Yalda Hakim (4:56)

Yeah, absolutely, Richard. I mean, we know that, you know, for decades the Iranian people have survived under these sanctions at different points when they've gone head to head with the west, when the regime has gone head to head with the West. And often the regime has tried to point the finger of blame on the United States, on the west, for the state of the nation. And they've said it's because of the sanctions that you are living the way that you are. But we have seen now, certainly in the last few years, that the Iranian people are saying to the regime, enough, we've had enough of you. We want change, we want you gone. And we've seen that in different movements. We saw that in the Green Revolution in 2009. We saw just in the last couple of years with the, with the women's movement where there was an uprising led by the so called TikTok generation where these young teenage girls stood up and said to the regime, we are not going to be forced to wear this hat headscarf off the back of the death of a young woman, Mahsa Amini. And so we can see the different crossroads that this nation continues to be in. But I'm so fascinated, Richard, because we've both covered the story of the women's movement over the course of the last couple of years. Just tell me, being in Iran, as you say, really difficult to get into the country. I certainly haven't sort of attempted to go. I, I worked at the BBC for years and it was really difficult for a BBC journalist to enter the country. But this is now a moment where suddenly the regime is opening up. And we know in the past that journalists have been arrested. An Italian journalist a few months ago was arrested and, and the Italians had to release an Iranian to get the journalist out. First of all, just as you say, you feel more welcome there. 10 days is a long time to be there. But just what are you seeing? What are you cap of the mood?

Richard Engel (6:56)

More than 10 days? We've asked for an extension. I think it's going to be granted. And that's, that's not the kind of reception we, that, that I've had here in the past. It's not that I'm naive. You know, just because we're being welcomed and we're giving more access and gotten a visa and I'm getting some thumbs up from people on the streets doesn't mean, oh, everything is great, you know, everything is perfect in Iran. That would be, you know, that would be foolish. I've been doing this business too, too long to be fooled by that. But let's, let's talk about the women and then we'll talk about the nuclear issue because it's fascinating and people might not understand it. But let's talk about the women's issue in particular. This is one of the most sensitive issues and one of the issues that's really at the cultural and political heart of the regime is women and women's dress and women's rights and how women present themselves in public. You are officially allow, required a woman as a woman here to wear a veil in public. And every restaurant you go into, there's a sign on the wall and there's a picture of a, of a woman wearing a veil. And it says, please, in these premises, according to the law, wear Islamic dress. They're on every, usually multiple signs in every shop, every cafe, in the hotel where I'm Staying in the lobby, everywhere these signs up, and people aren't listening to them anymore, and people aren't listening to them brazenly. You walk down the street and I would say, just by observation, maybe 30%, 40% of women are not wearing headscarves anymore. They will have a little scarf around their necks in case there's an issue, in case maybe a police officer comes up to them. They can quickly just put it over their hair, but they're just keeping it around their necks. And they're walking by the police stations, they're walking by government ministries. I've seen people walking with the women with their hair out, walking right past groups of what you would consider the morality police. And they don't say anything. They have stopped enforcing it on a daily basis. And that is a significant change. I don't think they've given up. I'm not sure that this is the end of the road. But there was a movement here. It was lasted a couple of years. It turned quite violent. There was a death of at least one. Several protesters were violent, had violent encounters. It was a brutal crackdown. But it seems to have made a difference because the government, at least right now, has decided it doesn't want that fight and it is not picking that fight. And people here are hoping that that is the start of significant changes. Now, it could be temporary, it could be that the government has other priorities right now and therefore has put this one on the back burner. But it is happening and it is obvious and people are talking about it. I did a television interview, American television, with a woman just a couple of days ago, long hair down to her. Down to below her shoulders, and she did the interview on camera without a headscarf on. Now, that would have been unthinkable even in North Tehran a few years ago. People may not have been wearing them or they were barely wearing them, but if we interviewed them on camera, they would quickly, you know, wrap themselves up so they wouldn't get in trouble, even if they found it personally annoying. Now, she said, ah, let's do it, and didn't care. And that's a sense of confidence that I've. That I've never seen in this country.

