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Speaker 1: This Weekend Podcast with David Gura, Christina Raffini, and Elisa Matteo.
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Speaker 5: The degree to which this is widening, it's pretty extraordinary
Speaker 5: here after the killing of Aroon Supreme leader. But we've
Speaker 5: seen buildings struck in Tel Aviv, projectiles and Cutter and Bahrain,
Speaker 5: and also protests in Paxton and I understand the desthold
Speaker 5: they're rising as a result of those protests that have
Speaker 5: taken place by Shared protesters.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're hearing it's up to nine killed in Karachi.
Speaker 2: We've also got some top lines acrossing the terminal. Iran
Speaker 2: has appointed Ayatola Ali Raza Arafi to the Leadership Council.
Speaker 2: He will not be the next Supreme leader. He's one
Speaker 2: of three senior officials who I believe company had previously
Speaker 2: designated as could take over for him during the past
Speaker 2: summer when that bombing campaign was going on. These Raelings
Speaker 2: were taking out top leaders and he knew this could
Speaker 2: be an issue.
Speaker 6: He named three people.
Speaker 2: We will ask our experts later if indeed he was
Speaker 2: one of them, and what we know about this individual and.
Speaker 5: Certainly just highlights the level of uncertain we have as
Speaker 5: we get to this issue of succession in Iran. Of course,
Speaker 5: that the President of the United States urging Iranians to
Speaker 5: put down their weapons and to reject the government that
Speaker 5: have been in place there. That of course being made
Speaker 5: from mar A Lago to Iran, a wide geographic distance there,
Speaker 5: and this is a fight that's being waged by air.
Speaker 5: We'll see what happens on the ground here in the
Speaker 5: hours and days ahead.
Speaker 2: All right, we want to bring in Jemani Verssecchi, Nancy
Speaker 2: Yusef and Ethan Bronner. Jamana is our midiest anchor, and Jamon,
Speaker 2: I want to start with you because I'm wondering what
Speaker 2: we know about the new appointee and what exactly the
Speaker 2: position being elevated to the leadership council. What does that mean,
Speaker 2: is as temporary or do we know at this point?
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, So your question is, I guess about who
Speaker 4: is going to succeed the Ayatola Chamree. And actually what
Speaker 4: we're seeing now is procedure is kicking into place. I mean,
Speaker 4: you've got to think as well, they had been preparing
Speaker 4: for this, for the possibility of him being eliminated or
Speaker 4: even dying by natural death. He was eighty six years old.
Speaker 4: And so what happens from here onwards is they've established
Speaker 4: this temporary leadership council that is made up of the
Speaker 4: president himself, President of Pazish Khan, who is alive according
Speaker 4: to the Iranian officials, the head of the judiciary, and
Speaker 4: then this senior cleric from the Guardian Council, the individual
Speaker 4: that you just mentioned.
Speaker 6: And their goal is just.
Speaker 4: To steer the leadership through the coming months because at
Speaker 4: the same time, what's going to happen is, according to
Speaker 4: the constitution, an assembly of experts. This is the eight
Speaker 4: member of well, it's a clerical body essentially comprised of
Speaker 4: eighty eight members. They will be getting together and will
Speaker 4: be assessing who should be the successor to Kmine. Many
Speaker 4: different names are being thrown out there, unclear at this
Speaker 4: point who it's going to be.
Speaker 6: Some of the names include.
Speaker 7: His son so Musham, some of his close aides Ali,
Speaker 7: Larry Janni, Sadik Clari Johanni. And then there's also the
Speaker 7: possibility of the grandson of the founder of the Islamic
Speaker 7: Republic and his name is Rojala Kromene as well, but
Speaker 7: at this point we don't really know. We know also
Speaker 7: that the prior sort of quote unquote reformist president Rohanni,
Speaker 7: who was the president who actually in the jcpoa deal
Speaker 7: with Obama back then, he was one of the names
Speaker 7: that was in the mix. But again unlikely at this
Speaker 7: point that we're going to get any clarity. So in
Speaker 7: the interim, this temporary Leadership Council is going to take
Speaker 7: over Christina.
Speaker 5: We heard such a chorus of complaint from Congress, but
Speaker 5: the fact that they weren't briefed before these strikes were launched,
Speaker 5: and there was a demand from the Iranians to have
Speaker 5: a meeting of the UN Security Council yesterday here in
Speaker 5: New York. In fact, that meeting did happen, and we
Speaker 5: heard from the US representative to the UN Mike Waltz.
