Q&A: Iran latest and the Makerfield by-election
The Story
The Times
3.9 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 May 2026
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As discussions - and tensions - rumble on in the Middle East, what are the stumbling blocks that have prevented a peace deal so far? And the Makerfield by-election which could help decide our next prime minister is fast approaching; we’ve got all you need to know on both topics, in our monthly Q&A.
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Hosts: Manveen Rana and Luke Jones.
Producer: Olivia Case.
We want to hear from you - email: thestory@thetimes.com
Read more: Israel bombs ancient sites as it pushes deeper into southern Lebanon
Further listening: Is Trump being out-negotiated over Iran?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From The Times and the Sunday Times, this is the story. |
| 0:05.5 | I'm Manveen Rana. |
| 0:06.9 | And I'm Luke Jones. Manveen, we're back together at last. |
| 0:09.8 | It had been about a month, and I think they thought it was finally possible to let us into a room together again. |
| 0:14.5 | It is that time of the month for our Q&A, where our questions and answers align perfectly. |
| 0:20.6 | Thank you to everyone for writing in. |
| 0:23.3 | We're going to be talking about the Mayfield by-election, which is coming down the slipway very soon. |
| 0:28.0 | And not only could affect people who live there, but maybe you as well if it ushers in a new prime minister. |
| 0:33.3 | And we're also going to be talking about Iran. |
| 0:35.3 | It's hard not to, really, but with the backdrop of a deal still being negotiated in the background, we're going to do what we can to shed some light on on the process. |
| 0:45.4 | So let's get started. The story today, your questions answered. |
| 0:56.6 | Iran is still in the news. There's been a lot of hype about potentially having a deal. |
| 0:59.6 | We don't quite know if we're there yet. |
| 1:01.5 | We did ask an expert, Michael Stevens, from Rousie, the Royal United Services Institute, |
| 1:07.4 | who did an episode with us about this on Wednesday. |
| 1:09.5 | Do you go back and have a listen for the longer |
| 1:11.2 | version, but he also gave us a quick breakdown on where things stand. It's certainly fair to say |
| 1:16.4 | that negotiations are progressing between the US and Iran. There are certain points, I think, |
| 1:20.5 | in which there are agreement. The Iranians have alluded to the fact that there are agreement |
| 1:25.3 | on many points. They have not gone into exact detail on what those points are, probably because they don't want to prejudice the progress |
| 1:32.5 | of those negotiations. The issue is this. I think that the US president keeps changing the |
| 1:38.2 | parameters, partly because his truth social account is so active, where he sort of gives a tone of progress to the |
... |
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