No big deal: murky Iran-war negotiations

Summary

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Economist Podcasts – The Intelligence

Episode: "No big deal: murky Iran-war negotiations"

Date: May 26, 2026
Hosts: Jason Palmer & Rosie Blore

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Main Theme

This episode delves into the uncertain and complex state of ongoing negotiations between America and Iran regarding the war and a possible interim ceasefire. It also covers the rise of agentic AI in China's super apps and a curious investigation into why black grouse crash into ski resort chairlifts. The tone is analytical, measured, and blends insightful commentary with clear reporting.

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1. Murky Negotiations: America, Iran, and the Ceasefire

[01:53–09:58]
Guests: Greg Carlstrom (Middle East correspondent)

Key Discussion Points

• The Ongoing Ceasefire Uncertainty

  • While America launched new airstrikes on Iranian targets overnight, a supposed two-week ceasefire has now stretched on for nearly two months, with lasting peace still elusive.
  • There is ambiguity in both action ("acts of self-defense") and in diplomatic language, due especially to “America's mixed messenger in chief.”
    Notable quote:

    “Even the state of the ceasefire is unclear.” — Jason Palmer (01:53)

• State of Negotiations and Prospects

  • Recent visits by mediators had sparked hope for an "interim agreement", but mixed signals from the US—particularly President Trump’s vacillation—have left negotiations unresolved.
  • The agreement being discussed isn't a final deal but rather a "deal to keep talking about a deal," which would likely extend the ceasefire by 60 days and set out broad principles (such as Iran pausing uranium enrichment and America offering some sanctions relief). Notable quote:

    "Effectively, it’s a deal to keep talking about a deal.” — Greg Carlstrom (03:31)

• Underlying Pressures and Leverage

  • Both the US and Iran are under pressure: soaring global energy prices are pushing the US toward a deal, while Iran faces the prospect of having to shut down oil wells (which could damage its oil industry).
  • Each side believes the other is under more pressure, with Iran thinking Trump needs a deal more due to American public discontent over fuel prices. Notable quote:

    “The Iranians still think they’re the ones with time on their side.” — Greg Carlstrom (04:53)

• Similarities to the Obama-era Nuclear Deal (JCPOA)

  • The interim deal being discussed bears strong resemblance to the earlier JCPOA, which Trump had criticized as “the worst deal ever negotiated.” This has drawn criticism from hawkish Republicans expecting more stringent terms.
  • The question of Iran’s existing stockpile of highly enriched uranium (400kg at 60% purity—close to weapons grade) remains unresolved and a major concern. Notable quote:

    “In some ways, this could even be a weaker agreement than the JCPOA.” — Greg Carlstrom (07:19)

• Near-Term vs. Long-Term Outcomes

  • Oil markets have responded positively to the prospect of a deal (Brent crude down about 6%), but a true return to pre-war normalcy would take months: tankers are stranded or far afield, and energy companies must reconfigure logistics.
  • The uncertainty means companies must decide whether to risk returning to the Gulf without knowing if a true final agreement will materialize. Notable quote:

    "The uncertainty of this war is going to be with us for some time to come.” — Greg Carlstrom (09:39)

Important segment timestamps:

• [03:24–04:40] — Elements of the interim deal
• [06:23–07:52] — Comparison to previous nuclear deals; unresolved uranium concerns
• [08:05–09:56] — Consequences for oil markets and timelines for normalcy

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2. Agentic AI in China’s Super Apps

[11:51–17:40]
Guests: Don Weinland (China Business Editor)

Key Discussion Points

• Rise of Agentic AI in Daily Life

  • “Agentic AI” refers to AI systems that can make decisions and take actions for users—e.g., ordering coffee via voice commands integrated within super-app ecosystems.
  • Over 600 million Chinese are estimated to use some form of agentic AI already.

