have that has already killed American soldiers with the goal of regime change. If that is not war, what is? Now, the president has said that the goal is regime change and the goal is to eliminate Iran's missile program and their nuclear program. He is not going to succeed in either of those endeavors. His intelligence agencies have already told him that the most likely outcome is that hardline members of the IRGC replace the current leadership. So we're not going to get a democracy. We're going to get an even worse Iranian leadership.

18:53Ted Cruz:We already know that you can't bomb their nuclear program out of existence. He told us last year that he'd obliterated the program. And then apparently over the course of the last year, they've gotten back to within a week. So we're going to have Americans dying. And the end result is going to be hardline leadership continues in Iran and we don't get rid of their nuclear program. That's a moral and strategic disaster for the country.

19:16Margaret Brennan:Well, you're summarizing the administration's views in perhaps a more succinct way than they have, because we haven't even heard a clear public accounting of the state of their nuclear program. Rubio said they weren't enriching. Whitcoff said something else. But I want to ask you about something in regard to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where you sit. The State Department has issued a worldwide caution alert to all Americans. They have set up a task force that they say they're going to try to figure out how to help the Americans were trapped in the Middle East and throughout the world.

19:48Margaret Brennan:But the U.S. Embassy in Israel said they're closed and they can't help evacuate. If you're an American abroad or a family member, what should you be doing right now?

19:57Ted Cruz:Well, I think you can call your member of Congress or your senator. We will do whatever we can to help. But it's no secret that this administration has no plan for the chaos that is unfolding right now in the Middle East. Those scenes that you showed at the beginning of the program are frightening. Violence is not contained just in the Middle East. It's spilling over into Pakistan and other parts of the world. And it's no secret that our allies in the region, with the exception of the right-wing government in Israel, had begged us not to take this action because they knew that the spillover, which is now looking like regional conflict, was the likely outcome.

20:35Ted Cruz:So again, what are we getting out of this? We're not getting regime change to a democracy. We're not going to eliminate their nuclear program. We are going to have regional war breaking out. It won't be the billionaire kids of Donald Trump and his buddies that die. It's going to be the children of middle class and poor families all across this country who are going to die for a war of choice, a war of vanity, an illegal war.

21:00Margaret Brennan:Well, we are going to hope for more briefings to Congress or engagement with the press to explain some of these things. When we are talking about the Americans, though, around the world right now, there's also from the FBI and Homeland Security concern about cyber vulnerabilities and potential threats to infrastructure. They've put out alerts about this. Given the current situation, Republicans are calling on Democrats to consider stopping the position you've taken, which is to halt some funding to Homeland Security. Do you feel you need to reconsider this position?

21:35Ted Cruz:So the Republicans are saying that because they launched an illegal, disastrous war in Iran, we should give them permission to continue using ICE to murder American citizens, to allow them to get the funding to tear gas schools. No, we need to stand up for the American citizens that ICE is murdering the kids that they are terrorizing. They should stop this illegal war and they should stop ICE from terrorizing our communities. We should demand that they do both things.

22:06Margaret Brennan:Well, the administration would say they have adjusted some of the way they're carrying out policies within DHS. They have not.

22:13Ted Cruz:They have not. I mean, just because some of the world's and the nation's attention has turned away from Minneapolis, us, that doesn't mean that they aren't still brutalizing American citizens. We just discovered last week that they had left a Burmese immigrant for dead five miles from his home, blind and disabled. This brutality is continuing in the country. We can do two things at once. We can demand that ICE stop murdering American citizens, and we can demand that the administration not send our kids to die for a war that we don't need.

22:47Margaret Brennan:So you believe that with the current funding, Homeland Security has that they are able to protect the homeland in an adequate fashion. That's what I hear you saying.

22:55Ted Cruz:Listen, I believe that the administration should make a commitment to legally prosecuting the laws of this nation. I don't have any obligation to fund a Department of Homeland Security that is violating the law every day, just like I don't have any obligation to support this war that is illegal as well.