Yalda Hakim (10:49)

Yeah, I mean, that is incredibly brave. We can't overstate how brave it is because it was a death sentence before for these women. It was unthinkable for them not to have their head scarves on. It was very much linked to the Islamic Revolution of 1978. And this has been something that's been enforced for decades. So for these women to. To say, now, I don't want to wear this. And why this is linked, Richard, to the current state of play needs to be explained as well, because, of course, we are now seeing this regime in talks again with the Trump administration. And let's just remind our audiences where we're at, because when we talk about the original Iran nuclear deal, the one that the Obama admin put together, now, that was about a decade in the making, and it was, you know, the Europeans were on board, the Americans were driving it, and it was basically to curb Iran's nuclear program to ensure that Iran wasn't going to weaponize its nuclear program and be a threat to the region and the global community. Now, what happened to that deal, which was the jcpoa, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, you remember, during Donald Trump's first administration, he came in and he ripped up the jcpoa, the Iran nuclear deal, and he said, you know, that he felt that the Obama administration had made so many concessions that he would have walked away from it. He described it as the worst deal ever. And he applied, at that point, maximum pressure on Iran. And so another deal to ease sanctions, to bring Iran to the nuclear table was never really enforced, not under the Biden administration. It was toyed with, it was flirted with, but it never, never came about. Trump has decided that he's going to send a clear message to the Iranian regime. You either come to the negotiating table, you make concessions, or we're going to smash you. Essentially, that is. That is the message that he sent. He sent a letter to Ayatollah Khamenei a few weeks ago and basically said, look, we want to talk. You got to come to the. To the table. There are many people who are now saying basically that it is going to be a revival of the jcpoa. The Iranians want it, the Americans want it. The Trump administration needs, needs this deal. They need a win of some sort. You know, Trump made all sorts of claims during the campaign. And as we sort of head towards 100 days of his second term, three months in, what he has said from the beginning is I'm going to make a deal on ending the war in Gaza. The ceasefire broke down. I'm going to bring an end to the war in Ukraine within 24 hours. I mean, it's been almost 100 days, he hasn't been able to bring the two sides to the negotiating table. So the one light in all of this for Trump is Iran now, because they have had several rounds of talks in Rome In Oman, they're looking at another round of talks soon. And why this matters, what you're saying about the women in the situation in Iran, to circle it all back, is the Iranian regime needs this too. We've seen over the course of the last year the proxies that they have built up in the region, Hezbollah, Hamas, you know, the Houthis, the groups that they have backed, this so called axis of resistance or axis of, of evil or upheaval has more or less been dismantled by the Israelis. They are facing backlash at home through what you're talking about now, not just because of the sanctions and people are living in dire, dire conditions, but also because people are saying, we don't want you anymore. And thirdly, they want to be able to make some kind of deal now with the Americans.

Richard Engel (15:00)

And that's first of all, exactly brilliant summary of where we are right now in the JCPOA that broke down, but I mentioned why the Iranian people want to deal. They don't want to be attacked. They don't want a fight with the United States. They don't want to see Tehran be bombed. Tehran, by the way, is a huge city. You know, it's a city on the size of Istanbul if you include the outer suburbs. This is a city of roughly 20 million people. Iran has about 85, 90 million people total population, and a large percentage of them live in Tehran. Tehran. They don't want to see bomb, they don't want to see war. They watch what happened in Gaza. They don't want any part of it. They, they don't want it. They want to do business with the world and they want sanctions to be lifted and they hope this deal will, will allow that. Now people, people are talking about the, the, the nuclear deal, the enrichment deal, and you don't need to be a nuclear scientist to understand the deal. It's, it's pretty, it's pretty simple. Do you want, you want, should we talk about it for a second? Go ahead. Okay, so there is a nuclear program here. It's based on uranium. And uranium, of course, is, is, it is an, is an element. It's radioactive element. And you can dig it out of the ground, but when you dig it out of the ground, it doesn't do very much. It just sort of emits radiation. In order to, to make it useful, you have to enrich it. And the way you enrich uranium, one of the ways is you, you spin it, you put it in a spent in a centrifuge and you spin it and spin it and spin it and spin it and spin it until it gets more and more concentrated because the heavier bits are thrown out toward the end of a centrifuge and you enrich it. And that's what it's really all about. Because in order to have a weapons grade, to have weapons grade uranium, it needs to be about 90% pure. So highly enriched, really dangerous uranium that you could use to make a nuclear weapon. Right? And the IAEA believes that they have enough 60% enriched uranium that they could take that 60% quickly, move it up to 90% and then make a bomb. What the deal would be, and we don't exactly know the deals are happening behind closed doors, but the general framework would be that Iran would agree not to enrich very to high levels, not to enrich to anything close to a weapons grade uranium. They would keep it at low levels, which you can still use to make power. They would take the more highly enriched stuff that they already have, send it out of the country. They would be allowed to make the low level enriched uranium for civilian purposes and that they would be monitored and have frequent monitors to make sure that they don't go above a certain threshold. And that in exchange for doing that, getting rid of the highly enriched uranium, allowing in monitors, that it would get sanctions relief, the threat of a military action would go away and there would be peace, prosperity, and a new page for Iran. It's possible and it's not that different. That was the basic framework of the Obama deal. And many Iranians believe that Trump tore up that deal and he's gonna fight to put a very similar deal back in place, but that he tore it up because he didn't like Obama. He tore it up because Obama did it and he wants the deal that he does. And so even if it's very similar, it will be his deal with his man and he would get the credit for it.

