same day. what do we read into it? i think we read into it it was a very long and complex negotiation with a lot of moving parts. there are several different elements to this. one is we did owe the iranians for a contract that was passed when the shah was on his throne and never delivered and the british government has recognized for many years that we owed the money. that wasn t an issue. equally unfortunately, the easternian government has had a bit of a habit of taking what they call geo nationals and they regard as iranian citizens, kind of hostage, if you like, in exchange for things that they want from other governments. it is not just the british. it s the australians. it s the germans. many people have geo nationals ins cars rated in iran for purposes of what we call trumped up charges and that ends tragically and others were caught up in this. so that was an awful human
there s a lot of wriggling around the issue, but there was. this is last christmas in the run up, and the reason it s such a big issue is at the time, the government told everyone in the uk you could not meet indoors for an event like that, and many, many people at the time went to great lengths to follow the rules. they didn t visit elderly or dying relatives. yet what came out first of all was the news that there had been this party, and then also the video. that s what really sort of put a rocket booster under this. and this video was not for broadcast, it was almost like a practice run of a question and answer session with the then prime ministerial spokesperson. this was last year, a rehearsal for a press conference.
demands seems to be if president biden is guaranteeing ukraine would join nato. i think it s interesting to see that why is president putin doing this at the moment? why has he put 175,000 troops on this border? creating extreme tension? deliberately ramped things up. yes. 0ne one possibility, yes, if you take it at face value, his concerns about nato. but ambassadors who were there before say this wasn t an issue. it was not as bothered about it. he didn t think it was going to happen. the idea that russia feels threatened is actually is not was not borne out by their discussions. actually, the country that is threatened is ukraine by those russian forces, by russian support in eastern ukraine for the separatists there, the men and material that have floded in. the so called green men and all the rest of it.
with ukraine. - and we ve had a very rapid l couple of days of diplomacy, and i think that that was kind of forcing the issue into the public domain. and i think that s sort of whatjoe biden is what his approach is, frankly. you know, to understand biden s approach to this kind of foreign policy - issue, potential crisis, you have to remember he s basically a senator - a senior senator and he sj always looking for the topic you can talk about, i rather than the crisis you need to confront. so, i think that he s looking i to see where the areas we can talk about are. it s interesting you say that because on friday, he was talking about gasoline prices in the united states, which is a good solid domestic policy issue.
a nato spokesperson said when it comes to ukraine, there will be, he said, on ukraine, negotiations on the right for countries to choose their own path. that s ukraine, whether it would one day become a nato member, but that s really not actually likely for a very long time, partly because they know how difficult an issue this is and how problematic it is. one of president putin s demands seems to me, president biden is guaranteeing ukraine would join nato. it s interesting to see, why is president putin doing this? why has he put 175,000 troops on this border? creating extreme tension? deliberately ramped things up. yes. ambassadors who were there before say this wasn t an issue. he didn t think it was going to happen.