23:13Margaret Brennan:So three weeks and counting. It sounds like the standoff is not ending.

23:16Ted Cruz:Well, if they agree to start adhering to the law at the Department of Homeland Security, they'll have the votes immediately. But listen, this is what the people want. The people want ICE to start behaving legally and they don't want wars overseas. So I think this is a pretty clear case of Democrats standing with the American people when it comes to domestic crises and international crises.

23:38Margaret Brennan:So back on Iran, if there had been a briefing, if there had been full disclosure of the state of negotiations or an assessment of Iran's nuclear program, would Democrats have been persuadable to support military action? I ask that because the Biden administration initially had reached out to Iran to try to get to a negotiated deal, and they weren't able to get one, in part because they weren't willing to lift sanctions off of the IRGC. So, in other words, are we just in a place where military conflict or confrontation was inevitable and it just happened to land on Donald Trump's watch?

24:20Ted Cruz:No, Donald Trump precipitated this crisis, right? He inherited a nuclear agreement that was working, that had put Iran more than a year away from a nuclear weapon. The JCPOA. The JCPOA. Against the advice of his advisors, he tossed that agreement out, which brought us to this moment.

24:37Margaret Brennan:It would have expired by now.

24:38Ted Cruz:And there, right, but I think Iran would have certainly been willing to extend those provisions if we were still in the agreement. But second, there is no history, there is no experience that shows an air campaign alone will result in positive regime change. In fact, there's not a single example of it in the entirety of American history. An air campaign without at least the threat of a ground invasion, which the administration is ruling out, never results in a democratic rebirth in an authoritarian country. So the plan they have laid out, sustained airstrikes without a ground invasion, is destined to fail.

25:15Ted Cruz:All that will happen at the end of this, most likely, listen, I'm rooting for democracy in Iran, but the most likely outcome here is that hardliners take over the government. They restart their missile program. They restart their nuclear program. And we're just right back at bombing them again and putting American lives and regional lives at risk again in a year or two.

25:33Margaret Brennan:All right. Senator Murphy, thank you for your time this morning.

25:37Ted Cruz:Appreciate it.

25:37Margaret Brennan:And we'll be right back with a lot more Face the Nation. Stay with us.

25:42Ted Cruz:I'm one of those people who will happily eat steak and eggs any time of the day. Breakfast, dinner. It's technically midnight, but I'm still hungry. Doesn't matter. There's just something unbeatable about a good steak hitting a hot pan. That immediate sizzle. The smell filling the kitchen. And then topping it with a fried egg where the yolk is deep yellow and just barely runny. Unreal. Pure protein heaven. That's also why I love having Omaha Steaks on hand. The steaks are incredibly tender, super flavorful, and cook evenly. Whether I'm searing them on the stovetop or throwing them on the grill, it's that steakhouse quality bite at home.

26:13Ted Cruz:Omaha Steaks has everything from their fan-favorite filet mignon, yes, the USDA-certified tender one, to burgers, chicken, pork, seafood, and even fully-cooked comfort meals like beef pot roast or meat-lover's lasagna for nights when you still want high protein but zero effort. Get 50 % off the world's best everyday protein. Go to omahasteaks.com for 50 % off site-wide during their semi-annual sale. And for an extra$35 off, use promo code T-Bone at checkout. That's 50 % off at OmahaSteaks.com. And an extra$35 off with promo code T-Bone at checkout. Terms apply. See site for details.

26:45Margaret Brennan:Where you learn matters. At Monmouth University, students study on a vibrant coastal campus with direct access to research, culture, and industry. From classrooms to competition, from creativity to career prep, Monmouth offers a vantage point shaped by location and purpose. Blending a personalized learning experience with Division I pride and a rising national profile. Bigger thinking, more inspired. You amplified. Amplify your future at Monmouth University. Learn more at monmouth.edu forward slash amplified. Are you really buying a car online on AutoTrader right now? Really? I can get super specific with dealer listings and see cars based on my budget.

