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Mediators from Pakistan and Qatar say the United States and Iran made “encouraging progress” during 18 hours of negotiations in Switzerland, where the two sides agreed to a roadmap toward reaching a final deal within 60 days. The talks took place despite Iran on Saturday announcing it was closing the Strait of Hormuz after Israel killed 83 people in Lebanon on Friday. Israel said it would agree to a new ceasefire in Lebanon but is also refusing to end its occupation of southern Lebanon.

“Iran has, through its throttling of the Strait of Hormuz, enormous leverage to produce pain on not just the United States, but global markets,” says award-winning journalist Spencer Ackerman. “We’re going to await how the Iranians will ultimately play that card when it comes to Lebanon.”

Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi, fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center, says that by demanding the ceasefire extend to Lebanon, “the Islamic Republic focused on creating a rift between Israel and the U.S., and I think, possibly, along with the successes in the war front politically, that was one of the most successful projects that they followed.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: Mediators from Pakistan and Qatar say the U.S. and Iran made “encouraging progress” during 18 hours of negotiations in Switzerland, where the two sides agreed to a roadmap towards reaching a final deal within 60 days. Vice President JD Vance headed the U.S. delegation. Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad-Bagher Ghalibaf led the Iranian delegation. On Sunday, Vance said the U.S. wants to turn over a new leaf with Iran.

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VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: What the president has asked us to do is turn over a new leaf to transform our relationship with the people of Iran and to extend an outstretched hand that says to the people of Iran that if your leadership is willing to give up being a driver of regional instability, if they are willing to give up nuclear weapons ambitions for the long term, then the United States is willing to fundamentally transform our relationship with that country. That is certainly our goal.

VICE PRESIDENT JD VANCE: What the president has asked us to do is turn over a new leaf to transform our relationship with the people of Iran and to extend an outstretched hand that says to the people of Iran that if your leadership is willing to give up being a driver of regional instability, if they are willing to give up nuclear weapons ambitions for the long term, then the United States is willing to fundamentally transform our relationship with that country. That is certainly our goal.

AMY GOODMAN: The talks took place despite new threats from President Trump. On Sunday, Trump posted a message online reading, quote, “Iran must immediately stop their highly paid PROXIES in Lebanon from causing trouble. If they don’t, we’ll hit Iran very hard, just like we did last week, only harder!!!” — three exclamation points.

On Saturday, Iran announced it was closing the Strait of Hormuz, after Israel killed 83 people in Lebanon. On Friday, Israel said it would agree to a new ceasefire in Lebanon, but is also refusing to end its occupation of southern Lebanon, where Hezbollah killed four Israeli soldiers Friday.

For more on these latest developments, we’re joined by two guests. Behrooz Ghamari-Tabrizi is a fellow at the Center for Place, Culture and Politics at the CUNY Graduate Center. He was previously professor and chair of the Department of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University. In the 1980s, he was on death row in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison. His latest book, just out this year, is titled The Long War on Iran: New Events, Old Questions. And we’re joined here in New York by the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Spencer Ackerman, author of Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, and writes the Forever Wars newsletter. His latest piece is headlined “Iran’s Forever Leverage.”

Let’s start with you, Spencer. Your assessment of where the U.S. and Iran have come to in their negotiations?

SPENCER ACKERMAN: We’ve reached an astonishing point, a point that reflects how thoroughly the United States has lost this foolhardy war that the U.S. and Israel launched in February. If you’ll remember, back then, there was never any consideration that Iran would close one of the world’s most important economic waterways. Right now, unlike anything the United States or Israel thought it would achieve in this war, that is the main issue driving absolutely everything else, and it’s the main issue that’s prompted the United States to essentially give away the store.

Unlike the JCPOA, the nuclear deal in 2015 that the Obama administration negotiated with Iran, this memorandum of understanding that the U.S. and Iran have signed to kick off a 60-day period of negotiations only in some aspects covers the nuclear file. What it mostly does is lay out a roadmap to a regional transformation that would have been astonishing previously to imagine. The United States is committing in this document, this signed document, to transform its military posture in the Middle East, to end all forms of sanctions on Iran, not in the staggered manner that the 2015 accord did, but, apparently, right now the Iranians can sell oil, make money off of their oil supplies right now. And more fundamentally, the U.S. and Iran are now........

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