Yalda Hakim (18:55)

Not just the credit, but the Nobel Peace Prize that he's after. I mean, if he gets one of these deals, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Iran, you know, whether he changes the JCPO even slightly, you know, he, we know is after this Nobel Peace Prize. And so if, if he is able to strike something out of this with the Iranians, whether or not it's, it's a two pager. You know, the, the, the original JCPOA was this comprehensive document that had the biggest brains, you know, in terms of understanding nuclear programs on the planet, working on it from Europe and the United States. But this could be quite a sort of a two pager that he brings out slightly tweaks, makes a few changes. Now, the biggest problem here, Richard, I think, is, is if the United States asks for too much or if the United States asks for too little. And, you know, the Israelis that I've been speaking to have said the concern is they will ask for too little. They will make so many concessions and give the Iranians so much that in return, the Iranians will think, well, we need to come to the negotiating table for all of the reason that we've just stated, whether it's sanctions relief, whether it's because their proxies and the groups that they've been supporting for decades have been smashed in the region, or whether it's domestic problems that they're currently facing and this rising, this uprising of voices that are turning against the regime. They need this as much as the Trump administration does. So we'll have to see how it plays out and whether the Americans do make the sort of concessions that the Israelis certainly are concerned that they will.

Richard Engel (20:37)

So the other question is, well, what about the regime? Why does the regime care? The regime wants this deal. The regime says it wants this deal. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, says that he's endorsed the deal. And I was at Friday prayers, I was one of the first Westerners inside the main mosque at Tehran University on Army Day, when it was full of soldiers and people who would be considered real hardliners. And I was listening to the sermon, and the preacher was saying, we don't trust the Americans, don't think they're our friends, but we're still going to talk because. And then he cited Quranic verses and Islamic traditions. It was a sermon, after all, to say why negotiations are important and why it's important to have dialogue even with people you don't agree with. So the question is, why, why, why, why are they doing this one I think they're feeling a lot of economic pressure because the economy here is, is in difficult state. It's difficult for the people to trade and to, you know, they can't use credit cards and sell things. And, you know, this country produces a lot of beautiful things, not just carpets and pistachios and saffron, although all those are fabulous. But they also have industry and they want to engage and they want to sell and they want to, they want the world to know their market, and they want it to sell things. The government needs that income because right now they're basically just selling their oil to China and they're using fleets of old tankers. And it's a very. There's a lot of smuggling, and it's complicated, and it's expensive for them because anytime you have to operate in sort of the gray economy, you lose a lot of money. So they need the money. That's definitely. And they are in a weakened position for the exact reasons you mentioned. Look, what's just happened in the last couple of years. Iran, its strength, its power was always through its ability to maintain control at home, which through its security services, through surveillance, through the laws and through the different security apparatuses here, and their ability to protect themselves by a network of proxies, a network of armor. You know, I like to think of it as Iran's outer coat of armor. And that outer coat of armor, or let's call you weapons, if you will, was strategically placed around Israel in order to send a message to Israel, don't think about bombing us because we can hurt you. And they had very close relations with Hamas in Gaza, right on the border, of course, with Israel. They had very, very close relations with Hezbollah, which is right to the north of Israel. They had a very, very close relations with Bashar al Assad of Syria. All three of those are either decimated, weakened, or in Bashar al Assad's case, gone. So their armor has been removed. So are they coming to the table now because they have no choice, because they need the money and because they're not in the same military position that they were, or is this real? Is this a real change? Is this the start of a process that, that is going to be transformative? And I think Iranians don't really know. They're hopeful that it's the latter, but they're also willing to take the risk that it's the former, that even if Iran is doing this because it's under pressure, Iranians will say, well, who cares? As long as they're taking these steps for whatever reason, maybe it leads to a more positive outcome for them politically, socially, economically. But the change, at least for now, is happening. It's real now. I don't know if this window is going to close. It's possible that in a couple of months, Trump decides, you know, I've tried my best. I wanted these negotiations to work, but they were a failure. And the military strikes happen. That's still very possible. You know, again, we're not, neither of us were born yesterday.