• The Strategy Behind AI in Super Apps

  • Major Chinese tech companies (Alibaba, Tencent, Bytedance) are leveraging AI mainly to retain users within their ecosystems and drive more spending or engagement.
  • The real commercial advantage: capturing more user spending through payment platforms and better-routed advertising. Notable quote:

    "What they’re trying to do is create a super app that uses their AI to direct you to all the goods and services and entertainment that you’re ever going to need and you don’t need to go anywhere else.” — Don Weinland (13:20)

• Monetization and Competitive Landscape

  • Amid slowing e-commerce growth and weak consumer spending, tech giants are under pressure to make AI investments pay off.
  • Two monetization models: transaction fees and targeted advertising, with AI deepening both.
  • Attempts to create AI hardware devices (e.g., Bytedance’s AI phone) have struggled due to lack of cooperation among competing tech companies. Notable quote:

    "There are basically two ways they can make money ... taking a cut through their payment platform or through advertising." — Don Weinland (14:32)

• How China Differs from the West

  • China’s massive scale and app-centric digital landscape make it easier for super apps to integrate physical and digital services—an infrastructure the US lacks.
  • Innovative AI devices may emerge soon, with competition especially hot among firms like ByteDance, Huawei, and Xiaomi. Notable quote:

    "The biggest difference in China is scale ... By plugging in AI, it’s a lot easier for these companies ... to create one of these agentic services." — Don Weinland (15:23)

Important segment timestamps:

• [12:31–13:14] — What is agentic AI?
• [14:16–15:19] — Monetization challenges for tech companies
• [15:23–16:11] — Key structural differences with the West

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3. The Ski Resort Grouse Mystery

[17:57–23:13]
Guests: Matt Kaplan (Science Correspondent)

Key Discussion Points

• The Problem

  • In Alpine ski resorts, black grouse often fly into ski lift cables and die, affecting both conservation efforts and the resort experience. Notable quote:

    "The main problem the black grouse face is that they have a habit of flying into chairlifts, breaking their necks and then falling to the ground dead..." — Matt Kaplan (18:32)

• Why Isn’t Prevention Working?

  • Resorts had installed bright red warning signs (assuming birds would see them), yet collisions continued. Notable quote:

    “Everyone and their dog has assumed, well, if we make the warning signs red, the grouse will see them ... As these researchers have published ... that has not been working, the numbers continue to drop.” — Matt Kaplan (20:17)

• Breakthrough Research: Grouse Color Vision

  • Scientists discovered that black grouse have very poor vision for red hues—they simply can’t see the red warning marks.
  • Grouse can see ultraviolet, blue, yellow, purple, and have poor contrast vision; their head’s “red” patches, visible to humans, reflect UV, which is visible to grouse. Notable quote:

    “They can see blue, they can see yellow, they can see purple. They can even see ultraviolet. But shockingly, they see red really, really badly.” — Matt Kaplan (20:45)

• Testing Grouse Vision

  • Researchers examined the eye proteins in dead birds and used visual tests with live grouse, watching head movements in response to moving patterns to judge what colors and contrasts they perceive.

• Practical Implication

  • The solution: replace red warnings with starkly contrasting signs in colors grouse can see (e.g., purple-yellow checks, black-white patterns). The case illustrates how human assumptions can badly misalign with animal biology. Notable quote:

    “This is a matter of interspecies communication going all wrong.” — Matt Kaplan (22:54)

Important segment timestamps:

• [19:50–20:31] — Failed interventions (red warning signs)
• [20:38–21:11] — Grouse color vision discovery
• [21:15–21:53] — How vision experiments were conducted

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Memorable Quotes (with Attributions & Timestamps)

• “Even the state of the ceasefire is unclear.”
  — Jason Palmer (01:53)
• “Effectively, it’s a deal to keep talking about a deal.”
  — Greg Carlstrom (03:31)
• “The Iranians still think they’re the ones with time on their side.”
  — Greg Carlstrom (04:53)
• “In some ways, this could even be a weaker agreement than the JCPOA.”
  — Greg Carlstrom (07:19)
• “What they’re trying to do is create a super app that uses their AI to direct you to all the goods and services and entertainment that you’re ever going to need and you don’t need to go anywhere else.”
  — Don Weinland (13:20)
• “They can see blue, they can see yellow, they can see purple. They can even see ultraviolet. But shockingly, they see red really, really badly.”
  — Matt Kaplan (20:45)
• “This is a matter of interspecies communication going all wrong.”
  — Matt Kaplan (22:54)

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Episode Flow and Tone

• Tone: Analytical, fact-driven, and engaging, with nuanced consideration of political, technological, and scientific challenges.
• Structure: Moves logically from hard geopolitics (Iran), to business and technology (agentic AI), to a quirky but revealing science story (grouse and ski lifts).

