A second round of talks is coming.
Trump told the New York Post that new US Iran negotiations
could happen over the next two days, and he said we are more
inclined to go there, a reference to Islamabad.
Bloomberg confirmed that both sides are looking to arrange a
second round before the ceasefire expires.
The blockade is working. 6 merchant vessels turn around
after contact with US naval forces.
The sanctioned Chinese tanker pass through anyway.
Iran is clearing debris from its underground missile bases, an
Iran regime sources told journalists on Tuesday.
We don't trust the United States and we are also being very busy
preparing ourselves for the next round of war.
It is Wednesday, April 15th, 2026, day 47 of Operation Epic
Fury. 6 days remain on the ceasefire clock.
The blockade is active, the diplomacy is accelerating, and
both of those things are happening simultaneously in ways
that are pulling in opposite directions.
This is episode 47 of Epic Fury, the US Iran War podcast.
Follow on Spotify and Apple Podcast to stay with this story
as it develops. Let's get into it.
Begin with the diplomatic acceleration, because the
Bloomberg report and Trump's New York Post call back are the most
consequential developments of Day 47, and because they changed
the meaning of everything else that happened.
Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter,
that the US and Iran are looking to arrange a second round of
peace talks in the coming days, with Tehran considering a pause
in Hormuz shipments to help ease agreement on time and place.
One proposal is to return to Pakistan, where the initial
talks were held last weekend, though other venues are also
being considered. The objective, according to
Bloomberg sources, is to hold more discussions before the
ceasefire expires next week. A White House official confirmed
to CNBC on Tuesday morning that a second round is under
discussion, though nothing has been officially scheduled yet.
Trump then called the New York Post back about 30 minutes after
his initial interview to update his position.
He said. The next talks could be
happening over the next two days, he said.
We are more inclined to go there indicating Islamabad as the
preferred venue, he said We are working on it, that sequence.
Bloomberg sources White House official confirmation Trump
calling a journalist back with updated intelligence is the
diplomatic signal of a process moving faster than the blockade
announcement from 48 hours earlier suggested it would.
The blockade was presented by Trump as a consequence of talks
failing. The rapid movement toward a
second round suggests the blockade is being used as a
pressure instrument to accelerate a second attempt,
rather than as a terminal act of escalation.
That distinction matters enormously for what the next six
days produce. The question is what is
different about a second round? Vance's written final offer is
on the table in Islamabad. Iran has it.
If Tehran returns to the table without having accepted the core
American demand, a commitment never to seek a nuclear weapon,
then the second round begins at exactly the same impasse where
the 1st 1 ended. The blockades, economic
pressure, the missile city reconstitution, the Chinese
tanker, the Lebanon talks, and Trump's cryptic phone call from
the right people are all inputs into what Iran's position will
be when delegation walks back into the Serena Hotel.
Whether those inputs have shifted Iranian calculations
enough to produce a different outcome from a second 21 hour
session is the central unknown of the next six days.
Bloomberg also noted that Tehran is mulling a pause in Hormuz
shipments as a gesture to help ease agreement on time and place
for the second round. A pause in Hormuz shipments
voluntarily as a signal of good faith would be a meaningful
concession. It would allow both sides to say
the blockade was not necessary and the ceasefire process is
working. Whether that gesture
materializes or whether it is a negotiating posture that Iran
floats without intending to deliver will be visible in the
ship tracking data over the next 48 hours.
Vance, speaking on Fox News on Tuesday, said he believed the
Iranian sitting across the table in Islamabad wanted to make a
deal despite decades of mistrust.
That is a significant statement from the man who spent 21 hours
in those negotiations and who characterized the outcome as bad
news for Iran, much more than for the United States.
Evans genuinely believes the Iranians wanted a deal.
The implication is that the failure in Islamabad was not a
failure of Iranian will, but a failure of the specific terms on
offer. That the gap between what the US
was asking and what Iran could publicly accept in this moment
was simply too wide. That reading supports the logic
of a second round. If both sides want a deal but
the first round's terms were too demanding for Iran to accept
immediately, the second round with modified terms or a longer
timeline could produce different results.