Yalda Hakim (25:05)

And there are splits within the administration. Those hardliners, Iran hawks, you know, the Mike waltzers of the world who say, listen, you know, we know how this regime operates and they are just trying to buy time here. They want a nuclear bomb, they want to acquire a nuclear weapon. And therefore they are just saying what needs to be said because it's a short term sort of gain for Trump.

Richard Engel (25:31)

And maybe, and maybe. But either way it's happening. This, we are in this window now. Whether window opens, more and more air comes in or the window is smashed closed and breaks into shards of glass, we will see and I think we will see in the next few months. But at the moment, right now, diplomacy does seem to be moving quickly and does seem to be making some progress.

Yalda Hakim (26:01)

Richard, I do want to sort of ask a little bit more on that because there are those within Israel, for example, that are incredibly concerned that actually, you know, I mean, I spoke to some contacts yesterday who said if we go back to the jcpoa, that particular deal, it's the, it's the best of the sort of the worst deals that could possibly, the worst outcomes that could possibly come out of this. So it's not so bad. If we go back to that Obama nuclear deal. There are others who believe, as we were just saying, that actually Iran is just, you know, they're playing games and they just like they are allowing women to wear headscarves. But actually the, the long term plan is to get everyone back into line, that they have the same attitude towards their nuclear ambitions, that they do want to weaponize their, their nuclear program.

Richard Engel (26:55)

And it could all be a trick. It could be that once they get more surveillance technology in place and they do have good relations with, with, with China, they could easily, if they could afford it, buy AI enabled cameras that could detect women wearing headscarves and launch a major crackdown. All of these things are possible and it is possible that we suddenly have a reverse in this trend. Certainly possible. But the government here is one of the most open minded and flexible that the president that they've had in many years. And the hardliners recognized there were elections. You remember Raisi, the former president died in that helicopter, mysterious helicopter crash. Mysterious helicopter crash. Right. And he was a hardliner. He was someone who people thought could be the next supreme leader. The supreme Leader is the ayatollah who runs the theocracy. The president is the one who manages the day to day bureaucracy of the country. And, and when Raisi was president, but he was potentially going to be the next supreme leader when he died in that helicopter crash. They had to have snap elections and the current president won those snap elections with very low turnout. And the hardliners didn't do very well. And that sent a message, I think that was read loud and clear, that, hey, we can't push too far. We don't really have the support that we think we do at the moment. So are they Biden biding their time and is this all a game? I don't know. I'm not even sure they know. But the important thing is there is this window and timing matters. And can I tell you something? The biggest thing that I hear from Iranians every single day is they tell me the world doesn't understand us. The world thinks that Iranians wake up every morning, burn Israeli flags, build American weapons, kill Jews for dinner, and that that's their life of radicalism. It's generally, I would say, pro American on the streets. It's generally pro Western. People like what happens in Europe. They want to go to Europe, they want to travel abroad. I'm not saying they're not. Not religious, but it's not a country of fanatics by any means. People pray and people don't pray. It is not the Taliban. It is not even, as I would say, as religious on a popular level as some countries in the Arab world, in the Middle East. It is a different culture, a different people that they believe that Iranians believe the world doesn't understand. And that's one of the main reasons they want to re. Engage. I would say a third reason. One, first reason to avoid a war. Second is so that they can do business. And the third is so that people can get to know them and get to know what they say is the real Iran.

