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17:05Emily Cohn:action against Iran here, just from your experience in the State Department and other areas?

17:13Lee Klaskow:If the question is, why are we doing this now or why is the U.S. getting involved, there are two answers. One is that during the talks that people were tracking on the nuclear file, the U.S. team assessed that Iran was not actually making concessions. We heard encouraging things about movement being made, but the reality is what Iran was offering was not to enrich uranium for three years. This time period is what the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA, told us. Same time frame, it would take Iran to restore their uranium enrichment if no restrictions were placed on it. So the U.S. team said, Iran is just toying with us.

17:53Lee Klaskow:This is the same delayed diplomacy they've been displaying for several U.S. administrations. This is a problem. Back in D.C., the military and the National Security Council and the president and her team said when the regime revealed this, that they were not willing to truly make concessions on the nuclear file or on their missile file, even though the U.S. had a massive military buildup on their shores. It caused the U.S. administration to say they intend to build out both programs to the point where the international community would lose any leverage to negotiate with them. They would either build up their nuclear program to the extent that you could no longer safely go after their missile program kinetically, or they would build up their missile program to the extent that it made it too risky to destroy any of their nuclear facilities.

18:39Lee Klaskow:So if If the current threat on their borders was not enough, nothing would be. And therefore, the time was now or never. The other pressure that was in was the U.S. got signals from Israel that they were going to strike potentially unilaterally because of their own feeling of this being a small window of opportunity and it being an existential threat. The U.S. knew that that would mean that the U.S. would be receiving attacks. Our bases would be on the receiving end because the Iranian regime had made it clear that any strike by Israel would also be considered a strike by the U.S. So combine those, then add in, sprinkle in intelligence that told us that there would be clustered meetings of senior Iranian leadership, almost too good to be true, and you wound up with the recipe for strikes when they happened.

19:24Lee Klaskow:So with Iran signaling readiness for a long war, where does that leave the U.S. when it comes to reshaping their strategy? We have some people saying it'll be three, four, five weeks. it's not really a reshaping however the the u.s battle plan has been laid you know these contingencies have been on the shelf for quite some time and of course they've been updated massively updated but the intent is to wipe out the military wipe out the navy and prevent iran from having a nuclear weapon and create a pathway for the iranian people to govern themselves to decide whether they want that to be someone new or to be levels three or four down within the regime.

20:05Lee Klaskow:It's on them. But this kind of operation to destroy an entire military, an entire Navy, including underwater assets, all the ships, all the bases, any missile facilities, drone facilities, factories, manufacturing, stockpiles, the like, it takes some time. So the U.S. and Israel started with those air defenses that would prevent Iran from being able to guard against these kinds of strikes. And it went then to long range, medium range ballistic missiles, things that would threaten our bases and Israel. And it's moving on then to leadership, to things like the short range ballistic missiles that Iran barely touched in the June war and is what we're seeing them fire along with drones onto their Gulf neighbors now.

20:47Lee Klaskow:So there's kind of a tiered hierarchy of places that were first priority to hit and now moving down. But the U.S. operations won't finish until they hit all of their high value target list. Some of those being individuals, but mostly being regime assets, the ways they exert control.

21:05Emily Cohn:So given your experience there, Kirsten, is this something that can be achieved in the space of four to five weeks, as President Trump was suggesting, or could it go perhaps even longer?

21:17Lee Klaskow:It depends on the state of Iran's air defenses, which right now we assess being pretty low, And then on intelligence, because we know Iran moves things around. So right now, satellite imagery, for instance, is helping our jets that are doing launcher hunting. They're literally scanning the air to look for launchers being moved from the places where they are secretly stored to the places where they are intended to launch, taking them out that way. How many of the stockpiles underground can we reach? Is the leadership on that list moving around? Do we know where they are? So it's the battle plan is there.

21:48Lee Klaskow:It's just whether or not intelligence shifts day to day that lays out whether or not the timeline stays solid or not. It also will depend on some geopolitical factors. How is the economy reacting around the world? What kind of damage is coming to the to Gulf partners? It's not that things like damage would cut short U.S. operations. In fact, if anything, it would probably speed them up. What are the odds that Gulf states like Qatar or UAE will be pulled deeper into a direct confrontation, perhaps? perhaps? Well, the U.S. may not even want that. These Gulf states have a lot of assets. They have standoff weaponry.

22:28Lee Klaskow:They have great air defenses that the U.S. is interoperable with. But you don't want to clutter the airspace. You don't want more situations like we had in Kuwait, where turning on Kuwait's air defenses wound up crashing three U.S. fighter jets. So anything would have to be well coordinated. The U.S. has planned the battle plan around those territories and that airspace not being available. So it certainly won't be a message, hey, everybody pitch in when you're ready. All of that would be integrated. The Gulf also tends to have a lot of their air defenses on auto mode. So it expends quite a bit of interceptor stockpile on perhaps one drone and its remnants and the like.

23:06Lee Klaskow:So the U.S. would want to say, before you get involved directly in anything offensive, let's really watch your defenses and make sure they're being well strategically expended. And then if we're going to use things like your standoff weapons, let's coordinate targeting. We want to really limit civilian casualties here. That's a big percentage of the planning has gone into how to limit those civilian casualties. But when you look around, even them participating in air defense is a contribution. And now that you have their civilians being hit, they're much more likely to say we would like to participate on the offensive side.

