Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me, Azazana Monsenk, and Jack Smith.

We would like to talk today about the consequences of Donald Trump's ceasefire extension.

He promised he wouldn't do it until the last moment. He said he probably wouldn't want to do it.

And then he did it. What does it tell us about Trump? What does it

tell us about where we are in the war? I think we can probably say a bit more than we used to be

able to say in terms of revealed preferences, because we've had eight weeks of period when people

did reveal their preferences, and Trump clearly revealed his preference for negotiations.

We have to see where the Iranians stand and what will

happen for now. Jack, can you give us a first assessment of where we are, basically?

Where we are now is that, as you mentioned, the ceasefire has been extended, but at the same time,

the prelude to the ceasefire being extended was that there were supposed

to be peace talks between the Americans and the Iranians in Pakistan, but neither J.D. Vance

nor the Iranians actually ended up showing up. So at the moment, there's no imminent prospect

of a peace deal that will permanently resolve this in the offing. And I think importantly for the rest of us

elsewhere in the world, both Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz and the U.S.

blockade of Iranian shipping out of the Strait of Hormuz is still in place. I think that one of the

things that's happened is that by resorting to this blockade, it seems to me like Trump has found

something that he views as a tool of sort of economic leverage and coercion that he sees

is preferable to engaging in airstrikes on the Iranians again, right?

The scope, I think, has narrowed quite a bit from the initial goal of regime change to, I don't know,

variously getting Iran to curtail its nuclear program in some way reopening the Strait

of Hormuz, et cetera, et cetera. But as it stands now, the reality is that it remains shut.

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