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Key Takeaways

• International diplomacy: Negotiations between America and Iran are at a precarious and ambiguous stage, likely to result in an interim deal very similar to past failed agreements, with both sides under pressure but no definitive breakthrough in sight.
• Tech and society: China’s tech giants are attempting to maintain dominance and find new economic pathways by embedding agentic AI in their ecosystems, enabled by a unique digital landscape.
• Science and communication: Real-world problems (like protecting bird populations) can come down to the nuances of animal perception and highlight the pitfalls of anthropocentric assumptions.

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This detailed summary covers all key points and discussions for listeners who may have missed the episode, offering the essential context, insights, and highlights from each story.

Transcript

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[Jason Palmer]

The economist. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm Jason Palmer.

[Rosie Blore]

And I'm Rosie Blore.

[Jason Palmer]

Today on the show, agentic AI comes to China's super apps and solving the great ski resort grouse mystery. First up though, If you're confused about the status of talks between America and Iran, you're in good company. Even the state of the ceasefire is unclear. Overnight, America launched new airstrikes on Iranian missile sites and mine laying boats, couching them as acts of self defense. And thanks to America's mixed messenger in chief, how diplomacy is progressing remains really murky.

[Greg Carlstrom]

Despite the American strikes overnight, we are now almost two months into what was supposed to be a two week strike ceasefire. But it still seems we are some way from a lasting deal to end the war.

[Jason Palmer]

Greg Carlstrom is our Middle east correspondent.

[Greg Carlstrom]

Now. Going into the weekend, there had been some optimism about an interim agreement that might extend the ceasefire. Envoys from the mediating countries visited Iran on Friday. Donald Trump seemed to imply on Saturday that a deal was imminent. But then we heard mixed messages. He said he was in no rush to get a deal done. And as we're speaking now on Tuesday morning, we still haven't reached even that interim agreement.

[Jason Palmer]

But what sort of progress has been made? What is now on the table, perhaps that hasn't been before? Or is there anything.

[Greg Carlstrom]

I do think America and Iran are closer than they were to that interim deal, which the Americans are sometimes calling a letter of intent or a memorandum of understanding to end the war. And effectively it's a deal to keep talking about a deal. So it would likely extend the ceasefire by 60 days, and then it would set out a list of broad principles that both America and Iran would agree to. So Iran, for example, might agree to a time bound moratorium on uranium enrichment. America would agree to deliver various forms of sanctions relief for Iran, and then they would spend the next 60 days, or perhaps longer, negotiating over how to implement those principles. Iran agrees to pause uranium enrichment. What exactly does that mean? What has to happen at its nuclear facilities? Who's going to monitor and verify its compliance? What milestones does it have to reach in order to unlock various tranches of sanctions relief? All of those details are going to take time to negotiate. And so they would be discussed during this extended ceasefire.

[Jason Palmer]

And much of the discussion up until now is who would blink first or who holds the cards, if you like, has that changed at all? Does it seem as if someone has time on their side more than before?

[Greg Carlstrom]

The Iranians still think they're the ones with time on their side. Both sides need this agreement. America needs it and the rest of the world needs it. Because of soaring energy prices. You had American motorists paying $4.50 a gallon for gasoline on average over Memorial Day weekend, and they're not happy about that. And therefore there's pressure on the Trump administration. There's also pressure on Iran. It has managed to find ways so far to stash its oil output in tankers that have been pressed into service as floating storage, and it's jury rigged some additional onshore storage. But at some point, Iran is going to have to start shutting in its oil wells and it wants to avoid that because that can potentially damage its oil industry. So both sides have an incentive to make this short term deal that might help to reopen the Strait of Hormuz a bit. But the Iranians think that Donald Trump needs a deal more urgently that the political situation in America and the energy shock that is rippling across the entire world is putting more pressure on him than the prospect of shutting in their wells is Putting on the regime in

[Jason Palmer]

Tehran and movement through the straight oil industry. That has been the, the big sort of near term question. But you hinted at the ultimate long term question about Iran's nuclear program. What does what's on the table look like now compared to what things were like before the war or the nuclear deal that Mr. Trump tore up?

