00:00President Trump has set the stage for an off-ramp in the Iran war as he prepares for a primetime
00:04broadcast address in the coming hours. Meanwhile, Iranian President Massoud Pazekistan has posted
00:10an open letter to Americans urging them to look beyond the US political rhetoric. That's bringing
00:16Bloomberg Politics editor Laura Davidson and our Washington and White House correspondent Jeff
00:20Mason for more. So, Jeff, give us an indication of what have we heard from the president so far
00:27today and what do we expect in this address to the nation? Well, we expect a few different things
00:34tonight. Number one, I think the president will go over some of the things that he has been saying
00:38in the last few days about what he views as success so far in the war in Iran and probably
00:45emphasizing the timeline that he laid out yesterday in terms of a two to three, excuse me, two to three
00:51week end or off-ramp period for the war. I wouldn't be surprised if he also used the war or
01:00excuse me,
01:00the address tonight to be critical again of some allies for not stepping up in his view to help
01:06the United States in terms of making it easier for ships to get through the Straits of the Strait of
01:12Hormuz. So probably a little bit of criticism as well as a perhaps an early victory lap as the
01:20President Eisenhower to this war. Jeff, will the American public accept his speech? Because we
01:29have seen now gas pump prices, $4 a gallon already being topped. They're not very happy with the Iran
01:37war. So what will the president need to tell them in order to assuage the public? Well, it's not for
01:44me to say whether the public will accept the speech, but I will say that I do think he, to
01:48your question,
01:49I do think he's trying to make a sales pitch. And in many ways, it's coming very late. The president
01:54did not do an
01:55address to the United States or to the nation when he launched this war more than four weeks ago. He
02:02instead did a video that was posted on his Truth Social account, his social media account. So this is the
02:08first
02:09time, despite multiple times, of course, where he spoke to reporters, where he is really sitting down and laying out
02:15the
02:15case for what he has done and what he has left to do, or at least chooses to have left
02:21to do in the war. But to your broad
02:23question, how will it be received by the American public? TBD. And some of that won't be clear, I think,
02:31until the midterm
02:31elections coming in November, to the extent that public unhappiness with this war will manifest at the polls.
02:39And Laura, not surprising, the Iranian president has actually tried to address the American public. What did he say
02:45in his letter? Yeah, so this letter called on Americans to look past the rhetoric and pointed
02:51out a lot of the inconsistencies that have been coming from the White House and acknowledging that
02:56the U.S. has kind of been kept shape-shifting here on what exactly it wants and the demands it
03:01has
03:02of Iran and says essentially that the history between the U.S. and Iran is misunderstood. This
03:08also comes around the same time that a report hit from the New York Times that says that U.S.
03:13intelligence is signaling that Iran doesn't believe that Trump is serious about these peace talks that
03:17he keeps talking about. This is a dynamic that Trump has actually acknowledged himself publicly,
03:22saying that a couple days ago that, you know, we always negotiate with Iran, we being the U.S.,
03:26and then we end up blowing them away. That's a direct quote there. So this is
03:31something that, you know, has continued to play out both last summer as well as just recently,
03:36you know, in the past several weeks, right ahead of the war, there have been talks going on,
03:39and then the U.S. has moved towards military action. That is what at least U.S. intelligence
03:44is pointing to as a key holdup here, as Trump is trying to get Iran to engage more in talks,
03:50and Iranians just aren't sure that this is for real this time.
03:55Yeah, so much of the uncertainty has been in exactly what kind of communications have been
04:00between the two sides, right? How much of it is gainsmanship on both sides?
04:04Do we know who the U.S. is negotiating with at this point?
04:09We don't. Trump has suggested that the U.S. is talking with the new president of Iran. That
04:16individual is actually someone who has been in that role since 2004. Of course, there's a
04:19new supreme leader, the son of Khomeini, the supreme leader who died in strikes several weeks
04:26ago. But the government itself really is unchanged. There are some new names in some of those top
04:32jobs. But in terms of the theology, the politics, the sort of hardline stance of this regime is
04:39essentially the same as it was before the war, despite having some new officials who have stepped
04:43up as those above them have died in the attacks. And Jeff, while this conflict continues, we are
04:51seeing President Trump really blaming allies and even making the suggestion in a media interview
04:57to withdraw from NATO altogether. He is certainly casting his ire on allies and in so doing raising
05:08questions about future alliances. The president has called into question the United States role
05:13in NATO multiple times, both during his first term and now during his second. I remember asking him
05:19a question in one of his first press conferences last year about whether he remained committed to
05:24Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which is the part of the treaty that lays out defense and that each
05:32country will come and defend the other in times of need. He's certainly putting that into or calling that
05:36into question again now because he's frustrated. He feels as though the United Kingdom, for example,
05:42and other European nations should have stepped up to help with the Strait of Hormuz. It's hard for
05:47me to say how this is different from previous times, if he's more serious now about potentially
05:53withdrawing the United States from NATO, or if that is just his frustration speaking. But we'll no doubt
05:59learn about that in the days and weeks and perhaps months to come.
06:04Thank you very much.
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