Vance said he's going to continue fighting for what he
described as the grand bargain that Trump wants to make with
Tehran. He also said he has been
frustrated to see some Catholic clergy criticize US policies but
that he still likes and admires the Pope, a notable softening
from Trump's own Truth Social attack on Pope Leo the 14th the
previous night. The Pope, for his part, vowed to
keep speaking out and said he had No Fear of the Trump
administration. Italy's Prime Minister, Georgia
Maloney, called Trump's attacks on the pontiff unacceptable, a
significant statement from one of Trump's closest European
political allies, delivered publicly and without ambiguity.
The Pope debate is a sidebar to the war, but it is a sidebar
that reveals the limits of Trump's political coalition,
even among its most sympathetic members on the blockades.
First full day of enforcement. Centcom reported that no ships
made it past the blockade and that's six merchant vessels
complied with direction from US naval forces to turn around and
re enter an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman.
That is the first concrete enforcement data from the
blockades operation and represents A meaningful
demonstration that the US naval presence is producing
compliance. 6 ships turn around. No ships got through on the
first full day. That is not a leaky blockade.
The exception is the Chinese tanker.
Reuters reported that a Chinese flag tanker previously
sanctioned by Washington for dealing with Iran passed through
the Strait of Hormuz despite the US blockade.
The vessel and its owner, Shanghai Shinrun Shipping
Company, have been designated under U.S. sanctions for Iranian
oil trade. China's Foreign Ministry
dismissed reports of China supplying weapons to Iran as
completely made-up, but the sanctioned tankers transit is
the first practical test of how the blockade handles vessels
from a country that has publicly condemned it as dangerous and
irresponsible, and the test did not produce an interception, the
CENTCOM blockade announcement said.
Any vessel entering or departing the blockaded area without
authorization is subject to interception, diversion, and
capture. A previously sanctioned Chinese
flag vessel transiting to or from an Iranian linked
destination would seem to fall precisely within that category.
Whether US naval forces did not see it, chose not to intercept
it for diplomatic reasons, or determine if fell outside the
operational parameters is not publicly known.
What is publicly known is that it passed through.
The practical question this raises is fundamental to whether
the blockade works as economic pressure on Iran.
If China flag vessels continue to transit carrying Iranian oil
to Chinese buyers at discounted rates, then the blockade is cut
off Iran's less important trading relationships while
leaving its most important one intact.
China takes roughly 1/3 of its oil through the straight and
peacetime. If that trade continues through
a notionally enforced American blockade, the blockades economic
coercive effect on Iran is significantly diminished.
The question of who the blockade is actually stopping and who
gets to pass anyway is the question that will define
whether it has the coercive effect trump intense.
China's Foreign ministry on Wednesday called the blockade a
dangerous and irresponsible act that will further inflamed
tensions in the region. Spokesperson Guo Jacqueline told
reporters that the measure risks undermining the already fragile
ceasefire and that only a full ceasefire can help ease the
situation in the Strait. He said China stands ready to
work with all sides to safeguard energy security and restore
normal traffic. China's message is consistent.
The blockade is wrong, a comprehensive ceasefire is
necessary and China is available as a facilitator.
What China is not doing is publicly threatening retaliation
for its tankers transit being allowed or challenged.
Beijing is playing a careful game, condemning the blockade
publicly while it's sanctioned tankers continue to move through
the straight. CNN published satellite imagery
on Wednesday showing that Iran has been working during the
ceasefire to clear debris blocking the entrances to its
underground missile bases, the hardened facilities, known as
Missile Cities Front end loaders, were visible scooping
rubble from blocked tunnel entrances and loading it into
dump trucks. The previous US Israeli strikes
had targeted those entrances to trap missile launchers inside,
preventing them from driving out to fire or returning to reload.
U.S. intelligence had assessed that roughly half of Iran's
missile launchers were still intact after a month of
fighting, buried underground by the collapsed entrances.
Sam Lehr of the James Martin Center for Non Proliferation
Studies told CNN this was expected.
The ceasefire requires accepting that your adversary will
reconstitute some of the military capacity you just spent
time, effort and money destroying.
