Deal or No Deal

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1:43BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. Wake up some money from BBC Five Live. Hello, welcome. It is Wake Up To Money. Iran has, until tonight, to agree a deal with President Trump, or he says, or else. The entire country could be taken out in one night, and that night might be tomorrow night. So any deal, we're told, must include the free traffic of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. We'll discuss the likelihood of a ceasefire, what the consequences of that could mean, as some ships have been passing through the Strait of Hormuz for certain countries around the world. We've got the resident doctor's strike today.

2:23NHS bosses say the walkout could be particularly challenging. And amongst all the doom and gloom, you may have noticed spring has finally arrived. That means flowers and increasingly the chance to pick your own. We'll find out why strawberries are out and tulips are in. Wake up to money with Sean Farrington. Good morning to you. Wake up to money on BBC five live on this Tuesday morning, the 7th of April. It is just after five o 'clock. The astronauts still safe on their way back home. Now we'll bring you the latest from events overnight. Some pretty spectacular moments that they have certainly lived through and the rest of us have watched as coming into work.

3:06One of the joys of coming in to wake up to money at this time of the year is that you do get to see a dark night sky. Others will be waking up to a sunrise and maybe not getting that clear image of the moon that we had on the way in this morning. Over Salford Quays, looking pretty amazing, thinking that those astronauts on Artemis 2 had seen something that none of us had ever seen by going round the opposite side of the moon. So we'll hear about their reaction to that and about some of the consequences of it as well as they come back. We've got Val Blake with me this morning, boss, co-founder of Gresham Blake.

3:44They're a menswear tailor and retailer based in Brighton. Big expansion plans globally as well. Val, very good morning to you. Good morning, Sean. I'm very happy to be here this morning. Thank you so much for being with us again, Val. Have you been keeping an eye on the moon? I mean, you can't dodge the moon storytelling, can you, at the minute? Has it captured any part of your imagination? Oh, my God, yeah. I mean, it's incredible. isn't it? I think especially at this time, I think, when everything else in the world seems so uncertain, I think that it's just a really, really amazing reminder to all of us that we're actually all pushing forward and actually, you know, innovating and thinking about our futures.

4:29And our future is positive and bright. Well, yeah, so we've got a bit of space news for you, Val, which will keep you happy, it sounds like. We're also talking tulips at the end of the show as well and the desires for us to pick our own. I hear tulips are right up the top of your tree for your favourite flowers. Tulips are, I think, I mean, I love tulips. I love tulips because when I think about tulips and what I love about them is they don't stay perfect. You buy them one day and they're really, really good. and then and they're neat and they're structured and then over time they bend and twist and they take on their own personality so I like I like tulips that are a few days old.

5:17Right well there you go well if you if you picked your own you'll know exactly the age they are we're going to be talking to a pick your own flower grower in on the Cambridgeshire Hertfordshire border a little bit later maybe you've got involved in that maybe there's a shop near you that's got involved in that 85058, do let us know. Right, let's get into the latest. Big morning, big mooning, big morning for all of us that have been watching the Artemis II journey. It's felt like every morning's been a big morning, but I think particularly the overnight last night at around 2 a.m. our time, the team on board, watching the Artemis II, on board the Artemis II journey around the moon, they observed, from their perspective, a full solar eclipse.

6:02So they travelled round this previously unseen side of the moon. Here's Will Chalk who has a bit more. It's a big day for NASA and a first for humanity as well. The Artemis 2 mission took four astronauts more than 400 ,000 kilometres from Earth. It's the furthest distance ever. The crew then went behind the moon, losing connection with Earth and existing in total isolation for 40 minutes. This was the moment the NASA astronaut Christina Cook reconnected with Houston.

6:58We will build. We will build ships. We will visit again. We will construct science outposts. We will drive rovers. We will do radio astronomy. We will found companies. We will bolster industry. We will inspire. But ultimately, we will always choose Earth. We will always choose each other. Integrity from Earth, our single system, fragile and interconnected, we copy. Those of us that can are looking back. Well, this is the first mission to the moon in more than 50 years, and it's preparing for a potential lunar landing by 2028. The crew will now continue their seven-hour flyby of the moon, taking pictures and recordings and making notes before heading back to Earth.

7:47Here is Artemis crew member Jeremy Hansen, as they broke that record I mentioned of 248 ,655 miles from Earth. It was originally set by Apollo 13 in 1970. As we surpass the furthest distance humans have ever travelled from planet Earth, we do so in honouring the extraordinary efforts and feats of our predecessors in human space exploration. We will continue our journey even further into space before Mother Earth succeeds in pulling us back to everything that we hold dear. But we most importantly choose this moment to challenge this generation and the next to make sure this record is not long lived.

