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The degree to which this is widening, it's pretty extraordinary here after the killing of Aroon Supreme leader. But we've seen buildings struck in Tel Aviv, projectiles and Cutter and Bahrain, and also protests in Paxton and I understand the desthold they're rising as a result of those protests that have taken place by Shared protesters.
Yeah, we're hearing it's up to nine killed in Karachi. We've also got some top lines acrossing the terminal. Iran has appointed Ayatola Ali Raza Arafi to the Leadership Council. He will not be the next Supreme leader. He's one of three senior officials who I believe company had previously designated as could take over for him during the past summer when that bombing campaign was going on. These Raelings were taking out top leaders and he knew this could be an issue.
He named three people.
We will ask our experts later if indeed he was one of them, and what we know about this individual and.
Certainly just highlights the level of uncertain we have as we get to this issue of succession in Iran. Of course, that the President of the United States urging Iranians to put down their weapons and to reject the government that have been in place there. That of course being made from mar A Lago to Iran, a wide geographic distance there, and this is a fight that's being waged by air. We'll see what happens on the ground here in the hours and days ahead.
All right, we want to bring in Jemani Verssecchi, Nancy Yusef and Ethan Bronner. Jamana is our midiest anchor, and Jamon, I want to start with you because I'm wondering what we know about the new appointee and what exactly the position being elevated to the leadership council. What does that mean, is as temporary or do we know at this point?
Yeah, okay, So your question is, I guess about who is going to succeed the Ayatola Chamree. And actually what we're seeing now is procedure is kicking into place. I mean, you've got to think as well, they had been preparing for this, for the possibility of him being eliminated or even dying by natural death. He was eighty six years old.
And so what happens from here onwards is they've established this temporary leadership council that is made up of the president himself, President of Pazish Khan, who is alive according to the Iranian officials, the head of the judiciary, and then this senior cleric from the Guardian Council, the individual that you just mentioned.
And their goal is just.
To steer the leadership through the coming months because at the same time, what's going to happen is, according to the constitution, an assembly of experts. This is the eight member of well, it's a clerical body essentially comprised of eighty eight members. They will be getting together and will be assessing who should be the successor to Kmine. Many different names are being thrown out there, unclear at this point who it's going to be.
Some of the names include.
His son so Musham, some of his close aides Ali, Larry Janni, Sadik Clari Johanni. And then there's also the possibility of the grandson of the founder of the Islamic Republic and his name is Rojala Kromene as well, but at this point we don't really know. We know also that the prior sort of quote unquote reformist president Rohanni, who was the president who actually in the jcpoa deal with Obama back then, he was one of the names that was in the mix. But again unlikely at this
point that we're going to get any clarity. So in the interim, this temporary Leadership Council is going to take over Christina.
We heard such a chorus of complaint from Congress, but the fact that they weren't briefed before these strikes were launched, and there was a demand from the Iranians to have a meeting of the UN Security Council yesterday here in New York. In fact, that meeting did happen, and we heard from the US representative to the UN Mike Waltz. Let's take a listen to what he had to say about the diplomatic track that the US was purportedly pursuing here before these strikes took place.
American diplomacy was attempted repeatedly and in good faith. President Trump, Secretary Rubio, our special envoys wit Coffin Kushner were relentlessly dedicated to diplomacy. But diplomacy cannot succeed where there is no genuine willingness to see s aggression, where there is no genuine partner for peace.
Again, the US Ambassador to the United Nations, I want to turn to Nancy Usef, staff writer at Atlantic Magazine
on this point. Nancy, as you look at that balance and the debate over how much that balance was really held even in the run up to all of this, what are we learning about the integrity of those conversations between the US and the Iranians being mediated by the Omani and the degree to which perhaps they were proceeding a way that could have forestalled what we saw happened here over the last twenty four to thirty six hours.
