Jeremy Bowen
๐ค SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
Well, Donald Trump says it is.
Donald Trump says this is, what do you call it, a love tap and a trifle.
But no, actually the ceasefire is in a very rickety condition.
You could imagine an incident getting out of control and the whole thing breaking down.
But the reason why it may survive this is because both sides actually want to keep on talking and try to make a deal.
The problem is the deal that they want to make is very different to the one the other side wants to make.
Well, that's a big question, and honestly, I don't know.
The negotiating technique, if you like, that they're using, which the Pakistanis, who are the intermediaries, are using, is to try to get together a so-called memorandum of understanding, a one-page document which says, this is the stuff we're going to have to talk about and make an agreement on, which is the way of getting over these issues.
But the problem is, is that, yeah, I think Donald Trump wants to have something he can brandish as a victory and which will enable him to say, you know what, I did a lot better than Barack Obama did when he was, well, the Europeans were there too, but he made a deal with Iran on the nuclear issue in 2015, which Donald Trump then when he came to office under a great deal of influence from Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, he basically dumped that deal.
So he needs โ those are his constraints.
And on the other side, the Iranians don't actually want to just get to a situation where the Americans agree to stop bombing because they've been there before and they just believe that the Americans or the Israelis will start bombing when they want to.
They want to institutionalize some changes, particularly on their recognition of their power over the Strait of Hormuz.
On the nuclear front, the enrichment of uranium that they denied they wanted for a bomb, but many people thought that was the case.
Many countries thought that was the case, including the UK.
It's all under quite a bit of rubble and rock right now because it's been bombed.
So even if the enriched uranium is intact, it's a question whether they can actually access it.
So they are more prepared on that one, I believe.
to make some concessions about, well, we're not doing any enrichment of uranium for a while, a certain number of years, whereas actually what they want is an acknowledgement of their right to enrich.
Well, that's the argument, that a war that was supposedly to stop them getting a nuclear weapon might make it, might deepen the determination to have one.
Now, the Supreme Leader, Atal Ali Khamenei, the previous one, his son has now got the job, though he hasn't been seen very much, because he hasn't been seen at all publicly, because he's said to be very injured still from the attack that killed his father and his mother, and I think one of his daughters, and