23:41Lee Klaskow:You saw Qatar already take down two jet fighters. That's more than just turning on a jammer, for instance. And now that Saudi has had embassies hit in their capital, they're rethinking. The Saudis, prior to any engagement, messaged to the Iranians very clearly, we're not allowing the U.S. to use us as a base for launches. But if you do anything that strikes civilian architecture, we will consider it an act of war and everything's on the table then. So we could be seeing the gulf being drawn in.

24:11Emily Cohn:Stay with us. More from Bloomberg Intelligence coming up after this.

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26:30Paul Sweeney:You're listening to the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast. Catch us live weekdays at 10 a.m. Eastern on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with the Bloomberg Business app. Listen on demand wherever you get your podcasts or watch us live on YouTube.

26:45Emily Cohn:Congressional war power votes aimed at blocking President Donald Trump from further military action in Iran will likely fail. That is the assessment of our next guest, Nathan Dean, senior policy analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence. He's down there in D.C. I mean, this is just for show, isn't it, Nathan? I mean, the Congress has given up the whole, you know, war powers thing a long time ago to this, to our U.S. presidency, haven't they? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is essentially a symbolic vote here. I mean, in order to get this through law, you would have to have both chambers pass it and you'd have to pass it in a way to get a veto proof majority because President Trump would obviously vetoed this measure.

27:20Emily Cohn:So I think what, you know, Senator Kim Kaine, who is the sponsor of this legislation or this resolution, and he did something very similar to Venezuela, is aiming to do is to essentially just put people on record ahead of the U.S. midterms because current polling suggests that 60 percent of Americans are not on board with President Trump's strategy in Iran. And, you know, as you can do in an election year, people like to play politics. And so this is something that I think just generally is more so about political aspects as we get closer and closer to November.

27:46Lee Klaskow:But even if passed, resolutions would need a super majority to override Trump's veto. And so that leaves them with, to Paul's point, something largely symbolic. So what is the ideal situation in your view?

27:59Emily Cohn:Yeah, so there's two reasons why Senator Tim Kaine is pushing this. The first is Congress doesn't like it when presidents start conflicts. And you don't even have to have a Republican president or a Democrat president. You go all the way back over the last 50, 60 years, Congress doesn't like when presidents start conflicts without going for congressional authorization. So this is the first reason. The second reason is that, you know, just going back to my point about politics, all 435 members of the House of Representatives and one third of the Senate are running in November. And this could be a situation where Senator Keene wants to put people on the record so that if that 60 percent of the American populace isn't on board with President Trump's Iran strategy grows larger, you can have some very difficult conversations.

28:37Emily Cohn:I mean, this is not going to change President Trump's strategy when he says that he doesn't need to even think of the polling numbers. He's correct. But, you know, he's also not running on the ticket in November. You know, there are going to be some Republicans, on the other hand, who are looking at this and looking at the chances the Democrats take the House in November. And I'm not going to say they're going to speak in opposition to this, but they certainly would be a little bit more wary, or at least their uneasiness would rise as a result of this vote. Nathan, realistically, is the Senate up for play here in the midterms?

29:08Emily Cohn:So right now, the prediction markets have it about a 40 percent chance that the Democrats are going to take the Senate. And a lot of it hinges on today. specifically what's happening here primary day in Texas. Now, you have two races. You have the Republican race and the Democratic race. On the Republican race, you have Ken Paxson, the attorney general, who, according to the prediction markets, has an 85 percent chance of beating the incumbent, Senator John Cornyn. On the Democratic side, a similar number, 82 percent, suggests that James Tallarico, the moderate Democrat, has a good chance of beating Jasmine Crockett, the progressive.

29:38Emily Cohn:That is the ticket that the Democrats want to see if they have a chance of taking the Texas race. But again, you know, like I think most people, at least according to the prediction markets here in Washington, are sort of just taking into account as their scenario. The Democrats have a really decent chance of taking the House, about 80 to 85 percent according to the prediction markets. The Senate is still going to be very difficult despite what happens today.

30:01Lee Klaskow:What's the most likely geopolitical scenario your sources are telling you? Say in the next 30 days, what are they preparing for? Maybe best case or worst case scenarios? Best case, depending on the view you're taking.

30:13Emily Cohn:Yeah, you know, obviously, I think it's the timeline of Iran. I mean, our colleague from Bloomberg Economics, Becca Wasser, has been looking at this. Our colleague, Wayne Sanders, has been looking at this. And there's this idea, if you look at the prediction markets again, in terms of where this is going to end, Calci has a contract here that essentially says the majority of folks think that this is going to be over this month. that's very different to this idea of the geopolitical risk will continue for months, especially in terms of like the Strait of Hormuz and all that other stuff. So I think that's the number one thing here to keep in mind from the geopolitical perspective.

30:43Emily Cohn:But I would also just say from the U.S. domestic perspective, keep in mind that there's going to be a rush to push legislation out this month and next month because Congress, like I said, is going to really focus on the midterm elections and that generally stops them from passing legislation.

30:56Paul Sweeney:This is the Bloomberg Intelligence Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live each weekday, 10 a.m. to noon Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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