8:35BBC Will Chalk reporting there as Artemis 2, that mission, as astronauts on board the Orion spacecraft get to the other side of the moon, continue a little bit further, as we heard there, before they get slung back towards the Earth. Tineke Fricke, also with us this morning, senior fund manager at W1M. Tineke, good morning. Sean. We heard Fowl's optimism about what this mission means to her and what it can mean for humanity. Maybe not with the grandeur that we hear, the astronauts. Almost every day they're having to come up with a sentence that sort of is supposed to inspire us in some way to continue the innovations that they're sort of executing on this journey.

9:22Does it represent something, Tineke, about where you have seen innovations in recent years and about where we might go next for all of the sort of excitement around humans getting further than they've ever been before? Are we at a point in innovation that maybe feels like we are kicking on to a next stage that we haven't been, hadn't had that kind of development for a long time? Yeah, I think certainly the pace seemed to be picking up in the space exploration. And obviously, innovation keeps moving ahead. And it's sort of interesting that we may see some companies listing in markets, SpaceX, for example.

10:08And there's some Japanese companies as well. So there's clearly more activity in there. And it's always harder to judge because we're never quite sure where it will lead to, what it will add to, you know, how we do things. But it's definitely stepping up and it's exciting. I mean, I always find it fascinating to find out about things that we didn't know existed, which is great. Well, do you know a fact that I did not know, Tillica, as I was scrolling through the BBC Live page online this morning. So when the moon is at its maximum distance away from the Earth on its orbit, which is about 407 ,000 kilometres, I didn't know that, but even better fact than that, you could fit all the major planets in the solar system between Earth and the moon at that point.

11:02That is effectively the distance between them. So you can put Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune between them. That's a pretty good stat, isn't it? Yeah, it's just fascinating, isn't it? It just gives you a real sense of literally space around us that we just don't know very much about. Yeah, 85058, let me know what is taking your fancy when it comes to this space journey. What is it you're interested in? The prospects for space innovations, as we've talked much about on Wake Up 20 in recent days. Let's get the latest on the Middle East now. President Trump, as you may well be well aware, if you've glanced at any front pages in the recent days, seen any news heard and seen any news headlines.

11:48President Donald Trump has given Iran until tonight, US time to make a deal. So he's been speaking at the White House in a press conference that lasted nearly an hour and a half. He repeated that warning several times. They have till tomorrow. I can tell you they're negotiating, we think, in good faith. We're getting the help of some incredible countries that want this to be ended because it affects them also. A lot of people are affected by this. But we're giving them till tomorrow, 8 o 'clock Eastern time, and after that, they're going to have no bridges, they're going to have no power plants.

12:25Stone ages, yeah. So he repeated that phrase again, and he also confirmed that any new deal with Iran to end the fighting must include allowing the free traffic of oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Gave further warnings of what may happen if a deal is not reached. We have a plan because of the power of our military where every bridge in Iran will be decimated by 12 o 'clock tomorrow night, where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding and never to be used again. I mean, complete demolition by 12 o 'clock. And it'll happen over a period of four hours if we wanted to.

13:08So we've got Mehran Kamrava with us, who's professor at Georgetown University in Qatar, director of the Iranian Studies Unit at the Arab Center for Research and Policy Studies as well. Mehran, very good morning to you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Just when you hear, as many have done, you know, Donald Trump again, talking the way he's talking there, Are countries around the Middle East that have taken the brunt of Iran's missiles in these recent weeks, are they supportive of Donald Trump's approach here? Well, they are, and at the same time, they aren't. I think the countries of the Persian Gulf, the Arab countries, don't necessarily mind to see a weakened Iran, an Iran in which infrastructure and the military are weakened and infrastructure is destroyed.

14:09But at the same time, what we've seen is that the Iranians have been lashing out at countries like the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia in particular. And that has been extremely costly for the Arab states of the region. And so on the one hand, there is kind of this subtle support for what Trump is doing. But on the other hand, there's tremendous fear and apprehension of the consequences and the spillover effects. Subtle support. But I mean, it almost sounds like it's surprising to countries around the Middle East that are allies of the United States that they have been on the end of these Iranian attacks.

14:59Has it been surprising? It has, actually. And it's somewhat ironic because throughout, the Iranians kept saying that American bases and American targets across the Middle East are fair game if the United States attacks Iran. And no one in many ways took them seriously because we thought that was a red line the Iranians wouldn't cross. And it was one of the first things that the Iranians did in the early hours of the first day of the fight on February 28, when Iranians attacked the Al-Udeid American base here in Qatar and then other American bases across. And then when the Americans attacked Iranian oil infrastructures, the Iranians attacked regional oil installations, including here in Qatar.

