Instant Reaction: Trump Threatens to Escalate Iran War in Primetime Speech

0:02Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts. Radio. News. This is a breaking news update from Bloomberg. Instant reaction and analysis from our 3 ,000 journalists and analysts around the world. This is special coverage from Bloomberg Radio. I'm Doug Krizner in New York. Wednesday evening, in a rare primetime address to the nation, President Trump provided an update on the war in Iran. Thanks to the progress we've made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America's military objectives shortly, very shortly. We're going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks. We're going to bring them back to the Stone Ages where they belong.

0:50In the meantime, discussions are ongoing. Regime change was not our goal. We never said regime change, but regime change has occurred because of all of their original leaders' death. They're all dead. The new group is less radical and much more reasonable. Yet if during this period of time no deal is made, we have our eyes on key targets. If there is no deal, we are going to hit each and every one of their electric generating plants very hard and probably simultaneously. simultaneously. We have not hit their oil, even though that's the easiest target of all, because it would not give them even a small chance of survival or rebuilding.

1:35But we could hit it and it would be gone and there's not a thing they could do about it. President Trump there delivering a rare primetime address with regards to war in Iran. He said the U.S. is getting very close to finishing the job in Iran. The hard part, in Trump's words, done insofar as Iran is concerned, and the country is no longer really a threat. Let's talk a little bit more about what we heard today from the president with our special guest, Christina Raffini is with us. She is co-host of Bloomberg this weekend. Also on the line, Bloomberg's Jeff Mason. He is White House and Washington correspondent.

2:12Thanks to you both. Christina, let me begin with you. What did you make of what you heard tonight? One of the interesting things we did not hear was something we were expecting to hear, and that was the president named NATO. We understand he's been very frustrated with NATO allies. He kind of second referenced it at one point. He said America doesn't need things out of the strait. We have our own oil and gas. And to all you allies who basically wouldn't help us, if you want it, go protect it. He also gave a bit of a timeline, although there weren't as many specifics as a lot of people were hoping for.

2:44He said, our objectives are about to be fully achieved. We're on track to complete those shortly. And then he said in the next two to three weeks. And for context, he then began listing the duration of other American wars, including Vietnam and the Iraq war, which meant much longer and said, it's, you know, this has only been 32 days of conflict. Jeff, he seemed to be delivering an ultimatum. Vice President J.D. Vance is set to relay some messages through mediators. And essentially, it comes down to this. If there is no deal, the U.S. is going to hit each and every one of Iran's electrical generating plants very hard.

3:23That seems to be illegal, doesn't it? Well, I don't feel like I can comment on whether it's illegal, but I can say that it is certainly a threat. And that may be one reason why we're seeing S &P futures going down already as President Trump was speaking. And that's probably the opposite of what he was hoping to achieve because he did reference the markets tonight. And he talked about the fact that stock markets had dropped a little bit because of the war. And then he said what he often says, which is he said he saw the markets coming back as he's been talking about ending the conflict and thought it seemed happy about that.

4:00I think tonight was largely a sales pitch by the president. It's a late sales pitch. And I don't mean late on a Wednesday evening, I mean, late in the process of the war. He launched this war four and a half weeks ago, essentially with a social media announcement. And yes, he has spoken to reporters and in that way addressed the American public over these weeks. But this was his first time coming out and laying out the logic for going into the war and laying out his next steps. And that's what he did with this address tonight. But I wouldn't say we learned a whole lot more about the war or the process, other than him sticking to a two to three week timeline for getting out.

4:45Christina, earlier today, Iranian President Masoud Perjewskian took the, let's call it unusual step of issuing a letter directly addressed to Americans. And in it, he said, continuing along the path of confrontation is more costly and futile than ever before. And he noted that attacks on infrastructure directly target Iranian people. Did it surprise you that there was no reference made to that letter? Not really. The president doesn't like to. I don't I don't think he wants to give credence to that administration or that power structure in Tehran right now. But it was an interesting move by Iran because that's something we've seen.

5:23Americans usually come from the State Department or American presidents have often issued statements in Farsi for the Iranian people. They often are trying to appeal to the people, especially during the protests. Or as President Trump said tonight, regime change was not our goal, but regime change has occurred. If you're trying to appeal directly to the population to overthrow what you view as a corrupt and, as he said several times, evil regime, that is something we are more commonly seeing from the U.S. to Iran. I don't remember in recent memory the president of Iran appealing directly to the American people, but these are unprecedented times.