27:23Margaret Brennan:You can really have it delivered. Or pick it up.

27:25Chris Murphy:Mommy, look! I think your kid is walking up the slide. Really?

27:29Margaret Brennan:AutoTrader. Buy your car online. Really?

27:36Margaret Brennan:We're joined now by Ohio Republican Congressman Mike Turner. Congressman, you are on the Armed Services Committee. I know you've been in contact with the administration to understand what is going on. The ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mark Warner, was briefed by Secretary Rubio, and he is calling this, Warner is, a war of choice. He said there was no evidence of imminent harm to Americans or an imminent threat to our country. Were you informed of a specific and imminent threat to the United States?

28:09Tom Cotton:Well, this issue of imminent is really this fallacy of really that comes from the Obama administration's nuclear weapons, nuclear enrichment negotiations, where the Obama administration, the JCPOA, They set up this fallacy that we were just going to set up cameras and watch Iran do this nuclear enrichment until they got all the way to a nuclear weapon. And then they were going to kick to the next administration whether or not there was going to be a military conflict, which is what we've come down to.

28:41Margaret Brennan:It was a pretty detailed international accord with stages. There were parts at sunset.

28:45Tom Cotton:But this concept of imminent, I mean, as we just saw from the international.

28:49Margaret Brennan:It's not even apart from imminent threat to justify U.S. military force.

28:53Tom Cotton:No, but it's not because it goes to really this inherent policy that we see that has a thread that's come through the Democrat side that we still see from the Democratic Obama administration's policies of what is imminent. Eminent here really is that the Iranian regime continues to be a sponsor of terrorism and amassing of missiles and inventory where they have declared themselves an enemy of the United States and of our allies. where they've committed themselves to nuclear enrichment and refused to declare themselves as not pursuing a nuclear weapon. They said they weren't. Well, actually, they have not.

29:42Tom Cotton:As we have seen, even just last year, we had the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency saying that they were just mere months away from being able to have several nuclear warheads. So this imminent issue is one where people want to have them be with their hand almost on the button to something that has been completely assembled. In this instance, the administration has declared that they had information, an imminent aspect of that Iran was a threat both to us and to Israel, our ally, and had the opportunity to take an action to eliminate that threat. That's important. We don't have to wait.

30:30Margaret Brennan:Sorry, which threat? We don't have to wait. Because the president said the nuclear threat was obliterated. No, no.

30:35Tom Cotton:He said that at those sites that we had taken action to eliminate, where there are nuclear enrichment sites, that we had obliterated those sites. But they had continued to amass missile technology and missile inventory. They had continued, as had been declared, to pursue their intention of nuclear enrichment. They had continued.

31:00Margaret Brennan:Rubio said they weren't enriching.

31:01Tom Cotton:They had continued their intention to pursue nuclear enrichment. They had said and declared that they were going to do that. Their programs had not been completely abolished and their intention had not been abolished. They remained a threat. And the fact that we had the ability to intervene, that eminence is incredibly important. This standard of what is imminent. I mean, you.

31:28Margaret Brennan:Well, people want to know why. Why now? That's why. Why? I'm asking.

31:31Tom Cotton:Because the opportunity is there to eliminate an imminent threat that is a imminent threat to the United States and our operations and in the area and our ally.

31:41Margaret Brennan:I want to ask you about another standoff between the Pentagon and Anthropic, which is the only AI company whose products are used in classified systems for things like Target ID, Intel assessments and battlefield simulations. This morning, the Wall Street Journal is reporting that their AI was in fact used in these operations, even though Secretary Hegseth and Trump ordered it to be cut off due to this contractual dispute over the use of the model. Anthropics CEO told CBS in an exclusive interview that it is up to Congress to act here, to really create clarity as to how AI can be used. It's clearly essential if the Pentagon is still using it in this operation.

32:23Margaret Brennan:Will Congress act here?

