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- [00:03]
David Gura
Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts radio news welcome to the Bloomberg this Weekend podcast with David Gura, Christina Raffini and Lisa Mateo. Thanks for joining us for today's selection of conversations from the show.
- [00:21]
Christina Raffini
You can listen to our favorite discussions right here on the podcast, but also make sure to join us live every Saturday and Sunday morning starting at 7am Eastern.
- [00:29]
Jomana Versace
We're on Bloomberg Television Radio and the Bloomberg Business app, bringing you unique takes and in depth interviews on news, politics, lifestyle and culture.
- [00:41]
Christina Raffini
The degree to which this is widening is pretty extraordinary here after the killing of Iran's supreme leader. But we've seen buildings struck in Tel Aviv, projectiles in Qatar and Bahrain, and also protests in Pakistan. And I understand the death toll, they are rising as a result of those protests that have taken place by shared protesters.
- [00:56]
David Gura
Yeah, we're hearing it's up to nine killed in Karachi. We've also got some top lines crossing the terminal. Iran has appointed Ayatollah Alireza Arafi to the leadership council. He will not be the next supreme leader. He's one of three senior officials who I believe Khamenei had previously designated as could take over for him. During the past summer, when that bombing campaign was going on, the Israelis were taking out top leaders and he knew this could be an issue. He named three people we will ask our experts later if indeed he was one of them. And what we know about this individual
- [01:29]
Christina Raffini
and certainly just highlights the level of uncertainty we have as we get to this issue of succession in Iran, of course, the president of the United States urging Iranians to put down their weapons and to reject the government that had been in place there. That of course, being made from Mar a Lago to Iran, a wide geographic distance there. And this is a fight that's being waged by air. We'll see what happens on the ground here in the hours and days ahead.
- [01:49]
David Gura
All right, we want to bring in Jomana Versace, Nancy Yousef and Ethan Brauner. Jomana is our Mideast anchor. And Jomana, I want to start with you because I'm wondering what we know about this new appointee and what exactly the position being elevated to the leadership council. What does that mean? Is this temporary or do we know at this point?
- [02:09]
Jomana Versace
Yeah. Okay. So your question is, I guess, about who is going to succeed at the Ayatollah Khamerei. And actually what we're seeing now is procedure is kicking into place. I mean, you've got to think as well, they had been preparing for this, for the possibility of him being eliminated or even dying by natural death. He was 86 years old. And so what happens from here onwards is they've established this temporary leadership council that is made up of the president himself, President Pazechian, who is alive, according to the Iranian officials, the head of the judiciary, and then this senior cleric from the Guardian Council, the individual that you just mentioned. And their goal is just to see steer the leadership through the coming months. Because at the same time, what's going to happen is, according to the constitution, an assembly of experts. This is eight member of, well, it's a clerical body essentially comprised of 88 members. They will be getting together and will be assessing who should be the successor to Khamenei. Many different names are being thrown out there, unclear at this point who it's going to be. So some of the names include his son, so Mushta Barnmane, some of his close aides, Ali Larijani, Sadiq Larijani. And then there's also the possibility of the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic, and his name is Ruhallah Khomeini as well. But at this point, we don't really know. We know also that the prior sort of quote, unquote, reformist President Rouhani, who was the president who actually inked the JCPOA deal with Obama back then, he was one of the names that was in the mix. But again, unlikely at this point that we're going to get any clarity. So in the interim, this temporary leadership council is going to take over.
- [03:57]
Christina Raffini
Christina, we've heard such a chorus of complaint from Congress about the fact that they weren't briefed before these strikes were launched. And there was a demand from the Iranians to have a meeting of the UN Security Council yesterday here in New York. In fact, that meeting did happen, and we heard from the US Representative to the UN Mike Waltz. Now let's take a listen to what he had to say about the diplomatic track that the US Was purportedly pursuing here before these strikes took place.
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Colonel Wayne Sanders
American diplomacy was attempted repeatedly and in good faith. President Trump, Secretary Rubio, our special envoys, Wyckoff and Kushner, were relentlessly dedicated to diplomacy. But diplomacy cannot succeed where there is no genuine willingness to, to cease aggression, where there is no genuine partner for peace.
- [04:43]
Christina Raffini
Again, the US Ambassador to the United Nations. I want to turn to Nancy Youssef, staff writer at the Atlantic magazine on this point. Nancy, as you look at that balance and the debate over how much that balance was really held, even in the run up to all of this, what are we Learning about the integrity of those conversations between the US and the Iranians being mediated by the Omanis, and the degree to which perhaps they were proceeding in a way that could have forestalled what we saw happen here over the last 24, 36 hours?
