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Hello and welcome to NewsHour for the BBC World Service. We're coming to you live from London.

I'm James Menendez. It's hard to imagine a situation less conducive to substantive peace talks between the United States and Iran

due to get underway tomorrow in Islamabad.

For a start, the Pakistani host don't sound absolutely certain that they'll go ahead as planned.

And the ceasefire that was announced earlier in the week to allow the negotiations to take place

is a sketchy one, to say the least.

One of America's main conditions for the

truce that Iran reopened the Strait of Hormuz to shipping hasn't happened. And then there's

Israel's ongoing assault on Hezbollah in Lebanon. That was thought to be covered under the ceasefire.

Well, in the past few minutes, the US Vice President J.D. Vance, who's leading America's negotiations team, spoke to reporters before boarding his flight to Pakistan. Look, we're looking forward to the negotiation. I think it's going to be positive. We'll foresee, as the President of the United States said, if the Iranians are willing to negotiate in good faith, we're certainly willing to extend the open hand. If they're going to try to play us, then they're going to find that the negotiating team is not that receptive. So we're going to try to have a positive negotiation. The President has gave us some pretty clear guidelines, and we're going to see. Well, with me in the studio, our diplomatic correspondent, Paul Adams, Paul, J.D. Vance

sounding positive there, but is it fair to say that expectations for these talks are pretty

low? I think rock bottom, to be honest. I mean, I think everyone will be mightily relieved

if they actually meet in the same room tomorrow. You know, there are so many reasons why

they may not get there.

You know, the dispute over what's going on in Lebanon,

something that the Iranians have said could make the whole process pointless.

The ongoing row over the Strait of Hormuz, Donald Trump,

clearly very unhappy with the state of affairs there,

judging by his latest posts on social media.

So, you know, just getting there, I think, will be an achievement. And if they come away

after who knows how many days or hours of negotiating, with a ceasefire still in place, I think

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