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Hello, I'm James Reynolds.

Welcome to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

The week began with a presidential threat that a whole civilization would die, and it ended in peace talks. In this edition of

BBC conversations, we bring together people from across the Middle East to share their experiences

of the past few days. On Tuesday, President Trump issued an ultimatum. He warns that without a deal

to end the 40-day war with Iran,

the U.S. military could destroy every bridge and power plant in the country. With less than two

hours to go until Trump's deadline, the Prime Minister of Pakistan announced a two-week

ceasefire had been agreed and invited both the US and Iran to meet in Islamabad.

We're recording this program on Friday lunchtime, and those talks are due to get underway over the weekend.

For our first conversation, we hear from Iranians living here in the UK.

You might remember them from our program just a few weeks ago.

Raha has lived in this country for three years after coming here for her master's degree.

Katie grew up in the US and Iran, but now lives here in London.

And Reza runs a Persian restaurant in central London and has close ties with the Iranian community in this city.

The day after the ceasefire began, I asked him for his reaction.

It was a big relief, I think, for all of us who were following the news and couldn't sleep at the

night. And we were just so worried hearing about just the rhetoric being used and, you know,

the threats being made about, you know, what the outcome could be from this.

And we were all fearing the worst. To hear that there's been a ceasefire and they've stopped for now,

I think it's a huge relief for all of us. I was talking to a few of my Iranian friends yesterday,

...