Big Take

President Trump intensified his threats on Iran Tuesday morning posting on Truth Social, "A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will."

This escalation follows a post on Monday saying the US would attack its bridges and power facilities if it failed to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic by Tuesday night.
On today’s Big Take podcast, host Sarah Holder sits down with White House correspondent Courtney Subramanian to unpack the state of negotiations between the US and Iran, Tehran’s rejection of a temporary ceasefire and the mounting pressure from voters and international leaders.

This is a developing story. We are live blogging at Bloomberg.com with the latest from across the globe. You can also listen at Bloomberg News Now.

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After a month of fighting, President Trump took his case for war with Iran to the American people Wednesday night. In a prime-time address that sent energy markets surging, he promised both an imminent end to the conflict and two to three weeks of further intense military strikes.
On today’s Big Take podcast, host Sarah Holder and Bloomberg Washington Correspondent Jeff Mason unpack the president’s brief, often contradictory speech. They discuss how it put investors and key allies on the back foot, what it could mean for the president’s agenda heading into the midterms and where the conflict goes from here.

We are live blogging our coverage of the war with Iran at Bloomberg.com with the latest from across the globe.
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US President Donald Trump spoke for nearly 20 minutes from the White House, saying the US would hit Iran “extremely hard” in the next two to three weeks, and that he’d strike key infrastructure like electric plants if no deal is reached.

Stocks fell and oil jumped on his comments, with Brent rising 5% as Trump talked about possible escalation and reiterated his call for other nations to step in to fully reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
This is a developing story. We are live blogging at Bloomberg.com with the latest from across the globe. You can also listen at Bloomberg Daybreak or Bloomberg News Now.

We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer.
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Fueled by a powerful mix of FOMO and a government drive to accelerate AI adoption, OpenClaw has exploded in popularity across China. But as these agentic systems gain sweeping access to personal data, reports of them “going rogue” are beginning to surface.
On today’s Big Take Asia podcast, host K. Oanh Ha sits down with Bloomberg’s Luz Ding and Bloomberg Opinion’s Catherine Thorbecke to dig into the rapid rise of agentic AI in China, why it has taken hold so quickly and the mounting security concerns pushing users and regulators to reassess the risks.
Read more: There’s Method to China’s OpenClaw Madness
China’s OpenClaw Obsession Is a Risky Gamble on Experimental AI
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A month into the Iran War, the Trump administration continues to send mixed messages about when and how it will end. In addition to threats on electricity plants and oil wells if a deal isn’t reached, the president said he would consider destroying another piece of critical infrastructure: Iran’s water desalination plants.
On today’s Big Take podcast, host Sarah Holder talks to Bloomberg defense policy and intelligence reporter Peter Martin about the Middle East’s reliance on desalination, the potential humanitarian crisis that targeting the plants could spark and how that action could fly in the face of international law.
Read more:
How the Iran War Is Exposing the Risks to Gulf Water Supply
US Expands Threats to Iran Energy, Water as It Hails Talks
Hosted by Sarah Holder; Produced by David Fox; Reported by Peter Martin; Edited by Paddy Hirsch.
Fact-checking by Eleanor Harrison-Dengate; Engineering by Alex Sugiura.
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