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00:00Overnight, the U.S. launched new strikes on Iran.
00:02This latest strike set follows Tehran targeting a vessel in the Strait of Hormuz.
00:06According to the U.S. military, now the key shipping choke point is closed to traffic once again.
00:11Joining us now is Arizona Democratic Congressman Greg Stanton.
00:14He serves on the Foreign Affairs, Transportation, and Infrastructure Committees,
00:17as well as Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the U.S. and China.
00:21Congressman, we do want to talk about China, but first I think we've got to talk about Iran.
00:25What is your understanding of the status of the Strait?
00:28Iran is saying it's closed. The U.S. is saying it's open.
00:31Is that an argument that doesn't need to be?
00:33Because if there's any uncertainty, as we talk about here often on Bloomberg, people are not going to want to
00:37risk it.
00:39I mean, up to the exact minute, we don't know what the situation is.
00:42Here's what we do know.
00:43The Strait of Hormuz was open before Donald Trump entered into this war of choice.
00:49And what a terrible decision that was.
00:51It's obviously increased gas prices for the American people and for our allies around the globe.
00:59And we don't know what his strategy or plan is with this war.
01:03Obviously, he was trying to negotiate a settlement.
01:05We wanted a negotiated settlement.
01:08It didn't work.
01:09And now we're back in an active war with no end in sight, no solution to the Iran nuclear problem.
01:16They can never have a nuclear weapon.
01:18But what is our plan to actually accomplish that?
01:21The ballistic missile program of Iran.
01:24Originally, that was one of the goals of this war was to end that program.
01:28No indication that is that is still a goal of this administration, ending their support for terrorist proxies in the
01:35region.
01:35This is a disaster, this war of choice.
01:38The president first took us out of the JCPOA in his first term, the Iran nuclear agreement.
01:43What a mistake that was, and now compounding it by this ongoing war of choice.
01:48We understand that the foreign minister of Iran traveled to Amman yesterday for meetings.
01:52Unclear if any U.S. representatives were there.
01:54And this is something that we talked about with a colleague of yours on the Foreign Affairs Committee.
01:57The chairman emeritus, Michael McCaul, was with us yesterday.
01:59And I just asked him about the level of engagement as he sees it from this White House with these
02:05talks.
02:05The president saying the ceasefire is over, but giving the kind of imprimatur to Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner,
02:11to continue having these talks if they want to, to paraphrase what the president said.
02:14Let's take a listen to what Chairman emeritus McCaul said to us yesterday.
02:18Iran is, they're not stupid.
02:20I don't trust them.
02:22I don't think they negotiate in good faith.
02:24They know the midterm elections are coming up.
02:26They know that if energy prices escalate, that's going to hurt my party.
02:31The worst thing that could happen is we negotiate a really bad deal for political reasons before the midterm elections.
02:37Now that we're in and we seem to be all in, we need to do this correctly.
02:42But, you know, I don't think the American people have a lot of patience, to be honest with you.
02:48And when they fill up their gas tanks, I mean, I filled mine up when I was home in Austin.
02:52And, you know, it was $100.
02:54And so the American people are fatigued.
02:59The American people are fatigued.
03:00That stuck with me.
03:01Another thing he said did as well.
03:02We need to do this correctly.
03:04And I wonder, Congressman, if you have confidence that as these talks unfold, so much as they are, they are
03:08being done correctly, to borrow a phrase from the Congressman.
03:11Well, Chairman McCaul said he was worried about the United States entering into a bad deal.
03:16We did enter into a bad deal.
03:17As you know, the agreement that the administration had reached with Iran, the one that's now been breached and now
03:24there's ongoing violence.
03:25But the agreement was a terrible one for the United States because we gave up all of the sanction relief
03:31immediately and all for the promise that negotiations would be ongoing to end the Iran nuclear program and to get
03:40rid of the enriched uranium that still exists inside of Iran.
03:45But we didn't create – like the JCPOA, the sanctions relief would be gradual over time as Iran showed commitment
03:54and that they were actually following the agreement, holding it up there under the agreement.
03:58Under the agreement that Donald Trump made with Iran, all of the sanctions relief was up front and the ability
04:04of Iran to still charge ships fees for crossing the Strait of Hormuz.
04:10And so we need a new deal.
04:12We need a deal that actually builds accountability for Iran.
04:15I agree with Michael McCaul that we can't trust this regime.
04:17They consistently lie.
04:20But it just goes to show you entering into this war of choice by Trump, what a terrible foreign policy
04:25decision that's going to have bad reactions for the people of America for years and possibly decades to come.
04:31All right.
04:32So what do you do about this then?
04:33Because obviously your party is in the minority, but I'm wondering if you're sensing any similar frustration from Republican counterparts
04:40in Congress and if you think the loss of someone like Senator Graham, who usually was very stalwartly loyal to
04:47the president but did express skepticism about this deal and could at times be a go-between between Congress and
04:53the president, if his loss is going to make any kind of dissent with the White House even harder?
04:59Well, first off, rest in peace, Senator Lindsey Graham.
05:03He was a good friend to our senator from Arizona, Senator John McCain.
05:07That's right.
05:07We appreciate him for that close working relationship.
05:10And he was a friend of the people of Ukraine, and he was a hawk on issues of Iran.
05:15I disagreed with him on numerous other political issues, but rest in peace.
05:21And he was a critic of this agreement that the president had come to with Iran for the exact reason
05:26I just said it.