5:58The other thing that I thought was interesting was when he talked about regime change, he said, but regime change has occurred because all the original leaders are dead. This is true. They have taken out of a lot of Iran's leadership. But the current leader is the son of the former leader. And a lot of the mullahs and power structure that are electing him are still in place from the old regime. And if anything, analysts have told us these strikes knocked out of a lot of potential moderates. And you're getting mostly extremists who are in the government right now, with the exception of perhaps the president and the foreign minister and maybe the Speaker of the House in Tehran.

6:34So that's not exactly accurate. And calling it regime change is also not accurate because these are, for better or worse, mostly the same people who were in power before this assault started. Jeff, we understand that British Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper will be chairing a virtual meeting with counterparts from some 35 countries. And the aim apparently is to discuss a plan to restore freedom of navigation in the strait. The U.S., from what I understand, is not due to attend this virtual meeting. Where do you think things stand with some of our allies, particularly those in Europe? Well, it's hard to say.

7:08I think they've certainly had a wake-up call from President Trump, and that didn't just start with this war. That started with his return to office generally when he started to be critical of NATO again, as he was during his first term. Although I will say I asked him a question at one of his first press conferences last year about whether he remained committed to Article 5, which, of course, is the part of the NATO treaty that guarantees mutual defense. And he said, yes, but there has certainly been a number of questions about that since. And he is raising them himself by being critical of NATO allies, Britain in particular, I might add, for not jumping in to help protect the Strait of Hormuz and help improve the shipping passages through there.

7:56So to your question, and that was a long windup, sorry. The fact that the United States is not taking part is probably a sign that these other countries realize that Trump is serious when he says we're going to leave in two to three weeks and we don't really care what happens to the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, he says that it will just automatically start working better. But I think most reasonable people who are familiar with that area of the world will know that that's not the case. And so these countries appear to be looking like they want to talk about it in order to come up with a strategy.

8:35Speaking with Bloomberg's Jeff Mason, who is our White House and Washington correspondent, as well as Christina Ruffini, who is co-host of Bloomberg This Week. And by the way, you can catch her Saturdays and Sundays on Bloomberg TV and radio beginning at 7 a.m. Eastern time. Christina, let me go to you. The conversation that we had yesterday late in the day was the possibility of some type of UN action as it relates to the UAE, maybe using the use of force to keeping the straight open. Do you think that's got any chance of succeeding? I think the UN is at its weakest that we've seen it in probably the last two decades.

9:14But following up on Jeff's point, the president said when this is done, it will just open up naturally because they want to sell the oil, referring to the Strait of Hormuz. What Jeff was talking about is something that allies are really concerned about. And that's probably what's precipitating that mention that that meeting you mentioned from the UK and this effort to try to get some sort of coalition together with the UN, with these nations to open up the street, because it is looking more and more likely. and I think the president's words hinted at it tonight, he doesn't really care if the strait is operational.

9:46He's going to do his thing and the U.S. is going to leave. And all those GCC countries, all those Gulf allies, all the Asian countries that depend heavily on oil coming through that strait, some of them who thought they had very close ties to the United States, are going to be in trouble if the U.S. is not there to finish the job. And that's going to fall to some sort of coalition of other nations. Maybe the U.N. is the mechanism by which they make that happen. But I would reckon it probably happens between a collaboration of EU and GCC countries. I think it probably happens outside that body.

10:20But perhaps talking about it at the UN will be helpful in getting that started. But this is a real issue, and allies are really concerned that this could actually happen. And they could be left in a worse strait, pun unintended, than when this war started, because Iran could be controlling the strait and then potentially profiting off of it if it starts to charge tolls or control passage. Jeff, let me go to you. Is President Trump getting advice from anyone outside that inner circle, so to speak, do you think? You know, it's always sort of tricky to figure out where President Trump is getting his advice.

10:55We know that he talks to, of course, the inner circle of advisors that you were referencing, also an outer circle of friends. He calls some of the natural U.S. allies and leaders friends as well. But it's hard for me to say to what extent he's listening to them. I always come back when asked about this to something that he said, I believe it was in 2016 before he won the first election that he won, which was he was asked then where he gets his advice. And he said from myself. And I think that that still applies in 2026. He is his top counselor. He is his top spokesperson. person. He likes to be the number one in charge, and he likes to be the one delivering the message, and he likes to be the one making the decisions.

11:41Now, that's not to say he's not listening to some others and getting some advice, certainly from people like Marco Rubio, Steve Woodcoff, Jared Kushner, and probably his own vice president, as you noted earlier, who's becoming a little bit more involved in more recent days. But the buck stops with him, and he's the ultimate decider. Christina, before this conflict began, the administration was somewhat stressing the issue of affordability. And I know now that the Cleveland now cast from the Cleveland Fed has the inflation rate at around forecasted around three and a quarter percent. Where do you think this leaves the president as we talk more and more about the run up to the off term elections?

