00:00Talks resuming. Very tense backdrop, though, Doug, our international affairs commentator.
00:05Yeah, Stuart, look, both sides sharpening their knives.
00:08You know, Donald Trump for weeks now has been weighing military action, all sorts of military action,
00:14building up the U.S. naval presence in the region, as we saw, sending, you know, aircraft strike groups and
00:20aircraft carriers,
00:21including the world's largest, which is headed to the region, the USS Gerald Ford.
00:25So the military assets are all over the place, just dotting the waters around Iran right now.
00:32And Donald Trump himself also commenting that the best thing that he thinks could happen right now, perhaps, is regime
00:38change.
00:39So there's on the U.S. side, the stage set. On the Iranian side, they're pushing back.
00:45They're giving just as good as they get.
00:47Basically, you had Abbas Araqchi, the foreign minister, meeting with – well, he was in Geneva a day ahead of
00:53these talks,
00:53meeting with the head of the nuclear watchdog, the IAEA, basically saying, you know, trying – a lot of technical
00:59talk.
01:00But on the sidelines of those meetings, he's been basically saying that Iran hopes to achieve what he calls a
01:06fair and equitable deal,
01:07but he won't do it at the point of a gun barrel.
01:10He will not do it, as he said, submission via threat.
01:14And they've been putting some muscle behind those words.
01:18Iran's Revolutionary Guards have been conducting exercises in the Strait of Hormuz.
01:23Now, you can see it there, I believe, on the map.
01:25It's very narrow.
01:26It's a narrow passageway in between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, which leads into the Arabian Sea.
01:33And why is it so strategically important, Stuart?
01:36And why is it significant that they're conducting exercises there on the eve of these talks?
01:40Because that is where one-third of the world's seaborne oil supply passes every single day.
01:48You choke that off, as Iran has hinted.
01:50It can very well do if it were to be attacked.
01:53And there you have oil gas prices, boom, spiking at the pump right away.
01:57That's not an idle threat to the United States, so it does have some leverage.
02:01Where Iran is not ready to negotiate, it's ready to look at nuclear issues,
02:04although it's not ready to consider zero uranium enrichment because it has always said its program is for peaceful purposes
02:10only.
02:10What's off the table right now for Iran is ballistic missiles and its support of regional proxies such as Hamas
02:16and Hezbollah.
02:17On the ballistic missiles, it says it needs to have strategic defense.
02:22No country is just going to willingly throw up its hands and throw away its only way of defending itself
02:27against outside aggression.
02:28Sounds like a lot of red lines there, Doug.
02:30I mean, could they make progress?
02:31They could make progress.
02:34I say that with, you know, a big asterisk next to it, Stuart, because look, let's be clear.
02:40Iran's economy has been struggling, is to put it mildly.
02:43The sanctions have really hit Iran in the jugular.
02:47Iranians, their daily lives, the cost of living has shot up.
02:51And that is what initially sparked the protests late last year, the horrible protests, which mushroomed into nationwide street protests,
02:59which elicited a brutal, bloody, deadly crackdown by this regime, perhaps the worst not just in Iran,
03:07but in the entire region in recent memory, with human rights organizations saying the death toll may be not in
03:13the thousands,
03:13but in the tens of thousands, with details and more evidence coming out almost by the day.
03:21So Iran's under enormous pressure, both internally on the domestic front with increasing disillusionment,
03:28dissatisfaction with the clerical regime, the Islamic theocracy, but also on the economic front.
03:34And if the U.S. continues to apply pressure as well as it has, it may try to find a
03:40way to save face to make some sort of deal.
03:42Like I said, not giving everything up, not throwing away the kitchen and the sink and all of that,
03:47but basically trying to stick to some red lines, but looking for ways to at least strike some sort of
03:53consensus understanding.
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