[Greg Carlstrom]

In some ways it would be very similar. This is one of the problems that Trump is having with this deal. It's one of the reasons why he seemed to do an about face in his messaging over the weekend. The deal that's being discussed sounds not dissimilar from the jcpoa, the deal that was negotiated by Barack Obama and then abandoned by Donald Trump. And he's taking a lot of flack from hawkish Republicans in Washington who think this is not what we were promised. When Donald Trump abandoned the JCPOA in 2018, he called it the worst deal ever negotiated. He said he would negotiate something better. But this sounds quite similar. In fact, it would impose restrictions on Iran's nuclear program again, perhaps a time bound enrichment moratorium, but wouldn't go further than that. It wouldn't dismantle Iran's nuclear facilities, which is something that Trump has long talked about doing. It's not clear if it would prohibit Iran from conducting research on centrifuges, for example, the machines that you use to enrich uranium, if it was allowed to continue doing that. In some ways this could even be a weaker agreement than the jcpoa. So there's been a lot of criticism around that. And then there's still a big question surrounding Iran's stockpile of highly enriched uranium. It has 400 kg of the stuff that is enriched to 60% purity, which is very, very close to weapons grade. And it's still not clear what is going to happen to that stockpile.

[Jason Palmer]

And putting that aside for a moment, coming back to the near term, if a deal is struck of whatever quality, whoever claims a victory, when does the world get back to the way the world was before this war?

[Greg Carlstrom]

I think unfortunately not as fast as people would hope or people would expect. Now, if you look at the oil markets, there was a lot of enthusiasm about even this talk of an interim agreement, because the expectation is that the Strait of Hormuz would be reopened as part of that deal. So when Asian markets opened on Monday morning, Brent crude was down about 6%. But I think it's likely to take a period of months, perhaps longer, to really get oil and gas and other commodities moving. You do have hundreds of ships that are stranded inside of the Persian Gulf right now. They would make their way through the Strait of Hormuz if a deal is struck, that would bring some relief to energy markets. But there's a limited number of those ships after that to really get things flowing again, what needs to happen, hundreds of other tankers would need to make their way back to the Gulf. Some of them now are as far away as the Atlantic Ocean where they're picking up cargoes from America or from elsewhere. So it's going to take them months to finish those voyages and then come back. And then you would also need energy firms in the Gulf to restart all the things that they've shut down during the war. So all of this, the timeline for restarting energy production and energy shipments is going to take a lot longer than the 60 days envisioned by this interim agreement. And that leaves all of these companies, producers, shippers, insurers, with a bit of a dilemma. Do you try to go back to normal? Do you send your tankers back to the Gulf when you don't know if America and Iran will actually reach a final agreement or whether this might all fall apart? So whatever happens in the next few days, I'm sure Donald Trump and the Iranians will try to sell it as if this is some great achievement and it's a war ending deal. But in fact, I think the uncertainty of this war is going to be with us for some time to come.

[Jason Palmer]

Craig, thanks as ever for joining us.

[Greg Carlstrom]

Thank you, Jason.

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[Don Weinland]

Based on the 20 Getting a Coffee delivered to my office in Shanghai is really easy these days.

[Rosie Blore]

Don Weinland is our China Business Editor.

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[Don Weinland]

I open up an AI app. I say something like pick me a coffee and send it to my office. Then I click a button to make the payment and within about 15 minutes the coffee arrives at my office. It's really convenient.

[Rosie Blore]

Don, this sounds like a utopian ideal where coffee just magically appears at your door. What exactly is going on?