He added that this aligns with the overall concept of
operations for the missile cities, which was designed
around eating the first attack, digging out and then launching
again. That is a significant
intelligence assessment. Iran is not simply sitting idle
during the ceasefire. It is systematically working to
restore the military capacity that 47 days of US Israeli
bombing degraded. If the ceasefire expires without
a deal and operations restart, the missile threat from those
reconstituted underground facilities will be materially
greater than it was at the point the ceasefire was called.
The ceasefire, from a purely military standpoint, is giving
Iran time it is using to rebuild.
This is not a surprise to military analysts.
Every ceasefire gives both sides time to reconstitute.
But the specific architecture of Iran's missile city program,
designed precisely around the concept of surviving an initial
attack and then relaunching, means that the reconstitution
happening in those satellite images is not incidental but
doctrinal. Iran built its missile
infrastructure to absorb the kind of attack it received in
Operation Epic Fury and to regenerate from it.
The US and Israel knew that when they launched the campaign.
Their bet was that the political and diplomatic pressure of the
campaign will produce a nuclear deal before Iran could rebuild
enough to restore meaningful deterrence.
That bet has not yet paid off, and the ceasefire is now giving
Iran exactly the reconstitution time that the campaign was
designed to deny it. Iran regime sources confirm the
dual track approach on Wednesday, they told
journalists. We don't trust the United States
and we are also being very busy preparing ourselves for the next
round of war. That statement, preparing for
the next round while simultaneously weighing a return
to the negotiating table, is the Iranian strategic posture in its
most explicit form. It is not a contradiction.
It is a rational hedge by a government that was bombed twice
in less than a year while in diplomatic contact with the
country, doing the bombing first in the 12 Day War of June 2025
and now in the 47 days of Operation Epic Fury.
The International Monetary Fund released its World Economic
Outlook on Wednesday, down grading global growth for 2026
to 3.1%, a reduction of 0.2 percentage points from a January
projection. The IMF said the US Iran war has
put the global economy at risk of being thrown off course.
The Fund outlined 2 darker scenarios in its moderate case.
The growth reduction is manageable in the most extreme
case, oil and gas prices jumping 100 to 200% from January levels
and remaining elevated into 2027.
Global growth would fall to 2%. That is perilously close to what
the IMF considers a global recession, and it is a scenario
that becomes more likely with every day The Strait of Hormuz
remains closed and the blockade prevents Iranian exports for
developing countries. The IMF warning is not abstract.
the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization has
separately noted that the Gulf region supplies a significant
proportion of the world's ammonia and urea fertilizer
exports, essential inputs for food production in South Asia,
sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Latin America.
A sustained hormones closure does not only raise petrol
prices in American suburbs, it raises the cost of growing food
in countries where food insecurity was already a crisis
before February 28th. The UN zone spokesperson said on
Tuesday that there is no military solution and warned
that instability in the Strait of Hormuz is worsening global
economic fragility. The Strait closure is not only
an energy market disruption, it is a fertilizer supply
disruption, a shipping insurance disruption and A food security
disruption for dozens of countries that had no voice in
the decision to go to war and no ability to protect themselves
from its consequences. Israel and Lebanon held direct
talks in Washington on Wednesday, the highest level
direct contact between the two countries in decades.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, host of the Israeli and Lebanese
ambassadors. The talks were focused on
halting the escalating Israel Hezbollah conflict and beginning
negotiations on a framework that could eventually allow displaced
Lebanese civilians to return and Israeli forces to withdraw from
occupied southern Lebanese territory.
At the end of the session, the State Department said Israel and
Lebanon agreed to hold further direct negotiations at a
mutually agreed time and venue, a modest but real outcome from a
meeting that Hezbollah's chief had urged Lebanon to cancel.
Hezbollah was not present. Its leader, Naeem Kassem, had
explicitly rejected the talks and told Lebanon's government
not to engage. Lebanon's government does not
control Hezbollah. It cannot stop Hezbollah from
firing rockets at Israel, regardless of what its
ambassador agrees in Washington. Any framework that emerges from
these talks requires a separate enforcement mechanism that
includes the group that is doing the fighting, a group that has
already said it rejects the entire process.
