Hello and welcome to Background Briefing available 24-7 at Background Briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we look into a number of stories and issues in the news.

We'll begin with the failure of negotiations in Pakistan between Vice President Vance and Iran's foreign minister and Speaker of the Parliament,

with Trump now ordering a blockade of the Strait of Amuz on top of the Iranian blockade.

Joining us to discuss his agonizingly long negotiations with Iran so far,

in contrast to the expectation that a deal to end a war

and 47 years a bitter confrontation can be ended in a weekend is Robert Mali.

He served as a special assistant to President Clinton for Arab-Israeli

affairs prior to that he was executive assistant to Samuel Berger, President Clinton's

National Security Advisor and was Director for Democracy, Human Rights and

Humanitarian Affairs for the National Security Council. Mali was President

Obama's lead negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal,

known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA,

and President Joe Biden named Mali as special envoy to Iran.

He's currently a senior fellow and lecturer at Yale University's Jackson School,

and his latest book is Tomorrow is Yesterday, Life, Death and the Pursuit of Peace in Israel, Palestine.

Then we get an update on today's elections in Hungary that might end the kleptocratic and

authoritarian rule of the illiberal Prime Minister Orban,

who Vice President Vance just campaigned for, along with Marco Rubio and Vladimir Putin,

who has sent his SVR and GRU spies to help rig an already rigged election,

which has the challenger in the lead.

Joining us is David Broder, an historian of the Italian

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