Paul Rogers

As far as what happened essentially in Islamabad, well, there seems to be one bout of negotiations which went on for the best part of 20 hours, but that was it.

And since then, both the Iranians and people, if it's not actually Witkoff himself, sorry, if it's not actually...

sort of J.D.

Vance himself, then it's somebody close to him is saying there's still chance of further negotiations.

So even there, we're getting sort of mixed messages.

It would be almost impossible, one would think, for them to have got a deal in 20 hours of negotiations flat out because this is a complex situation and we're dealing with sort of decades of history.

And it takes a lot of skill, probably several days with really good mediators

to bring size together.

So it was a false expectation that you're going to get an immediate clear breakthrough.

But behind all of this, all the time, you have these different angles coming from different parts of the administration, made even more extraordinary by this event in which Trump seems to have put online this picture of himself, who's almost sort of aping a biblical figure, possibly Jesus Christ.

So, you know, where we are, it's difficult to say.

That seems to be the case.

I mean, the real problem with all of this is the Iranians have been far more effective in defending their own position than almost anybody expected.

You know, the Iranians are still able to fire missiles almost at will.

They've taken huge civilian casualties.

They've had billions of dollars of damage done to the economy.

But it's also true that the hardliners who are really running the show now are playing it very tough in terms of internal dissent.

And it's more difficult for people who may be moderates within Iran.

So you've got that complexity as well.

Overall, what it means is that the chances of making real progress are slim, but they haven't disappeared.