Scott Lucas

Now, when the Americans dragged their feet on completing the deal this week, Iran upped the ante by saying, OK, not only do you need to be lifting sanctions, we need reparations for war damages.

And by that, they mean releasing $24 billion of around $100 billion of Iranian assets that had been frozen for decades.

The key thing here is that you'll notice in that first stage, there's no reference to Iran's nuclear program.

The Iranians are saying, look, ceasefire, then we'll talk to the nuclear program.

In that second stage, the Trump administration will beat its chest and say Iran cannot have a civilian nuclear program or there'll be a 20-year moratorium on it.

The Iranians are countering by saying, look,

This highly enriched uranium we have, which is up to 60 percent, we'll down blend it.

In other words, we'll reduce the grade of it down to 20 percent, maybe 5 percent.

But we're going to keep that in the country.

We're going to keep this civilian program.

So that's going to be interesting to see if we get a compromise there.

But let me also add what some in the media have not noticed, what Iranians have kept off the table.

Just before this war started, the U.S.

was calling for Iran to limit its ballistic missiles and to limit its ties with groups in the region, such as Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The Iranians have kept those issues out of both the first and second stage, which is a victory for them because it means they don't have to observe any limits on those missiles or on their regional behavior.

I mean, what you're hearing from Donald Trump is bluster and bluster the point of incoherence.

And by yesterday, while saying, oh, the Iranians will make a deal, they'll have to deal, they've got no choice but to negotiate.

He then said, you know, if they don't deal, he's going to come in hard on them again.

Iran is very much intent.

They want very much to make a deal.