32:25Tom Cotton:I mean, this is something that they're going to have to deal with and come to Congress before. This is obviously in this in this particular circumstances, I'm unaware of this particular issue. This is going to have to be something that is going to have to be dealt with in more detail than than obviously an interview on CBS.

32:43Margaret Brennan:Can I ask you in that targeting of the Supreme Leader that Secretary that Senator Cotton talked about? Did the U.S. carry out that strike?

32:52Tom Cotton:Well, I think this is very important. The what's what's very clear here, and I think this is important to discuss, you know, the president of the United States indicated that we were targeting the military, military infrastructure and and not the regime and not regime change. And yesterday when I had the opportunity to talk to Secretary Rubio, I asked that question and he was very clear in the answer that we did not target Khomeini and we were not targeting the leadership in Iran. So the aspect of that the United States was not undertaking regime change is very important. Our aspect of what the president of the United States has undertaken was this imminent threat that he described in his announcement.

33:43Tom Cotton:And that, I think, his response and his statement to the United States is an important aspect.

33:51Margaret Brennan:But just to be clear, you're not saying that Israel carried out that strike without the U.S. permission, green lighting, buy-in?

33:59Tom Cotton:You know, the fact that Khomeini has been a murderous authoritarian who has killed an unbelievable number of Israelis, they have absolutely, I think, a strong basis in which to do so. I think it certainly shows that if you're a murderous authoritarian and you are at risk, and it's better to be a friend of the United States than a murderous authoritarian. You know, it's also interesting that Putin just said that he lost a friend in losing Khomeini. And we certainly didn't see Khomeini as a friend.

34:40Margaret Brennan:We will leave it there. Congressman Turner, we'll be back in a moment with more Face the Nation. We go now to Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, who joins us from Austin. Good morning to you, Senator. I'm glad we got your audio working. You are from Houston, I believe, this morning.

34:55Chris Murphy:I am. Good morning, Margaret.

34:57Margaret Brennan:Good morning. I wanted to ask you about Austin, though, because there are reports of three people dead, more than a dozen injured following a mass shooting in that city. The FBI is saying this morning that their joint terrorism task force has joined the investigation. Is there any nexus to terrorism or anything that is going on in regard to the worldwide caution at this moment?

35:24Chris Murphy:We don't know for sure. There are some early reports that this shooting may be connected to terrorism. But we need to follow the evidence and see in particular what motivated the shooting. We are certainly, Heidi and I, are praying for those who were wounded and the families of those who were killed. But at this point, we don't know what the evidence will show in terms of whether this was an act of terrorism.

35:47Margaret Brennan:We'll continue to follow those early reports. But Senator, just looking at the global environment right now, CENTCOM announced three Americans were killed and five seriously wounded in this operation. President Trump and Vice President Vance campaigned on not getting America involved in new wars. What do you say to Americans this morning who are asking why we are in this conflict now?

36:14Chris Murphy:President Trump's decision to launch this decisive action against Iran is the single most important decision of his presidency. I think he laid out powerfully and effectively why he is taking this action. He is taking this action because the government of Iran is a profound and malign influence. They have been the leading state sponsor of terrorism for 47 years. They have over that time killed nearly 1 ,000 Americans. They provide more than 90 % of the funding for Hamas. They provide more than 90 % of the funding for Hezbollah. The Iranian Ayatollah was, until yesterday, actively trying to murder the president of the United States, Donald J.

37:03Chris Murphy:Trump. I spent the entire day with President Trump on Friday, right before he launched these attacks. He and I discussed this at length on Friday. My counsel to him was that the Iranian regime has never been weaker, that it was teetering, and now was the time. My advice was, do not miss this opportunity. I think the president has acted boldly. He's acted decisively and Iran no longer being led by a theocratic, murderous dictator. That makes America much, much safer.

