# US Insists Talks Ongoing Even as Iran Rejects Trump Outreach

An episode of [Bloomberg Daybreak: Asia Edition](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1663863437), 26 Mar 2026, 18 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/58e85be7-dbb5-4043-afed-af80014dc0b3/85b0ca7a-a2e6-4199-875b-b419001836ba/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=27143354-63aa-4ac5-965d-af80014dc0d3

Business and finance news from the Asia-Pacific. The White House insisted that peace talks with Iran are ongoing, even as Tehran publicly rejected US overtures and issued fresh conditions of its own to end the conflict that's wreaked havoc across the Middle East and global markets. For more, we heard from Rosemary Kelanic, Middle East Program Director at Defense Priorities. She spoke to Bloomberg's Haidi Stroud-Watts and Shery Ahn Plus - The Asia Pacific Financial and Innovation Symposium is underway in Melbourne. Bloomberg's Haidi Stroud-Watts speaks exclusively to Sam Sicilia, CIO at Hostplus, one of Australia's biggest superannuation funds. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio News.
[0:12] Speaker 2: Welcome to the Daybreak Asia podcast. I'm Charlie Pella. Doug
[0:16] Speaker 2: Chrisner has the week off. Crude oil rebounded, equities edged lower.
[0:20] Speaker 2: Is on certainty surrounding US Iran ceasefar talks kept investors
[0:24] Speaker 2: cautious amid conflicting headlines. Even so, the White House insisted
[0:29] Speaker 2: that peace talks with Iran are ongoing, even as Tehran
[0:33] Speaker 2: publicly rejected US overtures and issued fresh conditions of its
[0:37] Speaker 2: own to end the conflict that has brought havoc across
[0:41] Speaker 2: the Middle East and global markets. And for more, we
[0:44] Speaker 2: heard from Rosemary Kolonik, the director of the Middle East
[0:47] Speaker 2: Program at Defense Priorities, and she spoke with Bloomberg's Heidi Stroud,
[0:51] Speaker 2: Watts and Sherry On.
[0:53] Speaker 3: Rosemary, great to have you with us.
[0:55] Speaker 4: Give us, first of all, your reaction on this back
[0:57] Speaker 4: and forth between Iran and the Trump administry. Then where
[1:00] Speaker 4: you think is the Tulsa on right now?
[1:05] Speaker 5: I think that my reaction is that this is a
[1:07] Speaker 5: lot of political theater from the Trump administration. I think
[1:11] Speaker 5: it's quite clear that Trump is planning trying to play
[1:13] Speaker 5: markets and keep them calm during the week so that
[1:15] Speaker 5: he can potentially escalate on the weekend, if not this weekend,
[1:19] Speaker 5: some future weekend. Trump's ceasefire plans are not a ceasefire, right,
[1:25] Speaker 5: this is these are you know, Iran gave these counterproposals
[1:29] Speaker 5: that are ceasefire proposals. What needs to happen for hostilities
[1:33] Speaker 5: to cease. The US is trying to negotiate a whole
[1:36] Speaker 5: comprehensive package, which most countries don't agree to do in
[1:41] Speaker 5: the middle of a war because if they did, it
[1:43] Speaker 5: would just incentivize other countries attacking them. So the US
[1:47] Speaker 5: and Iran are just they're operating on totally different levels here,
[1:50] Speaker 5: and the US side is pretty disconnected from reality. I think.
[1:56] Speaker 4: Wouldn't be the wouldn't that be the right approach coming
[1:59] Speaker 4: from the Trumpets, especially if you think of it militarily
[2:02] Speaker 4: try to hit them the heart is while they're down,
[2:04] Speaker 4: instead of putting a ceasefire when the Iran could actually
[2:07] Speaker 4: rebuild their defenses. And at this point, when the Trump
[2:10] Speaker 4: administration went into this war, they wanted a bigger package
[2:15] Speaker 4: out of it. Right, we were still a little bit
[2:16] Speaker 4: confused about exactly what the target and would be and
[2:19] Speaker 4: what they could call victory. But wouldn't this be sort
[2:23] Speaker 4: of the strategy from the Trump administration, although the rest
[2:28] Speaker 4: of the world might not agree.
