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Speaker 2: We head to DC. Bloomberg News Supreme Court reporter Greg
Speaker 2: Store was listening to President Trump as well. He is
Speaker 2: in the Bloomberg News bureau in the nation's capital. Greg,
Speaker 2: it's a big day. We kind of expected this outcome,
Speaker 2: but I don't know that we expected the decision today.
Speaker 2: But exactly what was the decision and the significance of
Speaker 2: it walk us through it.
Speaker 3: So the significance is that the main the pillar of
Speaker 3: the tariffs that the president has been imposing over the
Speaker 3: last year does not give him teriff authority. The Supreme
Speaker 3: Court said it knocked out more than half of the
Speaker 3: tariffs that Donald Trump has imposed since returning to office.
Speaker 3: The Supreme Court said that statute, which gives the president
Speaker 3: certain powers during economic emergencies, does not include the tariff power,
Speaker 3: and that was sort of the fundamental dividing point that
Speaker 3: thessending justices said, Yes, it does. Now, as the President suggested,
Speaker 3: there are other tariff authorities. He's going to try to
Speaker 3: invoke those as much as he can, but those do
Speaker 3: tend to be more cumbersome, more limited, and so we'll
Speaker 3: see just how much he's able to replace the tariffs
Speaker 3: that have been struck down.
Speaker 4: Where does this go next? Is this ever coming back
Speaker 4: to the Supreme Court or are the next steps here
Speaker 4: really going just back to lower courts?
Speaker 3: It's really give me the lower courts. There will be
Speaker 3: big fights over refunds. In that press conference, the President
Speaker 3: said he expects that to be litigated over a matter
Speaker 3: of years. It's not yet clear what argument the administration
Speaker 3: has against refunds for the one hundred and seventy billion
Speaker 3: dollars that have been paid in these tariffs under this law,
Speaker 3: but it sounds like they are prepared to at least
Speaker 3: make some of them. So that will be a big fight,
Speaker 3: and then we may well have future fights over these
Speaker 3: other laws, including the one that the President said he
Speaker 3: is going to use to impose that ten percent global tariff.
Speaker 3: That's a more limited authority that is supposed to extend
Speaker 3: only for one hundred and fifty days. There may be
Speaker 3: questions about the exact parameters of what Donald Trump can
Speaker 3: do under that law.
Speaker 2: I am curious to Greg about what the President said
Speaker 2: about foreign influence of the Supreme Court, and he said,
Speaker 2: in my opinion, the court has been swayed. What is
Speaker 2: your read on that and what is he maybe insinuating.
Speaker 3: It's a bit of a head scratcher, you know. The President,
Speaker 3: of course has always said that these tariffs are paid
Speaker 3: by foreign countries, not by US importers. Well, the US
Speaker 3: importers have made very clear ensuing over these things, that
Speaker 3: they're the ones who are paying for them, and so
Speaker 3: that is perhaps what he's alluding to there. You know,
Speaker 3: certainly no evidence of that that I've seen in the
Speaker 3: opinion that it was anything other than their interpretation of
Speaker 3: what the law and the Constitution require.
Speaker 4: I'm wondering, you know, this decision, the six to three decision,
Speaker 4: what kind of clarity does it give us about just
Speaker 4: how much power the executive branch has, Because of course,
Speaker 4: right after the decision, we have Trump coming out and saying,
Speaker 4: you know, floating another ten percent global tariff.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well so kind of two halves to the answer.
Speaker 3: One half is the president is right, he has other authorities.
Speaker 3: And the Supreme Court didn't say you couldn't put in
Speaker 3: place any tariffs at all. You just can't do it
Speaker 3: using this law that the president has used so far
Speaker 3: up until now to basically impost tariffs for any reason
Speaker 3: at all that he wants. So in that sense it's narrow.
