Al Jazeera Podcasts.

Today, Iran says nuclear talks are encouraging, but U.S. warships are gathering in the region.

Donald Trump's repeatedly threatened military action on Iran

if a deal isn't reached on its nuclear program.

So where are negotiations really headed?

I'm Olega Bilal and this is the take. Before we go on with today's show, we want to know if you're following the U.S.-Iran

tensions and what questions you might want answered. Leave us a comment and join the discussion.

And if you listen on your podcast app, a quick review goes a long way and helping

others find the take. Thanks.

I'm Sina Tusi. I'm a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, a think tank in

Washington, D.C. And I write about and do research about U.S. Iran relations,

U.S. policies towards the Middle East and the domestic situation inside of Iran.

Well, Sina, welcome to the take. It's good to have you and your expertise here.

We are speaking on Wednesday, February 25th, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump's State of the Union.

And a lot of people were paying close attention to what he said about Iran.

They were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program in a particular

nuclear weapons. Yet they continue starting it all over. We wiped it out,

and they want to start all over again. Despite this alleged wipeout of Iran's nuclear program,

the U.S. is reportedly assembling its largest military concentration of air power since the 2003 invasion of Iraq. So help me make

sense of this. Why are we hearing talk of potential war and seeing the buildup of U.S. military assets

in the region? At the same time, we're seeing talks. I think Trump, there's a lot of context to why Trump has this approach towards Iran.

And you really, I would characterize it as an obsession to people just observing this.

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