[2:32] Speaker 5: I disagree with that. So yes, I think the Trump
[2:35] Speaker 5: administration wants big concessions from Iran. Where I think they're
[2:39] Speaker 5: wrong is they don't seem to understand how badly this
[2:42] Speaker 5: war is going for the United States. Right, so, the
[2:45] Speaker 5: US had a theory of victory that was we decapitate
[2:48] Speaker 5: the leadership and within a couple of days Iran surrenders
[2:52] Speaker 5: and the whole thing is over. It's quite clear they
[2:55] Speaker 5: didn't plan for a long war and they don't have
[2:57] Speaker 5: the theory of victory for a long war. Meantime, their
[3:01] Speaker 5: bargaining position has improved by fighting the United States. They
[3:04] Speaker 5: have now asserted control over the Straight Offoremus. They've stayed standing,
[3:08] Speaker 5: and they've demonstrated that they can continue to hit the
[3:11] Speaker 5: region pretty much indefinitely, albeit at lower levels, but continually
[3:16] Speaker 5: harassing the region as long as they want. And they're
[3:19] Speaker 5: you're they're using guerrilla tactics that are that are cheap
[3:22] Speaker 5: and easy to do that. So, you know, Trump seems
[3:25] Speaker 5: to either not understand what's happening on the ground or
[3:28] Speaker 5: this might just be proposals that he expects Aron is
[3:31] Speaker 5: going to reject, which they already have.
[3:37] Speaker 1: Is the ordering of thousands of troops to the region
[3:40] Speaker 1: also a negotiation tactic or is it the administration putting
[3:45] Speaker 1: in place, you know, an insurance policy if this doesn't
[3:48] Speaker 1: work out.
[3:50] Speaker 5: I don't think it's a negotiating tactic. I think it
[3:52] Speaker 5: is real escalation that Trump was planning, and he's getting
[3:55] Speaker 5: options for himself to do that escalation. And I think
[3:58] Speaker 5: it's unlikely that that he's going to back down now.
[4:01] Speaker 5: He should back down. He should back down because ultimately,
[4:05] Speaker 5: this is a war of attrition now, and the question
[4:09] Speaker 5: is not who's more militarily powerful, but who cares more
[4:12] Speaker 5: about the outcome? And Iran cares more about the outcome.
[4:16] Speaker 5: So Iran is not going to be cowed. It's not
[4:19] Speaker 5: going to be intimidated by the US sending more forces
[4:22] Speaker 5: to the region. And I do think that Trump is
[4:25] Speaker 5: basically using these negotiations as employed by time to assemble
[4:30] Speaker 5: the forces that he wants to take this, you know,
[4:33] Speaker 5: into an escalation, which would be a terrible, terrible outcome
[4:38] Speaker 5: for the US getting deeper involved when we have no
[4:41] Speaker 5: theory of victory or sense of how to extract ourselves.
[4:48] Speaker 3: The element of.
[4:49] Speaker 1: Israel Benjamin it now who also interests me too, because
[4:53] Speaker 1: you know, there's been a lot of analysis that this
[4:55] Speaker 1: is the war that Israel has been wanting to fight.
[4:59] Speaker 1: Right in terms of dealing with Iran, do you think
[5:02] Speaker 1: Israel will so easily come to the table and agree
[5:04] Speaker 1: to a seize bile when perhaps It's objectives different to
[5:08] Speaker 1: that of Washington's have not been met.
[5:11] Speaker 5: Well, Israel is supposed to be the junior partner in
[5:14] Speaker 5: this relationship, and so the United States should be able
[5:17] Speaker 5: to say to Israel no. Right. As you noted, this
[5:22] Speaker 5: is a war Israel has been arguing for the United
[5:25] Speaker 5: States to be part of for at least twenty years,
[5:28] Speaker 5: back to the days of George W.