Speaker 3: But the Court also, in a section that was joined
Speaker 3: by two Trump appointees Neil Gorsich, Amy Cony Barrett, and
Speaker 3: also the Chief Justice John Roberts, you know, talked about
Speaker 3: Congress's terrorf authority, Congress's taxing authority and said that unless
Speaker 3: a stat unless Congress has clearly handed over that power
Speaker 3: to the president, we're not just going to assume that
Speaker 3: the president can do something. There are actual limits to
Speaker 3: what he can do. And the Court invoked some of
Speaker 3: the opinions that used to roll back to trim to
Speaker 3: knock out some of Joe Biden's initiatives. So the Court
Speaker 3: at least, you know, three Republican appointed members of the
Speaker 3: Court as well as the liberals, we're trying to send
Speaker 3: the message that hey, we are putting some real limits
Speaker 3: on what this president like all presidents can do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I love that question from Emily and what
Speaker 2: you just said, Greg, because I do think about, you
Speaker 2: know what the president. You know, we've talked so much
Speaker 2: about the expansion of the executive branch and of presidential
Speaker 2: powers in this second term of a Trump white House,
Speaker 2: and it does seem like this many would say, can
Speaker 2: do just about anything. Right. We've seen a Congress that's
Speaker 2: very quiet, a Republican led Congress. But having said that,
Speaker 2: how do you read the tea leaves on a Supreme
Speaker 2: Court that has been seen to be very sympathetic and
Speaker 2: maybe even political, some would say to President Trump specifically
Speaker 2: and his policies to make this ruling or did they
Speaker 2: not really have any choice based on it was pretty
Speaker 2: black and white in terms of the law.
Speaker 3: Well, certainly important to emphasize, as you alluded to, that
Speaker 3: over the past year, the Supreme Court has let Donald
Speaker 3: Trump do an awful lot of things that he wanted
Speaker 3: to do, most of them only on a temporary basis,
Speaker 3: letting him fire people, letting him not spend money, letting
Speaker 3: him in immigration programs. And you know, that's still a
Speaker 3: reality that the Trump that the court is is being
Speaker 3: pretty deferential to Donald Trump in a lot of areas,
Speaker 3: but these were totally different legal questions. As I said,
Speaker 3: the Constitution says the tariff power is congresses, and the
Speaker 3: Court was looking at this case as a separation of
Speaker 3: powers case, unlike the other ones.
Speaker 1: That it had been dealing with.
Speaker 3: And this is a place where from the Court's perspective,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump just went too far.
Speaker 2: Stay with us more from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming
Speaker 2: up after this.
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Speaker 2: We're going to stay with this story, and we touched
Speaker 2: on some of this, certainly from the press conference with
Speaker 2: the President there at the White House, but also with
Speaker 2: Greg and we want to get into maybe a little
Speaker 2: bit more of what we are hearing from that press conference.
Speaker 2: After that press conference, what's going on inside the White House.
Speaker 2: And for that we want to get to Bloomberg News
Speaker 2: White House correspondent Kate Sullivan, who just ran to the
Speaker 2: microphone there on the north lawn of the White House.
Speaker 2: Kate Good to have you or you were in the
Speaker 2: room tell us a little bit about what that felt
Speaker 2: like on what is certainly got to be I think
Speaker 2: safe to say the president's got to be feeling a
Speaker 2: big defeat with what is a major policy of his
Speaker 2: second term here in the White House.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, So, we just wrapped that press conference and we
Speaker 5: saw a very defiant Trump at the podium. You know,
Speaker 5: there's a lot to unpack from that press conference, but
Speaker 5: some of the top lines are the President is going
Speaker 5: said that he would be signing new orders to impose
Speaker 5: tariffs to replace some of these tariffs. He talked about
Speaker 5: using Section one twenty two to impose a ten percent
Speaker 5: across the board tariff. Also talked about Section three oho one,
Speaker 5: which applies to unfair trade practices. I asked the President
Speaker 5: about whether this meant that he would now be asking
Speaker 5: Congress to take additional action when it comes to tariffs,
Speaker 5: and if he'd spoken to Leader thun about this. I
Speaker 5: thought it was really interesting. He said, I don't need to.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to do that because I don't need to.
