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

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On Wednesday evening in a rare prime time 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.

And 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.

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.

But we could hit it and it would be gone and is not a thing they could do about it.

In Trump, they're delivering a rare prime time 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 in so far 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 Rafini 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.

Thanks 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 Meito.

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 straight.

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.

He 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, you know, this has only been 32 days of conflict.

Jeff, he seemed to be delivering an ultimatum.

He's Vice President JD Vance is set to relay some messages through mediators.

And essentially, it comes down to this.

If there is no deal, the US is going to hit each and every one of Iran's electrical generating

plants very hard.

That seems to be illegal, doesn't?

Well, I don't feel like I could 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.

I 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.

Christina earlier today, Iranian President Masood Przyskian 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 into Iran right now.

But it was an interesting move by Iran because that's something we've seen.

Americans 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 seen from the US to Iran.

I don't remember in recent memory the President of Iran appealing directly to the American people,

but these are unprecedented times.

The other thing the President said 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 structures 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 and to Iran.

So 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 of Ed 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 US, 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.

I 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 of 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 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

straight-of-form moves and help get ship, help improve the shipping

passages through there.

So to your question, and that was a long wind-up, 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 straight-of-form moves.

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.

Speaking with Bloomberg's chef Mason, who is our White House and Washington correspondent

as well as Christina Rufini, who is co-host of Bloomberg this weekend.

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 keep 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.

But 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 straight-of-form moves.

What Jeff is talking about is something that allies are really concerned about.

And that's probably what's precipitating 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 straight is operational.

He's going to do his thing and the US 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 street.

Some of them who thought they had very close ties to the United States are going to be

in trouble if the US is not there to finish the job.

And that's going to fall to some sort of coalition of other nations.

The UN is a 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.

But 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 straight pun unintended than when this war started

because Iran could be controlling the street 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.

We 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.

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.

Now 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 know, 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 rated

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?

I mean, again, I hate to give Jeff Mason too much credit.

Just kidding, Jeff is brilliant.

But he was right and 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 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, the 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 tale to this.

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.

And that's really, really going to hurt him, and it's really going to hurt Republicans

out 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 Mid-East 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

boots, putting boots on the ground, that's definitely not something that the president

addressed tonight, which I think you can interpret in two ways.

Number 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 how 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.

One 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 this 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.

Talk 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.

commandos 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 Esfahem Natanz for Doe, those

nuclear sites very heavily last June with those big bunker-busting bombs.

And according to the president, raided them and at the time destroyed the nuclear program.

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. attacks 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

that 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.

And, but what I would like to say is actually building off of her brilliant remarks just

there, which is politically, there are the conservatives, and I spoke to one of them today,

who are concerned that President Trump is not finishing the job, that 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 the 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 Rafini, co-host of Bloomberg this weekend, and you can catch her Saturdays

and Sundays on Bloomberg TV and Radio Begin at 7 a.m. Eastern Time, thanks to you both.

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