[5:30] Speaker 3: Bush.
[5:30] Speaker 5: Trump is just the first president that actually said yes
[5:33] Speaker 5: to them. All the other presidents said no, and Trump
[5:35] Speaker 5: can also say no.
[5:36] Speaker 2: Now.
[5:37] Speaker 5: I'm sure Israel would not be happy with it. It
[5:38] Speaker 5: seems quite clear to me they really want regime change
[5:42] Speaker 5: or regime collapse. They want Iran to just be taken
[5:45] Speaker 5: off the geopolitical game board from their perspective. But Israel
[5:51] Speaker 5: is not supposed to be able to dictate US policy.
[5:53] Speaker 5: The President does that, and the President could tell Israel no,
[5:57] Speaker 5: and the US has enough leverage over Israel that we
[5:59] Speaker 5: could get them to stop if we really wanted them to.
[6:04] Speaker 4: We're are Golf states in all of this, and can
[6:06] Speaker 4: we expect them to get involved in the war if
[6:09] Speaker 4: they hit to their economies and entergy facilities warsin.
[6:14] Speaker 5: That's a great question, and we don't know at this point.
[6:17] Speaker 5: The more this escalates, the more they will bear the
[6:20] Speaker 5: brunt of that escalation, and so it's in their interest
[6:23] Speaker 5: for this to de escalate. So if Trump actually goes
[6:27] Speaker 5: through with attacking Iran's energy infrastructure, right their electricity grid,
[6:31] Speaker 5: then Iran can do the same to Golf states attack
[6:33] Speaker 5: their electricity grids. And Golf states are much more much
[6:37] Speaker 5: more reliant on desalinization, which of course requires electricity for
[6:42] Speaker 5: their water, whereas Iran depends on desalination for two percent
[6:47] Speaker 5: of their water and the rest of is fresh water.
[6:49] Speaker 5: So it's not good for the Golf states of this escalates.
[6:52] Speaker 5: By the same token, they can't just let Aron continue
[6:55] Speaker 5: to attack them without retaliating. So I would not be
[6:58] Speaker 5: surprised if we saw dout Arabia where the UAE joined
[7:02] Speaker 5: the war, other countries may not. We might see a
[7:06] Speaker 5: split among the Gulf states in this scenario. It's unclear.
[7:09] Speaker 5: But Trump has put them in a very difficult position
[7:12] Speaker 5: by starting this war.
[7:14] Speaker 4: And US allies have also remained quite detached from the
[7:20] Speaker 4: conflicting haven't they, especially after President Trump made it clear
[7:23] Speaker 4: that he wanted their help in reopening this rate of
[7:25] Speaker 4: horror moves. How likely is it that we're going to
[7:28] Speaker 4: get any sort of significant backup coming from US allies
[7:33] Speaker 4: at a time when we have seen President Trump really
[7:35] Speaker 4: renege on a lot of previous zeals, whether it's trade
[7:38] Speaker 4: or anything else.
[7:40] Speaker 3: Yeah.
[7:41] Speaker 5: I think that's a crucial point. I mean, Trump has
[7:44] Speaker 5: alienated US allies over the past year, and he alienated
[7:48] Speaker 5: them further by not getting them on board before he
[7:51] Speaker 5: attacked Iran. So he attacked Iran, it turned into a mess.
[7:55] Speaker 5: And now he's asking allies that he you know, previously
[8:00] Speaker 5: you know, had disdain for publicly to help us, and
[8:03] Speaker 5: they don't want to do it because they understand that
[8:06] Speaker 5: trying to reopen horror moves by force is a very
[8:09] Speaker 5: dangerous thing to do. So I think it's very unlikely
[8:12] Speaker 5: that that NATO countries are going to come into this.
