Over the weekend, we heard one message after another message about how a peace deal with Iran was coming. The framework was in place, we were told, and we were on the verge of it. And then suddenly, there was a new round of air strikes and threats. And so today, I talked to my colleagues David Sanger and Tyler Pager about what happened and how to make sense of this dramatic reversal.

Well, the president uses that phrase, obviously, to cover a wide range of things. But, he wasn't talking about a nuclear deal. He wasn't talking about a missile deal. He wasn't talking about a deal that would actually get to any of the substantive issues that led him to attack Iran along with Israel joining in with him on February 28th. What he was talking about, really, was a sort of memorandum of understanding, to put it in the real estate business terms. That basically said that they would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a process that would probably take 30 days or so by the time you demine it and figure it out. And then, use the time Secretary of State Rubio said up to 60 days to negotiate on the real issues of substance. So, this deal was really just a way to get back to the status quo at the time the war started. Not really to go solve any of the fundamental questions.

The closing of the strait was a result of the war. It was not a cause of the war. The Iranians had never closed the strait before. And what did they discover, Rachel? They discovered this was an enormously powerful weapon that they had that they had never flexed before. Leverage. They discovered that even facing the world's biggest military force, one they clearly couldn't compete with on the battlefield, they had an enormous ability to disrupt the world economy. And this has been the largest disruption of energy supply in modern history.

What he really did was bury it. The United States sent B-2 bombers in June of 2025. They used deep penetrating bombs to hit three major nuclear sites. And from all accounts we've gotten since, they did a pretty good job. They collapsed those sites and including one in Isfahan where there are 970 lb of highly enriched uranium. This is the stuff that in a few days or a few weeks you could turn into the kind of fuel you would use in a nuclear weapon. It would take you longer to build the weapon itself. So, what do they want? The US wants to get that near-bomb grade uranium out of the country. They have to dig it up and give it up. That's right. So, the Iranians, of course, say, "Hey, look, it's our right as a signatory of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty to produce nuclear fuel. So, we don't want to give up everything." So, there's been a lot of back and forth on that issue.

Yeah, I mean, this is getting right at the heart of what has been dividing much of Trump's base since the war began, which is those who think Trump should continue bombing Iran and in their parlance finish the job and those who are opposed to the war and see the economic costs of it and worried about the politics of the war and want Trump to figure out a way out. So, for those who want the war to continue, those so-called Iran hawks, I think we hit a wall on deal making.

It's essentially an acknowledgement that the president has achieved none of the political objectives that he laid out in the opening hours of the war. And when I asked the president about this on the way back from China, You did it for 38 days. I actually think it's sort of some treasonous what you write, but you and the New York Times and CNN I would say are the worst. I believe he called you treasonous. He did and the Times. We both got to share in it. It's really fascinating cuz it tells you how sensitive he is on this subject because I think he fears if the history of this war is written, if we're in a situation where Iran has once again managed to drag this out and hold on to a threshold capability to build a bomb, he will have failed.

Yes, so the president is a voracious consumer of media and is clearly aware of the criticism from some of his own allies and supporters about the status of the negotiations and the progress toward a deal that they are not happy with.

What's interesting is the official, who only spoke on the condition of background to discuss the negotiations, really just goes on a rant uninterrupted for quite some time, blaming the media. Key questions about a key part of this memorandum of understanding had not yet been figured out, let alone all the other contentious issues that were being punted down the road. So, basically, despite what the president has posted online just a few days ago, there is no imminent deal to end the war.

And Trump adds a whole 'nother wrinkle to these already complicated negotiations. On Monday morning, the president says that he's mandatorily requesting that all countries immediately sign the Abraham Accords. It illustrates how fragile this ceasefire is. And there's a fair bit of evidence that what the military was doing was sending a reminder to the Iranians that if the deal doesn't come together, and even if it does, they expect a certain level of behavior in the strait. They carefully referred to it as a self-defense action. Now, whether the Iranians viewed it that way, we don't know, but it tells you that this is all at a pretty delicate moment where there is a strange mix of incentive and force to try to get the agreement.

It seems the administration is willing to give the mediating partners Qatar, Pakistan, and other Arab countries a few more days and hopefully in their view wrap up the conflict. Right now when it comes to Iran the most urgent issues as you have explained are reopening the strait and some kind of ceasefire, but again there are these bigger issues that seem to be getting punted. And that sounds a lot like the kind of phase deal making that we saw with Gaza where the easiest things were negotiated up front and then the more difficult things like disarming Hamas and rebuilding Gaza and whether there would be a Palestinian state, all of those things remain unresolved months and months later.

I think you have to be pretty skeptical. If this strait is not reopened soon, we could see gas prices eclipsing $5 a gallon. And that is an extremely dangerous position for Republicans to be in in a competitive midterm election cycle. And so, there is a lot of pressure for the president to get this strait reopened. Unlike other conflicts that don't affect Americans on a daily basis, this one does.