05:27He gave all the benefits to Iran up front without having to build up accountability.
05:33And so it was almost doomed to failure.
05:36And he understood that the Strait of Hormuz was open before this war.
05:39The negotiations that were going on before entering into active shooting and missiles, the negotiations would have continued to allow
05:49the Strait of Hormuz to be open.
05:51But now that Iran has shown that they can close the Strait of Hormuz with drones going after ships in
05:57the region, it's going to be tough to put that genie back in the bottle.
06:01But that's exactly what this president and his team have to do, is to negotiate an open Strait of Hormuz,
06:07absolutely essential for the world economy.
06:10A lot of news this morning.
06:11Some news about another one of your colleagues, Ro Khanna, the gentleman from California.
06:14He tweeted this yesterday on a trip that he made to the Middle East.
06:18Israeli settlers brandishing American-made M4s detained me and other Americans on my trip to Palestine.
06:24When the IDF arrived, they sided with the settlers and continued our detention.
06:27They made a huge mistake, he said.
06:29And he went on to tell the New York Times, in an interview that he did with that newspaper, that
06:33he felt powerless in that situation.
06:36He was eventually allowed to continue his journey after calls to the U.S. Embassy and Israeli police.
06:40But he says, imagine how people feel every day.
06:43I wonder what this incident says to you about the state of play in Israel, in that region more broadly,
06:52and sort of the faith that you have in the Israeli government at this point.
06:55Look, Ro Khanna is right that this was a huge mistake.
07:00He's an American congressman.
07:01He's doing due diligence.
07:03He's trying to do fact-finding mission, particularly what's going on in the West Bank and the issue of settler
07:08violence in the West Bank.
07:10He should be doing that on behalf of his constituents.
07:13And he chairs the committee, or ranking member, excuse me, of the committee that I'm on, the China Select Committee.
07:18So he's doing important work for the American people.
07:21Regardless of what you think of him politically, he needs to be doing this kind of work to see with
07:26his own eyes what's going on.
07:28And, of course, if we're ever going to get a long-term peaceful solution in the Middle East, in Israel,
07:34between Israel and the Palestinian people, a two-state solution, which still needs to be the goal of United States
07:41diplomacy in that region and our relationship with Israel and the Palestinian people, that needs to be our North Star,
07:49if you will.
07:50And the settler violence that's going on in the West Bank is a massive problem to achieving that.
07:56It makes it virtually impossible to achieve that.
07:58That's got to stop.
07:59And he was doing important work, and it's totally unacceptable what happened to Ro Khanna in the West Bank.
08:04On a diplomatic level, it also seems to point out a few problematic things.
08:07These CODELs, these trips, don't just happen spontaneously.
08:10There's a lot of planning.
08:11There's a lot of security, usually a lot of coordination between governments.
08:14That indicates to me that possibly either that coordination wasn't happening at a sufficient enough level or perhaps there's a
08:21lack of, something we talk about on the show, command and control with those forces in certain areas of that
08:26country.
08:26Are you concerned there are bigger issues at play here even than this issue, this incident, which is quite a
08:32big deal?
08:32I don't want to speculate on that, but it's just completely unacceptable under any circumstances that settlers would detain Americans,
08:44and in this case, an American member of the United States Congress who was there on a fact-finding mission,
08:50which is important work to be done on behalf of the American people.
08:54And again, we know that it's always been the United States' goal in our diplomacy in that region to get
09:03to a two-state solution.
09:04That's the only way to have long-term peace in the region, and the activities of settlers and settler violence
09:10is a huge impediment to that, and it's important for members of Congress to do this work and see it
09:16with our own two eyes.
09:17And yeah, what happened is completely unacceptable regardless of the circumstances.
09:20You mentioned a couple times that Select Committee on Strategic Competition with China, and let me end there, and maybe
09:25the way that we can get into that issue is by looking at the U.S.'s decision not to renew
09:29the USMCA, that successor to NAFTA.
09:32I'm curious what that decision says to you about the way that the U.S. is looking at its relationship
09:38with that strategic competitor, with China.
09:40What is it going to mean not having that deal codified in a more formal way, having it be subject
09:45to our annual renewal, I guess, in the years ahead?
09:48What's that going to mean for U.S.-China relations, that level of competition?
09:52Well, I represent Arizona, a border state that has created tens of thousands of jobs as a result of the
09:58modernized agreement, the USMCA.
10:00So from a financial perspective, both for my community and the rest of the country, a terrible decision of this
10:07president.
10:07But on a geopolitical scale, the North American region is like over 30 percent of the world economy.
10:15And if we're serious about winning the war, the economic battle with China, and we have to win this economic
10:22battle with China, bringing the United States, Canada and Mexico closer together, acting as partners in North America, is critically
10:30important to winning it.
10:31As is, by the way, United States having stronger economic ties with Europe and the other Asian nations surrounding China.
10:41So the president slapping tariffs on our allies around the globe from a geopolitical perspective of winning this battle with
10:48China is a terrible decision.
10:50And just, you know what, just insulting Canada, calling them the, wanting them to be the 51st state or threatening
10:56a unilaterally bomb in Mexico, being belligerent to our next door neighbors.
11:02That is a terrible foreign policy, terrible diplomacy.
11:06We decide that these are our partners are going to work with them and we need to modernize the USMCA.
11:11We're going to have to leave it there, sir.
11:12Critical trade agreement.
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