Speaker 5: I felt like the top line from the President was
Speaker 5: We're still going to have tariffs, but they're just going
Speaker 5: to look a bit different, and I thought it was interesting.
Speaker 5: He talked a lot about certainty. He kept repeating the
Speaker 5: worst certainty, saying that for a very long time, we
Speaker 5: were waiting to see how this decision was going to
Speaker 5: play out, what was going to happen, and we were
Speaker 5: living in sort of a limbo period. The White House was,
Speaker 5: And now at least they know what has happened. They
Speaker 5: have some certainty, and they think that that should inspire
Speaker 5: some confidence and really sort of now dictates how they're
Speaker 5: going to move.
Speaker 4: Forward with this when Trump does move forward. There's a
Speaker 4: great piece on the Bloomberg terminal right now, the quick
Speaker 4: take about just all of Trump's legal options that he
Speaker 4: has after the Supreme Court said his tariffs are illegal.
Speaker 4: What will those look like in practice? Are the tariffs
Speaker 4: that Trump would potentially introduce under these new laws going
Speaker 4: to be as expansive of as what we had seen
Speaker 4: last year post Liberation Day.
Speaker 5: There were several reporters in the room who were I'm
Speaker 5: to press for more specifics on what exactly this would
Speaker 5: look like, what exactly the rates would be. The President
Speaker 5: kept saying, I can do whatever I want, So we
Speaker 5: don't have those specifics yet.
Speaker 4: We are.
Speaker 5: You know, obviously this has just happened. The White House
Speaker 5: is still responding to this. We heard a lot of
Speaker 5: broad top lines from the President today about how he's
Speaker 5: feeling about it, what he's going to do. But there
Speaker 5: are still a lot of questions. And he was asked,
Speaker 5: for example, about the refunds, whether the administration now needs
Speaker 5: to refund all the billions of dollars in revenue that
Speaker 5: they've collected from the tariffs, and he said the court didn't.
Speaker 2: Weigh in on that.
Speaker 5: He sounded frustrated that they did not weigh in on
Speaker 5: that particular part, and so we still don't know. He
Speaker 5: said that would be playing out in courts, and like
Speaker 5: a lot of this, I think this is still going
Speaker 5: There's still a lot of unresolved questions, and this is
Speaker 5: still going to be playing out for quite some time.
Speaker 2: You know, Kate, looking at Section three oh one and
Speaker 2: two thirty two. Two thirty two is national security reasons
Speaker 2: for maybe imposing tariffs. Three oh one seems to give
Speaker 2: the Section three oh one seems to give the president
Speaker 2: a lot of leeway to impose tariffs. I mean, it
Speaker 2: sounds like he still has a lot of levers that
Speaker 2: he can pull if he deems that it's important for
Speaker 2: the United States national security or otherwise.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I think national security.
Speaker 2: Has been all within the laws. I guess what I
Speaker 2: would say, all within the law, all.
Speaker 5: Within the law. Yes, the President has been talking about
Speaker 5: how tariffs are critical to national security. That's been a
Speaker 5: key part of his argument. I think we still have
Speaker 5: to see, you know, how this is going to play out,
Speaker 5: what he's going to do next. But definitely, you know,
Speaker 5: I think another part of this is is how is
Speaker 5: this going to affect the trade deals that have already
Speaker 5: been struck. He talked about that briefly in the press
Speaker 5: briefing room today, saying that some of them are going
Speaker 5: to have to be reopen, some of them are going
Speaker 5: to have to be renegotiated, but that a lot of
Speaker 5: them can still stand. He was asked specifically about India.
Speaker 5: He said, India is the same, that will stay the same.
Speaker 5: But I think they're are still a lot of questions
Speaker 5: about how exactly he's going to use, you know, when
Speaker 5: it comes to these particular sections that he that he
Speaker 5: laid out, how that's going to be implemented in practice.
