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00:00One of the journalists behind that reporting, State Department reporter Eric Martin, joins us now.
00:04Also joining us is Bloomberg Jerusalem reporter Dan Williams.
00:07We're so happy to have both of you.
00:08Eric, I'm going to start with you.
00:10Should you be on a plane?
00:11Should you not be on a plane?
00:12We're glad to have him here.
00:13We are glad to see you.
00:15But to this timing issue, I mean, this is such a fast-moving story.
00:18As we were sitting here, our Mideast colleagues flagged these comments
00:22where the Iran Foreign Ministry spokesman said,
00:24regarding the exact timing of the signing of the memorandum, we must wait.
00:27We must wait.
00:27Although it will not be tomorrow.
00:28The possibility that it could take place in the coming days is not ruled out.
00:33However, due to the other sides, read U.S.,
00:36instability in making any statements about this process, caution must be exercised.
00:40We've seen similar messaging from White House officials saying the other side needs to stop leaking.
00:44We've seen criticism about leaks from the vice president, J.D. Vance.
00:48Eric, where are we?
00:49Is this going to happen, or have we made much ado about nothing yet again?
00:53Sure, Christina.
00:54So I think that the where of this, in terms of where this gets signed, is much less important than
01:00the what,
01:00particularly for the Trump administration.
01:02And so finally getting to that deal, which we've heard President Trump say dozens of times since April 7th or
01:10April 8th,
01:11that this deal was a few days away or was just around the corner, finally getting to that deal to
01:16reopen the strait and to end the blockade would be a big development here.
01:23And so I think that, as with everything with this process, we were a couple of months ago, I was
01:28in Islamabad and connecting with you guys from there
01:31and talking about the latest just hours after Vice President Vance had sat down with his Iranian and Pakistani counterparts.
01:40If we finally get to a deal here, it seems likely that it could take a little bit longer than,
01:47you know, say, 24 hours.
01:48I mean, that's just been the way, that's been the trend for everything that's happened on this file over the
01:54last several months.
01:55And so it certainly makes sense that it could take a little bit longer than some of the most optimistic
02:01predictions about 24 hours or so.
02:04Dan Williams, let me turn to you.
02:06From your perch in Jerusalem, I'd be eager to hear sort of how the Israeli government is thinking about this
02:10as it all unfolds.
02:11We know that Prime Minister Netanyahu would be, if not eager for more strikes, would support more strikes on Iran.
02:16And he's very much on the margins of these negotiations that are taking place between the U.S. and Iran.
02:22What is the government's perspective on the prospects of this happening here within the next 24 or 48 hours?
02:27Well, since details of this deal emerged just in the last 24, 48 hours, the official public statements have been
02:35very spare.
02:36The Prime Minister Netanyahu put out, I think, all of two statements.
02:39His defence minister put out one statement.
02:42The rest of the usually loquacious Israeli cabinet is avoiding the media so far.
02:47There's something of a sullen public silence here.
02:50I imagine behind the scenes, the leaders here are working the phones with the Trump administration,
02:55trying to figure out what is included in this deal, whether there's any wriggle room,
03:00whether there's any way of toughening up some of the terms.
03:02The Israelis are generally not happy with this.
03:04As you noted, there was a willingness here to go back to war.
03:08In the absence of a deal that would satisfy the original conditions, demands set both by the Israelis and the
03:15Americans at the outset of this war.
03:17I mean, the Israelis aren't looking for more war.
03:20They are looking for a diplomatic conclusion that would preclude future war, as they would put it.
03:25And what they worry about is effectively this would leave, this deal would leave Iran with vestigial, at least, capacity
03:33to repursue its nuclear programme,
03:35to rebuild its ballistic missile programme, to come up with funding eventually for its regional proxies,
03:41and essentially empower it in the face of an unprecedented joint campaign against it by the world's superpower and the
03:49premier military power of the Middle East, Israel.
03:52The optics here are very difficult for Israel, and the possibility that the terms of this deal may not satisfy
03:59its bottom line,
04:00its bottom threshold in terms of what it would consider satisfactory, a satisfactory outcome to this war.
