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Most kind of estimates say that if Taiwan were attacked, the economic costs would be in the trillions. It would make Russia-Ukraine look pretty mild by comparison.
We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars we end. Right now, all eyes are on Washington. But who's actually watching Europe at the moment? To the Middle East now, and more than 50,000 people have been killed in the Gaza Strip since the war began. That's according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.
I'm Venetia Rainey and this is Battlelines. It's Monday 14th of April 2025. On today's episode, we'll be looking at the recent talks between the US and Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme. Donald Trump has threatened that there will be all hell to pay if Tehran does not agree to disarm. And amid a major build-up of American military assets in the Middle East, there's growing chatter that all hell could be imminent. I'll be looking at the progress of the talks and how likely a missile strike on Iran actually is.
But first, we head to Taiwan. Beijing recently held surprise military drills around the self-governed island, which China claims as part of its territory. The drills involved the PLA's Navy, Army, Rocket Force and Air Force, as well as the Chinese Coast Guard. Beijing said the drills were a stern warning to Taiwan's democratically elected government over what it sees as separatist activity. Chinese officials have accused Taiwan's leaders of being parasites who are pushing the island into war.
To explain the significance of it all, I'm joined by Kerry Brown. From 1998 to 2005, he was first secretary at the UK's embassy in Beijing. He's now professor of Chinese studies and director of the Lao China Institute at King's College in London. He's also the author of almost 20 books on modern Chinese politics, including most recently, Why Taiwan Matters, a short history of a small island that will dictate our future.
Kerry, welcome to Battlelines. Can you start by giving us a bit of context? What's the backstory to these drills that China recently held around Taiwan? In the last three years, basically, there's been a kind of escalation of pressure on Taiwan from China. Usually, it's associated with...
what China regards as provocations, for instance, visits by high level figures like Nancy Pelosi in 2022, when she was the Speaker of the House of Representatives, the third highest ranking official in America. She visited the island and there was a kind of military blockade for, I think, five days.
In recent times, there's been more aircraft, military aircraft incursions into what's called Taiwan's kind of airspace. They've increased quite significantly. I mean, I think there's hundreds every year and there used to just be, you know, only a few incursions.
The use of live ammunition is, again, a kind of increase of pressure, what we call most sort of salami slicing. You bit by bit, you kind of ratchet up the pressure, but you don't quite come to outright attack. I mean, that would obviously be a completely different order of things. But it's in that sort of spectrum, bit by bit increasing pressure. And what were these drills prompted by? Do we know? You mentioned Nancy Pelosi's visit, but nothing.
nothing that big was underway. So why were these drills suddenly held? Well, I think the general environment under Trump is extremely unpredictable. And China is partly, I suppose, opportunistic. It feels that it's dealing with a Washington that might not really be
know what it wants to do. We used to say that, you know, the kind of approach from America was strategic ambiguity. It didn't want to be gained by either side. So although it diplomatically recognizes the People's Republic of China in Beijing, it kind of had plenty of links with Taiwan and does supply military equipment to Taiwan.
But it doesn't want to kind of be dragged into a major conflict by Taiwan itself, declaring, for instance, independence. It's very wary of that. It doesn't want to be used in that way.
But at the moment, I think China senses that there's enormous confusion in America. There's great inward division. America is beating up on its allies, having fights with countries like Canada in the European Union and, you know, almost everyone. And I think it's kind of just throwing this into that situation to kind of test the waters, literally and metaphorically, just applying a bit more pressure on
It's also very wary, of course, of figures like J.D. Vance, the vice president, who is very, very isolationist, but also someone who's not really got a great deal of foreign affairs experience and might be kind of tempted to
think it's a good idea, which it definitely isn't, to give China pressure by sort of giving Taiwan more recognition than it deserves. So I think China's just reminding people this is a big, big issue. We will not back down if you cross any red lines. Just be very, very careful. We've had quite a few drills over the last few years. As you've mentioned, it's really picked up pace in recent years. But there's still a lot of discussion about how
Literally, we should take China's continued threats of forced reunification with Taiwan. However, we did recently see the unveiling of some landing barges. A video popped up showing these barges on a beach in China's Guangdong province. Can you tell us a bit about those?