Speaker 1: You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch
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Speaker 2: So we want to see what our next guest has
Speaker 2: to say about all of this. Alucinola is head of
Speaker 2: US Economic Research at Fitch Ratings. He's responsible for coverage
Speaker 2: of US economics and then includes the labor market, consumer spending, inflation, demographics,
Speaker 2: and so much more.
Speaker 6: He joins us.
Speaker 2: Here in studio, OLU, great to have you here with
Speaker 2: Emily and myself. What matters the most to you as
Speaker 2: someone who keeps a watch in the US economy? Is
Speaker 2: it that Supreme Court ruling and pushed back on Presidents
Speaker 2: Trump's tariffs, who he has said he's going to find
Speaker 2: other ways to do this. Or is it all the
Speaker 2: economic growth? Kind of the mixed messaging maybe to some
Speaker 2: extent on inflation a little bit hotter than we thought
Speaker 2: and growth a little bit weaker.
Speaker 6: Yeah, thanks, thanks Karen for having me. It's good to
Speaker 6: be back. I think if you asked me this question
Speaker 6: at ten am, obviously I would have said, yeah, it's
Speaker 6: the GDP print, the inflation print, particularly the inflation print
Speaker 6: just because it was quite hot. But you know, fast
Speaker 6: forward the last couple of hours, Clearly the Supreme Court
Speaker 6: decision is very, very important. The uncertainty that he brings
Speaker 6: to the table, you can't run away from it. In
Speaker 6: as much as we thought tariff risks, tariff related risks
Speaker 6: were receding, it's come right back. So, yes, the President
Speaker 6: has imposed the ten percent blanket. I still have to
Speaker 6: figure out if that ten percent is truly a blanket
Speaker 6: or are we going to exam pharmaceuticals? Are we going
Speaker 6: to exam oil and gas? Which sounds to me like
Speaker 6: what they will do, But I don't know at the moment.
Speaker 6: I don't think it's clear. So when we see that
Speaker 6: execut to that executive order, we will find out.
Speaker 4: You have in your notes that you're calling today Liberation
Speaker 4: Day two point zero. Of course we had Liberation Day
Speaker 4: last year. It was a big market moving day as well.
Speaker 4: You link this though, to optimism. Are you still optimistic
Speaker 4: that this is going to be good for the US economy,
Speaker 4: particularly in light of Trump floating you know, ten percent?
Speaker 6: Now, I do think that you know competitive, I would
Speaker 6: call this echoes of liberation Day, right, not quite seismic
Speaker 6: as Liberation Day was, and the markets are not downward
Speaker 6: ten percent of which.
Speaker 2: We've been talking about, feels kind of telling yes, yeah,
Speaker 2: But I do think that to the extent that we
Speaker 2: have the ten percent, if the administration follows through with
Speaker 2: all of the exemptions, it's going to be fine because
Speaker 2: effectively it will be lower than what we had before.
Speaker 6: If it's a blanket, that means collections will be slightly higher.
Speaker 6: So that is I don't think most companies have planned
Speaker 6: for that in terms of all of a sudden they
Speaker 6: have to pay more in tariffs, right, So I think
Speaker 6: that would bring some level of uncertainty. The other point
Speaker 6: is it's just for one hundred and fifty days. What
Speaker 6: are they going to replace it with. It's most likely
Speaker 6: going to be more sector focused, So your sector focus,
Speaker 6: by nature, would affect some countries a lot more than others,
Speaker 6: So that brings a lot more on certainty. It's probably
Speaker 6: going to affect pricing decisions, capex decisions, and the likes.