37:42Margaret Brennan:Senator, you are not going to find a lot of people in any way defending the Supreme Leader. That is for sure. However, putting Americans in harm's way is what I'm pressing you on here. Did the president explain to you why he called off active diplomacy? Because at the very same time he was on that plane, the vice president of the United States was talking to the Omani mediator who was trying to get a deal and told us that they were close to one. Why not choose diplomacy?

38:13Chris Murphy:Because the diplomacy was an abject failure. year. The Iranians approached the diplomacy with arrogance, which with absolute hubris, they said they would not stop enriching. No matter what, they were going to continue to enrich uranium. They would not discuss zero enrichment. They claimed a right to enrich uranium in underground bunkers with no supervision. As President Trump said on Friday when he was with me in Texas, his line was zero enrichments and the Iranians refused to discuss it. They also refused to discuss their proxies. They refused to discuss Hamas and Hezbollah and the Houthis. And President Trump understood that the Iranian, quote, negotiation was just a stall tactic and that the only response, my advice to him, I said, there's only one deal you should accept.

39:08And it's the deal that you offered Maduro, which is if you want to leave and flee the country, you can do so.

39:15Chris Murphy:Anything else is unacceptable. And Khamenei made his choice.

39:20Margaret Brennan:Well, there's disputes there in terms of your characterization of what was actually on the table and what the administration had indicated it was willing to accept in terms of allowing enrichment for medical purposes and the like. But that's now obviously done.

39:36Chris Murphy:So, Margaret, what I just told you is almost word for word what Secretary of State Marco Rubio told me yesterday.

39:45Margaret Brennan:Can you tell us now if you believe that there was an ongoing nuclear weapons program? One of the top arms control experts out there, David Albright, has written, there should be an immediate priority on rapid response operations to secure Iran's nuclear stockpiles right now. Can you assure the public that it will be secured? And if so, who is doing it if there are no Israeli or U.S. forces on the ground?

40:14Chris Murphy:So there is no doubt that a year ago, Iran had an active and ongoing nuclear weapons program. We took out the vast majority of that at the end of the 12-day war. That U.S.

40:25Margaret Brennan:intelligence assessment was not made public, if that is what was briefed to you.

40:29Chris Murphy:We took out, we launched targeted bombs at the end of the 12-day war, where we dropped the equivalent of about a third of a nuclear weapon on those underground facilities, facilities like Fordow, which is built into the base of a mountain. The bunker buster bombs we used, Israel doesn't have those bombs, no other country has those bombs. We took them out last year. The Iranians were still hell bent on rebuilding them. And one of the things we are doing right now is taking out their missiles, in particular, the Southern Missile Belt. Right now, Iran is building roughly 100 missiles a month. They are actively building missiles to threaten their neighbors.

41:13Chris Murphy:They're firing some of them right now at their neighbors, at our allies. They're illustrating powerfully, they're attacking They're making virtually every Arab neighbor that surrounds them, they are firing missiles that it's almost like they want to illustrate to the world just how maligned they are.

41:29Margaret Brennan:But in terms of containing the risk, who's securing the nuclear material that you say still exists within Iran? Who's doing that?

41:37Chris Murphy:Look, the quantity of nuclear material, I didn't say anything one way or another on that. What I said is they were building nuclear weapons a year ago and our bombing took that out. They also had an ongoing desire to rebuild them. I don't have present day intelligence on what progress they had made towards rebuilding nuclear weapons since we bombed their facilities. I have no indication that they were anywhere close to getting nuclear weapons because our bombing was devastating. And Margaret, that's one of the reasons I urged President Trump, Now is the time. You know, dictatorships survive because they're perceived as invulnerable.

42:19Chris Murphy:And in this instance, Iran decisively lost the 12 day war that weakened the regime and set up what the president is doing now.

42:28Margaret Brennan:Senator Ted Cruz, we have to leave it there for today. Thank you for joining us. We'll be right back with a lot more Face the Nation. Stay with us.