Yeah, I mean, they're formidable looking vessels. I mean, they have these sort of massive bridges coming out from one side to the other. And I mean, of course, it's pretty obvious how they could be used. That's one of the problems is in recent years, China has always been slightly surprising people with how fast and far it's
It's technology, and in particular, you know, it's military technology is coming. It's now got a stealth fighter, like the kind of F-series of stealth fighters in America. You know, it kind of creates its own avionics, and that wasn't expected, you know, a decade or so ago. So this is kind of part of a pattern, I guess. You know, we have to remember in context that an amphibious landing is...
never going to be easy, right? It's not easy. I mean, the D-Day landings in 1940s were formidable enough. We're talking about a far larger stretch of water, more difficult to navigate. Even with modern technology, this would not be easy. How seriously do we take China's intentions? Well, we don't dismiss them. We definitely don't dismiss them. That's absolutely clear. We have to remember that the rhetoric is pretty terrifying. But I mean, it is just rhetoric at the moment.
And we do have to remember that it's not just a military issue if China were to move against Taiwan. It's a political and geopolitical issue and an economic issue. And there the consequences would be colossal for everyone.
So I think that while China is always maintaining pressure, it's not an irrational actor. I mean, it's very, very aware of the costs, the opportunity costs that would come from moving against Taiwan in an aggressive and imprudent manner. I think, though, it's definitely into putting on psychological pressure and looking to see if there are opportunities there.
I mean, sometimes they look like there are opportunities. Taiwanese politics domestically now is very divided and the world outside is looking pretty kind of turbulent. So, you know, China, I think, is probably just going to want to wait as long as it isn't provoked. Yeah, you mentioned the psychological pressure. And we recently had the Taiwanese National Security Bureau's report on disinformation within China. And that's really a key way that China is trying to influence, as you say, politics in Taiwan at the moment.
How successful have they been with that? Well, you could say that they've not been super successful, firstly, because Taiwanese overwhelmingly now don't see themselves as Chinese or Chinese Taiwanese. I mean, the survey showed in the last 20 years, it's been all one way. They see themselves now either as, you know, Taiwanese, culturally Chinese, perhaps, but they definitely don't identify with the People's Republic of China. They're very, very wary. They're very
able to see issues when their kind of media is being influenced by Chinese messages. There's been three cases recently of what we call mainland spouses. That's, in this case, wives married to Taiwanese men who are originally from the mainland,
I think a couple have been sent back to China for posting supportive messages about reunification. One of them, I believe, said that it should be done by force. And I think one is still in detention waiting the outcome of a decision to send her back.
Taiwan is the world leader in dealing with Chinese misinformation. Its elections definitely don't show a great deal of support for Taiwanese reunification. I mean, that's politically now very, very, very unpopular. I think something like 2-3% of people voted for reunification supporting parties in the last presidential election in 2024.
So I don't think it's been a massively successful campaign, but it's irritating. And I think under the former digital minister, now the minister at charge, the wandering minister, Audrey Tang, you know, they've kind of come up with some fairly effective ways of dealing with this.
But it's always a problem, the fact that, you know, there's a lot of very, you know, kind of aggressive and sometimes very effective online kind of campaigns. And again, it's giving psychological pressure. It's making people feel nervous and wary.
As you say, a full-blown amphibious landing would be difficult, very challenging. Most experts seem to agree that some kind of blockade if China did choose to use force to take Taiwan is a bit more likely. And we've seen a huge rise in the cutting of undersea cables. Taiwan has reported five instances of that so far this year compared to three over the whole year of the last few years. And they recently charged for the very first time a Chinese ship captain with intentionally damaging undersea cables off the island.
We've also seen China unveil deep-sea cable cutters with the ability to switch off another country's internet access, which is something that other countries might have, but they haven't admitted to having it. How serious is that element of it? Do we think China is just testing its ability to do these sorts of things? Well, the brute fact is that Taiwan, for its economy, for security reasons, is kind of interlinked
with the country which is its greatest security threat as it currently is. I mean, the Republic of China on Taiwan with its sort of de facto independence since 1949 is still deeply, deeply entwined in China in ways which kind of
that aren't just negative. I mean, sometimes they're positive. There's cultural links. There's, I think, 600 flights per week between both places. I mean, when I first went to Taiwan 25 years ago, you had to go via Hong Kong. Now that's no longer the case. You can go direct. There's direct postal links. And there has been, although less so now, tourist links between both sides. I mean, there is a dialogue, not at the top, but there's a dialogue.