Speaker 6: I don't think that's what the economy needs at the moment,
Speaker 6: because this is an economy where if the government gets
Speaker 6: out of the way, the tailwinds are actually quite strong,
Speaker 6: So you have to now think this may be a
Speaker 6: little bit negative because the economy on its own was
Speaker 6: relatively resilient.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to go into that. I also just
Speaker 2: want to mention that the President did threat in fifteen
Speaker 2: to thirty percent auto tariffs. Now I'm looking at forward
Speaker 2: is up about one point two percent, and I think
Speaker 2: GM is it'll change, so it's not like it's actually
Speaker 2: up about one third of one percent. Yeah, those those tailwinds,
Speaker 2: if you will, whether it's higher tax refunds we get
Speaker 2: because of tax cuts, corporate tax cuts that could lead
Speaker 2: to spending. I mean, there's a lot of stuff that
Speaker 2: could be very stimulative. So that brings us to that
Speaker 2: hotter inflation print, which you in your notes kind of
Speaker 2: says it's our reality check, Like we have to kind
Speaker 2: of own up that. As we've heard from the Fed
Speaker 2: or J. Powell, right, inflationary pressures are still a thing.
Speaker 6: They are still a thing.
Speaker 2: It could even maybe get worse, and definitely.
Speaker 6: Could get worse. I think now with this renewed on certainty,
Speaker 6: potentially could get worse. I think there's this wedge between
Speaker 6: CPI and PC At the moment the CPI print, we
Speaker 6: got a few weeks ago two twenty a half percent,
Speaker 6: two point four percent. Lots of people jumping up and
Speaker 6: down saying, hey, clearly this inflationary. But with this reality check,
Speaker 6: inflation is stuck at three percent. That's essentially what it is.
Speaker 6: And if you compare where we are today with have
Speaker 6: line of a year ago, it's actually accelerated.
Speaker 2: Well, what's really kind of wild? And Mike McKee, who
Speaker 2: is breaking down the Fed minutes on Wednesday, says, you
Speaker 2: know they're going through, going through, and then you get to, like,
Speaker 2: I think the last paragraph where it said Fed officials
Speaker 2: were wary of cutting interest rates at their January meeting,
Speaker 2: but several suggesting the Central make may need to raise
Speaker 2: rates of inflation remains high. So they are already like
Speaker 2: continuing to be very vigilant when it comes to higher inflation.
Speaker 6: You have to be, because three percent is not two
Speaker 6: percent obviously, right, and with all of the tariff noise,
Speaker 6: you still are not clear whether it would accelerate or not.
Speaker 6: So the Fed given a label market that seems to
Speaker 6: be relatively stable. Now the balance of risk has shifted,
Speaker 6: it now has to be inflation inflation inflation?
Speaker 4: Does this make the report we got today about growth
Speaker 4: being slower than we expected, more of a blow to
Speaker 4: the economic outlook, particularly if we have the FED raising.
Speaker 4: It's a good question where growth is slowing.
Speaker 6: I do think that if you dig deeper, it wants
Speaker 6: to go under the hood. You realize that about one
Speaker 6: hundred basis point or so one percentage point was because
Speaker 6: of a shutdown. If you add that back, you're talking
Speaker 6: about twenty a half percent growth. The economy on its
Speaker 6: own is resilient. I don't think it can take that away.
Speaker 6: And you're also going to get some payback during this
Speaker 6: quarter right when we get the GDP, so potentially growth
Speaker 6: will be slightly higher.
Speaker 2: All right, you're not a political analyst, but I've got
Speaker 2: to throw midterms into this because I have to think
Speaker 2: as the president starts to go to different states, we've
Speaker 2: started to see some of that. He is thinking a
Speaker 2: lot about midterms and whether or not Republicans lose a
Speaker 2: lot of seats in Congress, and which would be really
Speaker 2: a vote on his White House. So, having said that,
Speaker 2: do you think that we'll shape what he does with
Speaker 2: tariffs and policies because he wants an economy, right, any
Speaker 2: president wants an economy. Humming along whether it's midterms are
Speaker 2: obviously a presidential race.
Speaker 6: I think that would be the rational view. And without
Speaker 6: me going further, without me going further, anything can happen
Speaker 6: between now and the midterms. Right, there will be that
Speaker 6: affordability to push with starting to see that. Hopefully, if
Speaker 6: that is really really strong, that may overwhelm the tariff noise,
Speaker 6: right and to some degree, corporations are used to the
Speaker 6: tariff noise to some degree, so hopefully there will not
Speaker 6: be a knee jerk reaction from a price standpoint going forward.