[Don Weinland]

So this is what we call agentic AI. It's when artificial intelligence makes a decision on your behalf and then sometimes produces a physical object in the real world. You think it sounds like heaven, but the AI doesn't always pick you the best coffee. I received a rose petal vinegar flavored coffee a couple days ago when I asked the AI to pick me something special. But anyways, there are more than 600 million people in China that are already using some form of agentic AI. That's a government estimate. And the companies behind these apps are really well positioned to push into this new era of the Internet.

[Rosie Blore]

So forgive me Don, but what's the actual point of this agentic Internet?

[Don Weinland]

So we often think of AI as something that we interact with and they help us do our work sometimes. But if you think about the companies that are behind AI in China, these big tech groups, Alibaba, Tencent, Bytedance, these are entertainment, social media and commerce companies. And for them, the point of AI in many respects is to push you into their e commerce networks or their entertainment network. What they're trying to do is create a a super app that uses their AI to direct you to all the goods and services and entertainment that you're ever going to need and you don't need to go anywhere else.

[Rosie Blore]

So in a sense, existing companies are trying to make sure that its existing consumers stay with it. How are they going to make money?

[Don Weinland]

Well, they have to figure out some way of cashing in on their AI. They've been making massive investments over the past two years, and their investors really haven't seen big returns from this. For a company like Alibaba, which heavily relies on e commerce as one of its main businesses, it's actually seeing that part of its business slow down. And it's worth keeping in mind that consumer spending is not very healthy right now. People aren't spending nearly as much as they used to, so that's a big concern. When you are one of the world's largest E commerce groups, there are basically two ways they can make money from this. One is by taking a cut of whatever you're spending your money on through their payment platform. Another way is through advertising. So these companies are already massive advertising groups, and agentic AI is a big area that they can move into. They can better recommend things to you when you are asking for a coffee or a chicken dinner to be sent to your house.

[Rosie Blore]

And how does this differ from what's happening elsewhere in the world?

[Don Weinland]

The biggest difference in China is scale. So the Internet in America and the Internet in China have developed in different ways. In China, people don't use desktop web search very often. Everyone is on apps on their phone. A lot of people don't even own computers. And within these apps, you have a very broad range of services. So by plugging in AI, it's a lot easier for these companies that already have connections to digital services and physical networks of drivers and warehouses and that type of thing to create one of these agentic services. In the US you just don't have these super apps in the same way we do in China.

[Rosie Blore]

And we've heard in the US about OpenAI working on a device that would do this for you. Is that happening in China too?

[Don Weinland]

Yes. I think that lots of these companies would love to create a super AI device. No one has done it very well at this point. ByteDance tried to create a phone late last year that had an embedded AI agent on it. And when you turned on the phone, anything you did on the phone could be controlled or assisted through ByteDance's AI app. That didn't work very well because other companies, other tech giants basically blocked that AI assistant from working very well. But it's early days. There are a lot of other Chinese companies that make devices and they create AI agents. Huawei is one of them. Xiaomi is another one of them. So it wouldn't be too surprising if one of these companies within a year or so, creates a device that is a AI super app. the same time, competition feels very Very heated right now, so this is a really interesting process to watch. I think what you see happening in China now is going to happen elsewhere in the world in the months and years to come.

[Rosie Blore]

Don, thank you so much for talking to me.

[Don Weinland]

Thank you.

[Rosie Blore]

Nature has evolved an extensive range of mechanisms so that animals can pass important messages to each other. Brightly colored skin. Don't eat thorns. Better to avoid. Unfortunately, the message do not fly into the ski lift has proved rather harder to communicate.

[Matt Kaplan]

So you wouldn't think that black grouse and ski lifts have much to do with one another, but unfortunately, they certainly have had a lot of impact upon one another over recent years.

[Rosie Blore]

Matt Kaplan is a science correspondent for the Economist.

[Matt Kaplan]

The main problem the black grouse face is that they have a habit of flying into chairlifts, breaking their necks and then falling to the ground dead, which is obviously bad for the black grouse, but it's also surprisingly bad for the ski resorts, which would rather not have a bunch of dead birds underneath their chairlifts for skiers to look at, because it doesn't make anybody happy.

