Ben Rhodes

military action.

There's a lot of U.S.

military assets in the region.

And there have been these indirect nuclear negotiations between the U.S.

and the Iranian government, which have been mediated by Oman.

On Tuesday, there were talks in Switzerland about,

They ended after what Amman's foreign minister called good progress, but we don't really know what that means.

The Iranian foreign minister said that both sides had agreed to, quote, a set of guiding principles and told state TV that this round of talks were more constructive and that progress was made.

You know, kind of buzzwords of diplomacy without any details.

This round of negotiations came after a visit to the White House by Benjamin Netanyahu last week.

At that meeting, Trump and Netanyahu apparently agreed to ramp up the economic pressure as if there's anything more you can do to sanction the Iranians.

But they talked about targeting oil sales to China, which would involve sanctions on the Chinese, which would be further strain on the global economy.

I will say also that nobody's talking about the protesters anymore, who, you know, clearly there were thousands of people killed.

That was the basis under which Trump said he was going to take military action.

But now we're just talking about nuclear issues and ballistic missiles.

I know we're reading tea leaves here, Eamon, but what is your read on the kind of state of play with Iran?

What are you hearing from the region about, you know, people's concerns or maybe hopes for what's happening?

Yeah, it was fascinating because, first of all, inside the security conference and all the side events, really the focus was on Ukraine and European defense spending and these issues, Greenland.

But outside, there were like –

tens and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people there to see Reza Pahlavi speak.