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Chapter 1: What recent actions has the US taken in Iran amid a ceasefire?
I'm guest host Waleed Ali and you're listening to 7am. 7am. They're actions that don't exactly scream peace deal. The US launching fresh strikes on Iran this week in the middle of a ceasefire. Days earlier, Donald Trump had said an agreement to end the war was close. Now Iran's threatening to retaliate amid fears things could escalate again.
And while Trump insists peace talks are still, quote, proceeding nicely, the president has upped the stakes for negotiators, trying to turn a narrow deal over Iran, Hormuz and sanctions. into something much bigger, a massive regional reset built around Israel, the Abraham Accords.
Chapter 2: What does Trump say about the possibility of a peace agreement with Iran?
Today, Middle East correspondent for The Economist, Greg Karlstrom, on the fragile ceasefire, Trump's bigger gamble, and who will blink first in the standoff between America and Iran. It's Thursday, May 28th. Greg, let's start with these recent US strikes inside Iran. What is happening exactly?
Well, the American story here is twofold. It seems like two things happened overnight on Monday into Tuesday. One is that Iran seems to have turned on some of its air defense systems near the city of Bandar Abbas, the main port city in southern Iran. The Americans would have seen that. They would have seen the Iranian air defense radars essentially lighting up, and they might have thought that
Chapter 3: How is Iran responding to US strikes and what are the implications?
Iran was attempting to shoot down either American drones or American warplanes, and so they carried out strikes on these air defenses.
U.S. Central Command says that the U.S. military conducted self-defense strikes targeting Iranian missile launch sites as well as boats around the Strait of Hormuz. The attacks come as Washington and Tehran continue negotiating.
They're also saying that small Iranian naval ships were attempting to go out into the Strait of Hormuz and lay mines in the strait. We don't have any confirmation, of course, that either of those things are Accurate. Iran has laid mines in the Strait before, so it's not entirely implausible.
Chapter 4: What are the stakes for negotiators in the US-Iran conflict?
But either way, the Americans carried out these strikes. The Iranians are accusing them of a violation of the ceasefire.
Iran's foreign ministry labeled the move a direct violation of the ongoing ceasefire, warning Iran would leave no act of aggression unanswered.
But we saw Iran a few weeks ago carry out missile and drone strikes on the UAE and other countries in the Gulf. They don't want to resume the war in full force, but they think there is still some, I think, utility in carrying out these sorts of attacks. I don't think the truce is about to collapse.
It's not the first time that one or the other party has violated the ceasefire, but it's a reminder of how fragile this all is.
I suppose the worst case scenario is that it might mean that the whole idea of negotiation becomes implausible. That certainly on the Iranian side, but perhaps even on both sides, no one really believes that the other side is trying to negotiate or that negotiations are in bad faith. And so they become just kind of strategic distractions while we do the things that we actually want to do.
Would those sort of concerns be misguided in a situation like this?
I think both sides went into these negotiations two months ago, assuming that the other one was negotiating in bad faith. I mean, that's certainly the Iranian perspective, right? They feel as if they've tried talking twice before with the Americans in spring of last year and then winter of this year.
And both times those talks ended not just in failure, but with Iran being attacked by Israel last summer and then by America and Israel. this year. So they think the Americans are entirely bad faith actors. And then that's also a longstanding view on the American side. For decades now, there's been a reluctance to negotiate with Iran and a feeling that it's pointless to negotiate with Iran.
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Chapter 5: How fragile is the current ceasefire between the US and Iran?
So they both have their doubts, but at the same time, they both have an economic incentive, if nothing else, to try and negotiate right now. America needs the Strait of Hormuz open to try and bring down global energy prices. Iran needs it open to lift this American blockade that is causing economic damage for them.
So that will push them, I think, towards at least some sort of a short-term agreement that might reopen the Strait temporarily, that might use some of that economic pressure. I think The bigger concern is what happens if they reach the interim deal that they're talking about now?
They buy a bit more time, they negotiate for a few months over a final agreement, and they just can't resolve the substantive disputes between their two sides to get to a final deal. Do we then end up in a position where, you know, great, we've extended the ceasefire by a few months, but it all falls apart later this summer or in the autumn?
One of those substantive disputes is Iran's nuclear program. Are the parties any closer to coming up with a formulation that will actually satisfy them? Or is this one of those intractable, insoluble points of controversy that it seems a war like this can only ever circle around but never really solve?
I think on some parts of the nuclear issue, they are closer. If you go back to the two previous rounds of negotiations before the war between America and Iran, The American position was pretty clear.
They can't have a nuclear weapon. It's very simple. You can't have peace in the Middle East if they have a nuclear weapon. And they can't have a nuclear weapon. And they've been told that very strongly.
They wanted Iran to renounce any uranium enrichment entirely. Iran was not allowed to enrich anything. And the Iranians insisted that they would never give up on what they see as their inalienable right to enrich uranium. Where we're at right now is they seem to have converged on the idea of a time-bound moratorium on enrichment.
So Iran won't swear it off forever, but it will agree that for a certain period of time, perhaps 10 years, 12 years, they're still negotiating over the exact duration, but Iran would swear it off for a limited amount of time. And so that is a compromise between the original positions of the two sides. So on that issue, yes, they have made progress.
On other issues, there are still very big gaps, the biggest of which is Iran's stockpile of more than 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium near weapons grade uranium. America has been insisting for more than a year that Iran needs to export that ship outside the country to be disposed of. Iran says we won't do that.
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