12:25I mean, again, I hate to give Jeff Mason too much credit. Just kidding. Jeff is brilliant. But he was right in saying this was part of that. This is a sales pitch because midterms are if you are the president just around the corner. And even if this is resolved tomorrow, which the president said it's not going to be right, he's looking at a two to three week timeline before the U.S. operation is even finished. That's not to say whether or not the straight is is working by then. And even though the president emphasized many, many times, he said, you know, thanks to my economic policies, we have drill baby bill drill.

13:00The U.S. is financially independent. The oil prices will come down. The stock market will go up. That's pretty aspirational because every analyst I've heard on Bloomberg this week is saying this is not like flipping a switch. There's a tail to this. It's it's inputs for chemicals. It's fertilizer for farmers. it's the global oil price, not just what we're paying in the U.S. that impacts everybody's price at the pump. And that's something that voters are really going to notice. And, you know, Trump voters are very, very loyal, but it's expensive to live in the United States right now. And families are under a lot of pressure.

13:33And that's really, really going to hurt him. And it's really going to hurt Republicans ahead of the midterms when they're already looking at an uphill battle. Jeff, what do we know about the buildup of additional U.S. troops in the Mideast region? Let me answer that. And then I want to get back to the politics briefly. As far as the buildup, we know that in recent days and weeks that the United States has sent more troops to the region, which has led to some speculation about potentially putting boots on the ground. That's definitely not something that the president addressed tonight, which I think you can interpret in two ways.

14:08Number one, you would, I don't think, be wrong to conclude that he's signaling that that is definitely not the direction he wants to move or else he wouldn't be repeating the fact that he wants to conclude the war in the next two to three weeks. You could also conclude that it's a head fake and that the president is still considering it, and that's why he has sent troops into the region in order to continue to have that option. So that'll be something that allies and enemies will have to figure out as this war continues. Briefly back on the politics, though, I also wanted to say I said earlier that this was a sales pitch.

14:51One of the things that was a sales pitch, I think, was him listing the number of when Christina mentioned this as well, listing the major wars of the last century and how long they took. And I just I'd be very curious to see some polling after the speech as to whether that logic resonates at all, both with his base and with an American public that heard him say as a candidate in 2024 that he would not launch new wars. Christina, earlier in the week, the president was focused on trying to recover enriched uranium in Iran. But apparently he told Reuters that it's so far underground, he doesn't even care about it any longer.

15:30Talk to me about what you perceive to be the maybe subtle shifts in objectives. So the Washington Post was out with some good reporting today about the president asking for an operational plan for U.S. commando special forces to go in and try to retrieve that uranium. That, to me, immediately seems like an almost impossible and incredibly dangerous task, because as the president mentioned in his speech, the U.S. hit Esfahim Netanz, Fordow, those nuclear sites, very heavily last June with those big bunker-busting bombs. And according to the president, cratered them and at the time destroyed the nuclear program.

16:10him. Now, tonight, the president said that Iran was on the door of a nuclear bomb and they were nearing the race. Everyone I've spoken to, nuclear experts say there's no evidence that Iran was any closer to that breakout time, the time it takes them to flip the switch and create a nuclear weapon than they were when the U.S. attacked those nuclear sites last summer. The issue is, this has been a talking point for the president. And so he wants to show that he's trying to prevent Iran from having a nuclear bomb. He has a plan for getting that uranium. But now it seems like he is backing off of that.

16:46That could be potentially because those plans came back and were not feasible or just simply because he realized that it contradicts his own argument that the U.S. destroyed these sites. But at the same time, he's also saying that Iran was about to get a nuclear bomb. And both of those two things can't really be true. Jeff, I'll give you the last word as we get set to wrap up. I appreciate you giving me the last word instead of Christina. But what I would like to say is actually building off of her brilliant remarks just there, which is politically, there are conservatives, and I spoke to one of them today, who are concerned that President Trump is not finishing the job.

17:24that he made the decision to go in and start this war, controversial decision, but one that is certainly supported by a lot of Iran hawks and right-leaning people in the foreign policy establishment. And they were worried ahead of this speech today that he is done with it, ready to get out because of the multiple reasons that we've already cited, and that that will actually still leave a threat in Iran that he could have taken care of now if he had just stuck with it. Jeff, thank you so very much. Bloomberg's Jeff Mason, our White House and Washington correspondent, and a very special thanks to Christina Ruffini, co-host of Bloomberg this weekend.

18:05And you can catch her Saturdays and Sundays on Bloomberg TV and radio beginning at 7 a.m. Eastern time. Thanks to you both.

18:21We'll be right back.