Well, it depends on who you ask. If you talk to the Omani, Foreign minister who gave an interview to
face the nation hours before these strikes began. He suggested that there was real progress that had happened in those talks, and the Iranians believed that there was progress, according to him, but the United States felt that the Iranians were not serious about talks, and we're interested really in buying time to avert the very strikes that we saw yesterday, and so these kinds of talks are really complicated, they're technical, and so I think the question becomes the degree to
which there was a detailed discussion of these talks and what the expectations were in terms of the outcome. Did this have to have something that went beyond the twenty fifteen agreement. Did it have to include limitations on Iran's ballistic missile capability, as the United States had asked for and the Iranians rejected. Did it have to deal with Iran's proxies, which again the United States asked to be part of the discussion, and the Iranians said they didn't
want it to be a part of the conversations. They wanted it to focus strictly on their nuclear program.
And Ethan Brunner Bloomberg's Israel bureau chief.
I want to ask you out today.
Other than that eight minute statement that the President dropped on social media in the middle of the night, the White House did not have any other comments, and so far we're being told they're not putting anybody else out for the near future. But the President did speak to
Barack revide over at Axios. One of the things he said is I can go long and take over the whole thing, or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians see you again in a few years if you start rebuilding and the inferences eras your nuclear missile program.
I'm wondering what.
The appetite for another prolonged conflict is in Israel, given the events of last year, the events following October.
Sixth, the war with Gaza.
Do you think the Israelis want a protracted campaign or do you think they would like to finish this.
Faster than that.
Look, I think nobody has an appetize for an expanded campaign if you can avoid it. So I think it would be fair to say that if they could, you know, sort of eliminate this regime and the new people coming into power would do what the US and Israel wants.
It to do.
People here would be thrilled.
That said, I think there's a gap between the US's view of Iran and Israel. For Israel, Israel is considered a somewhat existential battle the United States. It's I think fair to say a war of choice that occurred. So how long President Trump and his administration will want to keep going, I think will likely to be shorter than what Israel is willing to do. Of course, the Israelis
are suffering in a way that Americans are not. I mean, everyone who lives here, including me, has almost every hour been forced to go into a bomb shelter of some kind a sleep and bombshelters. You see, you're absolutely right. Yeah, it's got a metal door, it's got a metal shutter for the window, and the room is also built with something between eighteen and thirty inches of reinforced concrete and has a kind of an aeration system.
So yes, it's.
Designed for this. But I mean many, many people in Israel don't have one of their own apartment and they're forced into public shelters. So it's not fun at all. But I think on the other hand, you know, the people in Israel have been talking for so long about the need to eliminate the Iranian regime because Iran does say death to Israel, it does fund and armed militias around the region. It really is an enemy in a genuine sense that people I think have a tolerance which
is going to go on for a while. We'll see for how long. It's been a very rough day. By the way, a lot a lot of attacks here.
A lot of attacks. There are a lot of attacks across the region.
And I want to go to Jumana on that point, because we've seen an attack on the Dubai Airport. I believe either this is of course a major area of transit for live international.
Place that usually takes fire in these incidents.
Absolutely so, Jaman, I wonder if you speak to the way that this is widened and the degret to which books were alert on alert rather well beyond Israel and Iran.
I think it's difficult to overstate how unprecedented this is and how shocking it is for specifically the UAE.
You know, this is this is the part.
Of the region that has prided itself on its stability, on political stability, on economic stability.
Uh, this is not a jurisdiction.
In in in the region where you'd expect something like this to happen. So it's shaken everyone who lives here. And yesterday and throughout our reporting, we were talking about, you know, many people rushing to supermarkets to load up on food. That is not a situation that I think UAE officials ever anticipated would occur within the uae UH.
And And while.
It started off, the retaliation initially started off with Iran sending missiles and drones across and directed at US assets and U spaces in the region. Actually what happens yesterday is civilian infrastructure started to get damaged as well. And albeit it could be from the degree of intercepted missiles and rockets, but at the same time, it's sustained damage. We are seeing you heard about that fire probably in one of those high end hotels and a very fancy
part of town called Pajumeira. You would have seen the images online of a Dubai airport also sustaining damage. And it's not just Dubai Airport. Abu Dhabi Airports also was recipient of some damage. Similar themes emerging in Baharan as well. And so what's happened here is this has become a lot more dangerous for the countries in the region than what we thought was going to happen in the early hours.
