Senator Chris Murphy Talks National Defense Authorization Act

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**David Gura** (0:07)
We stay on national security and defense, and we head back to the Aspen Security Forum. That's where we find David Gura. He's the co-host of Bloomberg This Weekend. He also is the co-host of the Big Take podcast. He's sitting down with Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut. Hey, David.
We got word that just a few minutes ago, the US resume strikes on Iran, and I guess I'd like to start there if I could. The situation we find ourselves in, the plasticity of the president's policy toward the region right now, and your latest thinking on sort of where we are and where things are headed.

**Chris Murphy** (0:35)
I didn't know that we had stopped our strikes. This war restarted about a week ago. It shows no signs of ending. This is the most significant foreign policy disaster in the last 20 years. Iran effectively has control of the strait. They are going to have control of the strait for the long run. As a price of opening that strait, they want all of the sanctions released, which is going to put a lot of new money into their economy, but also allow them to send money out to their proxy groups in the region.
This war should have never started. It's hard to figure out what to do now because it's kind of like asking somebody, now that the raw egg is splattered over the floor, how do you put it back together? But it seems as if the United States is going to have to pay that VIG, billions of dollars to Iran and sanctions relief, and we're going to have to prevail upon the Israelis to permanently stop the war with Lebanon. If those two things happen, maybe we can get that straight reopened. I have no confidence that ultimately there's going to be any bigger deal between the United States and Iran. I don't think they're going to make any commitments on the nuclear program. So I guess the best we can ask for right now is to just stop the shooting, get the straight reopened, and we're still seemingly far away from that.

**David Gura** (1:49)
As we look at Humpty Dumpty there on the floor, do you think the administration gets that? Are they still confident that they can stare down Iran, I guess, and find some solution by doing that?

**Chris Murphy** (1:58)
Yeah, I think we can't overhype the degree that just plain old incompetence plays in this story. I mean, the Trump administration doesn't know what it's doing. Its primary diplomats with Iran are the president's son-in-law and a guy who was a real estate developer two seconds ago, who's never done diplomacy. So it's not surprising that they're failing.
They're going to either have to put actual adults like experienced diplomats in charge, or they're just going to have to step out of the way and ask our European friends or our Gulf friends to come in and try to seal an ultimate deal on reopening the strait. So I have very little confidence that this crowd that's in charge of our national security is going to be able to get anything done.

**David Gura** (2:41)
We've seen in recent weeks your colleagues on the other side of the aisle, many of them expressing more reservations about this. Do you detect a real change in their position as this is attenuated, as it plays out?

**Chris Murphy** (2:52)
I mean, this is of course a deeply unpopular war. The American people don't support the war they want to end. They're paying the price, not just in higher gas prices and higher diesel prices, and higher fertilizer prices, but also in the cost of the budget. This is 100 billion to 200 billion dollars. What is going to happen is that Republicans are going to cut funding for schools, for transportation, for nutrition in order to pay for the war. That's part of the reason that the American public don't want it. So as you get closer to the election, this becomes an issue that Republicans are going to have to deal with because this will be an issue where voters are going to say, are you for the war or against it? And it's going to matter in their choices. So yes, I expect that you will get more Republicans saying, time to end the war for the first time ever. About three weeks ago, we passed a resolution in the Senate to end the war.
It ultimately was stymied by some procedural moves in the Senate, but there is evidence that Republicans are starting to wake up.

**David Gura** (3:49)
You mentioned Israel a moment ago, and I go back to that memo of understanding, which it seems was not worth the paper that it was printed on. I think the president would agree with that now. Israel, of course, is not a party to those conversations. And I'm curious how you look at the U.S.'s power to persuade Israel to scale back, pull back its campaign in Lebanon and change tack.