- [05:07]
Nancy Youssef
Well, it depends on who you ask. If you talk to the Omani foreign minister who gave an interview to Face the Nation hours before these strikes began, he suggested that there was real progress that had happened in those talks. And the Iranians believed that there was progress, according to him. But the United States felt that the Iranians were not serious about talks and were interested really in buying time to avert the very strikes that we saw yesterday. And so these kind of talks are really complicated. They're technical. And so I think the question becomes the degree to which there was detailed discussion of these talks and what the expectations were in terms of the outcome, did this have to have something that went beyond the 2015 agreement? Did it have to include limitations on Iran's ballistic missile capability as the United States had asked for and the Iranians rejected? Did it have to deal with Iran's proxies, which, again, the United States asked to be a part of the discussions? And the Iranians said they didn't want it to be a part of the conversations. They wanted it to focus strictly on their nuclear program.
- [06:07]
David Gura
And Ethan Brunner, Bloomberg's Israel bureau chief, I want to ask you out today. Other than that eight minute statement that the president dropped on social media in the middle of the night, the White House did not have any other comments. And so far we're being told they're not putting anybody else out for the near future. But the president did speak to Barack Ravid over at Axios. One of the things he said is, I can go long and take over the whole thing or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians, see you again in a few years if you start rebuilding. And the inference is there is your nuclear missile program. I'm wondering what the appetite for another prolonged conflict is in Israel. Given the events of last year, the events following October 6, the war with Gaza. Do you think the Israelis want a protracted campaign or do you think they would like to finish this faster than that?
- [07:03]
Ethan Brauner
Look, I think nobody has an appetite for an expanded campaign if you can avoid it. So I think it would be fair to say that if they could, you know, sort of eliminate this regime and the new people coming into power would do what the US And Israel wants it to do, people here would be thrilled that said I think there is a gap between the US's view of Iran and Israel. For Israel, Israelis considered a somewhat existential battle. The United States, it's, I think, fair to say, a war of choice that occurred. So how long President Trump and his administration will want to keep going I think will likely be shorter than what Israel is willing to do. Of course, the Israelis are suffering in a way that Americans are not. I mean, everyone who lives here, including me, has almost every hour been forced to go into a bomb shelter of some kind. Asleep in bomb shelters, you see blearing
- [07:57]
David Gura
your secure room now, right, Ethan, isn't that your secure?
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Ethan Brauner
My secure, absolutely right. Yeah. It's, it's got a metal door, it's got a metal shutter for the window. And the room is also built with something between 18 and 30 inches of reinforced concrete and has a kind of an aeration system. So yes, it's a, it's designed for this and, but I mean, many, many people in Israel don't have one in their own apartment and they're forced into, into public shelters. So it's not fun at all. But I think on the other hand, you know, people in Israel have been talking for so long about to eliminate the Iranian regime because Iran does say death to Israel. It does fund and arm militias around the region. It really is an enemy in a genuine sense that people, I think, have a tolerance, which is going to go on for a while. We'll see for how long. It's been a very rough day, by the way. A lot, a lot of attacks here.
- [08:54]
Christina Raffini
A lot of attacks. There are a lot of attacks across the region and I want to go to Jumana on that point because we've seen an attack on the Dubai airport. I believe this is, of course, a major area of transit for a lot
- [09:03]
David Gura
of international flights, a place that usually takes fire in these incidents.
- [09:06]
Christina Raffini
Absolutely. So, Jaman, I wonder if you could just speak to the way that this is widened and the degree to which folks are alert. On alert rather well beyond Israel and Iran.
- [09:15]
Jomana Versace
Look, I think it's difficult to overstate how unprecedented this is and how shocking it is for specifically the uae. This is a part of the region that has prided itself on its stability, on political stability, on economic stability. This is not a jurisdiction in the region where you'd expect something like this to happen. So it's shaken everyone who lives here. And yesterday and throughout our reporting, we were talking about many people rushing to supermarkets to load up on food. That is not a situation that I think UAE officials ever anticipated would occur within the uae. And while it started off, the retaliation initially started off with Iran sending missiles and drones across and directed at US Assets and US Bases in the region. Actually, what happens yesterday is civilian infrastructure started to get damaged as well. And albeit it could be from the degree of intercepted missiles and rockets, but at the same time it's sustained damage. We are seeing that. You heard about that fire probably in one of those high end hotels in a very fancy part of town called Palm Jumeirah. You would have seen the images online of Dubai airport also sustaining damage. And it's not just Dubai Airport. Abu Dhabi airport also was recipient of some damage. Similar themes emerging in Bahrain as well. And so what's happened here is this has become a lot more dangerous for the countries in the region than what we thought was going to happen in the early hours. And just a short while ago, very, very strong remarks have come through from one of the Senior President's Advisors, Dr. Anwar Gargach. He's an advisor to President Mvz. And he actually put out a statement to the Iranians saying, get your senses together. This is not how you're supposed to be treating your neighbors. And I think, you know, implicit to that is the threat that, you know, so far the UAE have said that they're not going to let the US Use their bases to launch attacks on Iran. But there's the question mark of whether that may change and whether the calculus for these DCC countries has changed.