04:06Well, Dan, the terms of the deal have been a bit difficult for even some hardliners on the right here
04:13in the U.S. to stomach
04:15because it looks like they will resemble the JCPOA, the Iran nuclear deal, which we know Benjamin Netanyahu was openly
04:22very against.
04:23And you flagged to us this morning some tweets from a right-wing politician there in Israel
04:28talking about the emerging deal with Iran is a total victory for the Ayatollahs,
04:34it's a catastrophe from Israel's perspective, and blaming the Prime Minister.
04:38Does this create an even bigger political liability for him domestically as well?
04:43Absolutely. We're four months away from an Israeli election.
04:46It's going to be tightly contested, as they often are in Israel.
04:50This time it's a re-election bid for Netanyahu, who was already Israel's longest-serving leader.
04:55I think it's clear that he had a very different outcome in mind.
04:58The original scheduling had, within that six-week window, the initial six weeks of the war,
05:04produced enough internal damage to the Iranians to bring about an organic downfall of the regime.
05:11Afterward, he was to have hosted Trump, who was due to receive the Israel Prize in Israel,
05:16and that would have really set him up for re-election.
05:19In the absence of something that conclusive, and keep in mind there are still live fronts in Lebanon,
05:25which, by the way, is not disconnected to these Iran talks, given that Iran's looking out for Hezbollah.
05:30And even in Gaza, where this war began two and a half years ago,
05:33Netanyahu's going to have a lot of explaining to do to the electorate.
05:36He promised total victory. Israelis are exhausted. They've been bloodied.
05:40They've lost a lot in terms of international prestige, in terms of treasure and lives.
05:46And yet they're not really seeing that conclusion, any satisfactory conclusion, in the offing.
05:51It's something he's going to have to try very hard to explain.
05:53Eric, you spend your days going through detailed diplomatic cables, looking at documents, looking at deals.
05:58This is something unique. This is one page, I gather, maybe a couple more,
06:01but 14 points, as we understand it, from that semi-official news agency.
06:05I was struck by something in Bloomberg's reporting recently,
06:08that a person familiar with these deliberations said the memorandum would be open to interpretation in certain areas,
06:13including what the reopening of Hormuz would mean in practice.
06:17It makes me wonder sort of how cohesive, how long-lasting this document is likely to be.
06:22We're talking about a fairly short time horizon here, 60 days, should this be signed and approved by both sides.
06:27How much credence should we give a document like this?
06:31We've seen a very messy ceasefire over these last few months.
06:35David, in some ways, a document like this is a starting point for the tough negotiations to come.
06:41And so it doesn't deal in detail with the nuclear program.
06:46It's something I was talking the other day with Aaron David Miller,
06:49who is a former advisor to the State Department on negotiations regarding the Middle East.
06:54And he said this is really buying a ticket to the next tough negotiation in that, you know,
07:00you have things that each side is going to try to portray to their domestic constituencies as a win.
07:08But certain things like exactly, you know, what disposing of nuclear material means,
07:15whether that's downblending or moving material out of the country,
07:19as well as what reopening the strait means.
07:23I mean, does that mean that reopening with some degree of Iranian monitoring or control,
07:28or does that mean going back to February 27th?
07:31So these are questions that are somewhat open, as the officials told us, somewhat open to interpretation.
07:39But that's both a feature and a flaw, right?
07:43I mean, that's something that allows each side to sell this to their constituencies and to citizens as a win.
07:51But there's also room there for misunderstanding and for disagreement and conflict
07:56if one side feels like the other is violating something that they had committed to.
08:01Eric, I also want to ask you about who the main players are here,
08:04because very openly we're seeing acknowledgement from the different sides that Pakistan is involved in
08:10and has been meeting this, but I'm hearing, as I'm sure you are as well, from sources in the region.
08:13There are other regional players helping, assisting, advising, and possibly going to this signing ceremony.
08:21If indeed it does happen, we're now hearing it could be a digital signing.
08:24Not quite sure what that entails.
08:26Who are the regional players helping make this potentially happen?
08:29And then who are the negotiators?
