Patrick Wintour

And that is just to get people to the starting gate, which is to recommence negotiations.

So it's very difficult.

And what's going on at the moment is obviously this back and forth about the various blockades, but there's also...

behind the scenes negotiations happening about what would happen when the two sides met because it would all be choreographed it wouldn't be choreographed to the last minute but there would be a sort of certain assumptions that progress was going to be made on two or three issues and at the moment I don't think those behind the scenes talks going on

mediated by Pakistan are going very well either because I think the Iranians have been quite tough in what they're demanding and the Americans aren't relenting.

So we're in a very difficult position where neither side wants to back down, but neither side really wants to go for all-out war.

So we're getting this kind of surrogate battle, which I think is more than limbo.

Some people describe it as limbo.

I don't think it is.

There is a real conflict going on in the strait and how that plays out is going to be critical to whether the talks recommend it.

Well, I think that the difficulties largely arising out of the blockage on the Internet.

And this has now gone on for more than 50 days.

And certainly when you when the stuff I'm reading out of Iran, the demand for the restrictions on the Internet to be lifted is repeated.

And it's actually now coming from quite senior politicians inside Iran.

Iran itself and there's a conflict between the political side and the security side and the reason it matters so much is that as in any modern economy which to a degree Iran is they are dependent on the internet to trade and that's why there is such high unemployment and the numbers starting to come in about inflation particularly food inflation are really quite frightening as well yeah so an enormous human cost Patrick thank you as ever for your time no problem