US Denies Iran Report on Draft Peace Deal to Reopen Hormuz

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]Yeah. We're all.

[00:00:01]We're all in the dark. This is a very, very difficult set of negotiations to follow. And as you know, uh, President Trump, every half an hour, hour says something different.

[00:00:10]The Iranians then say something different.

[00:00:13]It does, if I had to guess, feel like some kind of a deal is emerging to reopen the Strait in the coming month or so, that seems to be what we're learning. Uh, and then, of course, there'll be at some point some questions about the nuclear issue, but that's the feeling one has. But who knows?

[00:00:30]And meanwhile, of course, there's the Israeli Lebanese, uh, phenomenon.

[00:00:33]We can we can talk about when you're ready.

[00:00:36]Ethan, is there a sense of how much pressure the Trump administration is putting on Israel behind the scenes to avoid a wider conflict?

[00:00:46]Uh, I think there's, um, a clear understanding that Israel is not going to do anything that would, uh, really lengthen this thing in a way short toward Iran, for example. It would not move without American agreement in terms of what's going on in Lebanon.

[00:01:02]It's a sort of a side show from Israel's perspective, from, uh, the Iranians want to include Hezbollah in their peace pact.

[00:01:11]It's not clear. It doesn't seem that the Americans are insisting on that at the moment. And, you know, there's a there's a there's a separate issue going on here, uh, which has to do with the inability of Israelis who live in the North to feel safe with the arrival of these new, um, drones that are fiber optic guided, that have a 15 kilometer at least range.

[00:01:32]And they are beginning to shoot, uh, at, at Israel from beyond the ten kilometer zone that Israelis had established. So the last couple of days, Israelis have begun to push even further north to try to deal with that threat.

[00:01:49]Ethan, do we know who the United States is negotiating with in Iran?

[00:01:53]Do we know who the leadership is in Iran, who's negotiating, and whether they, in fact represent the full country?

[00:02:01]So I don't think that they represent the full country.

[00:02:04]But you could have said that about the regime for a long time, I would say that a good 40 to 50% of Iranians can't stand their government.

[00:02:11]Um, and so that's not changed. But I think the people who are holding the reins, uh, around the, uh, Revolutionary Guard and the military are the people that the Americans are dealing with.

[00:02:23]I think there's a reason to imagine that that deal will work if they can come to a deal. But, you know, the problem is that the Iranians have come out ahead in many ways in this battle.

[00:02:34]And that is not what the Americans expected.

[00:02:36]Uh, nor did the Israelis when they went into it.

[00:02:39]Can you talk to us a little bit more, Ethan, about what Israeli officials are signaling about their objectives and timeline in Lebanon?

[00:02:46]Sure. So as I started to say a few minutes ago, the the main point for Israel is that it's the people who live in the North should be able to live without fear, uh, of attack.

[00:02:59]And there's been attacks for a long time from there, uh, in 2024, what was happening is the, uh, Hezbollah was able to shoot these kind of or held anti-tank missiles. And they were, you know, as long as you could see your target. They would go ten kilometres into a house in Metula in northern Israel. And the Israelis kind of thought they dealt with that by creating this ten kilometer, uh, buffer zone.

[00:03:25]But then these, uh, these fiber optic guided drones have entered the scene and they are really, uh, a big threat because you can't jam them.

[00:03:35]They're actually they're held by a kind of like a fishing line of a that's the fiber optic. And as long as they can sit on a sort of somewhere in a hill or on a balcony and shoot at them at Israel or at soldiers in the they can get them. And that's been happening.

[00:03:50]And it's been, uh, so the Israelis have said, well, we're not going to put up with this. We're going to go in further.

[00:03:55]And there have been something like a thousand of these drones that have been shot in the last eight days, uh, at Israelis.

[00:04:01]So that's the Israeli argument, uh, and they feel very strongly about it, that they have to be able to provide safe living for the people in the North.

[00:04:09]And it isn't quite happening. So it's it's, um, it's a scary thing for them.