Yalda Hakim (30:08)

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as you say, an extraordinary situation developing now where just in the space of a few weeks, we could potentially be in a situation where they could get into quite serious talks about how to curb Iran's nuclear program. Richard, we're going to take a break and come back and talk about the fact that we are getting close to 100 days of this administration and where are we at in terms of foreign policy?

Richard Engel (31:00)

Welcome back. So now it has been, let's say, about 100 days into the Trump administration. Let's talk about that. He said he was going to fix Ukraine on day one. There was a little bit of an Easter ceasefire that never really happened, according to both sides. They both accused each other of violence, violating it. So there was a tiny little pause that really amounted to nothing. That conflict is still ongoing. Trump and Marco Rubiov even said, if it doesn't work, we're gonna give up, we're gonna stop negotiating. The guy who said he was gonna fix it in day one, now says, oh, it's so hard. Maybe I'm gonna walk away from the process entirely. What are you hearing from your sources? How are people feeling 100 days, more or less into Trump 2.0?

Yalda Hakim (31:50)

Well, Richard, I think Steve Witkoff, who has become this kind of the busiest envoy for this particular administration, I mean.

Richard Engel (32:01)

He'S the busiest envoy I've ever seen.

Yalda Hakim (32:03)

Yeah, I mean, he's really incredibly busy. He's single handedly managing all of these different conflicts, whether it's striking a deal with, with Israel and Hamas. And I saw him in Qatar where he was working very closely with the Prime Minister there to try and come up with some kind of ceasefire deal. And we saw that take place just days before the inauguration. But that obviously, as we know, has now collapsed. And then of course, he's also leading the negotiations to try and come up with some kind of agreement between the Ukrainians and the Russians to bring some kind of ceasefire there. And he, he's constantly traveling to Moscow and trying to speak to Putin and trying to come up with some kind of deal there. And of course, he is at the forefront of this particular negotiation with the Iranians that we've been talking about. He is a real estate mogul. He is someone who has known Trump for decades. He's very close to the family. He has an office in the White House, although originally he was supposed to be in the State Department. But he was getting so many calls in the day that he was, was rushing over to see Trump. He's got open access into Trump's office, just as Jared Kushner did. And Jared Kushner, Trump's son in law, was so driving a lot of Trump's foreign policy in the first administration. And Witkoff is probably the closest thing to that. He's, as I said, close to the family. He has access to Donald Trump and those foreign policy wonks and leaders around the world. When Witkoff arrives, they know that the message is coming directly from Donald Trump. So what he says matters. And they sit up and they want to listen to what he has to say.

Richard Engel (33:54)

And there are pluses and minuses to that, to having one person basically handling foreign policy, whether it's from Gaza to Iran to Ukraine, it all goes through him. And there's pluses, there's advantages and disadvantages. The advantage is exactly as you're saying, people take him seriously because they know they're talking to someone who has access to Trump, who's in the office right next to him. And who Trump trusts. So they take him seriously. It feels like they're talking to Trump. The negative side is he's basically bypassed the State Department. He's basically thrown the State Department away. And it's foreign policy through an envoy. It's foreign policy by executive order.

Yalda Hakim (34:38)