- [11:20]
Christina Raffini
Jomana, thank you very much. Jamal Versace, their anchor for Horizons Middle east and Africa here at Bloomberg Television and Radio. Our thanks to Nancy Youssef of the Atlantic magazine and Ethan Brauner, our Israel bureau chief as well.
- [11:30]
David Gura
Thank you all. It's very interesting the places that do not normally take direct hits in these attacks. I was texting with a friend in Doha today, checking on them and seeing how they are, and he said we're good. We're just loud bangs and we're lying to kids about, quote, daytime fireworks. On that note, we want to bring in Colonel Wayne Sanders. He's a senior defense research analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Colonel, thank you so much for joining us. I think one of the things I want to ask you about is the level of coordination, especially on the intelligence side, between US Intelligence, the CIA and Israeli intelligence, Mossad. There's a report in the New York Times this morning that the CIA was actually the agency that located Khamenei and was able to make that targeting in collaboration with Mossad. I'm wondering what your take is on that. If that was a generous leak to chuff up our folks in Langley, or if you think that's actually how that probably went down, given the intelligence capability of both those agencies.
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Jomana Versace
Agencies, yeah.
- [12:23]
Colonel Wayne Sanders
I think there's a lot more partnership that goes on than a lot of people realize that are behind the scenes that normally don't make it into, into the public light. But from this perspective, there's a lot of partnerships across those agencies. And anybody who's able to tip and queue among allies and say, hey, look, this is the information that I have. I have this piece of information because normally what you're looking for is some type of corroborative, corroborated reporting. You don't want to go off of a single source that says, hey, this is where they're at, and then you end up responding and end up being wrong. So if you can take some signals, intellig, you can take some imagery, you can take some human intelligence, a source maybe, and be able to put those pieces together, then you have, you have that additional level of confidence before you try and target a strike.
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Christina Raffini
Colonel, let me just ask you about how you're thinking about the length of this conflict. And of course there are the warnings and the run up to these strikes by the US And Israel that this could metastasize into a wider conflict. And then when you think about the time horizon for that, what's your, what's your latest, best thinking on how long this is, is this is likely to last?
- [13:21]
Colonel Wayne Sanders
Yeah, I would like to think it wouldn't go beyond seven days. Mainly. A lot of the pieces that you're seeing, the administration talk about is, is a week, right? They're kind of using that as one of the pieces that are out there. When you look at the capability that Iranians have left, right. A lot of the areas that the US And Israel were attacking is obviously leadership during the first one. Then the rest of the volleys are really going after air defense launchers and missile stockpiles. Right. They're keeping it towards valid military targets. The launchers, there's not a whole lot of launchers left. There probably may be 100, 150 is what I'm hearing from reporting. So no matter how many missiles you have, you have to be able to actually launch them in specific volleys from these launchers. So if they're able to successfully target those, it continues to cripple the amount of military capability and capacity that Iran can put behind. Back in the Iran Israel conflict, you actually saw volleys of 200300 at a time. Well, you're not able to do that if you have a limited number of launchers.
- [14:18]
Christina Raffini
Colonel Wayne Sanders, stay with us. We're going to come back to here over the course of the next few hours to get your perspective on these conflicts as get new reports of strikes throughout the region. And, Christina, suffice to say this is, as Jomana was saying, something that really has widened geographically here over the last 24 hours.
- [14:31]
David Gura
It really has. It's opened up a very interesting discussion, both politically and militarily, about what comes next. Thanks for joining us on today's Bloomberg this Weekend podcast. Don't forget to tune in live for the show every Saturday and Sunday morning starting at 7am Eastern.
- [14:47]
Christina Raffini
We're on Bloomberg Television, Radio and the Bloomberg Business app, bringing you unique takes and in depth interviews on news, politics, lifestyle and culture.