Speaker 5: Let's take a listen to what he had to say
Speaker 5: about the diplomatic track that the US was purportedly pursuing
Speaker 5: here before these strikes took place.
Speaker 8: American diplomacy was attempted repeatedly and in good faith. President Trump,
Speaker 8: Secretary Rubio, our special envoys wit Coffin Kushner were relentlessly
Speaker 8: dedicated to diplomacy. But diplomacy cannot succeed where there is
Speaker 8: no genuine willingness to see s aggression, where there is
Speaker 8: no genuine partner for peace.
Speaker 5: Again, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, I want
Speaker 5: to turn to Nancy Usef, staff writer at Atlantic Magazine
Speaker 5: on this point. Nancy, as you look at that balance
Speaker 5: and the debate over how much that balance was really
Speaker 5: held even in the run up to all of this,
Speaker 5: what are we learning about the integrity of those conversations
Speaker 5: between the US and the Iranians being mediated by the
Speaker 5: Omani and the degree to which perhaps they were proceeding
Speaker 5: a way that could have forestalled what we saw happened
Speaker 5: here over the last twenty four to thirty six hours.
Speaker 9: Well, it depends on who you ask. If you talk
Speaker 9: to the Omani, Foreign minister who gave an interview to
Speaker 9: face the nation hours before these strikes began. He suggested
Speaker 9: that there was real progress that had happened in those talks,
Speaker 9: and the Iranians believed that there was progress, according to him,
Speaker 9: but the United States felt that the Iranians were not
Speaker 9: serious about talks, and we're interested really in buying time
Speaker 9: to avert the very strikes that we saw yesterday, and
Speaker 9: so these kinds of talks are really complicated, they're technical,
Speaker 9: and so I think the question becomes the degree to
Speaker 9: which there was a detailed discussion of these talks and
Speaker 9: what the expectations were in terms of the outcome. Did
Speaker 9: this have to have something that went beyond the twenty
Speaker 9: fifteen agreement. Did it have to include limitations on Iran's
Speaker 9: ballistic missile capability, as the United States had asked for
Speaker 9: and the Iranians rejected. Did it have to deal with
Speaker 9: Iran's proxies, which again the United States asked to be
Speaker 9: part of the discussion, and the Iranians said they didn't
Speaker 9: want it to be a part of the conversations. They
Speaker 9: wanted it to focus strictly on their nuclear program.
Speaker 2: And Ethan Brunner Bloomberg's Israel bureau chief.
Speaker 6: I want to ask you out today.
Speaker 2: Other than that eight minute statement that the President dropped
Speaker 2: on social media in the middle of the night, the
Speaker 2: White House did not have any other comments, and so
Speaker 2: far we're being told they're not putting anybody else out
Speaker 2: for the near future. But the President did speak to
Speaker 2: Barack revide over at Axios. One of the things he
Speaker 2: said is I can go long and take over the
Speaker 2: whole thing, or end it in two or three days
Speaker 2: and tell the Iranians see you again in a few
Speaker 2: years if you start rebuilding and the inferences eras your
Speaker 2: nuclear missile program.
Speaker 6: I'm wondering what.
Speaker 2: The appetite for another prolonged conflict is in Israel, given
Speaker 2: the events of last year, the events following October.
Speaker 6: Sixth, the war with Gaza.
Speaker 2: Do you think the Israelis want a protracted campaign or
Speaker 2: do you think they would like to finish this.
Speaker 6: Faster than that.
Speaker 10: Look, I think nobody has an appetize for an expanded
Speaker 10: campaign if you can avoid it. So I think it
Speaker 10: would be fair to say that if they could, you know,
Speaker 10: sort of eliminate this regime and the new people coming
Speaker 10: into power would do what the US and Israel wants.
Speaker 4: It to do.
Speaker 6: People here would be thrilled.
Speaker 10: That said, I think there's a gap between the US's
Speaker 10: view of Iran and Israel. For Israel, Israel is considered
Speaker 10: a somewhat existential battle the United States. It's I think
Speaker 10: fair to say a war of choice that occurred. So
Speaker 10: how long President Trump and his administration will want to
Speaker 10: keep going, I think will likely to be shorter than
Speaker 10: what Israel is willing to do. Of course, the Israelis
Speaker 10: are suffering in a way that Americans are not. I mean,
Speaker 10: everyone who lives here, including me, has almost every hour
Speaker 10: been forced to go into a bomb shelter of some
Speaker 10: kind a sleep and bombshelters. You see, you're absolutely right. Yeah,
Speaker 10: it's got a metal door, it's got a metal shutter
Speaker 10: for the window, and the room is also built with
Speaker 10: something between eighteen and thirty inches of reinforced concrete and
Speaker 10: has a kind of an aeration system.