And just a short while ago, very very strong remarks have come through from one of this senior president's advisors, doctor Anad Gargash. It's an advisor to President MBZ, and he actually put out a statement to the Iranians saying, get your senses together. This is not how you're supposed to be treating your neighbors. And I think you know
implicit to that is the threat that you know. So far, the UAE have said that they're not going to let the US use their basis to launch at tax On in Iran, but there's the question mark of whether that may change and whether the calculus for these DCC countries has changed.
Jamana, thank you very much to remember set you there, anchor of Horizon's Middle East and Africa here at Bloomberg Television and Radio are thanks to Nancy Yuseffith Atlantic Magazine and Ethan Bonner, our Israel Bureau chief as well.
Thank you all. It's very interesting the places that.
Do not normally take direct hits in the attacks I was a texting with a friend in Doha today checking on them and seeing how they are, and he said, we're good. We're just loud bangs and we're lying to kids about quote, daytime fireworks. On that note, we want to bring in Colonel Wayne Standers. He's a senior defense research analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence.
Colonel, thank you so much for joining us.
I think one of the things I want to ask you about is the level of coordination, especially on the intelligence side, between US intelligence, the CIA, and Israeli intelligence.
Most there's a report in.
The New York Times this morning that the CIA was actually the agency that located community and was able to make that targeting and collaboration with USAD. I'm wondering what your take is on that, if that was a generous leak to chuff up our folks and Langley, or if you think that's actually how that probably went down given the intelligence capability of both those agencies.
Yeah, I think there's a lot more partnership that goes on. Then a lot of people realize that are behind the scenes that normally don't make it into the public life. But from this perspective, there's a lot of partnerships across those agencies, and anybody who's able to tip a queue among allies and say hey, look this is the information that I have. I have this piece of information. Because normally what you're looking for is some type of corrobative,
corroborated reporting. You don't want to go off of a single source that says, hey, this is where they're at, and then you end up responding and end up being wrong. So if you can take some signals intelligence, you can take some imagery, you can take some human intelligence a source maybe, and be able to put those pieces together, then you have that additional level of confidence before you try and target a strike.
Colonel, let me just ask you about how you're thinking about the length of this conflict. And of course there were the warnings and the run up to these strikes by the US and Israel that this could metastasize into a wider conflict. And then when you think about the time horizon for that, what's your latest best thinking on how long this is likely to last?
Yeah, I would like to think it wouldn't go beyond seven days. Mainly, a lot of the piece that you're seeing the administration talk about is is a week right, they're kind of using that as one of the pieces that are out there. When you look at the capability that our Inians have left, Right, a lot of the areas that the US and Israel were attacking is obviously the leadership during the first one. Then the rest of the volleys are really going after air defense launchers and
missile stockpiles. Right, they're keeping it towards valid military targets. The launchers, there's not a whole lot of launchers left. They're probably maybe one hundred, one hundred and fifty is what I'm hearing from reporting. So no matter how many missiles you have, you have to be able to actually launch them in specific volleys from these launchers they're able to successfully target those. It continues to cripple the amount of military capability and capacity that Iran can put behind.
Back in the Iran Israel conflict, you actually saw volleys of two hundred three hundred at a time.
Well, you're not.
Able to do that if you have a limited number of launchers.
Coronel Wayne Sanders, stay with us.
We're going to come back to here over the course of the next few hours to gede your perspective on this conflict. Is get new reports of strikes throughout the region, and Christina suffice to say, this is, as Jimana was saying, something that really has widen geographically here over the last twenty four hours.
It really Hasn't's opened up a very interesting discussion, both politically and militarily about what comes. BAXT thanks for joining us on today's Bloomberg This Weekend podcast. Don't forget to tune in live for the show every Saturday and Sunday morning, starting at seven am Eastern.
We're on Bloomberg Television, Radio and the Bloomberg Business App, bringing you unique takes and in depth interviews on news, politics, lifestyle and culture.