15:59Now, when we hear of negotiations, as Donald Trump was talking about, we know that Pakistani mediators had proposed a plan that involved the temporary ceasefire and resumption of shipping through the Strait of Hummuts. But earlier on yesterday, Iran's state media said the country had rejected a proposal for ceasefire, instead calling for a definitive end to the war and sharing a list of demands. Just from what you know of Iran's relations with the likes of Pakistan, the US relations with the likes of Pakistan, where you have mediators from Pakistan involved in this. Does that, I don't know if the words encourage you, does it make you think there is an increased chance of a deal being done?

16:48Unfortunately, we don't really know what is going on in the negotiations. There's been extreme secrecy and opacity concerning. And whatever negotiations are happening, the voices coming out of Islamabad are being drowned by these extra loud rhetoric coming out of Washington and then Tehran and also Israel. And so, unfortunately, given the rhetoric and the environment surrounding this conflict, things like decimation, annihilation, Stone Age, all of these phrases that are being thrown around makes it extremely difficult to figure out what really is going on in terms of negotiations. And yet some countries are clearly negotiating or being diplomatic to a certain extent that they are able to get their ships of oil in particular through the Gulf.

17:52So as much as we say Iran is effectively blocking the Strait of Hormuz for much of the world, we've seen, there's a fascinating article by our colleague who we often wake up to this time of morning and see pieces from Osman Chia on the BBC website this morning that goes into a little bit of detail about how many nations around Asia, most recently the Philippines, have been keen to reach agreements with Iran to get some of the ships through. because their economies are so reliant on energy from the Gulf. It's possible, isn't it? Absolutely. And despite popular assumptions, the Iranians have been very strategic actors in terms of ensuring that they do not alienate more friends, or at least they don't necessarily antagonize countries that should not be antagonized.

18:48Japan, Philippines, for example, as you mentioned, Thailand, and China, of course, some of the countries that rely extensively on the import of energy resources through the Strait of Hormones. And some of these countries, including the Philippines, are seen as American allies, aren't they? Does that show that who Iran are willing to deal with doesn't necessarily mean anybody associated with the United States cannot get oil out of the region? Absolutely, yes. They've been very calculated in ensuring that diplomatic complexities are not necessarily seen in black and white, and that countries like the Philippines or Japan, both very close friends and allies of the United States, can continue to transit through the Strait of Hormones.

19:51Now, Maran, you're in Qatar yourself. I've got to ask you what life has been like in Qatar in recent weeks. We have seen some of the major energy infrastructure parts of the Gulf region that have been hit have been in Qatar. What's day-to-day life like there? Well, we're living under conditions that can best be described as the new normal. As a professor, I've gone back to teaching online as if it's the COVID days again, because I teach, of course, at an American university. And with 600 Iranian educational institutions having been hit, they have now threatened American institutions. There used to be a shelter-in-place order here in Qatar where we shouldn't have left, but again, showing Iranian pragmatism despite the fact that Qatar is a very close ally of the United States.

20:53For the last two weeks, there haven't really been any attacks here in Qatar. There have been repeated daily and nightly attacks in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, and to a lesser extent, Saudi Arabia, but not here. Nonetheless, there's a sense of foreboding. There's a sense of fear and apprehension of, is the other shoe about to drop and what will happen next? Have some of your students who, as we know, there are many, many expats in the Gulf region and people maybe who've traveled to the region to study in some of those places like your university. Have you found that some of those students have wanted to return home to their own country now and maybe don't have the confidence in some of the Gulf states that they would have had before this war?

21:47That's absolutely the case. As you mentioned, a country like Qatar is made up of 90 % expatriates. Same thing with the United Arab Emirates. And so many expats have either left or are thinking about leaving. They're working remotely. So, yes, absolutely. And what you just mentioned, Sean, indicates that moving forward, the costs of doing business for these states, particularly Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Kuwait, the costs of doing business will be significantly higher because it'll be more difficult for them to present themselves as these havens of stability and security that they have been up until now.

22:38Mehran Kamrava, thank you so much for your time this morning, professor at Georgetown University in Qatar. Fal Blake, who's with us this morning, who's the boss of Gresham Blake, co-founder of Gresham Blake, the menswear tailor and retailer, based in Brighton. But Fal, also with Middle East expansion plans yourself, where are you at now? Are you in the middle of them? Have they been going ahead this year? what's the plan for Gresham? Well they have, yeah we've been expanding into the Middle East particularly in the UAE and Saudi Arabia earlier this year in January we opened up a showroom in Dubai now for us that wasn't a quick decision because we'd been building relationships in the region for many, many years so that opening was sort of our next natural step but obviously so yeah last year in particular we did we delivered lots and lots of key projects in the region for high-end uniforms some of the projects we completed were the hyatt in Dubai the mangrove in Abu Dhabi we're on the Hilton supplier list preferred supply list is this for For staff or is this for, what's this particularly for?