Speaker 4: How optimistic are you about the refunds for the terroriffs?
Speaker 3: This morning?
Speaker 4: Before Trump spoke, the question was, oh, okay, well, how
Speaker 4: are all of who's going to get the refunds? And
Speaker 4: how smoothly is that process going to go? How are
Speaker 4: you thinking about that?
Speaker 6: So I'm going to go from I'm not a political
Speaker 6: strategist too, I'm not a lawyer, but the reality is
Speaker 6: that corporations have suit right, they have the legal basis
Speaker 6: to ask for a refund now. Prospectively going forward, they
Speaker 6: may still pay times, but it seems to me that
Speaker 6: they have the legal basis since it's illegal, Hey give
Speaker 6: me back my money, you know, it doesn't belong to you.
Speaker 6: That's my sense.
Speaker 2: Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Business Week Daily coming
Speaker 2: up after this.
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Speaker 2: We've talked about the Supreme Court decision over teriffs. We've
Speaker 2: talked about the economic data, a lot of big news
Speaker 2: coming out investors. We've got to talk though about Ran
Speaker 2: because President Trump said it's considering a limited meal. Let's
Speaker 2: try it again, considering a limited military strike and or
Speaker 2: on ratcheting a pressure on the regime to come to
Speaker 2: a quick deal over its nuclear program. As the masses
Speaker 2: military forces in the region. We just talked with our
Speaker 2: Tony Capasa about saying that he doesn't anticipate maybe anything
Speaker 2: coming this weekend and kind of put in perspective the
Speaker 2: forces that are there. But let's get an update on
Speaker 2: this story and for more, we head to Alan Ayir.
Speaker 2: He's distinguished Diplomatic Fellow at Middle East Institute, and he
Speaker 2: joins us. Alan, it's good to have you here with us.
Speaker 2: Your view as you listen to what the President has
Speaker 2: said and what's coming from the White House, and as
Speaker 2: you watch what's going on in the region.
Speaker 7: Well, first, Hi, Carol, High Emily. My view is it's
Speaker 7: probable we're heading for war, whether that's in a couple
Speaker 7: of days or within ten days to two weeks. In
Speaker 7: terms as the military puts it, the table is pretty
Speaker 7: much set in terms of US military assets in the region.
Speaker 7: And even though this administration hasn't given it it's rationale,
Speaker 7: it seems to be guided almost by inertial forces. So
Speaker 7: it seems to me there will be hostilities in the
Speaker 7: region soon.
Speaker 4: And what's the clarity here on how Iran is preparing
Speaker 4: for a potential strike in a potential war.
Speaker 7: Well, I think Iran has already accepted the fact that
Speaker 7: it's probable that there will be hostilities. Initially, President Trump
Speaker 7: seemed to be increasing the military threat and the hopes
Speaker 7: that Iran would exceed and agree to US terms, but
Speaker 7: that didn't happen. Iran sees itself as under existential threat
Speaker 7: from the US and Israel, So right now I would
Speaker 7: assume it's preparing. And this is what satellite imagery is
Speaker 7: also showing preparing for upcoming hostilities and planning its counter attack,
Speaker 7: and it's not going to differentiate between what the US
Speaker 7: describes as a limited attack and any other type of attack.
Speaker 7: Iran has messaged that if it's attacked, it will respond aggressively.
Speaker 2: Is I Ran right that it's under kind of an
Speaker 2: existential threat this point, Well, I think.
Speaker 7: Each side is misperceiving the other. As I said, I
Speaker 7: think President Trump's administration thinks that the more force it shows,
Speaker 7: the more likely Iran is willing to capitulate, whereas Aaron,
Speaker 7: which sees itself as in an existential struggle with the
Speaker 7: US and Israel, sees any capitulation on its own red
Speaker 7: lines as merely an invitation to further aggression from the
Speaker 7: United States. So we're in a very different place in
Speaker 7: the relationship than we've been for most of the long
Speaker 7: decades I've been following it, where even though neither side
Speaker 7: prefers military aggression, both sides are prepared for.
