Iran: US 'negotiating with itself'
Newshour
BBC
4.2 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 25 March 2026
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
An Iranian military spokesman has accused the United States of 'negotiating with itself' over the conflict in the Middle East, amid uncertainty over the prospects of meaningful peace talks. President Donald Trump has insisted his administration is talking to the 'right people' in Iran, and that they badly wanted a deal to end the war.
Also in the programme: five survivors of Jeffrey Epstein come together for the first time to speak about their ordeal; and the man who persuaded a would-be-bomber not to blow up a hospital has received one of Britain's highest honours.
(Picture: US President Donald Trump speaks during a swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House on 24 March 2026. Credit: GRAEME SLOAN/POOL/EPA/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:10.1 | Hello and welcome to NewsAff and the BBC World Service. |
| 0:13.7 | We're coming to you live from London. |
| 0:15.7 | I'm James Menendez. |
| 0:17.3 | And there are, once again, several competing and very different narratives about the war in Iran and whether that's likely to end soon. |
| 0:25.8 | President Trump said at the beginning of the week that peace talks with Iran were already underway. |
| 0:30.9 | That was denied by Tehran. |
| 0:33.0 | Then again, on Tuesday, he said the talks were happening and were starting to bear fruit without giving |
| 0:38.8 | specific details, adding that Iran badly wanted a deal. |
| 0:43.6 | They did something yesterday that was amazing, actually. They gave us a present, and the |
| 0:49.6 | president arrived today. It was a very big present worth a tremendous amount of money. And I'm not going to |
| 0:57.2 | tell you what that president is, but it was a very significant prize. President Trump's then |
| 1:07.4 | went on to say that it was related to oil and gas and the straight-of-hormuz, |
| 1:13.3 | but again, not much in the way of specifics. |
| 1:18.2 | Well, then today, a statement from Iran's main military command, |
| 1:20.5 | apparently mocking the idea of talks by suggesting that the Americans were only negotiating with themselves. |
| 1:25.5 | This is Lieutenant Colonel Ibrahim Zolfagari speaking on Iranian State TV. |
| 1:31.8 | The strategic power you used to talk about has now turned into a strategic failure. |
| 1:41.6 | The one claiming to be a global superpower would have already gotten out of this mess, if it could. Don't dress up your defeat as an agreement. Your era of empty promises has come to an end. Have your internal conflicts reach to the point where you are negotiating with yourselves? our first and last word has been the same |
| 2:03.0 | from day one, and it will stay that way. Someone like us will never come to terms with someone |
| 2:09.4 | like you. Not now, not ever. Well, shortly after that, reports emerged from Pakistani officials |
| 2:16.8 | saying that Iran had received a 15-point plan from the US for a ceasefire. |
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