The problem really is that something like over half of Taiwan's trade is with China. So it's vulnerable there. It's major companies like Foxconn that makes, you know, kind of stuff for Apple and iPhone. And, you know, they're kind of extremely integrated into the Chinese economy. I mean, they have massive factories there. There were about 400,000 Taiwanese living in China. I think that's gone down a bit now, but still, you know, significant number of people living
So you can't really divide them. It's not like North and South Korea where there's real massive differences and there's no real trade links and there's no real people-to-people links. It's all kind of icy cold walls. With Taiwan and China, it's much more porous. In many ways, Taiwan presents the ultimate kind of security prosperity issue. It needs to deal with China for its prosperity and its economic growth and has gained benefits from that.
But its security is definitely not looked after by this. It has tried to diversify by the new southbound policy, where it looks at other potential companions in terms of trade, like India, Southeast Asia countries, ASEAN countries.
But the brute fact is that the Chinese economy is so huge and remains huge no matter what America is currently doing, that Taiwan is sort of going to be stuck with this dilemma and managing it. I don't think this is a dilemma that will ever be solved, but it will just be one it has to manage. It's managed it under this one China policy for the last sort of 60, 50, 60 years.
But obviously that's under huge strain at the moment. And the question is how long you can maintain the status quo without either an accident or a deliberate action which completely undermines and destroys that. To what extent do you think the PLA has been, obviously it's been reformed heavily since Xi Jinping came into power in 2012, massive reforms brought in particularly in 2015. To what extent do you think the PLA is being restructured and shaped around the idea of taking Taiwan by force one day or being able to if it needed to?
Oh, I think for the last 30, 40 years, the principal strategic objective of the People's Liberation Army in China is Taiwan. I mean...
It's been focused on that in 1995 when there were the first presidential elections, 95-96 in Taiwan, democratic presidential elections. The military from China had big exercises, quite threatening exercises in the Taiwan Strait, and America sent two aircraft carrier to try and calm the region down.
But from that point, we've known the People's Liberation Army has a very strong strategic objective in retaking Taiwan and reunification of the country. The issue about the People's Liberation Army, I mean, you have to remember it's the army of the Communist Party. It's not a national army. It answers to the Communist Party. And the head of the Communist Party, Xi Jinping, is the chair of the Central Military Commission that commands the People's Liberation Army. Their mission
recent sort of situation is they've had very significant budgetary increases every year. I think something from 10 to 17% each year, significant. So they're now second only to the United States, but over 200 billion US dollars of funding goes to the military in China. However, they've been beset by some pretty deep anti-corruption measures.
moves. There's been a number of military figures, most notably the previous Minister of Defence, Li Xiangfu, who disappeared a couple of years ago after only a few months in his position and then was replaced. At the moment, there seems to be an even bigger figure, a kind of General He, who has sort of also disappeared. No one's quite sure what's happened to him. He sits on this key body, the Central Military Commission. He was regarded as a protege of Xi Jinping, but
He's just disappeared. So there's kind of political corruption purges of the PLA are definitely significant. But its key task is to be battle ready for dealing with the issue of Taiwan should China be provoked. And I mean, that is what it is basically currently doing. Do you think Xi Jinping would do that? It's obviously a huge risk for China, particularly for the PLA, which has hardly fought in any wars, not really battle tested. Would he? Yeah.
I think at the moment, unless provoked, and I'll explain what that is in a second. No, I don't think he would. I think it would be kind of colossally self-destructive. I think that China's attitude is to do things by stealth.
You have to remember they have no combat experience since 1979 when they attacked Vietnam, not very successfully. And their last real international combat experience was, in fact, on any scale, was the Korean War, which was over 70 years ago. So although they have this impressive military, it is untested. And also you have to remember that the Chinese public has never, unlike British, French and, of course, American publics,
had the body bags of their young come back after defeat in war or fatality in war. In China, we don't know how that would go down with the one-child policy up till recently, which means that the cost for this for families would be massive.
So I'm very skeptical that Xi Jinping will proactively do anything. As I say, if a Taiwanese leader were to say tomorrow, we are independent, that's it. Or if Trump was to say tomorrow, Taiwan's independent, we recognize that we're putting an embassy in Taipei. Yeah, then that's the red line. And China would do whatever it could to ratchet up from blockades to something even worse.
