Ceasefire ends with 'scum' Iran -- what's next? Plus, diet meds are changing the way brands formulate snacks

**Christy Strawser** (0:00)
Welcome to On Deadline, your radio news from Odyssey newsrooms across the country. I'm Christy Strawser, Odyssey's managing editor of News. We're going wide today with a variety of hot topics for summer, from diets to kids to exercise safety.
But let's begin with the world's shortest ceasefire. Here's Tommy Tucker in New Orleans.

**Tommy Tucker** (0:20)
Give them a little warning, we're going to hit them hard tonight, but we'll see how it all works out. President Trump said at the NATO summit, referring to Iran, I would think that means the ceasefires, we know it is over. Lindsey Cohn joins us, visiting Associated Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. It seems like Groundhog's Day. Here we are back to, I don't know, at one point we have regime change, then we don't. We have a ceasefire, then we don't. They're cooperating, then they're not.
I just, look, I'm no Lindsey Cohn, but it just seems to me that Iran is dragging its feet. They're playing the time game for whatever reason, and kind of like dictating what happens at their pace, not ours. Am I missing something?

**Lindsey Cohn** (1:04)
Well, Tommy, I think that obviously the president did say, you know, from his perspective, the ceasefire was over, but he also said he wasn't going to object to continuing negotiations. I see this as all part of the bargaining process. As we talked about the last time this happened, because almost exactly the same thing happened two weeks ago, of course. And as we talked about then, well, I think the Iranians certainly are pushing the envelope, right? They're trying to see what they can get away with.
And that is part of the bargaining process. They don't really have an incentive to escalate too much because they can't really get a better deal than the one they already had. The US., on the other hand, also doesn't have much of an incentive to escalate back to where we were because the midterms are getting closer and closer, and we already discovered that we can't get much more out of them than we already got. So I think both sides are really trying to jockey the position for these talks. Now, that being said, that's the strategic perspective, if both of them are sitting there calculating. That doesn't rule out the possibility that somebody might make a miscalculation or that somebody is not understanding the situation clearly. But I don't think that this means that tomorrow we're going to go back to war.
What we've seen is very, very limited tits attack types of strikes. They look like, to me, they look like testing boundaries. And I think that that is probably going to continue. But the talks will probably also continue.

**Tommy Tucker** (2:33)
So I guess what confuses me is I get to testing the boundaries part, and I understand trying to get the best deal you can. But if Iran realizes they're not going to get a better deal than they had, and the United States realizes that, as you said, midterms are coming up and that we're going to have to do this and have to do that, which resembles a lot, correct me if I'm wrong, the original JPOA, is that, I got the letters right there?

**Lindsey Cohn** (2:57)
JCPOA.

**Tommy Tucker** (2:58)
JCPOA, okay, I got most of them. I feel like I'm taking an eye exam. So then why not just end it? I understand if both sides realize it's not going to get any better, why are we prolonging this?

**Lindsey Cohn** (3:11)
Well because, so they both realize that they're not going to get significantly better, but there are still, because the talks have lots of things to settle, they are still trying to sort of jockey for position on these further talks, right? What I meant was they're not going to get sort of a better, Iran is not going to get a better ceasefire than they got, but they can still get sort of advantage in some of the negotiations. But you're right, there isn't a lot of sense in pushing much further. And as I mentioned the last time we spoke, I think Iran is miscalculating with these things. I think Iran is, they think that they have more leverage than they do, or they think that they have leverage now that they might not have later, which I think is correct.
So they may be pushing just to see how much they can get right now. But if they push too far, it's going to backfire on them, which may be happening now.

**Tommy Tucker** (4:11)
I guess maybe what I'm trying to say is it's different. I'm going to use the car analogy before with you about buying a car and negotiating with the floor mats, and the floor mats are back in, they're out there. If you're just wasting a day screwing around at a car dealership, that's one thing. But we're talking about a lot of money here that affects a lot of people, human lives perhaps. And I just don't understand. At what point do cooler heads prevail, maybe is what I'm asking.