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00:00I mean, for people who don't follow Iranian affairs too closely, and I must admit, we haven't spoken much about Iran in newsrooms in recent months.
00:09There have been lots of other issues on our radars.
00:13I mean, how would you characterize the state of relations between Washington and Tehran right now?
00:21Well, there aren't any. It's as simple as that.
00:23There hasn't been diplomatic relations between the United States and Iran since 1979, and the Iranian revolution and the hostages siege the overrunning of the American embassy in Tehran.
00:35Since then, there have not really been any direct contacts, except in the context of the negotiations for the so-called JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that was agreed back in 2015.
00:52And actually, I was the UK negotiator, so was involved in a lot of those negotiations.
00:58And in the margins of those negotiations, there was some direct contact at high level between American diplomats and Iran.
01:07But otherwise, there's basically no bilateral relationship between the two at all.
01:12And since President Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, he ramped up sanctions against Iran.
01:20So I think it's fair to say that this would be a significant moment of senior level direct contact between the two countries.