Evening briefing Wednesday 1st April

0:00This episode of the Times Radio News Briefing is sponsored by PwCWC. Staying competitive means getting ahead, not just keeping up. So how do business leaders cut through the noise and focus on what really matters. PwC takes you further with tech, from optimising the systems that put your data to work, to scaling AI from proof of concept to competitive edge. PwC helps you meet tomorrow's tech demands so you can compete at a speed that rewrites the rules. Discover more at pwc.co.uk. Welcome to the Times Radio evening briefing on Wednesday 1st April. Iran is denying it's asking Donald Trump for a ceasefire.

0:42The US president made the claim in a post on True Social, but the Iranian foreign ministry says it's false and baseless. Trump also says he's seriously considering taking the United States out of NATO, describing the military alliance as a paper tiger. John Bolton is a former national security advisor to Donald Trump. He's told Times Radio the president is losing control. I think it's absolutely clear over the past couple of weeks that Trump is not operating from a preconceived strategy. He's winging it day after day. And I think that's very dangerous. I think it means that while enormous damage has been done to the Revolutionary Guard, the nuclear program and other assets in Iran, the goal of regime change, if it ever was a goal, and that's open for question, but that goal is no longer what Trump is after.

1:31Earlier, Trump said American attacks on Iran could be over within two or three weeks with or without a deal. Hozroh Isfahani from the National Union for Democracy in Iran has told Times Radio he doubts that Trump will cut and run. I don't think he would make such a mistake and go down in history for losing one of the greatest opportunities that the United States had for finishing the leading sponsor of terrorism. But even if he does that, the Iranian nation has proved over the past five decades that they are going to keep marching against the Islamic Republic. We have been doing it since the inception of this regime and we are going to keep doing it until this regime is reduced to a blip in our history.

2:13Donald Trump will be addressing Americans from the Oval Office at 2 a.m. UK time tomorrow morning. Mick Mulvaney was Trump's head of staff in his first administration. He's told us what he thinks the president will say. I don't expect any big announcements. I don't expect him to come out and say we're starting a ceasefire tomorrow. I don't expect him to say we're pulling out of the Gulf next week. I expect a summary and a sales job, an explanation to the American public why the president thinks this has been so successful, why he thinks he has achieved his goals and why the American public is better off.

2:47And Sir Keir Starmer says he will take the UK closer to Europe. Announcing a summit in the coming weeks, he said such a move is in Britain's interests, both defensively and financially. Brexit did deep damage to our economy and the opportunities to strengthen our security and cut the cost of living are simply too big to ignore. So in the coming weeks, we will announce a new summit with our EU partners. And I can tell you that at that summit, the UK will not just ratify existing commitments made at last year's summit. We want to be more ambitious. And you can follow the Times Radio News Briefing on Spotify and listen live to Times Radio online.

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