29th Annual Milken Institute Global Conference Special: Day One

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**Carol Massar** (0:25)
Watching the markets and as we see Iranian missiles targeting the United Arab Emirates. There's some concerns about that. Tehran warning that it was tightening its grip on the Strait of Hormuz. I mean, Joe, this is once again, we see this back and forth and it feels like there's no progress towards an end.

**Joe Mathieu** (0:38)
It feels pretty hairy. And this comes with this Operation Freedom. I guess it's being called the president announced over the weekend where we would in fact not necessarily start escorting vessels through the Strait, but stand by to help them. There's a question about whether anybody is going to take that opportunity and it's where we start our conversation with Ian Bremmer. The force behind the Eurasia Group is with us live and in person here at the Milken Conference. It's great to see you. I hope that this set of meetings is going well for you. We would just love to talk about this very delicate moment that we are in and whether the president has the ability to open this corridor in the Strait. Even if he does, could we move enough ships to make a difference?

**Ian Bremmer** (1:14)
As of right now, he does not and that is a big part of the problem. This is by far the biggest challenge we've seen since the ceasefire was announced by President Trump a couple of weeks ago.
We now have ships that are being fired on in the Strait.
One doing a quick U-turn right after that. No one injured to the best of our knowledge. And then we have what looks to be some interceptions, the UAE Ministry of Defense saying that they had intercepted some shots at them from Iran in the last couple of hours. That is clearly an escalation, a direct response by the Iranian government from Trump's announcement that he was going to have a humanitarian freedom operation to get some of these ships through. The Iranian perspective is we are prepared to talk about ending the blockade if you're going to let our ships through. Otherwise it's not happening. And the Iranians have the ability and the willingness to prevent Trump from making these moves. This is, he's going to be pretty antagonized by this. There's no question in my mind.

**Carol Massar** (2:26)
Ian, who's got the cards? Who's got the winning hand right now? Or is there a winning hand? Because it doesn't seem like there's really any progress. I mean, Iran understands its power by controlling the Strait of Hormuz. And if it lets that go, then what?

**Ian Bremmer** (2:38)
Look, I wouldn't want to be the Iranian regime right now, very clearly. And 150 of their leaders have been killed. So to say they've got the winning hand in that environment, they're desperate, but they're also, their regime is not going to change. More of them can be killed. A lot more Iranians have been killed and displaced, by the way, than anyone else in this war. Lebanon is the only other country that's even close. So it's not like the Americans are facing some existential threat. But this was a war the Americans chose to fight, that President Trump chose to fight with Israel.
And it turns out that Iran's capacity to cause damage and pain to the Americans is massive. Where one place the Iranians have an advantage is an information advantage.
They know what the polls are in the United States. They know what people inside the Trump administration are saying, and that they're not completely aligned on this. They know the Republicans don't like the war. The US has none of that transparency on what is being said at the top of the IRGC inside Iran. And that is a disadvantage for the United States.

**Carol Massar** (3:41)
Well, where's our intelligence on that?

**Ian Bremmer** (3:43)
Well, there is intelligence. Again, you've killed most of the people you were talking to, right? And the foreign minister who is engaged and still engaged every day by text with Steven Witkoff, they're still talking. And the sides aren't all that far apart on the nuclear issue. But he's not the guy calling the shots inside Tehran. The people calling the shots are not on television. They're not engaged publicly because they don't want to get killed. So it is just a lot harder to get intelligence on what the Iranians are doing and what the Iranians are thinking. And I'll tell you, as many times as I've seen President Trump say, they better watch out or no more Mr. Nice Guy, when the supreme leaders like kid and father and mother have already been assassinated in this war, no more Mr. Nice Guy doesn't hold a lot of credibility. Most Iranians that we've spoken to in Tehran...