I reached out to the economist Greg Karlstrom, because I wanted to know how our ceasefire with Iran is looking up close.

Greg works out of the UAE in Saudi Arabia.

And if I had to sum up Greg's take in one word, I might use fragile.

The first day of it was not much of a ceasefire. No one ceased fire on Wednesday after it was

announced. It was the bloodiest day of Israel's war in Lebanon. Carried out more than 100

air strikes in the space of 10 minutes. It killed more than 300 people there. So it seemed very

fragile in those first hours. But the question on everyone's mind is how long is this going to last?

Yeah, are you still kind of holding your breath?

I mean, we have until, what, the 21st or 20 seconds,

but first you have to get through those two weeks.

And with this talk now of imposing a naval blockade on the Strait of Hormuz,

the Americans imposing a blockade,

there's a concern that we might not even get through the first two weeks. And then

to extend it, you would need some prospect of making progress in negotiations. And they left Islamabad

on Sunday morning, the negotiators from both sides, without having even fixed a date for a second

round of talks.

What Craig is describing here, it sounds more like a quasi-seys he's fired to me.

That vibe was only underlined over the weekend, as the president thumped his chest at a UFC fight,

while the vice president, J.D. Vance, flew to Pakistan to lead 20-plus hours of negotiations before leaving, empty-handed. Yeah, I think everyone should temper their expectations

about progress here. Yes, it was a 21-hour session. It was, I think, serious on both sides.

When people called it a marathon session, I was like, is it though? Is it? It was a marathon day.

It wasn't a marathon. I mean, you go back 10 years to when the U.S. and other world powers

...