00:00The U.S. military launched what it called self-defense strikes on southern Iran Monday
00:04to, quote, protect our troops from threats posed by Iranian forces. U.S. Central Command says the
00:09targets included Iranian missile sites that had themselves targeted American warplanes and boats
00:14that it said were laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz. The strikes came just hours after Iranian
00:18negotiators landed in Qatar for more talks to end the war. Talks President Trump said were, quote,
00:24proceeding nicely. If the negotiation process continues to proceed nicely after these strikes,
00:30the biggest issue remains the same, Iran's nuclear program. The Post's Michael Zenni walked me through
00:35what we know about that part of the latest proposal. The administration has said that the deal is 95%
00:43negotiated, but as with most things in life, the last 5% appear to be the hardest. And the big
00:50thing
00:50that that 5% includes is Iran's nuclear ambition and the fate of that highly enriched uranium,
01:00which President Trump has been very, very clear on must leave Iran one way or the other. And he has
01:10actually been at pains to point out that the deal that he is negotiating that he and his team are
01:21working out will not be a repeat of the JCPOA, which President Obama negotiated with the Brits and the
01:30French and the Chinese and the Europeans. Famously, President Trump said it was one of the worst deals
01:35ever negotiated. It allowed Iran way too much wiggle room on enriching uranium. It also allowed them to
01:43develop their rocketry. And he pulled out of it in his first term. He has mentioned multiple times in
01:51the last several days how bad this deal was. And that is his way, I think, of signaling that he
01:57understands what's at stake here. Now, one of the things that we've been able to ascertain,
02:04and our chief White House correspondent, Steve Nelson, has been hard at work on this Memorial Day,
02:10when I'm speaking to you, getting reporting that basically one option that's being floated is that
02:17a third nation, possibly the Chinese or the Pakistanis who are helping us sort of be an
02:25intermediary, could themselves take the highly enriched uranium out of Iran. It's currently buried
02:33under rubble at the bombed-out locations of Iran's nuclear site. That would do two things. One,
02:41it would allow the Iranian hardliners to say, we are not handing the uranium over to the Americans.
02:51And it would allow Trump to say, Iran's nuclear ambitions are dead.
02:56In addition to the nuclear piece of any deal, there's also the opening of the Strait of Hormuz.
03:02Oil prices dropped 5 percent after President Trump said talks with Iran were progressing,
03:06in his word, nicely. But traders aren't popping the champagne just yet, noting nothing's been
03:11finalized. And then on Monday, President Trump added another wrinkle, making demands of other
03:16Mideast nations. The president says that he told the leaders of six Muslim nations, Saudi Arabia,
03:21Qatar, Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey, and Jordan, that it should be mandatory that they normalize relations
03:28with Israel by signing on to the UN-negotiated Abraham Accords. He suggested that it would be
03:33the appropriate way to thank the United States for negotiating peace with Iran and keeping them
03:39from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon. Now, it doesn't seem that this Truth Social post is a deal breaker,
03:44though, at least not yet.
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