Yeah, I mean, things that the Secretary of State would have done previously. You know, we're seeing Steve Witkoff as Trump envoy, zipping around in his private jet. He doesn't get a penny from. From the government. These are all things that are unheard of. But that is what Steve Witkoff is doing. And he has a direct line to Donald Trump, and he's determined to get one of these deals done. So whether it is pushing on the Ukraine front, and frankly, we're seeing Putin say things like, well, I'll have an Easter ceasefire. And then you hear from those on the ground that the ceasefire has been breached. Hundreds. Zelensky himself has said that. Or whether we saw the collapse of the ceasefire in Gaza and the devastation that has continued there. And even at the time, people described that particular ceasefire as fragile, as a deal that would be difficult to hold, and he has struggled to resurrect that deal. So what we have seen now is this administration trying to do things on speed. They are basing, basically trying to handle multiple tasks at once. And it all feels slightly incomplete and confusing. It's unclear if any of these deals are going to get off the ground. This particular deal with the Iranians, I mean, you remember famously the summit that Donald Trump had with the North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, where he went, he tried to deal with that, of course, and the. Those North Korea watchers were saying, this is just a photo op for. For Kim Jong Un and it's going to get nowhere. And actually, I think the difference between that and the Iran deal is there. You know, the North Koreans weren't concerned that anyone was going to come and smash them. So, you know, they would. They were doing it for a photo op. He wanted to meet Donald Trump. I think the Iranians know that there is a lot more at stake here, and that's why potentially we will see concessions made from both sides and a potential deal could be signed between the Trump administration and the Iranians.

Richard Engel (36:55)

And that's exactly what I was saying earlier, that neither of us were born yesterday. There is talk, there is movement, there's excitement here. The government says that it wants this deal and is trying to show that it wants this deal opening up to a degree to American journalists, to me, and so that we can have these kind of conversations, then I can talk to people on the streets again. Again, unfettered access, relatively speaking, for Iran. I mean, there's more controls that I felt in other countries than I'm feeling here. I was out the other day with our camera. We were just walking around, just stopping people on the street, putting our tripod down. Police walked by us, didn't even ask for our papers. That's shocking for a place like Iran. I've been here in the past. As soon as you put your sticks down. Sticks, Tripod for people who don't know the journalistic term. As soon as you put your sticks down, police came and sometimes would take you back to the police station. I filmed in Cairo. Cairo is harder to work than I'm finding it to work here. When you try and film on the streets in Cairo, five minutes, within five minutes, sometimes less than that, the authorities are all over you and they want to know who you are and this. And there's questions and it's obstructionist. I was talking to, to people on the streets who were openly telling me that they've had enough, not just of the government, but of the entire Islamic system, openly saying that, including women with their headscarves off. That's extraordinary. And that's, I would say, for Iran, quite a bold step. So they're trying to show they want to do this deal, whether they have no choice, whether it's real, they're doing it, the people want it. But is it going to fail? Like the Gaza deal failed? Is it going to fail? Like, so far the Ukraine talks have failed? I don't know. The Iranians don't know. That's the big question. But I can tell you this moment, there is that window, there is that hope, and there is that momentum from both the state and the people here who want to give this a shot. And if it does fail and suddenly there's military action against Iran by Israel, and there was that New York Times report a couple of weeks ago that said they were going to bomb in May and that Trump said, let's try diplomacy first. We'll keep military option on the table, but let's not do that yet. So if in a couple of months that military option comes back and there's a conflict, I'll look back and I will remember the conversation we were having right now. And remember that window was open and it was open, and it was really open for a little bit. And there really is a bit of momentum leading in the direction of trying to engage. Maybe it's because they have a new president. Maybe because it's the women who went out into the streets and said, they're not taking this anymore. And the police lost the will to enforce certain of these social laws. Maybe it's the economic crisis. Whatever the reason is, the currency has gone up since I've been here. The toman, the Iranian currency, is gaining value because people are encouraged by the prospect that there's going to be a deal. The Iranian currency, day by day, since I've been here for the last week, has gone up. And that's quite significant. It's a sign of people's confidence. And I was out last night walking around and it was a great scene. There were a bunch of men and they all had their phones out and they were looking at the international currency rates and they were trading gold and they were trading the local currency and they were going back and forth and haggling. And it was fun to watch because it was old fashioned of people kind of screaming at each other. And I've got this and I've got that and I've got this many gold and I've got this much currency. And they were going, and the market is heating up because there's some optimism.

Yalda Hakim (41:18)

Incredible. Well, Richard, then I need to ask you, I mean, what is your prediction of things? I mean, you sound, as you say, we're not naive, we've seen these things played out before, but you sound, you know, cautiously optimistic and I'm curious to know what your prediction is going forward and what, how are things likely to look?

