00:00Ian, I want to go back to what we heard yesterday after the market closed from President Trump,
00:05pausing the period of energy plant destruction by 10 days to Monday, April 6, 2026, 8 p.m.
00:12Eastern time. The markets, we saw oil fall on that. We saw futures move higher on that news.
00:18And then fast forward to today, and it seems like things are not cooling down at all in the Middle
00:24East. What's with the mixed messages, the mixed signals? Yeah, you know, I think they seem to be
00:31pretty closely related in the sense that any time stocks fall too much, oil prices rise too much,
00:38you hear signals from the Trump administration that talks are going well, negotiations are
00:45happening, the war is not going to last very long. And then you see market reactions. At the same time,
00:53we know that the market is anxious about unclear U.S. strategic goals in this conflict. There's not
01:01a lot of things the U.S. can accomplish short of opening the Strait of Hormuz now that would have
01:07a significant long-term impact. And so at the moment, there's no clear, you know, rationale or
01:14end point for the war short of Iran just exceeding to U.S. demands. And the 15-point plan that
01:23we've
01:23seen put forward by the U.S. seems to have a lot of the demands in it that Iran rejected
01:29in the talks
01:31leading up to the U.S. and Israeli strikes that opened this war. So it's, you know, we've seen a
01:37sort of very obvious interplay between, you know, Trump's comments, administration comments,
01:43and, you know, oil and stock moves in the sense of just, you know, Trump trying to calm markets
01:51essentially. And we've got a lot of mixed messages from different officials in the administration
01:56and from Trump himself sometimes in the same day. So there's a lot of confusion and not a very clear
02:03end state in terms of where we get to, you know, with this conflict right now.
02:07So is the U.S. actually signaling flexibility here when it comes to enrichment and sanctions?
02:11And from Iran's perspective, why the hesitation to come back to the table?
02:16Yeah, I think in the 15-point plan the U.S. put forward, there's all sorts of things that
02:23basically go against what Iran has been doing for the last 40 or 50 years, you know,
02:28not supporting militant groups across the Middle East, you know, curtailing its nuclear program,
02:37curtailing its ballistic missile programs. All of these things are things that they have
02:42slowly built up over time, you know, to give themselves a security posture that they feel
02:48comfortable with. Obviously, the U.S. and the West don't want Iran to be doing any of these things.
02:53But, you know, as we've seen from previous U.S. administrations, this is a tough thing to get
02:58Iran to agree to. You know, we've seen things from former U.S. officials saying Iran is a problem
03:03to be managed, not necessarily a problem to be solved. And the issue here was the U.S. going into
03:10those talks ahead of the war, you know, with these extremely maximalist positions, you know,
03:18asking Iran to basically give up everything to get nothing, essentially. And, you know,
03:25Trump was the one who pulled out of the Iran deal that the U.S. struck with Iran before
03:30and has bombed Iran twice now in the middle of talks. So you can see from Tehran's perspective
03:37that, you know, they don't necessarily see the U.S. as a trustworthy negotiating partner
03:43and vice versa, given all of the Iranian attacks on U.S. troops and personnel over the last few
03:48decades. So there's a lot of ill will. And right now, one of the key aims of the war seems
03:56to be
03:56to open the Strait of Hormuz, which was something that did not exist. You know, it was a problem
04:01that didn't exist before the war began. So we're in very strange strategic territory right now where
04:06the U.S. is asking for stuff it had wanted in talks that it themselves abandoned in order to
04:12start a war, which then created more problems, which the U.S. is now trying to address with talks.
04:17So it's a bit of a confusing situation for a lot of us following this on a day-to-day
04:21basis.
04:22And you can see the markets just sort of gyrating back and forth here with every utterance from the
04:28White House, which may indicate either it's escalating or talks are going well.
04:32Well, Ian, on the view from Tehran, I want to bring up a post on X from Abbas Argachi,
04:39Iran's foreign minister, who writes just in the last few minutes,
04:43Israel has hit two of Iran's largest steel factories, a power plant and civilian nuclear
04:48sites, among other infrastructure. Israel claims it acted in coordination with the U.S.
04:52The attack contradicts the president's extended deadline for diplomacy.
04:56Iran will exact heavy price for Israeli crimes.
05:00Does this contradict that extension, that extended deadline for diplomacy that we heard
05:08from the president yesterday, these attacks on infrastructure?
05:12Yeah, it's not clear. I mean, obviously, essentially any attack on any civilian infrastructure
05:18in wartime is essentially a war crime. And the deadline that Trump mentioned was specifically
05:25related to power plants, presumably that the U.S. themselves wanted to hit. This is not necessarily
05:32the first time we've seen U.S. and Israeli war aims diverge. That's been an issue from the very
05:38beginning of this conflict. But you're right in the sense that, you know, the U.S. and Israel
05:46are in this together, Iran sees them as linked. You know, they are only engaging at the moment
05:54with the U.S. side, seemingly, on talks. And the commentary out of Israel from Benjamin Netanyahu
06:02and others is that this war is very much continuing. They have their own goals in Iran that are
06:08different from the U.S. And so this is not the first time this has come up as a problem.
06:15And if Iran
06:16is seeing it that way, you know, it could be it could be an issue for for this deadline and
06:23the sort
06:24of the talks. Although, again, this deadline is a bit amorphous in the sense that it keeps getting
06:29extended, you know, as Trump kind of seeks off ramps here to a conflict that is is just totally
06:35rocking markets. Israel has come out and and said that they did hit some of these nuclear
06:42facilities. But their their, you know, justification for that was that these were plutonium sort of
06:48enrichment related facilities, not, you know, civilian nuclear facilities. They were designed
06:55for, you know, weapons grade, you know, material. Very quickly here, we're hearing the 15 points
07:00versus five asks. Is there actually any real overlap to work with?
07:06I think there are things on both of those lists that we know are red lines for both sides.
07:14I cannot imagine, for instance, U.S. taxpayers or Israeli taxpayers supporting war reparations
07:22for Iran to help rebuild some of Iran's facilities. For instance, that's one of the Iranian asks,
07:28as is sovereignty over the Strait of Hormuz, which it didn't have before the war. So, you know,
07:34there's no way the U.S. is going to agree to those. And so that's why, to some degree, you're
07:39seeing this
07:42escalation, this intensifying of the conflict, even as we see, you know, Trump repeatedly saying he wants
07:50a ceasefire. I think the reality here is that we're not in traditional peace talks. We are in talks between
07:59two
07:59extremely hostile, long-term geopolitical enemies. And, you know, even as part of the ceasefire deal
08:08that Trump is trying to push, there are, you know, massive asks in there for Tehran. And so there is
08:17basically no way Iran will agree to this unless military, in the U.S. mind, unless pressure is
08:25brought militarily. So that's the kind of issue we're dealing with right now.
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