Speaker 6: So yes, it's.
Speaker 10: Designed for this. But I mean many, many people in
Speaker 10: Israel don't have one of their own apartment and they're
Speaker 10: forced into public shelters. So it's not fun at all.
Speaker 10: But I think on the other hand, you know, the
Speaker 10: people in Israel have been talking for so long about
Speaker 10: the need to eliminate the Iranian regime because Iran does
Speaker 10: say death to Israel, it does fund and armed militias
Speaker 10: around the region. It really is an enemy in a
Speaker 10: genuine sense that people I think have a tolerance which
Speaker 10: is going to go on for a while. We'll see
Speaker 10: for how long. It's been a very rough day. By
Speaker 10: the way, a lot a lot of attacks here.
Speaker 6: A lot of attacks. There are a lot of attacks
Speaker 6: across the region.
Speaker 5: And I want to go to Jumana on that point,
Speaker 5: because we've seen an attack on the Dubai Airport. I
Speaker 5: believe either this is of course a major area of
Speaker 5: transit for live international.
Speaker 6: Place that usually takes fire in these incidents.
Speaker 5: Absolutely so, Jaman, I wonder if you speak to the
Speaker 5: way that this is widened and the degret to which
Speaker 5: books were alert on alert rather well beyond Israel and Iran.
Speaker 4: I think it's difficult to overstate how unprecedented this is
Speaker 4: and how shocking it is for specifically the UAE.
Speaker 6: You know, this is this is the part.
Speaker 4: Of the region that has prided itself on its stability,
Speaker 4: on political stability, on economic stability.
Speaker 6: Uh, this is not a jurisdiction.
Speaker 4: In in in the region where you'd expect something like
Speaker 4: this to happen. So it's shaken everyone who lives here.
Speaker 4: And yesterday and throughout our reporting, we were talking about,
Speaker 4: you know, many people rushing to supermarkets to load up
Speaker 4: on food. That is not a situation that I think
Speaker 4: UAE officials ever anticipated would occur within the uae UH.
Speaker 6: And And while.
Speaker 4: It started off, the retaliation initially started off with Iran
Speaker 4: sending missiles and drones across and directed at US assets
Speaker 4: and U spaces in the region. Actually what happens yesterday
Speaker 4: is civilian infrastructure started to get damaged as well. And
Speaker 4: albeit it could be from the degree of intercepted missiles
Speaker 4: and rockets, but at the same time, it's sustained damage.
Speaker 4: We are seeing you heard about that fire probably in
Speaker 4: one of those high end hotels and a very fancy
Speaker 4: part of town called Pajumeira. You would have seen the
Speaker 4: images online of a Dubai airport also sustaining damage. And
Speaker 4: it's not just Dubai Airport. Abu Dhabi Airports also was
Speaker 4: recipient of some damage. Similar themes emerging in Baharan as well.
Speaker 4: And so what's happened here is this has become a
Speaker 4: lot more dangerous for the countries in the region than
Speaker 4: what we thought was going to happen in the early hours.
Speaker 4: And just a short while ago, very very strong remarks
Speaker 4: have come through from one of this senior president's advisors,
Speaker 4: doctor Anad Gargash. It's an advisor to President MBZ, and
Speaker 4: he actually put out a statement to the Iranians saying,
Speaker 4: get your senses together. This is not how you're supposed
Speaker 4: to be treating your neighbors. And I think you know
Speaker 4: implicit to that is the threat that you know. So far,
Speaker 4: the UAE have said that they're not going to let
Speaker 4: the US use their basis to launch at tax On
Speaker 4: in Iran, but there's the question mark of whether that
Speaker 4: may change and whether the calculus for these DCC countries
Speaker 4: has changed.
Speaker 5: Jamana, thank you very much to remember set you there,
Speaker 5: anchor of Horizon's Middle East and Africa here at Bloomberg
Speaker 5: Television and Radio are thanks to Nancy Yuseffith Atlantic Magazine
Speaker 5: and Ethan Bonner, our Israel Bureau chief as well.
Speaker 6: Thank you all. It's very interesting the places that.
