00:00Emily, it's been a long time and we're glad to have you back. Welcome to Bloomberg TV and radio.
00:05Are you assuming the ceasefire is over or that we're simply continuing this pattern
00:10of tit for tats against the backdrop of some form of talks?
00:15I don't think it's really over. I think this is definitely another example of war being a
00:21continuation of policy by other means. Basically, both sides are communicating with violence at
00:26the moment. What we see is the Iranians expressing their displeasure at several triggers that have
00:31happened recently, including Israeli strikes inside Lebanon, some clashes with the Kurds in the north of
00:37Iran, and then also this transit of ships close to the Omani side of the border. And we just saw
00:43them
00:43wrap up funeral festivities for the Ayatollah. And that's a moment where they seem to really have
00:48wanted to reassert themselves in the strait. And then we see the Trump administration pushing back
00:53very hard with retaliatory strikes. So we are in one of these cycles. But that doesn't mean that
00:58we can't return to negotiations, return to a ceasefire when both sides have, in effect, set their
01:03peace. Well, Emily, the U.S. attacked Iran's coastal southern provinces. And according to Iran,
01:11this is not from CENTCOM, two bridges in eastern provinces along the railway line to the city of
01:18Mashhad, Iran calling the attacks. This is a statement from the foreign ministry. I'm sure you've seen it.
01:23A flagrant violation of Articles 1 and 5 of the MOU. For starters, what are we doing dropping bridges
01:30here? That seems like an escalation. And what do you make of a flagrant violation? Does it still stand?
01:37I think both sides could shoot some talking points back and forth on who's violating the MOU more,
01:42but that's really not a productive conversation at this point. On the point of the bridges, though,
01:47I think there's some conflicting opinions about that. From a military perspective,
01:51you could say that those bridges were very useful militarily to move things around inside Iran
01:56that are necessary to keep harassing the strait. On the other hand, it's also civilian infrastructure
02:02and civilians need to get around. So this is one of those things where inside the Department of War,
02:07there would have been a lot of debate. Inside CENTCOM, there would have been a lot of debate over
02:10whether these were legitimate military targets. We're also pretty deep into this conflict at this
02:16point. And while we started it with a huge target deck, those have kind of worn down a little bit.
02:21So now what we're looking for is smaller targets, small fast boats and things that are really going
02:26to send a message. And to me, those strikes on bridges and infrastructure really says to the
02:31Iranians that, look, we can bring some serious pain to your administration and we're going to be
02:36in this to win this.
02:38Wow. I, you know, I just, I wonder, and I've asked a few people this, when you hear a couple
02:43nights in
02:43a row, hey, we just struck 90 more targets, we're taking the fight to Iran. Having heard repeatedly
02:49from the president that we have defeated Iran militarily, we've destroyed their air force and
02:55navy. How can we continue to find so many new targets? Are they rebuilding, reconstituting sites?
03:01Or are these lower level, lower grade targets that might not have been prioritized earlier in the war?
03:07Right. So there are big strategic targets like the facilities where they're working on nuclear
03:12weapons production, where they're working on nuclear enrichment. Those things have been thoroughly
03:17destroyed. When you look at smaller targets like these, however, it is pretty easy to rebuild some of
03:22it. A lot of what they're doing in the strait is they're harassing shipping with small drones. Those are very
03:28easy to hide, very easy to produce, and very easy to move around the country. So those are going to
03:33be the kind of
03:33mobile targets they're looking for now. We've also seen them try to harass shipping in the strait with
03:39small boats, small fast boats. Those can be hidden in any number of places all along the Iranian coast,
03:45and they can keep moving that material into position. So while we are continually knocking
03:50down a lot of these targets, some of them are going to come back on. Others are going to be
03:54like deeper
03:54into the target deck or these things that we didn't strike before that now we're going to send a message
03:59by striking. Got it. As I mentioned, you were director for Iran on the National Security Council 0708,
04:05so the George W. Bush administration. Emily, to what extent were you talking about this very issue,
04:12the extent to which you gamed out having to protect the strait or maybe occupying Karg Island? Are the
04:19stories and targets you're reading about now familiar to you? I realize you can't describe classified
04:25information, but were these considerations that long ago? Quite familiar. In a lot of ways,
04:32this is a war that we've been planning for, waiting for, for 20 years. Back when I was on the
04:37National
04:38Security Council, we were seeing the Iranian government go after our troops in Iraq in a very
04:42aggressive way. And so we were planning for a potential escalation that could lead to this kind
04:47of war. We did the war games. We did the planning. We did the op plans. This has been something
04:52that the
04:52Pentagon has been ready to do for a very long time. And granted, they've been updating those plans based
04:58on what would be the most legitimate targets, the most painful targets for the Iranian regime.
05:03But one of the features of all of those discussions was always, how are they going to try to close
05:07the
05:08strait? Will they be able to shut down global shipping? What can we do about it if they do?
05:13This actually, this particular round of conflict, I was surprised by how little preparation there was for
05:20that eventuality that they were going to close the strait. It just seemed like an obvious move that
05:25they were always going to try to make. And I think what has really surprised the world is just how
05:29little effort it really takes on the part of the Iranians to make it unpalatable for things like
05:34global shipping to move through that very narrow waterway. This is fascinating. That's, of course,
05:40when the commander in chief was calling Iran part of the axis of evil. We all remember
05:46that speech. Emily, what do you make outside of maybe lack of planning for the strait the rest of
05:54the way the military has selected targets and comported itself over the past couple of months?
06:00Is this similar to what your administration would have done in terms of approach?
06:05Oh, I think so. I mean, it's really a tale of two policies. There's one policy, which is the
06:10military execution of the president's orders. And in so many ways that has been amazingly, perfectly,
06:17wonderfully done from rescuing the downed airmen who was in Iran to the very precise targeting to
06:25minimizing civilian casualties whenever possible to being able to find, fix and finish very quickly
06:31with the help of some new technologies. A lot of that has been proving the way of American warfare works
06:37very well, very efficiently, and can be lethal when it needs to be. On the other hand, though,
06:42you have the overarching policy of the conflict. You know, what are we really trying to accomplish
06:47here? There are things that you can't accomplish via military means, and there are things that you
06:51just can't. So early on in this year, what we saw was the Trump administration come out and say
06:56that they were looking for things like an end to violence against protesters. They were talking about
07:01things like regime change or a new regime in Iran. And then they kind of backed off that rhetoric.
07:06And I suspect it's because somebody explained to them that these are these objectives are very
07:10difficult to achieve through military means. Instead, we shifted to this framework where we were
07:15looking at nuclear and Navy and those things you can accomplish. Now he's calling it the denuclearization
07:21is the word we've been hearing from the president.
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