42:36Ted Cruz:With Moustache, a taco on one hand and ordering a ride in the other means you're stacking cash back. With Venmo Stash, get up to 5 % cash back when you pick a bundle of your favorite brands. Earn more cash when you do more with Stash. Venmo Stash terms and exclusions apply. Max$100 cash back per month. See terms at Venmo.me slash stashterms. Tax Act can think of a million things more fun than filing taxes. Tax Act is going to name some now. Sitting in traffic. Folding a fitted bed sheet. Listening to your co-worker talk about his fantasy team. Digging a hole. Digging an even larger hole next to that original hole.

43:12Ted Cruz:Unfortunately, TaxAct's filing software can't make taxes fun. But TaxAct can help you get them done. TaxAct, let's get them over with.

43:23Margaret Brennan:We're joined now by Iran policy analyst Kareem Sajipour, who is with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, as well as former CENTCOM commander and CBS News contributor, retired General Frank McKenzie, who joins us from Tampa this morning. It's good to have the both of you here. This is such a dynamic situation right now. Karim, I want to start with you. Apparently, President Trump has told The Atlantic that he's willing to talk to the new leadership of Iran. Who is the new leadership of Iran?

43:51Ted Cruz:I don't think that's even clear inside Tehran who is the new leadership. You know, this is one of the most unpopular regimes in the world. And I'm skeptical that there's going to be anyone who is palatable for both the senior clergy, the Revolutionary Guards, and 90 million Iranians. There's probably no government in the world with a greater gap between its government and its people than Iran. So I'm skeptical there's going to be any single figure who can immediately fill the enormous void of Ayatollah Khamenei.

44:24Margaret Brennan:General McKenzie, what Karim is sketching out here sounds like chaos. It sounds like the potential setting for civil war. Is that how you would assess what we might be seeing come next?

44:36Ted Cruz:I think we're still in the early stages of this campaign. There are several days of continued strikes ahead of us from Central Command and from Israel to reduce the Iranian ability to volley fire rockets at us. We'll see how that progresses in the next few days. The leadership targets have clearly had an effect, and I believe the loss of Iranian an effective national level of command and control is going to have a pernicious effect on their ability to wage this war. As to what might follow, whether it's civil war, a fractured state, don't know. Actually, for me, it's hard to see how it could be worse than what we had before.

45:13Margaret Brennan:General, you know this morning we have CENTCOM acknowledging at least three American deaths, five seriously wounded. These are just the opening hours. But it does appear that the situation is only escalating. What should the American people be prepared for?

45:33Ted Cruz:The American people should be prepared for several more days of exchanges of long range, long range rockets. We're going to continue to strike them with our aircraft, with our T-LAMs, our Tomahawk land attack missiles. And the essential calculus over the next 72 to 96 hours, Margaret, is going to be whether or not we can reduce the Iranian ability to generate volleys, and by volleys I mean groups of missiles that are fired at our bases in the region. It's hard for them to generate a lot of missiles at Israel because of the range and just for various reasons. But what we want to do is we don't want them to let them fire large numbers of rockets at Al-Yadid Air Base, for example, Al-Dawfra Air Base, or the cities of our friends in the region, which they have done indiscriminately.

46:14Ted Cruz:So that's going to be a key thing to watch over the next 72 to 96 hours. CENTCOM has planned for this for years. We're probably going to take more casualties. I think the president's comments actually were spot on when he warned the American people that this wasn't going to be a cakewalk. I think he knows that. But I think we're probably going to have more casualties before this is over. I hope we can certainly minimize those. And I know that our commanders in the region are doing everything they can to keep those numbers down.

46:42Margaret Brennan:We have seen already some civilian casualties in some of those Gulf states who are taking the incoming. Kareem, the president, you've heard all of our Republican guests say that the president laid this out very clearly. What I heard that eight minute video was a recitation of 50 years of Iran's malicious activities, everything from the bombing of the Marine barracks in 1983 by Hezbollah, the taking over the embassy, all sorts of different things. He even linked the attack on the naval destroyer in Yemen to Iran, even though it's often attributed to al-Qaeda. It was just sort of an argument, Iran is bad.

