Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance.
Project Freedom has been paused. President Donald Trump has said he's halting the military operation in a bid to reach a deal to end the war with Iran in the Middle East. Now, the project was supposedly helping vessels leave the Strait of Hormuz and it began on Monday. So what happens next? Well, Lise Doucette is the BBC's chief international correspondent and she joins me now.
Good morning, Lise.
Hello.
Chapter 2: What is the announcement regarding Project Freedom?
Good morning, Clare. So yesterday we had the US Secretaries of State and Defence and the Joint Chief of Staff Chair explaining how Project Freedom would work, is working. They invested a lot of time and effort in this. Is it clear why Donald Trump reversed course last night?
Well, President Trump often says that only he makes up his mind. He makes it up at the last minute. His administration has been very much defined by this kind of policymaking. And it was only just a short time after his Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, addressed journalists in the White House in great detail, telling them about so-called Project Freedom, the U.S.
new operations in the Strait of Hormuz. And then President Trump
Chapter 3: What are the implications of halting military operations in Iran?
announces that it has been put on pause. For the third time in many weeks, he said it was Pakistan, which is now one of the main mediators in the Iran-US standoff, had asked him to pause it in order to give more space for diplomacy. I think we just have to keep watching this. not just day by day, but sometimes hour by hour.
So is it clear then that the Iranians said, we will come back to the table, but we need this Project Freedom business to end. They just didn't like it.
Well, they didn't like any of it. They don't want the naval blockade to remain in force. They have said repeatedly that they will only lift their blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. It's not a full blockade, but certainly it is severely restricting traffic, unless the US lifts its naval blockade of its ports. President Trump, when he announced Project Freedom, he said it was a humanitarian gesture.
He seemed to imply that even Iran could be involved in it. He said he just wanted to free the some 2,000 ships with some 20,000 sailors who have been trapped there for many months. He said it was separate. But of course, for Iran, it isn't separate. And there you had within 24 hours, Both sides shooting at each other. The United Arab Emirates also coming under drones and missiles attack.
And every maritime and seafarer and tanker organization saying we're not going to risk the lives of our sailors and our ships. No one's going to insure us until there is a deal agreed by all sides in the Strait of Hormuz. So it seems President Trump got the message.
And would you expect, Lise, that we will have significant and meaningful talks now as a result of this announcement from Donald Trump? Or where does it leave the entire conflict?
It depends what you mean by significant and meaningful talks. Since the beginning of this protracted negotiations protest, which has so far included, and it's significant, the first high-level face-to-face talks led on the U.S. side by U.S. Vice President J.D.
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Chapter 4: Why did President Trump pause Project Freedom?
Vance, it was the highest level since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. But negotiations are, you know, everyone listening, certainly the people of Ireland, of Northern Ireland, know about how long it takes. There's a lot of give and take. There has to be compromises and political will on both sides. President Trump keeps talking about a deal within days. He's even now talking about a final deal.
What Iran is talking about, whatever you think of Iran's positions, they have offered a phase deal whereby both sides lift their blockades of the Strait of Hormuz. I should add to that that Iran probably wants to retain some foothold there, but at least they're offering to free up maritime traffic. They want to see an end to the war, not an extension of this shaky ceasefire.
And they have said, we will talk about the nuclear file, which will take a long time. It's highly sensitive. It's deeply technical. But President Trump has been saying he's not satisfied with the deal. He has to show that he's made progress in curbing, if not stopping, Iran's nuclear program. So it's not at all clear how this process is going to move, if it does move at all.
I was struck last night watching Marco Rubio Lisa, the irony of him saying what we want is for ships to move freely through the Strait of Hormuz with no threat of mines, with no tolls, you know, absolute freedom of movement. And I thought, well, that's that's what you had before the Americans went in and started the conflict. Right. So that's where it takes you back to.
The Strait of Hormuz is the gift of geography to the Islamic Republic of Iran, and it has been now another gift of this war. I think your listeners may have heard, perhaps even on your own program, that war planners said that for many, many years, whenever they war-gamed possible scenarios, if the United States was to attack Iran, that Iran would immediately seize the Strait of Hormuz.
President Trump has expressed surprise a number of times that Iran would do this. And now that Iran has done it, it is clear, and this is what I heard from officials when I was in Iran, I just got back last week,
is that not only do they see it as strategic leverage during the negotiations, they now see it as an economic lifeline to remove themselves from the stranglehold of international sanctions. But they also see it as long-term leverage
it's not clear whether enough countries will agree with them on this i know that some countries in the region including the united arab emirates say this is a very dangerous precedent they say these are territorial waters what will happen in other strategic straits the world over where countries decide just to seize them but iran has been very quietly holding discussions with oman which controls the other side of the strait with other countries in the region
We'll have to wait and see. Does President Trump have the patience to try to do this deal? Does he have the political will? He likes the short, sharp, successful deals. Iran plays the long game. It sweats out every detail. It does play for time. It has major concessions to make. Is there a middle point between the short game and the long game? We just have to wait and see.
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Chapter 5: What are the reactions from Iran regarding the naval blockade?
The impact, not just of the war, but a near total digital blackout, the shutdown of the international internet. Even the government's own communications minister has pleaded for it to be lifted, saying 10 million Iranians' livelihoods depend on being connected. I'm not sure how in the weeks and the months to come, They're going to be able to square this pressure on their own people.
They're calling for economic jihad, but people have to find a way to make ends meet.
Now your own colleagues in the BBC are reporting and have asked the White House for comment on this report from Axios which says that the White House believes it is close now to agreeing a memorandum of understanding with Iran. Sky News quoting Pakistani sources confirming that the United States and Iran are near a peace deal.
So that makes more sense of Donald Trump's announcement overnight that Project Freedom is gone now. He clearly felt that he was making progress elsewhere release?
Even Marco Rubio said the war, the war is over now. And there is a sense in which the United States under pressures, political and economic at home, wants to stop the war, wants to find another way to use the phrase to climb down. For many weeks now, there has been discussion of, as a first step in negotiations, a framework, a memorandum of understanding where they
end the war, where they agree on what the topics for discussion will be. This often happens in negotiations. It has to be a phased process. President Trump is doing diplomacy without diplomats, and that's not a point of view. That is factual. Many of the top diplomats have been fired from the civil service. And President Trump makes a boast about it, saying,
that he has people in his first term, he said, oh, the State Department had people who know the rivers and the mountains. I have people who know how to make deals. So he has his trusted envoys. But I think the view is that until he brings in people who understand nuclear physics,
who understand nuclear negotiations, who understand how to deal with Iran, who understand Iran, they're not going to make any progress. But if indeed they are now moving towards a framework of understanding a memorandum, that shows that they are moving towards at least the beginning of what could be called serious negotiations.
But when I was in Iran, when President Trump was warning that he was going to bring down every bridge and every electricity plant, for Iran and I think any negotiators anywhere would say that that doesn't create the right atmosphere for negotiation.
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