Jeremy Scahill

if the sanctions were lifted.

And all of that depends on what happens during those 60 days of talks.

Trump is saying if they don't make a deal, he's going to resume the war.

I'm skeptical of that for reasons that you guys have talked about before.

The midterm elections are coming up.

And the reality is that Iran fought the United States for roughly 100 days, both militarily and diplomatically, to a standoff where the president of the United States is desperate to try to spin capitulation as victory.

Right.

I mean, there's some interesting things that if you read between the lines of some statements that Vice President J.D.

Vance made recently, if you look at some of what Iran is saying, it's interesting.

Let's start from the biggest sort of perspective on this.

Iran has said that it wants at least $24 billion in its frozen assets.

This is Iranian money that's been frozen, repatriated to Iran itself.

at the front end of a deal.

That was Iran's opening position.

Behind the scenes, there was discussion of phasing it, where half of it would occur during the initial period of the memorandum of understanding, and the other half of it would occur as sort of a benchmark process during the 60-day negotiation.

But behind the scenes, there's been a flurry of activity involving Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, reports of money already changing hands.

The Emiratis are denying that, but Iranian sources have told me that Trump wants to find a way to give us our money without saying that he gave us our money.

So it's possible that this will kind of not become entirely public right away for the reasons you just mentioned, that Trump wants to be able to say, I didn't do what Barack Hussein Obama did and give them cash at the front end of this deal.

The other day, J.D.

Vance posted on X a remarkably diplomatic statement about the state of affairs.