00:00Jen, let me start with you and just get a sense from you of how you're navigating the dueling messaging
00:04that we're getting from the Iranian officials and from U.S. officials, principally President Trump, about the situation in the
00:08strait.
00:09Who are you looking to or listening to for clarity amidst all of this confusion?
00:13At this point, I'm looking for kind of top line indicators of what direction these talks are headed.
00:20I think that your previous guest mentioned caution and fluidity, and I think that's exactly right.
00:26Both parties are positioning in advance of what are expected to be a renewed round of talks.
00:32And I think it's always important to remember that nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to.
00:37With regard to the straits specifically, this has been a really important reminder that regardless of what President Trump says
00:44or what Iran does in the immediate term,
00:47the long-term impact of this is that Iran can close the Strait of Hormuz anytime it wants in the
00:53future.
00:53That is a very disruptive and disconcerting tool that it now has exercised over the course of the last month
01:00that won't necessarily be fully resolved regardless of how this conflict ends.
01:06Andrew, I want to pick up on that because I was going to ask you, you know, for all this
01:09weaponry and munitions and lives loss
01:11and as we were just talking about tanker stuck and economic hardship,
01:17the U.S. is really not any different in a different place than it was before they pulled out of
01:21the JCPOA the first time.
01:23I was going to ask you what was different the second time around,
01:26except for it seems to me that Iran might be more willing to give up its nuclear program to please
01:31the U.S.
01:31knowing that its real card it has to play now is closing the strait.
01:35What is your take on that?
01:36I think that's right.
01:38I also think, importantly, the geopolitical situation for Iran is much worse today than it was back in 2018
01:45when we got out of the Iran nuclear deal.
01:47I mean, remember, the reasons we got out of the JCPOA was not just the perceived holes in the nuclear
01:53piece,
01:54but also the effect that it would have on Iran's support of proxies and its development of ballistic missiles,
01:59i.e. it would make it tougher to sanction Iran for a variety of reasons if we stayed in the
02:04deal.
02:05Now, since then, you've had Bashar Assad fall.
02:08You've had Hezbollah take a tremendous beating from the Israelis in Lebanon.
02:12You've had Hamas take a tremendous beating also.
02:15You've had Midnight Hammer.
02:16Iran is in a worse place today, and so I think it actually could make more sense focusing specifically on
02:22the nuclear issue.
02:24And I'm not surprised there's parts of the Iranian government that are willing to deal just on that piece.
02:29John DeVito, I heard a colleague here describe what's happened over these last seven or eight weeks as Iran exercising
02:34a new kind of nuclear option.
02:36That is, for many decades, they'd talked about and planned for closing off this strait to wreak the kind of
02:40economic havoc they have over the last seven or eight weeks.
02:44We saw yesterday in those posts from President Trump adamants that Iran never do this again or be prevented from
02:50doing this once again.
02:51To what degree has Iran learned here they have a very powerful tool at their disposal, one, I mean, we
02:56can quibble with this,
02:57that has the power to be, if not as destructive as a nuclear weapon, certainly a very powerful weapon that
03:02can disrupt the world economy?
03:04I think that's 100 percent correct.
03:06I still think that all of the things that Andrew just mentioned will remain important parts of its external facing
03:13policy,
03:14its missile and drone program, which have not been addressed as far as I can tell in these current negotiations.
03:21The nuclear, we've arguably, they have now had motivation to move towards weaponization, whereas they had not made that decision
03:29in the past.
03:30But in the immediate term, what they can really exercise on a day-to-day basis and influence a kind
03:36of geopolitical direction is, in fact, the closure of global commerce.
03:40So I expect that we will continue to see this kind of back and forth where, if they don't like
03:46the direction things are headed,
03:47and I suspect that that's what happened yesterday.
03:49They announced that the strait was open, tested the United States, and the blockade remained in place.
03:54And so they're showing us that they can close it again.
03:57So I do think that we are likely to see this happen quite a bit in the future.
04:02And that is particularly bad news, in particular for our Gulf allies, who rely so heavily on the strait in
04:10order to induct virtually all of the commerce that they do,
04:15but particularly with regard to the energy sector.
04:17Andrew, one of the things that's complicating, well, our lives here as journalists,
04:21but also the lives of people trying to make market predictions and the lives of people just, frankly, trying to
04:26live their lives,
04:27is the mixed messaging we're hearing from Iran and from the White House.
04:30The president says Iran has agreed to all of these things.
04:32And then Iran says we haven't agreed to any of these things.
04:34And yet that's the backdrop for these talks that, as far as we know, are expected to happen in Pakistan
04:39on Monday.
04:40Can you talk to us a little bit about the format of those talks, why there's no working group or
04:45expertise involvement in them?
04:47And if you think the Pakistanis are being kind of reliable narrators, are they telling the Trump administration what Iran
04:53is really saying,
04:53or are they telling the Trump administration what they think the Trump administration wants to hear?
04:58That's a very, very good question.
05:00Certainly the Pakistanis love the position they're in.
05:03They have their own geopolitical problems on their border with the Taliban.
05:07There was a conflict with the Taliban kicking off right about the time the U.S. conflict with Iran was
05:12kicking off.
05:13The more we focus on this channel through them, the more U.S. goodwill and latent support they're going to
05:20have in any coming fight with the Taliban and also vis-a-vis India.
05:24So, yes, the Pakistanis want this to continue very much.
05:29You know, in terms of signal versus the noise, at least on the Iranian side,
05:33I do think there's a couple of things going on.
05:37One is that genuinely the two different parts of the remaining Iranian regime probably have a tough time talking to
05:44each other.
05:45Everyone's concerned about communications.
05:47Everyone thinks they've been hacked.
05:48So it's not clear.
05:50It's not that easy to get everyone to clear things.
05:53Also, I think it's important to remember, even under the JCPOA, that the Revolutionary Guards never really bought into that.
06:00They were basically told to do that by the supreme leader.
06:03That's not something that they were wildly enthusiastic about.
06:06The supreme leader basically gave it to the foreign ministry that, hey, run and see if you can get a
06:11deal to alleviate the economy.
06:12Now, without a supreme leader or without one who's as old and sort of set as Khomeini, you know,
06:19it's going to be even more challenging to get consensus.
06:21Jen, we've only got about 30 seconds, but I did want to get your take on that,
06:25at the form of these talks and the Pakistanis as mediators.
06:28Yeah, I think that they have done an admirable job of getting us this far.
06:32And I do think that the fact the parties are continuing to talk is a very positive signal that there
06:38is a formula to be found.
06:41What that looks like in the end, again, I would exercise caution at this point,
06:44because in addition to the points that Andrew rightly makes, I think also, you know, this formula is complicated.
06:52And so, again, going back to nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to, everything will fall into place.
06:58And I do think that Lebanon remains an important part of this.
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