Iran’s Leaders Are in No Hurry to Get a Peace Deal

**David Gura** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.
Nearly four months after the war in Iran began, US and Iranian negotiators are trying to turn their ceasefire into lasting peace. The two sides signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this month, which provides a roadmap toward a deal. But efforts to lock that deal have been slow going and rife with contradictory rhetoric over everything from the status of Iran's nuclear enrichment programs to its future ambitions for the Strait of Hormuz. On Thursday, a cargo ship was struck by a projectile near the coast of Oman, hours after Iran's Navy warned vessels against using unsanctioned routes.
The strike comes at a critical time for President Trump. This week, a handful of Senate Republicans joined Democrats in a vote that would force the president to halt military operations in Iran or seek congressional authorization. It underscores the growing discomfort the GOP and the broader American public has with the conflict. A new Quinnipiac University poll shows 6 in 10 Americans don't think that the war was worth it.

**Marc Champion** (1:10)
This deal is the kind of deal that you get when you lose a war.

**David Gura** (1:14)
Marc Champion is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist who covers international affairs. And he says what he's seen of the draft MOU and the reaction to it suggests that at least for now, it only solves the problems the Trump administration created.

**Marc Champion** (1:26)
What he did get was two things, in essence, he got to restart the nuclear talks that had been underway when the war began. And then he also got to an agreement to reopen the straightforward MOUs. There's really nothing else in that deal that says, hey, here's why we fought the war.

**David Gura** (1:45)
I'm David Gura and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, I sit down with Marc Champion to discuss the state of negotiations between the US and Iran, how a proposed MOU compares to the Obama era nuclear deal, and what foreign powers, from the Gulf to China, will be watching for in a settlement.
So, Marc, the clock is ticking. We're about a week into this 60-day period. The Vice President traveled to Switzerland to meet with his Iranian counterparts and the Pakistanis and the Qataris were there. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is on his way back from his tour of the Gulf, he met with allies to try to drum up support for a potential deal. What is the status of the negotiations now? What are the main sticking points that these two sides are going to be haggling over?

**Marc Champion** (2:30)
Yeah, they are very far apart.
In essence, this is a ceasefire deal. It's not a peace deal, it's a ceasefire deal. This is what they needed to do, what the US, what Trump felt he needed to do in order to open up the straight to four moves. So it's just the very beginning point, is sort of, okay, we're going to stop shooting so that we can talk. It has set a framework for the talks, which is quite favorable to the Iranians. One of the things that it does is to say, okay, we're going to talk about the nuclear file and the highly enriched uranium, but doesn't really make clear how much more they're going to be willing to talk about. They haven't made any commitments to talk about ending the program forever, which was one of the war goals and the reason why Trump did reject the JCPOA. Second thing is Lebanon. This is a very, very difficult problem. You have to bear in mind that in terms of the cost of this war, in lives, in people displaced, the toll on Lebanon has been higher than any other country, including the Gulf countries that were hit, including Iran. It was a small country pulled into this war because Hezbollah, either at Iran's bidding or just because they wanted to do it, they entered the war, started firing at Israel. Israel took that as an opportunity to go and solve the problem once and for all of Hezbollah, firing across into its communities in the north, which had made them largely uninhabitable.
The Iranians have managed to put in the first point of these 14 points, the reference that connects this ceasefire to Lebanon and says, Lebanon is part of the ceasefire. So, if the ceasefire in Lebanon fails, the Iranians can say, the ceasefire with the US is off. So, they have this kind of leverage and it's a wedge issue to put distance between the Americans and the Israelis.

**David Gura** (4:27)
I want to return to Lebanon and Israel in just a moment. Before I get there, you're highlighting something I wanted to ask you about, which are the timing pressures that both sides face here. The president has this 60-day period. Obviously, the midterms come on the heels of that. It's a great incentive for him to get something done before voters go to the polls here in the United States. As you've pointed out, though, the Iranians don't feel that same level of pressure. What they've shown themselves to be expert at is attenuating this, lengthening this.