JD Vance heads for peace talks with Iran

**Paul Moss** (0:00)
This is The Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service.
I'm Paul Moss, and in the early hours of Sunday 21st June, these are our main stories. JD Vance heads to Switzerland for US-Iran peace talks. But what's with the contradictory claims about the Strait of Hormuz? After more deadly Israeli airstrikes on Gaza, we hear from eyewitnesses on the ground. And Colombians are preparing to elect a new president. The contest defined by the country's on-going and brutal conflict.
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Let's start with those contradictory signals emanating from the Middle East. We may have become accustomed to mixed messages around peace talks within the region. But even by those recent standards, it's been a particularly difficult 24 hours for anyone trying to figure out what is actually going on. On the one hand, Iran says it's once again closed the Strait of Hormuz. And yet the United States insists plenty of ships have been passing through. And despite this situation in the Strait, both the US. Vice President JD Vance and the Iranian Foreign Minister are due to sit down together in Switzerland on Sunday to try to thrash out a deal. And all of this against a background of the ongoing conflict in Lebanon, something Iran insists must end if a peace agreement is to be possible. Israeli strikes are reported to have killed more than 20 people in southern Lebanon on Saturday. This man, Qasseem, showed people around the home where an Israeli missile killed his family.

**Joe Inwood** (2:02)
It was my in-law's house, my wife's two brothers, my mother-in-law and her son.
There were also two babies. One was just one month old.

**Thomas Morgan** (2:11)
The other is two months old.

**Paul Moss** (2:12)
So with this kind of suffering in Lebanon continuing, what are the prospects of U.S.-Iran peace negotiations even going ahead, let alone succeeding? I spoke about this to our correspondent Joe Inwood and asked him first what to make of those contradictory claims about the Strait of Hormuz.

**Joe Inwood** (2:30)
We can see from tracking data that some ships are getting through. And in fact, JD Vance, the US. Vice President, was saying they've had almost record levels of oil going through over the last 24 hours. But what we really can say for certain from this is it is just an illustration of the strategic weapon that the Iranians have been given by this conflict. Closing the Strait of Hormuz was not something that they would have threatened to do before the war started. And what's really interesting now is their go-to weapon.

**Paul Moss** (2:57)
Despite saying they've closed the strait, an Iranian delegation has gone to Switzerland. So presumably they're still open to the idea of negotiating some kind of peace deal.

**Joe Inwood** (3:07)
Yeah, clearly the fact that they're saying they're closing the strait, that is not the end of things. It is, as I said before, a way of exerting pressure and effectively exerting pressure on the Americans. But obviously the whole thing is being set back by the situation in Lebanon. And that's the point that the Iranians have made again and again. The ceasefire that we are seeing needs to cover the entire region. And at the moment it's not.

**Paul Moss** (3:30)
Israel's attacks on Lebanon have caused an ever-growing rift with the United States. The United States making it clear it's exasperated with Israel for doing this. It doesn't seem though that the administration, Benjamin Netanyahu, is being put off doing it by what the United States says.

**Joe Inwood** (3:46)
It's really, really extraordinary to see the shift in relations or the tone of some of the messaging you get coming from the United States.
More critical of the Israeli government than something I've ever heard before. It's felt that there is a tonal shift because what we're seeing here is the divergence in strategic objectives between these two allies. For the Americans, they just basically want to get out of what many people see as a really strategically difficult situation in terms of the conflict they've got themselves into in the Middle East. Whereas for the Israelis, they have different objectives. Benjamin Netanyahu has competing pressures on him because he has the international pressures, pressure coming from the United States to stop the war, to allow the peace process to continue because the Israeli government are very dependent upon the American government for financing and political cover and the such like. But he has domestic pressures as well. He's got a right-wing coalition, some members of whom are very right-wing, and have talked about raining fire, doing real destruction to Lebanon. And he has an impending election, October at the latest. And he knows that if he cannot get some sort of outcome in Lebanon that he can sell to the people of Israel as meaning all of this was worth it, all of the destruction, all of the cost, all of the diplomatic damage that's been done, well, he is going to be in real political trouble. And that is something he is clearly desperate to avoid.