What's happening now is more of an economic war of attrition between these two.

And Iran said in recent weeks that it is now a global superpower.

Some progress.

That is how Secretary of State Marco Rubio described current negotiation efforts with Iran.

We've heard that before from President Trump from his cabinet, that a deal is close.

So we will ask again, are we actually really close to a deal with Iran?

This is Sources and Methods from NPR.

I'm Scott Detrow in for Mary Louise Kelly.

Today's Thursday, which means on this podcast, we will dive into the week's biggest national security stories with NPR reporters who are out there covering them.

Joining me today is NPR International correspondent A.A. Batrawi based in Dubai. Hey there. Hi. And here in D.C., NPR Pentagon correspondent Tom Bowman. Hey, Tom. Hey, Scott. So it's about noon our time in D.C. It's about 8 p.m. in Dubai. There is a lot to talk about from the recent days. I will do my best to kind of recount things from the weekend on, and then you can both pick it up from there. Does that sound good? Sounds good to me. All right, let's start with the weekend. President Trump announces a deal with Iran is close, though, as I said, heard that many times before. Monday, U.S. forces launched new attacks against Iranian boats trying to lay mines near the Strait of Hormuz. This is done in, quote, self-defense, according to U.S. Central Command. Tuesday, Iran shoots down U.S. drones. On Wednesday, Trump gathers his cabinet, tells reporters he will not be rushed into a deal. They thought they were going to outweigh me, you know, We'll outweigh him. He's got the midterms. I don't care about the midterms. Look what happened. Hey, yeah, pick it up from there. More strikes overnight from both sides? Yeah, I mean, what the sequencing looks like is that there was an American tanker, an American commercial ship trying to transit through the Strait of Hormuz with its responders off so quietly without

catching the attention of Iran. That's what Iran says happened. And then the Iranian Revolutionary

Guards say that they shot at this tanker and turned it around. And then we saw overnight,

the U.S. saying that it struck down four Iranian attack drones and hit an Iranian launch site

on Iran's coast on a city there called Bandarabes that sits right near the Strait of Hermuz.

Then we saw Kuwait saying that they had intercepted some drones.

And then we heard Iran's Revolutionary Guard said that they launched attacks targeting the launch site of that American attack overnight.

And then Central Command, Sentcom came out and said that actually Iran had fired a ballistic missile at Kuwait

and called it an egregious act.

And yet, we are still on a ceasefire, right? There are negotiations happening. How does this affect

those? Well, actually, the military called an egregious ceasefire violation, the first we've

seen so far in this month change ceasefire. So that is significant, I think. But again, where does it go

from here? Is it back and forth? Military officials I talk with say it looks like the Iranian

...