Today is the second full day of the two week ceasefire between the U.S.

and Iran.

The price of oil is up again and stocks were down because of concerns over whether the ceasefire would hold.

There is disagreement over whether the agreement prevents Israel from bombing Lebanon.

Israel says it does not.

And it bombed Lebanon yesterday, killing an estimated 300 people.

Talks are planned between Israel and Lebanon.

As part of the agreement, Iran promised to reopen the Strait of Hormuz passageway for 20% of the world's oil.

Media reports indicate there is very little, if any, traffic moving through the strait.

High stakes negotiations over reopening and securing the Strait of Hormuz are set to begin tomorrow in Pakistan, between U.S.

and Arounian officials.

The white House says Vice President J.D.

Vance and President Donald Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, will join the discussion Saturday.

We spoke with diplomacy expert Robert Farley from the University of Kentucky's Patterson School of Diplomacy about the cease fire effort and whether an agreement is realistic, especially after President Donald Trump warned in a post Tuesday that, quote, A whole civilization will die if Iran refused a cease fire.

I think the President Trump wanted to create, in the minds of the Iranians, the belief that he might use nuclear weapons.

I think it was much more likely that, with their strikes were going to be conventional, but they were going to be targeted against, Iranian civilian, power stations and bridges and so forth.

You know, it is fortunate that the president decided to back down.

It is fortunate that we were able to come to a cease fire, before that happened.

But I think that has also done some significant damage to, you know, really our diplomatic status around the world.

Right.

There's only there's only so much we can do, when we're simply hated and feared.

There's a lot of confusion right now about what exactly the United States and Iran agreed to as part of the cease fire negotiation.

And, and that confusion seems to exist not just in the media and the public, but also within the administration itself.

You know, Iran has agreed to a cease fire.

The United States and Israel have agreed to a cease fire.

But Iran has also, expressed that it continues to control the Strait of Hormuz.

It's continuing to control traffic there.

And it's continuing to exact tolls.

They can continue to control the strait.

And, they believe it's to their advantage to control the state in the strait.

They don't appear to be willing to budge on that.

And if they're not willing to budge on that, then, you know, the American, the American diplomats have to budge.

But beyond simply threatening Iran with more of what's already happened, I'm not sure what it can accomplish.

And I think also the Iranians really perceive, Tuesday night, what happened on Tuesday night when President Trump, announced the cease fire?

They perceived that as American capitulation.

The Iranians, by all evidence, seem to think that Trump chickened out.

Which is going to make it that much harder for this administration to pursue any kind of credible military threats in the future.

And the Trump administration has talked about a bunch of different possible objectives for the war.

The ones that we have accomplished, are the destruction of the Iranian navy, which was pretty substantial, and the degradation of Iran's command and control and the degradation of Iran's missile industry, its missile and drone constructing industry.

Beyond that, it's hard to say what goals that the United States has accomplished to this point.

And really going back to what we talked about before.

The biggest problem is with the Strait of Hormuz, right before the war started, the Strait of Hormuz was open.

Now, even after the cease fire, the Strait of Commerce does not appear to be open.

And so there are, a lot of objectives that the United States has not accomplished thus far.

And it's hard to see how we get from point A to point B. I think that the administration in, in Israel and the administration in the United States had both hoped that, there could be some kind of regime change in Iran.

Right?

Whether on the one hand, you would have a popular uprising against the Islamic Republic or on the other hand, you kill enough people at the top, and eventually they are replaced by reasonable people who are going to, negotiate in good faith.

That has not happened.

It hasn't really come close to happening.

And it's really hard to say from this point that it's going to happen.

You know, in terms of reopening the Straits, which is really the biggest deal right now for the United States and for the global economy.

I mean, you can go with it two ways.

One, the United States can violently open the strait, by invading parts of Iranian territory, or B we can we can come to an agreement that the Iranians are willing to live with, for reopening the strait.

I don't see any other option between those two, those two opportunities.

So I don't know how we negotiate our way out of this.

I also don't know how we fight our way out of this.

We're we are in a position where it seems like any step we take, takes us into in a worse direction.

And I think that's a very dangerous position to be in.