Sarah Smith

Donald Trump has said that he thinks they might restart in a couple of days.

He said that to a New York Post reporter who was speaking to him from Islamabad, that being where the talks at the weekend took place, of course.

And he said, stay there because we might be talking again in another couple of days.

He didn't give any more details than that.

On Monday, President Trump said that Iran had been in touch and they very badly wanted to do a deal.

So he was suggesting that Iran might be prepared to agree to something they hadn't agreed to at the weekend.

But it's not at all clear what or on what Donald Trump is basing that optimism.

So, no, it's not obvious looking at the situation right now.

why a deal might be any more likely if talks are to resume this week than it was when they were discussing them at the weekend.

But as part of an ongoing process, keeping open channels of communication is, of course, the only way to try to move towards a deal.

We've had an interesting revelation on one of the sticking points.

I mean, the U.S.

's number one red line is that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon.

And America wants Iran to agree to stop any kind of nuclear development, to stop enrichment activity of uranium and to hand over the stockpile of enriched uranium it already has, which America fears could be used to make a nuclear weapon.

It was reported in the United States that the vice president, J.D.

Vance, the leading figure for the American negotiations, had said to the Iranians at the weekend that America wanted them to stop all nuclear activity for 20 years.

Well, President Trump responded to that on Tuesday, saying, no, he wasn't happy about the idea of it only being for 20 years.

He wanted it to be forever.

because he didn't want it to look as though Tehran had won anything, didn't want to appear to have been giving any kind of concessions to Iran at all.

So that gives you an idea of the mindset with which the president is looking at these talks and an understanding of maybe just quite how difficult it's going to be to get any kind of agreement.