Laurence Norman
speaker
77 appearances
6 recordings
2 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 22 Jul
Laurence Norman’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
So that may be something that raises red flags in particular
In Congress, the administration says there will be some kind of agreement with the Saudis that will allow them some of that access, but we don't know the details of that yet.
Yeah, the Biden administration's effort was to tie a deal with Saudi Arabia on civilian nuclear energy in exchange the Saudis would move towards or accept a normalization with Israel.
The Saudis have balked to that and the war in Gaza, and they seem further away from that than ever.
Nonetheless, President Trump has decided to move ahead.
There may be an advantage for the White House.
There may be a certain element where as they're
fighting with Iran and as they're seeking an agreement with Iran, this is a bit of a Damocles sword over Tehran's head.
Maybe there's a bit of leverage there for the Americans that the White House is looking at.
Iran is walking away, basically being paid to reopen the Strait of Hormuz with no significant hard commitments that it will make on the nuclear program and ballistic missiles.
The draft included not only waivers on sanctions on Iranian oil, which means that Iranians can export their oil legally again, but it also included a promise basically to allow the Iranians to repatriate the revenues that they'd earned.
Iran has sold oil, for example, to China, but it's not been able to get its hands on the revenue because of U.S.
financial sanctions.
And Washington offered to change that, and that is what the critics are focusing on.
The administration came into negotiations with Iran a year ago, promising to eliminate their nuclear program, their ballistic missile program, and have them behave differently in the region.
That's pretty tough for an administration that spent years bashing President Obama's 2015 nuclear deal.
WSJ What’s News · Gasoline Prices Drive Inflation to Highest Level in Two Years · 10 Apr 2026
podcast
So the Iranians' biggest leverage now is their control of the Strait of Hormuz.
That is a huge economic problem for the rest of the world.
And it's going to be pretty difficult to wrest control from Iran militarily.
Pretty bad, I think it's fair to say.
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