Dealing with devils
Iran, the UK, the DRC, Cuba, and El Nino.
Hello,
Here are the five things you need to know today:
IRAN. Negotiations resume, but few know who is talking.
BRITAIN. Between Washington and Manchester, Starmer faces a reckoning.
DR CONGO. Tshisekedi’s friends buy him time.
CUBA. Relief is offered amid rising tensions.
EL NINO. Floods in Peru could herald trans-Pacific climate stress.
IRAN. Third time lucky
Negotiations resume, but few know who is talking.
The US and Iran reconvened in Geneva for a third round of talks. Marco Rubio said Iran was “trying to rebuild elements” of its nuclear program. JD Vance said the US wanted a “reasonable settlement.” Tehran said it saw a “good outlook”.
INTELLIGENCE. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner will deal with Iran’s foreign minister via Omani diplomats. There may be scope for direct engagement informally, but the stage-managed process suggests that Tehran still doesn’t trust its diplomats. But with uncertainty over who is even running Iran – Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has allegedly handed power to security council chief Ali Larijani, sidestepping the government’s role – it may not ultimately matter.
FOR BUSINESS. The danger of the talks is not so much that Iran doesn’t give the US what it wants (which is itself unclear), but that it can’t, due to regime divisions and inertia. A second danger is that Iran won’t think what the US offers will stick. Beyond Trump’s erraticism, there is a growing sense that Witkoff, as with Ukraine, is running things less to achieve a diplomatic outcome than to secure a commercial deal down the track, irrespective of war or peace.
BRITAIN. Flash Gorton
Between Washington and Manchester, Starmer faces a reckoning.
Labour was tied at 28% with Reform UK and the Greens ahead of today’s Gorton and Denton by-election. Tommy Robinson was invited to the US State Department. Whitehall denied it had paused the transfer of the Chagos Islands.
INTELLIGENCE. The Chagos Islands, which Britain has agreed to transfer to Mauritius