00:00Now, moving on, after two months of conflict, it appears that the US and Iran are closing in on a
00:05one-page, 14-point memo to end the war.
00:08Reports suggest the deal could include a moratorium on nuclear enrichment and the easing of some sanctions on Iran.
00:15A key question is when the Strait of Hormuz can fully reopen.
00:18But the war has already put transatlantic ties under immense strain.
00:22Our correspondent, Shona Murray, caught up with the former US ambassador to NATO, Kurt Volker, and started by asking him
00:29about his assessment of the prospects of a deal.
00:33It seems like there will be a mutually agreed opening of the Strait of Hormuz, so shipping can go in
00:41and out.
00:41There'll be an end to fighting, and there'll be a moratorium on uranium enrichment and a nuclear program with inspections.
00:51Those seem to be the outlines, probably also lifting of sanctions and returning funds to Iran.
00:56This is actually very, very similar to what was already in the JCPOA that was torn up.
01:03The difference is, if there are any, and if what we read in the press is to believe, are that
01:10we've destroyed most of Iran's power projection capability.
01:13So it'll take them a while to restore that.
01:17Which is what the JCPOA would have done if it had been able to continue after 2017.
01:23Right. Well, that would have expired, I believe, in 2018.
01:26They could have renegotiated. I mean, the path of the JCPOA, the years before it took to negotiate that as
01:32well.
01:32Yeah, in that sense, yes.
01:34So we are basically back where we were and achieving pretty much the same thing.
01:40So what can Donald Trump say that he achieved, particularly given the death toll when we saw 170 young schoolgirls
01:49killed on the first day of this war?
01:52I mean, then also other, obviously, civilian casualties and a regime still intact after it killed its own people back
01:59in January,
01:59which was actually the reason why this particular conflict started in the first place.
02:04There are many reasons why this conflict was there, and the reasons kept shifting.
02:10Sometimes President Trump referred to the protesters or the 45,000 people, as he said, killed.
02:16I'm not sure the number was quite that high, but a large number of people killed by the regime.
02:21Other times it was the nuclear program.
02:24Other times it was ballistic missiles.
02:26But what I think he can say he achieved is setting Iran back, both in terms of its military, its
02:34power projection capability, its proxies, and its nuclear program.
02:40All of that is physically set back substantially.
02:44But as you say, the regime does stay in place, and it does have the capability and the will to
02:52shut down shipping in the Persian Gulf if it wants to.
02:56And the issue is, though, that with the Strait of War Muslims, although it had been gained that the Iranians
03:01could take control of it in the event of a war like this,
03:04they have institutionalized it now, the Iranians.
03:07They've sort of know, they know now that they can control this, turn it on and off as they like
03:12in the future.
03:13Yeah, that's right.
03:14And also the business model of the Gulf states of being a secure and relatively free place to do business
03:22globally is shaken a bit by the fact that Iran has shown a willingness to fire missiles and drones at
03:29them.
03:29So that's going to take some time to restore confidence there as well.
03:33So in a way, the Iranian regime comes out of this emboldened, even though they have been substantially weakened.
03:39What do you think this means for NATO?
03:40We saw the U.S. president abruptly announce the withdrawal of 5,000 troops because we haven't seen any strategy
03:47since from the Pentagon in relation to that.
03:49Let's put these into a couple of different categories.
03:52The first is President Trump's peak at NATO countries for not fighting alongside the U.S. in the Persian Gulf.
04:00That's really, I think, a distraction.
04:02He never asked them to.
04:03There was no consultation.
04:04There was no agreement on a common plan.
04:08It was just a venting saying, well, you're not there for us, even though we're there for you.
04:12I don't think that is something we should take too seriously from a military point of view.
04:18But rather, it is just a further reflection of President Trump's general unhappiness with NATO countries.
04:24Then you get to specific complaints about we were not able to use bases in Spain.
04:30We were not able to use bases in Italy.
04:33Germany said some nasty things about us.
04:35And so we're going to take some military steps.
04:38Well, there, I think we do have to take it seriously.
04:41President Trump is indeed unhappy and wants to take some steps.
04:45But then we have to look at what the U.S. military wants to do.
04:49The presence of U.S. forces in Europe is good for the United States.
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