[8:14] Speaker 5: They've said that they won't. They've said that after the
[8:17] Speaker 5: conflict stabilizes, so after the war's over, maybe they will
[8:21] Speaker 5: help with managing, you know, sort of peacekeeping mission, a
[8:24] Speaker 5: naval peacekeeping mission in a way through horror moves, but
[8:27] Speaker 5: they're not going to do the heavy lifting.
[8:29] Speaker 1: Here.
[8:31] Speaker 2: Rose Murray Klank, director of the Middle East Program at
[8:34] Speaker 2: Defense Priorities, speaking to Bloomberg's Heidi Stround Watts and Sherry On.
[8:40] Speaker 2: Coming up, we will take you to Australia where the
[8:43] Speaker 2: Asia Pacific Financial and Innovation Symposium is underway. We'll bring
[8:48] Speaker 2: you our exclusive interview with Sam Cecilia, cio at Host Plus.
[8:54] Speaker 2: That's coming up right here on the Daybreak Asia podcast.
[9:06] Speaker 2: Welcome back to the Daybreak Asia Podcast. I'm Charlie Pella.
[9:09] Speaker 2: Doug Chrisner's got the week off. We go to Australia
[9:12] Speaker 2: next where the Asia Pacific Financial and Innovation Symposium is
[9:17] Speaker 2: underway in Melbourne, one of the country's largest funds. Host
[9:21] Speaker 2: Plus is taking part in the event. We had the
[9:24] Speaker 2: opportunity to speak to Sam Cecilia, the CIO at Host Plus.
[9:29] Speaker 2: He spoke exclusively to Bloomberg's Heidi Stroud Watts with.
[9:33] Speaker 3: The ongoing conflict in the middle of eies.
[9:34] Speaker 1: Has that affected the way that you sort of run
[9:37] Speaker 1: your portfolio? Has it meant any changes or thoughts about changes?
[9:41] Speaker 6: Look at an understandable question, thank you.
[9:43] Speaker 7: The reality is that we're going to be living in
[9:47] Speaker 7: a world of uncertainty and a world of volatility that
[9:50] Speaker 7: is here to stay. But that's always been the case
[9:53] Speaker 7: when you think back twenty five years, go back to
[9:57] Speaker 7: the year two thousand. If you were a investor in
[10:00] Speaker 7: the year two thousand, what didn't you know about the
[10:04] Speaker 7: next twenty five years. You didn't know about the about
[10:08] Speaker 7: the dot com bust, you didn't know about Brexit, you
[10:12] Speaker 7: didn't know about COVID, you didn't know about the global
[10:16] Speaker 7: financial crisis. You didn't know about Trump tariffs, you didn't
[10:20] Speaker 7: know about Ukraine Russia war. You didn't know about a
[10:23] Speaker 7: lot of things. And so you know, you have a
[10:27] Speaker 7: choice as a long term investor. If you need to
[10:31] Speaker 7: think and act long term. You can sit by the
[10:34] Speaker 7: sideline waiting for the dust storm to settle, but it's
[10:37] Speaker 7: never going to settle ever, and so as a consequence,
[10:41] Speaker 7: you should invest throughout that period, which is what we did,
[10:45] Speaker 7: and so bringing it to your question today, yet another conflict,
[10:49] Speaker 7: yet another source of uncertainty, yet another source of volatility.
[10:53] Speaker 6: We need to continue to invest through that period.
[10:57] Speaker 1: You're as cool as a cucumber, So tell me. Is
[10:59] Speaker 1: it defensively opportunistically? How are you investing through this period,
[11:03] Speaker 1: particularly pertaining to the possibility of a higher inflation and
[11:07] Speaker 1: rate environment.
[11:08] Speaker 6: It's diversified, that's the real answer, right.
[11:11] Speaker 7: You need to look at all the opportunities that present
[11:14] Speaker 7: before you in terms of deploying capital and take advantage
[11:19] Speaker 7: of the opportunities where it makes sense and mitigate the
[11:22] Speaker 7: risks as best you can.