I think we are not close to that at the moment, though we're closer than we were five years ago or 10 years ago. But I think that there's definitely scope for misunderstanding and falling into a conflict, a bit like the First World War, kind of sleepwalking into a conflict. And that would be really, really disastrous. I mean, for China, what would be the costs of this? Well, I think there'll be two. First of all, there will be the geopolitical costs that it would
really cross from being a challenger, competitor, I mean, it points an adversary for the political West to being an outright and over enemy. You know, that, that, that will be the moment it attacked a democracy. It would completely, no matter if, if America and everyone else did nothing, it would be
to stand by Taiwan, it would still be a, you know, be a colossal kind of problem. And China would basically fall into its own set of alliances and it would be a divided world that would be completely different to the world we live in currently at the moment. And then economically,
Obviously, Taiwan is an important part of the global economy because of semiconductors, supplier links, for all sorts of other things. Most kind of estimates say that if Taiwan were attacked, the economic costs would be in the trillions. It would make Russia-Ukraine look pretty mild by comparison, and that's a terrible, terrible war in any case. So I think we just got to remember that China is aware of this. It knows this. I think its attitude is basically, look,
We just carry on applying pressure. We wait for the day when the West is more and more weak. And then I think when they look at what Trump's America is doing at the moment, they look at the disarray in much of the political West because of that. I think they feel time is on their side. Just one final question. Pete Hegseth over the weekend said that if it was China versus the US, China would win. The Pentagon is in the book the exact amount of years, but
In the past X number of years, 10, 12, 15, the Pentagon has a perfect record in all of its war games against China. We lose every time inside the Pentagon war games.
Do you agree with that? Well, I have to say that is an extraordinary thing for an American head of the military to say. I don't imagine for one minute a Chinese head of military would say anything like that. I don't think that they would say that America would lose. I mean, I think that they know America is a formidable country.
But it's about the political will. I mean, I have no doubt the American military is still the world's best, best equipped, most experienced. I mean, it is formidable. But I mean, it's political will. And I mean, I think at the moment, because of the political disarray in Washington, it's
Maybe he's right. I mean, at the moment, in many ways, China is winning because of the administration that he's serving in. It's winning because the tariff wars, it's prepared for this. It's game this out. And basically, I think it's able to do what it needs to come through this. And I mean, in the longer term, I think it just thinks, and it might be very wrong here. I'm not saying it's right or wrong. I'm just saying this is what I think Chinese believe. They believe that the American-led war
world is coming to an end, that the West is weaker and weaker, and that, you know, they just have to stay the course and their time is coming and it's coming quicker than they expected. That's Kerry Brown, historian, author and director of the Lao China Institute at King's College in London. Coming up after the break, would Trump strike a run if it doesn't do a deal?
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Most of them were agents. The latest podcast from The Telegraph. I'm Cara McGugan, and this is Bed of Lies. Search Bed of Lies wherever you're listening to this. In the Easter story, the word cross appears 11 times. Crucify appears 23 times. Yet one word appears even more. Love.
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The last thing you want to hear when you need your auto insurance most is a robot with countless irrelevant menu options. Which is why with USAA auto insurance, you'll get great service that is easy and reliable all at the touch of a button. Get a quote today. Restrictions apply. Welcome back. Last weekend, US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aradji were in Oman for indirect talks.
They were the highest level nuclear negotiations since the US signed off on a nuclear deal known as the JCPOA back in 2015 to impose limits on the amount of enriched uranium Iran could stockpile. In his first term, Trump famously pulled out of that deal, calling it "one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into." Since becoming president again in January, Trump has vowed to continue to pursue a maximum pressure approach to Iran.
Last month, he said he wrote a letter to Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, telling him to make a deal or face the consequences. Iran is very high on my list of things to watch. And as you probably know, I sent them a letter just recently. And I said, you're going to have to make a decision one way or the other. And we're going to either have to talk and talk it out or
Very bad things are going to happen to Iran, and I don't want that to happen. I don't want that to happen. My big preference, and I don't say this through strength or weakness, my big preference is we work it out with Iran. But if we don't work it out, bad, bad things are going to happen to Iran. Then, last Monday, during a press conference with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu, he suddenly announced that direct talks had been scheduled. In the end, they appeared to be indirect talks, but it was still a hugely significant step.
and there appears to be another meeting scheduled for later this week. Trump spoke about it briefly on Air Force One yesterday. Iran also. It was another way. I met with a different group of people in Iran, and we'll be making a decision on Iran very quickly. The talks come as the region is on tenterhooks amid a boosted U.S. military presence and growing pressure from Israel to strike Iran's nuclear program before it's too late.