23:59It's for design-led uniforms, which has been, you know, part of our product portfolio out in that region. So it's design, yeah, high-end uniforms for big brands and hotels out in that region. And so how, yeah, as you sort of take a bit of a breath, Is that reflective of what the following months were like after a launch in January and a war that starts right at the end of February in the Middle East and another war in the Middle East that has impacted Dubai so much? we we feel that everything is on pause right now um obviously um but having said that even in the last few weeks we've had lots and lots of active conversations via video link with developments across bahrain qatar kuwait raz al-qaima so for us the pipeline is still very active and alive it's very much a pause.

25:08I mean, my, our main thoughts are with the people out there in that Gulf region. We've built such strong relationships over the last few months and few years. And these people that are out there are people that we've worked very closely with and built strong relationships with. And as a brand and as a business, we definitely want to carry on supporting that region. It's interesting hearing Moran in Qatar talking about the sort of changing confidence, whether it's of the students at the university, that just merely the fact that when you look at the politics of the war, that when educational areas are being struck in Iran, Iran has said it will look to strike back at potentially educational areas that are linked to America in the Middle East and hence Maran at the moment is in that sort of COVID lockdown mode of teaching from home and online only.

26:11Have you noticed that there's sort of a ripple effect of a hit to confidence in Dubai where you kicked off in January this year? People are still talking. People are still communicating. Obviously, it's a very fragile situation out there and we just have to be very respectful. with that and put that at the forefront and accept that as a reality right now at this very present time. But carry on being positive that this situation has to end. We're very, very, very, very certain that that's the only way. So that's the way that our mindset is thinking. Tinica, when you look at where investments come from, where the money is flowing around the world, for many, many, many years now, the money from sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East, money from the oil and gas, the profits from that production in the Middle East has sort of trickled through from those countries around the Gulf to major investments in almost every country.

27:28We've seen a lot of it here in the UK of investment from the Middle East. It could be in some of the companies listed on the stock market. It could be football clubs, whatever it might be. There's a whole array of things there. Have you noticed when you look at the numbers, Tineke, that that might be changing? Whether there's not as much money perhaps as expected in the Middle East or the money is needed for other things now that many more of these Gulf states have been brought into being a focal point of the war. Is that changing things at all? Too early to say if it has an impact. What is clear is that the Gulf states had been committed to diversify their wealth sources.

28:18So it's more than oil and gas and LNG. And I suspect that that will continue because clearly what has happened now by some facilities being turned off completely, there's even, you know, that sort of reinforces the importance of being able to bring in money for the economy from other sources. So I think the strategic direction will probably continue. What is less clear is the amounts. Obviously, if Gulf states earn less, then there tends to be less in the sovereign wealth funds. And there might be more money needed for rebuilding locally. But I think the path of diversification for the Gulf economies will continue.

29:11But I think also, as the professor pointed out, I think those countries where the majority of the energy came from Gulf states, I think they will also diversify where that will come from. So there'll be a bit of a reallocation, I think, globally. 85058 if you've had thoughts maybe you've worked in the Middle East yourself you might know members of your family or friends who are working have been working in one of the the Gulf states have they changed their thinking longer term have they been willing to stay in those locations and see this through be fascinated to hear a little bit more about what is going on in those regions there as we hear habits change you know this morning hearing about habits changing in Qatar and the educational services there.

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31:06wake up to money with sean farrington good morning wake up to money on bbc five live thank you for your messages uh whether it's about developments in the middle east one saying if trump goes through with this threat warflation will go bonkers he will become the man who broke the world as uh we await to see what happens with that deadline that donald trump for set Iran for later tonight, I think eight o 'clock US time, so around midnight GMT, I think. So yeah, that will be one for us to very much be keeping an eye on as we get to Wake Up To Money tomorrow. So stay with us on BBC Five Live. Subscribe to Wake Up To Money on BBC Sounds, of course.

31:51Other messages about the Artemis II mission, massive waste of money says Sandy near Edinburgh yet another vanity project for Trump I wish the astronauts the best of luck but so much poverty and yet the£70 million spent on this is the most expensive firework on Rekthorne says Sandy ridiculous 85058 your thoughts as you maybe get a chance the sun not quite up over Salford Quays here at Wake Up to Money Towers this morning yet so opportunities to view the moon when you look up and you see what's been happening over recent days with that trip around the moon that those astronauts have been making.

32:28What are your senses about it all? Let us know. Much more discussion on that to come through 5 Live as well. Let's get into the latest six-day strike by resident doctors, as they're now called, formerly junior doctors, in England, which begins at 7 o 'clock this morning. This is the 15th walkout in the dispute over pay and job opportunities. It comes at the end, of course, of a long bank holiday weekend. NHS managers saying it could be particularly challenging. The government withdrew its offer of creating a thousand more doctor training posts in England after the British Medical Association refused to call the strike off.