[Rosie Blore]

Matt, what is a black grouse and what on earth is going on here?

[Matt Kaplan]

A black grouse is a member of the chicken family. They have bright red patches on top of their heads, and they're found all over northern Europe and Asia, much of the Nordic countries, in Russia. But they have this tiny isolated population in the Alps, and their numbers there have been diminishing for years. And particularly notable are their populations around ski resorts. When there are ski lifts present, grouse populations seem to suffer particularly badly.

[Matt Kaplan (continued)]

And that, bonded to the observation of

[Matt Kaplan]

grouse smacking into the lifts suggests that there is a problem.

[Rosie Blore]

So what's anyone tried to do about this so far?

[Matt Kaplan]

To deal with the issue of the grouse smacking into chairlifts, ski companies and resorts have been putting up warning signs all over their cables for their chairlifts. These signs have varied in size from 3.5 to 15 centimeters in width. They're almost always bright red because the bird colliding with the chairlift has bright red patches on its head. So everyone and their dog has assumed,

[Matt Kaplan (continued)]

well, if we make the warning signs red, the grouse will see them and not fly into the chairlifts. But as these researchers have published an experimental biology recently that has not been working, the numbers continue to drop.

[Matt Kaplan]

And so the quest was on to

[Matt Kaplan (continued)]

figure out what can these grouse actually

[Rosie Blore]

see and what have they discovered?

[Matt Kaplan]

They put the grouse through a whole

[Matt Kaplan (continued)]

bunch of visual experiments looking at, you know, can they see contrast what colors can they see?

[Matt Kaplan]

And on the whole, their vision stinks. They don't see contrast very well, but

[Matt Kaplan (continued)]

they can see it. They can see blue, they can see yellow, they can see purple. They can even see ultraviolet. But shockingly, they see red really, really badly. And so all of these signs all over the Alps that have been put up by ski resorts mean nothing to the poor birds because they can't see them.

[Rosie Blore]

And, Matt, how do you actually work out what a bird can see?

[Matt Kaplan (continued)]

Well, the solution is to do two things.

[Matt Kaplan]

One, you find a dead grouse, you take apart its eye, and you look at the receptor proteins that are found inside the eyeball, and that tells you what colors the bird can see. It doesn't tell you very much about contrast, though. And that's where the second part of the experiment that these researchers ran gets interesting. You put a grouse in a box

[Matt Kaplan (continued)]

where it can't move around very much,

[Matt Kaplan]

and you have one clear wall along the top of the box. And then you project onto the ceiling, outside that clear wall, contrasting patterns, and

[Matt Kaplan (continued)]

you move them with the video camera back and forth.

[Matt Kaplan]

Grouse eyeballs don't move very much. And so with grouse, if it can

[Matt Kaplan (continued)]

see the contrast moving along the wall, the grouse has to move its head back and forth. And so they knew which contrasting patterns the grouse could see by watching their head. If the head moved to follow the pattern, they knew the grouse could see it. If it didn't move its head, they knew they couldn't see it.

[Matt Kaplan]

So the grouse have bad vision, and they really need stark contrast, be able to see much of anything.

[Rosie Blore]

And did they work out why a bird that actually has red on its head can't see?

[Matt Kaplan]

Turns out that the patches on the red head of the grouse actually reflect a ton of ultraviolet. And while you and I can't see ultraviolet, grouse can. And so the color that's reflecting off of this animal's head that it can see is ultraviolet, but the red is lost on it. So the solution, really, for the ski resorts is to create warning signs that have very stark contrasts and which don't involve red. So something like bright purple and bright yellow right next to each other in a checkered pattern would be really great, or black and white even, because the grouse could see that. But the bright red, forget it. It's not going to work, really. This is a matter of interspecies communication going all wrong.

[Rosie Blore]

Matt, thank you so much.

[Matt Kaplan]

My pleasure, Rosie.

[Jason Palmer]

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow.

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