This is The Guardian.

This is becoming a war where it's a clash of American military power against Iranian economic power.

We're doing extremely well in that negotiation, but you never know with Iran because

we negotiate with him and then we always have to blow them up.

You cannot predict what this man does.

We've learned that.

So it's equally possible that he will step up militarily, try and take Kalk Island,

or is using that purely as leverage to get a kind of climb down.

There's yet more distorted reality from President Trump, who is threatening to obliterate Iran's

infrastructure, whilst also claiming he's in talks with a new reasonable regime about ending the war.

From The Guardians today in Focus, this is the latest with me, Lucy Hove.

I'm joined by Jonathan Friedland, Guardian columnist and host of our sister podcast Politics

Weekly America. It's lovely to have you back with us, Johnny. Thanks for dialing in.

So it's obviously been a very busy weekend after a very busy few weeks. There's a lot to get through

in terms of updates on what's played out over the weekend. But let's start with these

thousands of US military personnel who've arrived in the Middle East. What we want to talk about

what they will be deployed to do there, but also this reported suggestion that there are

US preparations for a ground invasion. That is reported, we should say, not confirmed at this time.

Yeah, I mean, it's very hard, obviously, to work out what is talk, what is smoke and mirrors,

what are real plans. And of course, some of the messaging is designed to have

an impact on the other track which is going on here, which is some parallel universe, perhaps

but a parallel track of negotiation. So some of it is designed to act as pressure. On its own,

...