To help us unpack it all, I'm joined by our foreign correspondent, Akhtar McCoy. First, both sides, the United States and Iran, said the talks were constructive and positive. But the main thing itself is because Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, has banned any direct talks with the United States. Since March 31st, he hasn't spoken anything about nuclear talks. But before that, he said talking with Americans is not rational, honorable and wise.
It's a big deal in Iran to have an indirect talk, even on state TV, whatever channel you watch. Whenever they are referring to the talks, they are saying indirect, sometimes several times in one single sentence, like the talks are indirect, indirect. To say that they haven't broken Mr. Khamenei's order and they haven't spoken with the Americans directly. But Khamenei has other tools to talk in every single village, small town, big town across the country. He has representatives.
as Friday prayer leaders. This last Friday, almost all of them, I watched a few of them, they talked against the deal to say, okay, if any deal reached with Americans, that's Khamenei's advice. He said, okay, we should have indirect talks and here we go, we have a deal. But if the talks fail, then Khamenei wouldn't be blamed for that. We had the same situation in 2015 when former Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif was meeting with John Kerry, the Foreign Secretary of the United States,
Several times during the talks, he attempted to go to Tehran to ask Khamenei for his opinion. But he, instead of just calling him, he wasn't sure about security. But he said, like, he decided not to go there because if the talks fail...
then Khamenei would be blamed. So we had the talks in Oman on Saturday. They have this very brief bump into each other two minutes after the end of the meeting. What are the statements coming out of Tehran and Washington afterwards? What's the result of these talks? Both sides say the talks were constructive and positive. Mr. Trump said last night he was going to talk about
any deal or whatever, it will be very clear very soon that what's going to happen to the talks. In Tehran, yesterday on Sunday, the parliament had a discussion about how to deal with these talks. There were some fierce verbal clashes between the MPs. One MP was shouting in the chamber, telling people, Iranians, okay, if anything happens, we, the parliament, have no idea what's happening with these talks.
He said like the parliament is completely left out of talks. They have no idea what's happening. Even the parliament's nuclear commission, nuclear committee is not aware of what's happening with the talks. Hardliners were very angry with Iranian foreign minister for meeting the U.S. envoy.
The markets have reacted positively. Reformists have reacted positively. Only the conservative and hardliners are angry, especially with that brief chat outside your hotel rooms. The International Atomic Energy Agency recently said that Iran has around 275 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent. What does that actually mean?
That means like they for make it's enough uranium to make four nuclear bombs and to make it a nuclear bomb you need to enrich it to 90 percent. And how easy it is to make it from 60 percent to 90 percent? Very easy. They just need to push a few buttons and they have the bomb ready. And why they are not doing it, why they haven't decided yet? Because of Mr. Khamenei's fatwa or
or religious decree. He has banned that in the 90s. We have reported that several senior commanders of Iran Revolutionary Guards
have asked Mr. Khamenei to just revoke the ban and let them make the nuclear bond. There's a kind of funny dance going on here, isn't there? Because Israel believes that Iran is on the cusp of being able to attain nuclear weapons, which is something that it feels very strongly is an existential threat. And we saw concrete evidence of that last year when Iran and Israel exchange blows. Iran can reach Israel if it wants.
Clearly the US is taking that threat seriously. It's moved B-2 stealth bombers to the Chagos Islands. There's been a whole lot of deployment of US military assets to the Middle East region. Over 70 cargo flights delivering a US Patriot air defence battalion from the Pacific to the Middle East. We don't know exactly where that is. A second TAD battery system deployed to Israel. And there's an aircraft carrier currently on its way from Asia to the Middle East.
We know that in Israel, there's huge appetite to strike Iran before they develop a nuclear bomb. What are you hearing about that? We know that both Trump and Biden administration were warned by U.S. intelligence agencies that Israel is going to bomb Iran nuclear facilities this year.
And last week, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was meeting with US President Donald Trump, he suggested a nuclear deal, like a Libya model, Qasafi model deal with Iran, which...
was referring to a 2003 nuclear deal with former Libyan dictator, Muammar Gaddafi, in which he just gave up on his nuclear program. Eight years later, his government collapsed and he was beaten to death. Inside Iran, no one is favoring that, whether they are hardliners or conservatives or, I don't know, reformists, no one is favoring a complete disarmament, which the Israeli government, the United States, is looking for a complete disarmament.