Speaker 4: So what are the next ten to fifteen days going
Speaker 4: to look like? That's the timeline President Trump has given
Speaker 4: Iran for how they could avoid potential military action. And
Speaker 4: how optimistic are you that the two countries could avoid
Speaker 4: military action.
Speaker 7: Could if they wanted to, I mean, if there were
Speaker 7: I mean, unfortunately, neither side has really pursued vigorous, sustained diplomacy.
Speaker 7: There's a certain inertial momentum here because there's so much
Speaker 7: distrust between the two sides that there's a type of
Speaker 7: sort of strategic path dependency. There's certainly room for negotiated settlement.
Speaker 7: President Trump's redline is he doesn't want Iran to have
Speaker 7: a nuclear weapon. That's certainly doable in terms of verification
Speaker 7: measures restrictions on the Iranian nuclear program. But due to
Speaker 7: the total absence of mutual trust and the gathering of
Speaker 7: military forces in the region at this point, as I said,
Speaker 7: it seems overwhelmingly probable that there will be military actions.
Speaker 7: So I'm quite pessimistic that they'll be able to avoid
Speaker 7: some type of military action, and once that happens, prediction
Speaker 7: is impossible. I don't know the target set that Iran
Speaker 7: will see to move against once If the US attacks,
Speaker 7: it could be US forces in the region, US allies
Speaker 7: in the region, Israel, And we don't know how extensive,
Speaker 7: era you initially, US strikes will be, whether they'll try
Speaker 7: to decapitate the regime and hopes of accelerating regime change
Speaker 7: or something more limited.
Speaker 2: Ellan, what about what's happening at home in Iran? I mean,
Speaker 2: we are reporting notes of professor at John Hopkins University
Speaker 2: who says, you know, Iran may not have much reason
Speaker 2: to agree to a deal now, might be counting on
Speaker 2: the idea that a US attack will rally nationalist support
Speaker 2: for the regime at a time when it's faced pressure
Speaker 2: internally from weeks of protests. He went on to say
Speaker 2: that there's a little the US has offered that Iran
Speaker 2: could agree to, So I do think about also there's
Speaker 2: what they're dealing with with the US, but also what
Speaker 2: they're dealing with at home in terms of protests.
Speaker 7: Quite correct, there seemed to be at least some of
Speaker 7: the Trump administrator who hope that an aggressive attack on
Speaker 7: the Iranian regime will jumpstart some type of regime change
Speaker 7: the worlds, will result in a more pro West or
Speaker 7: user friendly regime in Iran. I don't see that happening.
Speaker 7: There's no institutions in place that could replace the power
Speaker 7: vacuum that would be left behind. Even if the Iranian
Speaker 7: institutions were successfully decimated by a US military strike, and
Speaker 7: that's a huge if. So what Iranians are preparing to do,
Speaker 7: there's no generalization I can make. There will be possibly
Speaker 7: some rally around the flag effect and others hoping that
Speaker 7: the US finishes the job it starts and puts in
Speaker 7: some other type of regime.
Speaker 4: Just to wrap up here, tell us what we need
Speaker 4: to be watching for just right in the near term.
Speaker 4: Here about any signals you're going to be looking for
Speaker 4: for any clarity on how Iran is preparing for a
Speaker 4: potential strike.
Speaker 7: They're preparing. They're trying to reinforce their facilities that they
Speaker 7: think are strategically important in terms of nuclear sites, in
Speaker 7: terms of missile sites, because what Iran is banking on
Speaker 7: is the ability to respond using its missile forces, using
Speaker 7: its drone forces, using its rocket forces, both against land
Speaker 7: targets and also against targets in the Persian Gulf. Because
Speaker 7: the Persian Gulf is a very small area, very shallow,
Speaker 7: there's a lot of US naval assets there. The Iranians traditionally,
Speaker 7: if you swarm techniques with small Iranian craft, right, So
Speaker 7: the next thing to watch for is, unfortunately it initiate hostilities.
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