[11:24] Speaker 6: And the best way to do that is to diversify it.
[11:27] Speaker 3: Where does that diversification lie.
[11:29] Speaker 1: We've been talking about crypto, and that's caused quite a splash.
[11:33] Speaker 7: Sure well, crypto if we decide to go down that path,
[11:36] Speaker 7: and we haven't made that decision yet, the mechanism for
[11:40] Speaker 7: doing so, and the rationale for doing so includes that
[11:44] Speaker 7: it acts as a diversifier to some of the other
[11:47] Speaker 7: investments that we have in the fund. There are different
[11:51] Speaker 7: ways to access crypto that meets our.
[11:55] Speaker 6: Fiduciary and regulatory obligations.
[11:58] Speaker 7: If we can't meet our fiduciary and regulatory obligations, then
[12:01] Speaker 7: we will not be proceeding down that path. Pretty straightforward, right,
[12:06] Speaker 7: And the easiest, lowest hanging fruit of accessing digital currencies
[12:12] Speaker 7: in its generic form is through an exchange trade and fund,
[12:16] Speaker 7: So you can do it through an ETF, which provides
[12:18] Speaker 7: you with some level of diversification, that provides you with
[12:22] Speaker 7: mark to market pricing. There's a whole set of advantages
[12:26] Speaker 7: liquidity provisions. So we'll be looking at all of those characteristics.
[12:31] Speaker 7: But unless we can get satisfaction that all of those
[12:35] Speaker 7: have been addressed in including custody of assets, and we
[12:40] Speaker 7: can get our regulator comfort, give them comfort that we
[12:45] Speaker 7: have crossed and ticked all of those boxes, then we
[12:49] Speaker 7: won't be proceeding.
[12:50] Speaker 1: Is that a reflection of what the younger membership cohort
[12:54] Speaker 1: want to see in terms of alternative asset classes?
[12:58] Speaker 7: Look, I think there's no doubt that the that the
[13:00] Speaker 7: overwhelming proportion of requests that we get for digital currencies NFTs,
[13:09] Speaker 7: there's a whole set of related investment opportunities comes from
[13:13] Speaker 7: younger demographics. But historically host plus's member base has been
[13:18] Speaker 7: the hospitality industry, which is a very young member demographic
[13:22] Speaker 7: to begin with.
[13:25] Speaker 1: The war is not by far the only risk facing masket.
[13:29] Speaker 1: I wanted to get your views on private credit. We
[13:31] Speaker 1: heard a bit this morning from Blackrock. We've also heard
[13:34] Speaker 1: from Lloyd blank find saying that he sees a firerus there.
[13:38] Speaker 1: What's your assessment of what's going on on the risk levels.
[13:42] Speaker 7: So we've had exposure as a fund to private credit
[13:48] Speaker 7: since twenty ten, and so all of a sudden, everyone
[13:52] Speaker 7: acts as if this is a new ass a class,
[13:55] Speaker 7: and it is not. It could be new for retail investors,
[14:04] Speaker 7: but there are institutions, but not for institutionals. It shouldn't
[14:07] Speaker 7: be new to institutional investors, right, and so you'll find
[14:11] Speaker 7: that if you are investing in private credit with bona
[14:15] Speaker 7: fide institutional asset managers, then they would have mechanisms in place.
[14:21] Speaker 6: They have.
[14:24] Speaker 7: Credit assessment facilities, workout teams, a whole set of necessary
[14:31] Speaker 7: infrastructure to access private credit in the right way. We
[14:36] Speaker 7: know this is true because we've been doing it since
[14:38] Speaker 7: twenty ten and there's never been a problem.
[14:42] Speaker 1: So des that men, your fund managers and maybe looking
[14:44] Speaker 1: for bargains at this point on the secondary market.