Israel's stated goal in Lebanon is to disarm Hezbollah and reach
a generational peace agreement. Hezbollah's stated goal is to
continue operating as an armed force in Lebanon.
Those goals are not bridgeable through ambassador level talks
hosted by the US State Department.
They are at best a beginning of a beginning for Iran.
Even a beginning of a beginning on Lebanon has value.
Any visible movement toward a Lebanon arrangement, even
preliminary Israeli Lebanese engagement, weakens Iran score
justification for keeping the Strait of Hormuz closed.
If Lebanon is visibly moving toward a ceasefire framework,
Iran can no longer argue that Hormuz must stay closed until
Lebanon is resolved. That diplomatic linkage Lebanon
Progress unlocks Hormuz Progress is the chain that makes the
Washington talks relevant to the Islamabad process.
Senate Democrats, led by Chuck Schumer, pushed again for a war
powers vote on Wednesday. Schumer called the war an epic
fail, citing rising US fuel prices in the absence of a
nuclear agreement. Republicans continued to block
the vote in the Senate. In New York.
Police arrested approximately 90 protesters in Manhattan, among
them whistle blower Chelsea Manning, actor Hari Neff and New
York City Council member Alexa Aviles, who were blocking
traffic as par demonstrations against the war and US arms
sales to Israel. The protest was organized by
Jewish Voice for Peace, one of the groups that has been among
the most consistent organizers of anti war demonstrations in
the United States throughout this conflict.
The arrests are a reminder that the domestic political cost of
this conflict has not disappeared.
Even as the ceasefire and the prospect of a second round of
talks have pushed it off the front page.
The war powers question remains legally and constitutionally
unresolved. Trump authorized Operation Epic
Fury without a congressional declaration of war.
The blockade represents an ongoing act of military force
conducted without specific congressional authorization.
Whether those legal questions will ever produce a binding
congressional constraint on the president's ability to act in a
Strait of Hormuz is, at this point unclear, but they are
accumulating as political pressure that will intensify if
the ceasefire expires and bombing restarts. 6 days remain
before April 22nd. The second round of talks is
being actively arranged. The blockade turned back six
ships on its first full day. A sanctioned Chinese tanker pass
through Iran is digging out its missile cities, the IMF
downgraded the global economy, Israel and Lebanon met in
Washington, and Iran's regime sources said they are preparing
for the next round of war while simultaneously weighing a return
to the negotiating table. Both things are happening.
Both are real. Whether diplomacy or military
preparation wins the next six days is the question this
conflict has been asking since February 28th.
It has not yet been answered. Six days is an extraordinarily
short time to reach an agreement between two countries that have
been at war for 47 days, that have not had a functioning
diplomatic relationship for 47 years, and that arrived at the
Islamabad talks with positions the negotiators themselves
described as far apart, not only in substance but in style and
temperament. The specific issues that remain
unresolved. Iran's nuclear program, Hormuz
governance, the sanctions architecture, war reparations,
regional proxy networks and Lebanon are not issues that any
diplomatic team has resolved in six days in the history of the
modern Middle East. What 6 days can produce is a
framework that extends the time available.
A 45 to 60 day ceasefire extension, as Turkey's foreign
minister floated on Monday, would not resolve any of those
issues. It would buy the time to attempt
to resolve them. The difference between an
agreement that extends the ceasefire and an agreement that
ends the war is the difference between a pause and a
resolution. And right now, a pause is the
most that the situation can realistically produce.
If the second round of talks produces A ceasefire extension
with a commitment from Iran to hold Hormuz traffic steady and a
commitment from the US to suspend the blockade during the
extension period, that would be a diplomatic outcome that allows
both sides to step back from the edge of April 22nd without
either side having to make the nuclear concessions that
Islamabad could not bridge. If this podcast is helping you
make sense of what is happening, please take 30 seconds to leave
a review on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
It makes an enormous difference to how many people find the
shell. This has been episode 47 of Epic
Fury, the US Iran war podcast. Day 47, Six days left.
A second round of talks is coming.
Iran is digging out its missile cities.
The blockade turned back six ships, a Chinese tanker pass
through anyway, and the ceasefire clock keeps counting
down. We will be back very soon.