How do the Germans survive when they treat all terrorism as crime in law?Also, is ‘stochastic terrorism’ some kind of meaningless jargon? Did I just record a 25 minute video without once referring to World War 3.0?There is, by the way, a prize for recognising the source of my definition of terrorism.

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Sometimes I just have to get home from Crossfit, plunk down in front of the microphone, and start talking. In particular I thought it was important to say something before the weekend about the brief illusions of peace in the context of a deliberate de-escalation of conflict that’s called a ‘cease-fire’.

This comes up in the context of the US Navy steaming warships through the Strait of Hormuz to break the blockade, with Iranian drone squadrons, anti-ship cruise missile batteries and fast attack boats firing on them like billy-o, and the Iranians exacting a toll by shooting missiles at the UAE. During a cease-fire.

China, though: likely to be bankrolling Iran’s reconstruction, ready to be quietly demanding, and holding power of veto over POTUS’s imminent visit to China with all the pi-pa-po of standing on the dais as the armed might of Chinese Communism marches past, and the President gets all the free Chinese food. Best not ruin that by insisting on Israel’s victory conditions.

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Planes of cleavage in the Iranian regime, imminent collapse of the bourgeois running dog settler colonialist Zionist entity; it says you’re about to watch your adversary dissolve into dust like a vampire on Buffy. Maybe it works. A state is an idea (unless you’re a blood-and-soil nationalist in which case it’s … an idea about blood and soil. If you change the idea sufficiently, maybe you can make it cease to exist?

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There are definitely British monarchs about whom I know a great deal. I once spent a great deal of time with King Charles I’s encrypted correspondence with Queen Henrietta Maria, for instance, and that lamented king and martyr had a tremor in his handwriting that reads to my eye like a stammer.

I said a few months ago that King Charles was going to advance British interests no end by tucking the Grand Cross of the Order of St Michael and St George into his checked bag. It would not surprise me if President Trump would delight in holding a higher order of chivalry than Ronald Reagan’s, and I’m sure he’d wear the glittery breast badge and neck medal on formal occasions whatever the protocol people said. When President Trump was being rather less charming in his comments on British fighting spirit a few weeks ago, I said that King Charles will have been told to send that GCMG hardware back to Asprey’s.

Never mind that, though: I rather relished the thought of doing modern royal commentary, and I don’t imagine I’ll have another chance.

A plug for some of my off-podcast work though: I’ve just been on Sky News talking about efforts to recruit people to be Iranian spies on Telegram, and those might actually be Iranian efforts! I’ve got a Chernobyl documentary running on Discovery Channel in the US and on Channel 4 in the UK. I’m also on a rather sharply produced Suez documentary, also on Channel 4.

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It’s been a goal of Russia since the 1980s to peel member states off of NATO, to achieve a favourable correlation of forces against the West. Have the Russians hit the jackpot by peeling off the Big Enchilada?

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You’ll see me pause in this video to check a news feed for current US/Iran negotiation updates. As soon as I pressed ‘stop’ on my video camera, a story popped up saying that Aragchi has left Islamabad. If the ceasefire is indefinite on the American side, and if the Iranians aren’t keen to go into a negotiation that might require significant concessions; why stay?

By the time I was done uploading, President Trump had told Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner to stay at home (apparently no need to say that JD Vance was staying home). In his call to unofficial White House spokesman Barak Ravid, POTUS said, ‘we have all the cards’, which presumably means that the Strait of Hormuz remains successfully sealed and gasoline will hit a fiver a gallon in America.

A week ago I said to keep an eye out for ceasefire violations, and of course they’ve been notable but trivial. Notable in that there doesn’t appear to be an American willingness to start rocketing Iran again; trivial in the sense that nobody appears to notice Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Lebanon firing away like billy-o. As to the Iranians mining Hormuz more? If the Strait is closed, who cares?

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The senior leadership of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards isn’t filled with people who would volunteer to be a pro-American military dictator in Iran, but you know that offers are hitting generals’ inboxes.

The key takeaway is that Qalibaf and Aragchi have got a convenient air gap between themselves and the men in charge. It's not a crack, but it does mean that there isn't an easy path to ‘yes’.

This confirms that Bibi Netanyahu's bet on hitching his wagon to Donald Trump’s star looks like an increasingly perishable move, particularly as America First is shaping up to fight MAGA for dominance in the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, with the Strait closed, this is the best thing POTUS could possibly do to break the world's dependency on the fossils.

Also, recording in a hotel room feels kind of inappropriately intimate, but here I am.

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Should the US be negotiating with the Speaker of Parliament and the Foreign Minister when they aren’t in charge of much? Should they be the Iranian negotiating team in the first place?

I was meant to be talking about Lebanon this evening, but of course it ends up being about Iran. You’ll notice that on at least one occasion I say ‘Iran’ when I mean ‘Lebanon’ in this piece.

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This is a quick upload from T5

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In Iran the US negotiators will have to be very flexible indeed about the ‘deal’ they agree, because the Iranians won’t be. In Lebanon the mediators (the US) are trying to go from an ambassadorial meeting to a summit instantly, and that will require some real incentives from the Americans. The Lebanese Government (as I’ve already said this week) are not going to be eager to accept an open-ended commitment to go to war with Hizballah.Meanwhile, the US is expressing itself pleased that everyone is complying with their blockade of Iran (which blockade is of course largely enforced by the shipowners’ insurers), which cuts off Iran from all commerce with Russia, China and North Korea, except whatever moves to Iran across their land borders or across the Caspian Sea with … Russia?

Why, though, hasn’t ‘decapitation’ defeated Iran or Hizballah? Nor, for that matter Hamas? Why keep trying to achieve strategic effect by killing enemy leadership, if it doesn’t work? Is it because it’s important to be seen to do something? Is it because continuous warfare against an implacable enemy gets votes? Will that make a difference in the Israeli election in the next six months? What about the American election in seven?

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