Patrick Wintour

try to reassure the West about its nuclear program.

I think, for instance, this stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which Donald Trump just refers to as dust, what would happen is that it wouldn't be exported to America, which would be ignominious from Tehran's point of view, but it would be diluted so that it is much less uranium in it, and it would be down to

that would be tolerable to the West.

So there are agreements that are possible, but it's very difficult to do it whilst there's a war on.

And I think what we've seen is that America has accepted that it doesn't have the leverage it thought over the Iranian regime.

They thought it would topple very early on and swore it didn't happen.

And then this chokehold, which is the trait of Hormuz, has emerged to be

Iran's sort of secret weapon.

And I don't think the Americans had a strategy ready for that.

In fact, there's been interviews given by the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, where he's admitted they hadn't foreseen that the Strait of Hormuz would be used as this form of leverage on the Western economy.

And that's what's going to lead to inflation seeping through the world economy over the next few months.

Well, he is now under a lot of criticism from some of his most loyal allies in the Senate saying that the deal has failed.

leaked and revealed is a disaster.

Figures like the Texas Senator Ted Cruz, probably his closest ally, Lindsey Graham, are all saying this deal is a disaster.

And that, I think, the political pressure on him is partly what's led to delay in an agreement.

And what he's trying to do really hard is to get some kind of commitment from Iran that it will negotiate on this stockpile of

highly enriched uranium.

And what the Iranians are saying is we won't give you any commitment about that.

One way or another, we will be happy to negotiate about it, but we're not going to tell you what we're going to do about it at this stage.

That's for the negotiations that should last