They are focused on having the nuclear program for scientific reasons, which the Islamic Republic has been saying for the past two decades that their nuclear program is only for scientific reasons. But can Israel bomb Iran itself? That's very highly unlikely. Israel would need the United States and the Islam administration to help. Israel may have the ability to do it. We had experiences of that last year when Israel and Iran exchanged missiles for four times.
But like having a bigger scale strike on Iran would definitely need Trump's help. And do you think Trump would help? Do you think now is the time? Because the argument in Israel is that Iran is weaker than it's ever been. Hezbollah is weakened in Lebanon. Bashar al-Assad has fallen in Syria. The Iraqi militias are disarming. That now is the time to cut off the head of the snake, so to speak. Do you think Trump...
would do something like that? Trump doesn't want war. Since he has started his administration, he is trying to be a dealmaker. He has started talking to make a deal, ceasefire deal in Gaza. He's talking with Putin to have a ceasefire deal in Ukraine. Israel, United States, Iran, they can't afford to have a war at the moment. All sides are just trying to have a deal, whatever deal, just to call it a deal, to have that deal ready.
But if they are going to war, it depends on next Saturday's talk. Up to now, the talks are only about Iran nuclear program and the Iranian officials are also saying, OK, we are not going to talk about anything else indirectly through the Omani guy. It's only the nuclear program and how we are going to deal with that. The United States will also bring up Iran's missile program. It's supposed for proxy forces across the region.
These are the two things that several Iranian MPs and officials said if at any point the U.S. negotiating team bring up on the table, they will just leave. So for now, they are just going to talk about nuclear thing. Supporting their proxy groups in Yemen, the Houthis in Yemen, the Shia militia groups in Iraq is something that Trump has been forcing Iran to stop.
But at the moment, they are saying they are not going to talk about it, which is a big deal, which is a big problem in the future. It will make more problems even if they reach a deal, which at the moment seems a bit unpredictable. Unpredictable. OK, but I was going to ask because Trump has spoken a lot about various foreign policy problems that he wants to solve. A solution to the war in Gaza, get all the hostages out or they'll be held to pay for Hamas, you know, and enter the war in Ukraine.
What would you assess the likelihood of a deal coming through in the next few months on Iran's nuclear program? Iran badly needs a deal. When the United States and European allies and China and Russia, they signed a deal in 2015 with Iran, there was one mechanism in that deal, which expires in October, this October, the snapback mechanism, which means if
All of those sanctions which were lifted by the UN resolution, they would be back on Iran. And Iran doesn't want to miss that deal. They badly need a deal to not miss that deadline. And the United States, of course, they want to, as you said, Trump wants to be a dealmaker. And then just finally, what would the reaction be in Iran if Israel and the US did strike its nuclear program? That's a big question.
So far, what we know about Iran's military capabilities, what the Islamic Republic has showed to the world. But there are many things, many other missiles or whatever they have, which we don't know anything about. The world doesn't know about it. They have missile cities, underground missile cities. They're building, making new drones, suicide drones. And how they are going to respond to any, if the talks fail,
And that's very unpredictable. You can't predict the Islamic Republic. You can't predict Donald Trump. It doesn't have a good outcome for the nation, for the 90 million people of Iran who are living under the shadow of war for the past 20 years. I mean, they really don't care what Trump says, what Benjamin Netanyahu says, what Iranian Khamenei said. They just want a very, very normal life.
For that young boy or young girl in Tehran who are living under the shadow of war and then they are not enjoying their young ages, or that father in a remote village who has to feel embarrassed because he can't afford buying a new pair of shoes for his children on the eve of new Persian year, they just want a normal life. So whatever comes after the talks, they will be affecting enormously the new Iranians' life.
If the talk fails, they would be still living in the shadow of war, even bigger shadow of war. If they reach a deal, they would be at least hopeful for a better future, for a very normal life. Thanks very much for joining us. That's Akhtar McCoy, our foreign correspondent. That's all for today's episode on Battlelines. We'll be back again this Friday with a special Trump edition. Until then, goodbye. Battlelines is an original podcast from The Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Venetia Rainey, and Roland Oliphant.
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