47:22Margaret Brennan:We haven't necessarily gotten the detail on the immediate threat to the United States. You've been watching this so closely. When the president said at the end of his video that the Iranian people should rise up, is there any chance that the Iranian people can do that?

47:36Ted Cruz:That is a possibility, Margaret. As I said, this is an incredibly unpopular regime. I think they probably have at best 15 support. At the moment, the Iranian people are spectators, not yet participants. President Trump also implored them to initially stay home for the next few days as it's unsafe, and then to seize their institutions. And so I think people are watching very carefully to see if there are any splits within the regime. But, you know, they say about dictatorships that they're most murderous at the beginning of the reign and at the end of the reign. And we saw this regime massacre potentially tens of thousands of people last month.

48:18Ted Cruz:And the question is whether they still have that coercive and cohesive security forces to continue to do the same.

48:24Margaret Brennan:You know, we're listening there and seeing some audio from celebrations among some people at the news of the Ayatollah's death. You have written, and I thought this was pretty eloquent, Ayatollah Khamenei lived by death to America and death to Israel. He died by death from America and Israel. What does this mean for the Islamic Republic to have him gone?

48:48Ted Cruz:He was the longest serving dictator in the world. For four decades, he reigned over Iran. For most Iranians, three quarters of whom were born after the 1979 revolution, he was the only ruler they ever knew. And I think this is a society, I would describe it as perhaps the most secular society in the Muslim Middle East, perhaps the most pro-American society in the Middle East. And people, Iranians recognize they'll never fulfill their enormous potential as a nation so long as the ethos of their government is death to America and death to Israel. And so there's an enormous demand for a government which is perhaps not democratic, but puts national interest before revolutionary ideology.

49:30Margaret Brennan:General McKenzie, very quickly, have you heard an end game? How does America declare victory here?

49:36Ted Cruz:Well, first of all, Margaret, we need to have an end game in view, but we shouldn't be thinking about an off-ramp right now. We need to think about continuing to impose our will on the enemy and continuing this fight at a very high level. Yes, there's an end game. And for me, at least, an end game would be either you get a regime that you can negotiate with, a new regime. that may be unlikely, but our history of predicting regime changes in the Middle East of totalitarian states is uniformly poor. The other alternative is you get some kind of successor state that you might be able to cut a deal with while it may be unpalatable in some dimensions.

50:09Ted Cruz:Nonetheless, you may get a regime that's going to talk to you about the nuclear program or the ballistic missile program. So I think there is an end state in view.

50:17Margaret Brennan:We will watch for it. General McKenzie, Kareem, thank you for your time. And thank you all for watching. Until next week, and it's been a busy one. For Face the Nation, I'm Margaret Brennan. Today's guests were Senate Intelligence Chairman, Arkansas Republican Senator Tom Cotton, Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz, Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut, Ohio Republican Congressman Mike Turner, former CENTCOM Commander, retired General Frank McKenzie, and analyst Kareem Sajjapur. The senior executive producer of Face the Nation is Mary Hager, and the executive producer is Anne Hsu. This broadcast was directed by Shelley Schwartz.

50:56Margaret Brennan:Face the Nation originates from CBS News in Washington. For more, we're online at facethenation.com and on YouTube. We're also rebroadcast on our CBS News 24-7 streaming network at 12.30 on Sundays, and we're available through our apps, CBS News and Paramount+. Rinse knows that greatness takes time, but so does laundry.

51:19Ted Cruz:So Rinse will take your laundry and hand deliver it to your door expertly cleaned. And you can take the time pursuing your passions. Time once spent sorting and waiting, folding and queuing,

51:29Margaret Brennan:now spent challenging and innovating and pushing your way to greatness. So pick up the Irish flute or those calligraphy pens or that daunting Beef Wellington recipe card and leave the laundry to us. Rinse. It's time to be great.

52:12Ted Cruz:Now streaming on Paramount+.