Speaker 2: Do not normally take direct hits in the attacks I
Speaker 2: was a texting with a friend in Doha today checking
Speaker 2: on them and seeing how they are, and he said,
Speaker 2: we're good. We're just loud bangs and we're lying to
Speaker 2: kids about quote, daytime fireworks. On that note, we want
Speaker 2: to bring in Colonel Wayne Standers. He's a senior defense
Speaker 2: research analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.
Speaker 6: Colonel, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 2: I think one of the things I want to ask
Speaker 2: you about is the level of coordination, especially on the
Speaker 2: intelligence side, between US intelligence, the CIA, and Israeli intelligence.
Speaker 6: Most there's a report in.
Speaker 2: The New York Times this morning that the CIA was
Speaker 2: actually the agency that located community and was able to
Speaker 2: make that targeting and collaboration with USAD. I'm wondering what
Speaker 2: your take is on that, if that was a generous
Speaker 2: leak to chuff up our folks and Langley, or if
Speaker 2: you think that's actually how that probably went down given
Speaker 2: the intelligence capability of both those agencies.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think there's a lot more partnership that goes on.
Speaker 11: Then a lot of people realize that are behind the
Speaker 11: scenes that normally don't make it into the public life.
Speaker 11: But from this perspective, there's a lot of partnerships across
Speaker 11: those agencies, and anybody who's able to tip a queue
Speaker 11: among allies and say hey, look this is the information
Speaker 11: that I have. I have this piece of information. Because
Speaker 11: normally what you're looking for is some type of corrobative,
Speaker 11: corroborated reporting. You don't want to go off of a
Speaker 11: single source that says, hey, this is where they're at,
Speaker 11: and then you end up responding and end up being wrong.
Speaker 11: So if you can take some signals intelligence, you can
Speaker 11: take some imagery, you can take some human intelligence a
Speaker 11: source maybe, and be able to put those pieces together,
Speaker 11: then you have that additional level of confidence before you
Speaker 11: try and target a strike.
Speaker 5: Colonel, let me just ask you about how you're thinking
Speaker 5: about the length of this conflict. And of course there
Speaker 5: were the warnings and the run up to these strikes
Speaker 5: by the US and Israel that this could metastasize into
Speaker 5: a wider conflict. And then when you think about the
Speaker 5: time horizon for that, what's your latest best thinking on
Speaker 5: how long this is likely to last?
Speaker 11: Yeah, I would like to think it wouldn't go beyond
Speaker 11: seven days. Mainly, a lot of the piece that you're
Speaker 11: seeing the administration talk about is is a week right,
Speaker 11: they're kind of using that as one of the pieces
Speaker 11: that are out there. When you look at the capability
Speaker 11: that our Inians have left, Right, a lot of the
Speaker 11: areas that the US and Israel were attacking is obviously
Speaker 11: the leadership during the first one. Then the rest of
Speaker 11: the volleys are really going after air defense launchers and
Speaker 11: missile stockpiles. Right, they're keeping it towards valid military targets.
Speaker 11: The launchers, there's not a whole lot of launchers left.
Speaker 11: They're probably maybe one hundred, one hundred and fifty is
Speaker 11: what I'm hearing from reporting. So no matter how many
Speaker 11: missiles you have, you have to be able to actually
Speaker 11: launch them in specific volleys from these launchers they're able
Speaker 11: to successfully target those. It continues to cripple the amount
Speaker 11: of military capability and capacity that Iran can put behind.
Speaker 11: Back in the Iran Israel conflict, you actually saw volleys
Speaker 11: of two hundred three hundred at a time.
Speaker 6: Well, you're not.
Speaker 11: Able to do that if you have a limited number
Speaker 11: of launchers.
Speaker 3: Coronel Wayne Sanders, stay with us.
Speaker 5: We're going to come back to here over the course
Speaker 5: of the next few hours to gede your perspective on
Speaker 5: this conflict. Is get new reports of strikes throughout the region,
Speaker 5: and Christina suffice to say, this is, as Jimana was saying,
Speaker 5: something that really has widen geographically here over the last
Speaker 5: twenty four hours.
Speaker 2: It really Hasn't's opened up a very interesting discussion, both
Speaker 2: politically and militarily about what comes. BAXT thanks for joining
Speaker 2: us on today's Bloomberg This Weekend podcast. Don't forget to
Speaker 2: tune in live for the show every Saturday and Sunday morning,
Speaker 2: starting at seven am Eastern.
Speaker 3: We're on Bloomberg Television, Radio and the Bloomberg Business App,
Speaker 3: bringing you unique takes and in depth interviews on news, politics,
Speaker 3: lifestyle and culture.