Richard Engel (41:41)

Ooh, I hate to be a pessimist, I hate to be a pessimist, but I was just reading some old quotes from the former Israeli Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett, and he was saying, saying they've never had an opportunity like this to strike Iran because they have the cause, they believe, which was October 7th. And they have the means because Iran's weapons, external weapons, Hamas, Hezbollah, even the Houthis are getting weakened, they're getting, getting attacked. They were sort of the last of the, of the proxies still standing. So Iran has never been this vulnerable before. So I don't, I think there's still a decent chance that this goes military because they're. Just because there's goodwill and just because you want something to happen. There are plenty of people who don't want this to happen. There are plenty of people who would see this moment and see this as a great opportunity to try and destroy some of Iran's nuclear capacity. So I'm going to do a low prediction. I would say it's still probably 50, 50 that you're going to get a deal or you're going to get some sort of military action. But if these talks break down, there are plenty of people in Washington who would really like to have a military campaign against Iran and see that this is an opportunity that might be too tempting for them to skip.

Yalda Hakim (43:35)

Well, I guess for me, Richard, as we've been discussing, I'm going to be watching very closely the talks with, with Iran. There are more sort of meetings that are taking place, bilaterals that are taking place this week and of course the situation in Ukraine and Russia to see how that unfolds. Vladimir Putin has now sort of said, you know, has hinted at the fact that he might want to meet with, with the Ukrainians. The last time they met, of course, was in 2022 and those talks fell apart. The two leaders didn't, but they had teams that were meeting. And of course, as we march towards days of the Trump administration, Trump 2.0, I'm curious to know who is going to remain in the court of Trump and who leaves, you know, whether the Pete Hegseth is ousted. Because of course we've there's been more revelations around Signalgate and that he, you know, shared contents of that with, with family and friends and, and that's landed him in hot water. And of course Elon Musk, who we know that he's going to be leaving this administration very soon. So you surprises really in terms of the shifts and changes. It's taken almost three months now. We saw the chaos in the first Trump administration where people were being hired and fired almost every other week. So what made this administration different from the first was the fact that they seemed from the outset more organized, more focused, less kind of leaks that we were seeing fewer people who were working against the plans of the, of the president. And yet we are starting to see cracks because of the level of, of chaos and confusion and the fact that things are remain incomplete. So that's what I will be focusing on in the next week or so.

Richard Engel (45:31)

And Yalda, before we go, there's one thing because if you noticed on this prediction, I, I was like, Well, I mean 55% it breaks down, 45% works works and that if it breaks down, it breaks down badly. Right. Which is that's not a great prediction. That's still a, it could go either way. It's kind of a, I don't want to say cowardly, but it's not a very decisive prediction because it's really still fluid. And one of the reasons that we haven't talked about that is very interesting is the role of Saudi Arabia. The Saudi Arabia defense minister was just here, was just in Iran and is backing this deal. And that's very different. The Saudis and generally all the Gulf countries didn't want this deal to happen under Obama. They didn't like the deal. They didn't want Iran breaking out of its box. They wanted to destroy this country and keep it as weak as possible because of this ancient, ancient Persian Arab rivalry, because of oil competition. Who controls the Gulf? Is it the Arabian Gulf or is it the Persian Gulf? There's old animosity here. This time the Saudis seem to be supporting this process and there's still talk, rumors in the background. But it was rumors circulating in Tehran when the Defense minister, who is the brother of Mohammed bin Salman, was here, here. The talk was, maybe he's here because he's trying to organize a final peace summit in Saudi Arabia where President Trump goes and signs this deal. So the fact that the Saudis were here and the fact that the Saudis are into it and that the Saudis are playing such a central role in a lot of these negotiations, that's an encouraging sign. And so I would say something to watch would be watch Saudis position vis a vis Iran and what Saudi Arabia has to say about the negotiations. Because I think it's different and significant.

Yalda Hakim (47:46)

Yeah, absolutely. As you say, different and significant. Richard, really good to speak to you again this week and this time from Tehran. And I'm looking forward to seeing you very soon. And thank you to our listeners. Listeners for listening.

Richard Engel (48:01)

Thank you, all of our listeners. It's great to connect with you, great to talk to people every week. Sorry we missed Easter. We'll be back and keep it going. Please send us questions@theworldky.uk and follow us wherever you get your podcasts. You asked and we listened.

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