00:00For more, let's bring in Bloomberg's Horizons, Middle East and Africa anchor.
00:03Jumana Baseshi live from Dubai for us.
00:07Jumana, so you're still seeing the strait blockaded talks have faltered.
00:11Yeah, we are seeing an extension of the ceasefire.
00:14I mean, it looks increasingly like a protracted conflict.
00:18What's the state of play?
00:21Yeah, or protracted ambiguity.
00:24And, you know, we spent most of yesterday trying to figure out
00:27whether these Islamabad talks were actually going to take place.
00:30Certainly, there were a lot of signs that they were going to happen.
00:33The U.S. had the appetite to send a delegation.
00:36Preparations were fully underway in the city.
00:38But it seems in the very last hours of the day, the talks fell apart,
00:43which prompted President Trump to put up that true social post,
00:46suggesting that they have now agreed to extend the ceasefire indefinitely.
00:51Trump saying in that post that they will do so until Iran submits a new proposal
00:56and discussions are concluded one way or the other.
00:59He says that that came at the request of the Pakistani mediators,
01:03but then also blamed the collapse on what he cites a seriously fractured leadership structure in Iran,
01:08something that we ourselves had been reporting on,
01:11and the fact that some more pragmatic voices in Iran perhaps wanted to continue with the negotiations
01:17versus the more hardliner approach taken by the IRGC.
01:21Now, the semi-official state news agency Tasneem has said that Iran never officially requested an extension of the ceasefire.
01:30But the bigger issue, and this is vis-a-vis a comment that we got from the Iranian foreign minister
01:36overnight,
01:37is the ongoing closure of the streets, as you just mentioned.
01:41And in that true social post, President Trump referenced that they're going to keep the street closed,
01:45the naval blockade is going to stay in place.
01:47The Iranian foreign minister overnight posting that blockading Iranian ports is an act of war.
01:53And this was one of the major sticking points yesterday.
01:56The Iranian side once again saying that so long as the blockade stays in place,
02:01they would be less incentivized to go to another round of discussions.
02:04So putting it all together, we're not in a state of peace.
02:08We're not in a state of war.
02:09We are in a state of ceasefire, but the blockade still exists.
02:13And it is this ambiguity, I think, that's going to be hanging over the region for the foreseeable future,
02:19unless we get a breakthrough somehow, either diplomatically or still,
02:24there's still that question of a potential return to hostilities.
02:27It's not out of the question now.
02:29It's not out of the question now.
02:29It's not out of the question now.
02:29It's not out of the question now.
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