Hello and welcome to Background Briefing, available 24-7 at background briefing.

I'm Ian Masters, and today we'll look into a number of stories and issues in the news. We'll begin with yesterday's press conference at Trump's Gulf Resort in Florida, at which he made little sense and appeared to contradict himself after saying he would only accept an unconditional surrender from Iran,

announcing that the war would be over in a week or so.

Joining us to discuss how much Trump's one-hour phone call with Putin before the press conference

influence Trump's change of mind is Jonathan Geyer, program director at the Institute for Global Affairs

at the Eurasia Group.

A reporter and editor focused on foreign policy, national security and the Middle

East. He is an Arabic and Hebrew speaker and spent five years as a correspondent in Egypt.

A regular contributor at the New Republic, New York Magazine and The Guardian, among others.

He has an article at the American prospect, we will discuss the blowback from

an unpopular Iran war.

Then would examine whether the so-called dead man walking, Iran's new supreme leader,

Mostobah Khomeini, will reverse his father's fatwa against building nuclear weapons and

speak with Dr. Anel Sh Sheeline, a research fellow at

the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a fellow at Rice University's Baker Institute

for Public Policy, and an expert on religious and political authority in the Middle East

and North Africa.

She has worked as a journalist in Egypt and Yemen and served as a foreign affairs in the

Office of Near Eastern Affairs in the Department of State's Bureau of Democracy, Human

Rights and Labor until resigning over then President Biden's policy on the war in Gaza.

We will discuss her article at the New Republic, the Unbelievable Madness of our War with Iran.

Then finally, we'll get a military analysis of both the Iran War and the Russia-Ukraine war

...