08:31Is it still just mainly Wyckoff and Kushner?
08:33We saw this Axios report that they'd actually gone to Oak Ridge, Tennessee,
08:37which is a nuclear facility to kind of buff up on their nuclear knowledge.
08:41Are they still leading it, and does the president still have faith in them?
08:45Well, in terms of the intermediaries who we're seeing,
08:49certainly all countries in the region have an interest in and are invested in seeing this peace process come to
08:57fruition.
08:58But they also have to have ongoing relationships with Iran.
09:02So we've seen, we had reporting from colleagues earlier this week about UAE having meetings with the Iranians
09:11for the kind of highest level meetings that we've had since the beginning of the war
09:15to try to calm some of the tensions, lingering tensions between those two countries.
09:21Of course, we saw Iran after the U.S. and Israeli strikes lashing out and hitting civilian targets in the
09:29UAE.
09:30We've also heard about the role for Qatar in this process and being involved.
09:36So even though Pakistan has been the host to the negotiations that we saw in April
09:41and has been the one that's had its highest level officials going to Tehran to deliver messages
09:47or using phones in Pakistan to deliver those messages
09:51and then taken by courier to Moshtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader in this process that takes days.
09:59So we've seen that from several countries involved there.
10:02And then, you know, to your question about who from the U.S. is involved,
10:06we've very much seen still the vice president ultimately in the lead on this,
10:13but the details being negotiated by Witkoff and Kushner.
10:17We had some reporting that there was the potential for an in-person signing ceremony,
10:24perhaps in Geneva and perhaps as soon as Sunday.
10:28That now seems to have been that speculation tamped down a little bit,
10:32such that we're now expecting this could take several more days
10:36and that it could be this virtual kind of ceremony or virtual signing
10:40that the Pakistanis and Iranians have mentioned.
10:44Dan, let me turn to you lastly here.
10:45We were talking about, you brought up Lebanon just a moment ago,
10:48and of course that's a roiling conflict still despite the diplomatic efforts
10:50that we've seen engineered or tried to be engineered here in recent weeks.
10:54Where does that stand now, and what's your understanding of the degree to which
10:57that would be a part of any memo of understanding that's signed here?
11:01Well, if you ask the Iranians, Lebanon has to be part of this.
11:04They've frequently and consistently called for a ceasefire,
11:08an end-of-war deal to apply to all fronts.
11:10That's code for Lebanon, specifically the front of warfare between Israel and Hezbollah,
11:17which is really Iran's main ally, a very efficient, very well-armed guerrilla force
11:22and political force in Lebanon.
11:24The Israelis have ruled this out.
11:26While Iran is their arch foe, the overarching threat to their security,
11:32Hezbollah is the most immediate, literally, on their northern border,
11:35at least until they pushed Hezbollah back with that invasion launch pretty much in parallel
11:40with the war against Iran over these months.
11:43The Israelis now have expanded a border security zone,
11:48what they call a buffer zone in southern Lebanon.
11:49That led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Lebanese civilians.
11:53It's also effectively driven Hezbollah north and disarmed Hezbollah to a large degree.
11:58Israel has no intention, it says, of withdrawing from that.
12:01It may delimit its attacks to that zone
12:04and hold off on attacking Hezbollah in Beirut, in the Lebanese interior.
12:08But that really looks likely to be a major bone of contention there.
12:13It's very important for the Iranians symbolically,
12:16in terms of their power projection,
12:18in terms of their influence in the Levant, on the Mediterranean coast.
12:20It's very important for the Israelis in terms of security of up to 2 million of their northern residents
12:26who, until very recently, were in range of Hezbollah rocket fire
12:30and at risk of seeing a Hezbollah invasion of the kind Hamas pulled off on October 7th, 2023.
12:36So Lebanon really will be a sticking point.
12:39It seems the Israelis managed last week, through sheer firepower,
12:43to assert what they call their right to continue fighting there against Hezbollah,
12:47if not in Beirut, then in the south.
12:49Time will tell whether they will also work that into this deal,
12:53that exception, that lacuna for Lebanon,
12:55into whatever sign between the Americans and Iran.
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