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So it's day 68 of the Iran war. The ceasefire seems to be holding between America and Iran but nothing could be further from the truth in southern Lebanon. The IDF have released another series of 12 towns and settlements that they've demanded to be cleared. What is interesting when you see where they are on the map is the original buffer zone here to try and protect northern Israel but actually only three of the proposed targets are south of the Litany river where we thought the buffer zone might be extended to. Most of them are well north so it does expose the fact that Israel may well have greater ambitions deeper into southern Lebanon than we had thought. Meanwhile President Trump at the start of this ceasefire imposed it on Israel. Feels more like President Trump is tolerating Israel's attacks at the moment because the more pressure on Hezbollah the more pressure on Iran to come to some sort of deal. So turning to the Strait of Hormuz, Project Freedom was originally designed as a humanitarian effort to ease the but it very quickly became apparent that the actual objective was America to challenge Iran's control of the Strait of Hormuz. In fact Central Command were very clear that there were fresh assets available for this including 15,000 soldiers, over 100 fighter aircraft, destroyers and aircraft carriers. Indeed Pete Hexeth even said there will be a red white and blue dome over the Strait of Hormuz 24 and 7 providing that security. But the reality on the ground was that Iran fairly immediately actually struck two merchant vessels one of which ended up with some casualties and some damage to the ship itself. Almost immediately President Trump put a pause on that operation but he also claimed that he paused it because of the progress of talks. The challenge with that claim of course is that dozens of times President Trump has claimed when actually it feels like that's more to placate the markets than reflecting how the talks are actually going. So where are we with these talks? What is clear is that America and Iran are not talking directly to each other but Pakistan is acting as a great intermediary. We understand that Iran has put a proposal to America, America's considered it and handed its counter proposal back to Iran but we're not sure where we are yet. What is clear at the moment is that their nuclear situation will be at the front and centre of any negotiation. President Trump has been very clear that Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. We understand the clause that's in the current round of negotiation is about a moratorium on uranium enrichment by the Iranians. The word moratorium sounds grand but it actually means a delay or pause a temporary and therefore it's actually kicking the can down the road. We also understand that a sweetener for Iran agreeing to this term will be a lifting of sanctions and potentially also an unfreezing of up to 100 billion dollars worth of assets. But I think the real challenge here is that we understand it's simply a one-pager document. The last time these negotiations happened it took 20 months, big teams of people, lots of detail. So one pager will not cover that at all. It almost certainly will be a memorandum of understanding, some sort of framework for talks which will not have any detail in it. It will allow both sides to declare victory and then look to discuss the details downstream. The big positive is that at least that would get the Strait of Hormuz open again. The challenge of course with talks is they involve compromise and Iran clearly has leverage that will not be comfortable for President Trump. The trouble is his options are looking somewhat limited at the moment. One of them is to return to military action. There's no advantage in doing that on a big scale but he might decide that if negotiations fail that he has to pummel Iran's nuclear capabilities even further if they've been damaged actually to destroy them in a sort of midnight hammer too. But that still won't open the Strait of Hormuz. Second option is to continue negotiating. Feels like we're in a bit of a stalemate at the moment with both sides waiting to see who blinks first. And the third option of course is for America to walk away but that would lots of matters unresolved. None of those options are particularly palatable. There is one ray of light though that's just coming into view. China is a delegation from Iran, a senior delegation visiting China as we speak. Why is that important? Well China takes about 50 percent of its oil supplies from Iran. Iran exports about 90 percent of its oil output to China. So there's a vested interest for China in getting the situation resolved and the straits open again. Meanwhile President Trump is very keen to do deals with China and also wants access to rare earth metals. Therefore bizarrely it might well be that actually there's an opportunity for China to broker a peace and bring pressure to bear on Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz. So where does that leave us? Well despite America, President Trump's very aggressive America first policy, it's always worth maintaining diplomatic relations with not only your friends but also your enemies, because you never know when you might need help even from potential adversaries.