00:00Joining us now to talk more about the overnight developments out of Iran, it's Bloomberg News
00:02Middle East reporter Dan Williams. Dan, always good to have you with us, and I return to that
00:06ballistic bluster. I can't resist using the term once again. The headline, of course, is
00:10President Trump says the ceasefire is over, but talks continue, and then we have him sending this
00:15missive last night. A thousand missiles are locked and loaded and aimed at the Islamic Republic of
00:19Iran with thousands more immediately to follow should the Iranian government act on its threat
00:24pronounced in many corners of the globe to assassinate or attempt to assassinate the
00:28sitting president of the United States of America, in this case, me. A lot of clauses there, which made
00:33that very difficult for me to read on this Saturday. But Dan, set the scene for us. These talks are
00:38continuing. The president says he's fine with that happening. His emissaries are in the Middle East
00:42with a mind toward talking with the Iranians, yet the backdrop doesn't seem very conducive to much
00:48progress. How do you read it? Well, I think this is largely about Hormuz, and I think it's largely
00:53about Trump being very personally upset, miffed, at the open displays of defiance and hostility toward
01:01him that we saw in that week-long funeral for the slain supreme leader of Iran. Huge banners in
01:08English threatening bluntly the killing of the U.S. president. Now, to be fair, he's no stranger,
01:14or the Iranians are no stranger to receiving such rhetoric from him. Well, remember just a few weeks
01:19ago, a couple months ago, talk about effectively ending the Iranian civilization if they don't
01:24comply with U.S. demands. That was just one of the selection that we had on the smorgasbord of
01:30Trump's ballistic bluster, as you put it. But now he's taking it personally. It's worth remembering
01:35well before this war, I believe there were two assassination attempts uncovered by U.S. authorities
01:41that were attributed to Iran. There is that longstanding state of official hostility between the
01:46countries well before the war, well before the Trump administration. So that shouldn't be
01:51surprised. I think what he wanted, what the U.S. administration wanted out of this MOU, which we
01:57in the press tend to refer to as an interim peace deal in shorthand, was a week-long reprieve for
02:03that
02:03funeral leading to, and obviously the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, mutually by the Iranians and by
02:10the U.S., leading to a sequencing of diplomatic talks resolving the differences. What you had instead
02:17was very full-throated, angry, vengeful rhetoric from Tehran, a very well-attended funeral, which I
02:25think drove home to Trump, to his administration, frankly, to anyone watching, that the Iranians
02:30remain defiant. This really isn't a peace deal, at least on U.S. terms. And indeed, in some terms,
02:37it could be said the Iranians came out triumphant from this war, where they faced down the U.S.,
02:42the world's superpower, along with the greatest, the most powerful regional military power, that's
02:47Israel. Although there was one very prominent face missing from that funeral, and that was
02:51the new Supreme Leader, Khamenei. No word yet on where he is, on his health, on the state of him.
02:58He
02:58has not been seen since all this happened. We talked about how there are these technical talks
03:04happening, probably in Oman, over the weekend. The U.S. wants Iran to publicly state that the
03:09Strait of Hormuz is open and say it's going to stop firing on commercial ships. CBS is reporting
03:13that Iranian officials privately told the White House it was a mistake. They shouldn't have fired
03:18on those ships this past week, and it was a bit of a command and control issue. And that makes
03:24me
03:25wonder if who really is in charge in Tehran right now. At some point, is there a concern that that
03:30could
03:31start to fracture between more hardline groups and, you know, whatever leadership is left from
03:36the last regime? And where do you go from here? Is the Strait open? Is the Strait ever going to
03:41be
03:41open again? At this point, it seems like an existential question. I would agree, and I think
03:46that is the bare minimum that the United States wants to get from this MOU. If the U.S. is
03:51to walk away
03:52from this crisis, with Iran effectively in control of Hormuz, I think it'll be undeniable that Iran
03:59gained a major strategic achievement out of this war launched against it by the U.S. and Israel. So I
04:04think
04:05that was the main aim of the MOU, to sort out the Hormuz issue, to allow an eventual U.S.
04:11drawdown,
04:12albeit with pressure down the line, to touch on other issues in Iran. For example, its nuclear program,
04:17its support for proxies. But really, Hormuz was most pressing. It affects world commerce,
04:22commerce. It affects U.S. allies in the Gulf, and it affects the prestige of the United States
04:27in the Middle East, given that very significant shift of ownership or control in that strategic
04:33waterway. Will it open? I can't answer. The question about authorship or leadership in Iran,
04:40Iran really is a black box to outside observers. They've exercised extraordinarily good message control,
04:46largely by shutting down the internet throughout the course of this crisis. Just six months ago,
04:51they brutally shut down a nationwide wave of uprisings, something of a mini-mini insurgency,
04:59which they managed to put down. They faced pretty open threats from their enemies to stir up such
05:05opposition, topple the regime. They're not going to allow to happen if anyone's going to ask them.
05:10So what you have here is a leadership which did manage to sign this MOU just four weeks ago.
05:16There was no problem then in authorship for that MOU. So for us now to try to dismiss lethal fire
05:23being applied to ships as some sort of breakdown in communication, breakdown in command and control,
05:29where only four weeks ago there was enough command and control for them to sign an MOU
05:33that everyone hailed as a binding interim peace deal, I'm not sure that holds much water.
05:38I'm sorry.
05:38I'm sorry.
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