Penny Stuart

I was thirty-something years old when Iranian students dragged me into a room and told me I wasn't going anywhere. Four hundred and forty-four days later, I walked out. I've spent the decades since trying to make sense of what happened — and what keeps happening — between our two countries. So don't talk to me about Iran like it's an abstraction. I lived inside that confrontation. I felt it. Which is why I'm not ready to write off this ceasefire, even though everything about it is maddening. Negotiations in Pakistan may produce nothing. The talks could collapse before they get started. I've seen American diplomacy with Iran fail more times than I can count, and usually for the same reasons — too much pride, too little patience, and Israel holding a match in the corner of the room. But here's what I know in my bones: another war won't break Iran. We just tried. It didn't work. Iran doesn't break — it absorbs, it adapts, and it waits. I watched that stubbornness up close for 444 days. What bothers me most isn't that Iran is winning this moment — it's that we handed it to them. Tehran's framework is running these negotiations. Iran still controls the Strait of Hormuz. Still collecting tolls. Trump looked at their proposal and called it workable. I never thought I'd see the day, but here we are. Iran wants everything on the table — sanctions, enrichment rights, American troops out, and a deal that covers what's happening in Lebanon and Gaza too. That's a lot to swallow. And Israel, which wasn't invited to this conversation, is already making clear it has no intention of being constrained by it. That's the part that worries me the most. Because if Israel keeps bombing and Washington can't or won't stop it, none of this holds. And yet — and I say this as someone who has every reason to distrust Tehran — I don't think we go back to all-out war. Not because anyone has suddenly gotten wise, but because the math doesn't work. A second round ends the same way. Iran still controls the Strait. The global economy still flinches when Tehran flexes. What we're heading toward isn't peace. It's something smaller and more precarious — two countries silently agreeing not to destroy each other today, with no paperwork and no guarantees. I know what it's like to survive on something that fragile. For 444 days, that's all I had.

What an interesting twist of history it would be if the UK became a hub of intellectual refugees the way the US itself did in the 1930s and 40s. It wouldn't take much more than what's already happening.

A smart foreign-born undergrad at a US university asked me if he should go to the UK to start his startup because of the random deportations here. I said that while the median startup wasn't taking things to this extreme yet, it would be an advantage in recruiting.

UPDATE: Finnish Police confiscates the Eagle S tanker and it is currently being moved to Kilpilahti oil harbor in Porvoo with the help of tugs. Transfer operation has started on Saturday around 10:50 am.

On the streets of Free Damascus, I asked Syrians if they had a message to send to the people of Ukraine. Here is what they said: