Vera Bergengruen

They are going in and they're saying, we want you to not pursue nuclear weapons.

We want you to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in unrestricted terms.

We want you to curb all of your behavior in the region.

So the U.S.

is coming in with really major demands.

Iran wants sanctions to be lifted and, you know, they just basically want an end to the hostilities.

But they're both coming there and neither side appears to think they have lost.

And so the United States seems to think they have the upper hand on Iran.

Iran seems to think that they have very critical leverage over the United States because of their control of this waterway.

So they're both there kind of not willing to be, you know, out leveraged, I guess.

Right.

I mean, both sides last week had essentially declared victory.

Right.

Another really important thing to set the scene, I think, is that President Trump repeatedly said, we don't really need a deal.

And going in, he's telling reporters, I don't care.

They can make a deal.

They can't.

We've already won.

And he himself was actually in Miami watching, you know, a UFC fight with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

And there's this bizarre split screen where everyone's waiting for the vice president after 20 hours of negotiations in Pakistan.