00:00Take a look at how oil is trading early in the Asia session as we continue to factor in fading geopolitical premiums.
00:06We had seen Brent lose about 4% last week, but only after big surges in 2026, of course,
00:12all to do with the state of geopolitics, especially tensions around Iran.
00:17But Iran's president now describing Friday's nuclear talks with Washington as a step forward,
00:23insisting Tehran, though, won't give up its right to enrich uranium domestically.
00:27Let's get more with Bloomberg editor Michael Heath.
00:30Mike, so give us the latest on how these negotiations progressed.
00:36Yes, Sherry. On Friday, there was there was talks in Oman between Iran's foreign minister and the U.S. envoys,
00:44which is Steve Witkoff and President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
00:49Basically, the Omani foreign ministers, you know, shuttled between the two groups,
00:53sort of looking for compromise and looking at, you know, both sides sort of feeling each other out
00:59for a sense of how seriously they take the negotiations.
01:02Now, on both sides, it looks like it's been reasonably positive.
01:05As you mentioned, Iran's president came out saying that their sense was that the talks were respectful
01:11and the U.S. is prepared to be reasonable there.
01:13And President Trump also saying there'd been good talks and he anticipated that there'd be more to come early this week.
01:20So that, as you mentioned, with the oil price, that sort of saw things ease off a little bit.
01:25But there is there is a bit of dissension about what's what's actually being discussed here.
01:30I mean, President Iran only wants to talk about the nuclear issue.
01:33And the U.S. had wanted to talk about ballistic missiles and and sponsorship of proxy proxy groups around Israel as well.
01:41But it seems like the U.S. has agreed that it will just focus on the nuclear side.
01:46Iran's, as you mentioned, is saying, look, it's not going to be dictated to in what it can and can't do.
01:51But at the end of the day, you know, the U.S. has quite an armada, you know, stationed in the Middle East.
01:57So there is a bit of a big stick hanging over this as well.
02:00So we'll have to see how that unfolds.
02:01Sort of another side to this, too, is that Prime Minister Netanyahu is due to go to Washington to sort of perhaps whisper a little bit in President Trump's ear about these negotiations, too.
02:11So that's another factor that's feeding into it as well.
02:13But so far, so good.
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