[14:46] Speaker 7: Well that's their prerogative. To do so right, we allocate
[14:49] Speaker 7: capital to our fund managers. We then don't restrict them
[14:51] Speaker 7: as to where they see where they sawce those opportunities from.
[14:56] Speaker 7: And if they can find secondary markets or they can
[14:59] Speaker 7: find distressed sellers, et cetera, then all power to them.
[15:05] Speaker 3: Would you be looking at reduce exposure to software? Though, again.
[15:12] Speaker 6: We need to look at the word software and.
[15:16] Speaker 7: Know and believe that different software companies are differently placed
[15:21] Speaker 7: to access AI. I presume that's the nature of your
[15:24] Speaker 7: question there. And so you have certain software companies that
[15:31] Speaker 7: are laggered in the AI in adoption of AI in
[15:34] Speaker 7: part of their software, they will have a very hard
[15:37] Speaker 7: path going forward. And then you've got some software companies
[15:41] Speaker 7: like Canva that are in essence an AI company now
[15:45] Speaker 7: that have been implementing AI tools.
[15:49] Speaker 6: They've got nearly thirty AI.
[15:51] Speaker 7: Tools implemented into their software, and they're ranked amongst open
[15:55] Speaker 7: AI and Anthropic as the third ranked design tool that
[16:03] Speaker 7: has adopted AI. We expect that type of software company
[16:09] Speaker 7: to thrive in these circumstances.
[16:12] Speaker 1: As the super nest tag and the pile continues to grow.
[16:15] Speaker 1: There's been lots of questions as to whether super funds
[16:18] Speaker 1: in Australia upgrowing the home market.
[16:20] Speaker 3: Can you give us an indication of what that.
[16:21] Speaker 1: Looks like in terms of flows to Australian assets or
[16:24] Speaker 1: overseas at the moment for you guys.
[16:26] Speaker 6: Sure. So there's two parts to my response. If we're
[16:32] Speaker 6: talking about deploying money in.
[16:34] Speaker 7: The domestic liquid public markets, equity markets, that's approaching.
[16:43] Speaker 6: Approaching capacity.
[16:45] Speaker 7: But if we're talking about real assets, infrastructure, real estate,
[16:50] Speaker 7: nation building assets, show us the projects and we can
[16:54] Speaker 7: fund them here, and we can fund them offshore as well.
[16:57] Speaker 7: The reason we go offshore in a for diversification b
[17:02] Speaker 7: gives us access to assets that we can't get in
[17:05] Speaker 7: our home country. And let's remember that our beneficiaries, our
[17:10] Speaker 7: members are based in Australia. So at the end of
[17:13] Speaker 7: the day, that capital that we invest offshore needs to
[17:17] Speaker 7: come back home to end up in their retirement accounts.
[17:21] Speaker 7: And so we should be encouraged if you like to
[17:25] Speaker 7: look globally for the best opportunities to get the you know,
[17:30] Speaker 7: the best return we can for our superannulation members.
[17:33] Speaker 2: Sam Cecilia Cio at host Plus speaking to Bloomberg's Heidi
[17:38] Speaker 2: Stroud Watts of the Asia Pacific Financial and Innovation Symposium
[17:43] Speaker 2: in Melbourne. Thanks for listening to today's episode of the
[17:48] Speaker 2: Bloomberg Daybreak Asia Edition podcast. Each weekday, we look at
[17:52] Speaker 2: the story shaping markets, finance, and geopolitics in the Asia Pacific.
[17:57] Speaker 2: You can find us on Apple, SPOTIFYLMBERG podcast, YouTube channel,
[18:01] Speaker 2: or anywhere else you listen. Join us again tomorrow for
[18:05] Speaker 2: insight on the market moves from Hong Kong to Singapore
[18:08] Speaker 2: and Australia. I'm Doug Prisner, and this is Bloomberg

Shows are listed from Apple Podcasts' charts and directory, and Podcast Index where it is used. Every show and episode belongs to its publisher and plays from the publisher's own feed; this site hosts none of them.