Transcript of US/Iran Peace Talks, Hungary Election Preview, Congress Returns Monday New

Peace talks in Islamabad. Iran's delegation is there, and so are negotiators for the U.S.

Among them, Vice President J.D. Vance, Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner. I'm Scott Simon.

I'm Ayesha Rascoe, and this is Up First from NPR News. Iran made new demands yesterday, including a ceasefire in Lebanon. We'll have more on the peace talks in just a minute.

Ahead of tomorrow's national election in Hungary, what are voters there telling us about Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his younger challenger, Péter Míjar?

Plus, congressional lawmakers have been on a 2-week break and come back to Washington next week. What's on their big to-do list?

Please stay with us. We've got the news you need to start your weekend. 6 weeks after the United States and Israel launched a war in Iran, delegations from Tehran and Washington, D.C. are in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad to begin negotiations to end the war.

The war has killed thousands of people, mostly in Iran and Lebanon. It sent the price of oil soaring, and it's damaged the global economy.

NPR's international correspondent Dia Hadid has been following developments from her base in Mumbai. Dia, thanks for being with us.

You're welcome, Scott.

Any developments overnight?

So far, each delegation has met with the Pakistani Prime Minister, Sherbaz Sharif. Local media reports that the Iranians, who are being led by the Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalebaf, met with Sharif to determine the timing and manner of negotiations, which suggests there's still no agreement on how the two sides will communicate. And an Iranian government spokeswoman just told state TV that they're negotiating, quote, with their finger on the trigger. Now, analysts say this is a marathon. Here's Kathy Gannon. She's the former Islamabad bureau chief for the Associated Press.

There's not going to be a settlement today, but there might be an agreement to keep talking.

To keep talking. But already, Scott, there's concern that Pakistan might be drawn into the fighting. And that's because even as Pakistani leaders mediate between the Americans and Iran, the defense ministry of Saudi Arabia just announced that a contingent of Pakistani forces had arrived in the kingdom to beef up defenses there. That's because the two countries have a defense pact, and it's one reason why Pakistan has been so keen to negotiate an end to this war. I should add, though, regardless of what happens today, this is already historic. It's the first face-to-face engagement since 2015, and that's when the Obama administration negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran. That deal was upended by Trump.

Do we know at this point what either side is demanding or negotiating?

There are various versions of a 10-point plan that is being distributed. Now, what the Iranians say they want, some of their demands, is the release of $6 billion in frozen assets, an end to attacks. It wants guarantees surrounding its nuclear program, and it's also demanding changes to how shipping happens through the Strait of Hormuz. It appears they want to charge ships for passing through, which is new.

And the US is demanding what?

Do we know?

Well, President Trump's demands to end the war, just like his objectives in starting it, have shifted over time. But this is what he told media on Friday.

No nuclear weapon. That's 99% of it.

99% of it. He's also warned Iran that he can resume bombing at any time. But what's interesting here, Scott, is people I'm speaking to say the US really doesn't have a strong upper hand. Like, have a listen to the Islamabad-based security analyst Abdallah Khan.

We have never seen America so isolated in its military adventures. Diplomatically, the Americans have lost their clout in the region and in the world, obviously. There is no match to American military power. But you cannot win the wars with just use of power. I may sound a bit rude, but Americans turn out to be the losers.

Harsh words. Meanwhile, the Iranian regime has withstood for now the decapitation of much of its leadership. And if anything, analysts say it's even more hardline now. And they've effectively seized up the global economy by blocking the Strait of Hormuz. And Scott, I would say you could get a sense of that equality and how the two sides even arrived to Islamabad.

Well, tell us about that, if you would.

So the Iranian delegation arrived last night. They were greeted warmly by Pakistan's most powerful man, the army chief, with kisses on the cheeks. The US delegation was given a similar red carpet welcome. And it's important to note Pakistan can do this because it has good relations with Iran. The US and China are supporting their efforts. But even with all this, talks will be difficult. I mean, they nearly didn't happen at all.

Well, how so?

Well, the ceasefire that was announced last Tuesday has been shaky from the get-go over disagreement about whether it includes Lebanon, where there's been fighting between the Iranian proxy Hezbollah and Israel. Now, what we're hearing today is that the Lebanese and the Israelis are going to speak directly. So potentially we have another historic outcome from this 40-day war.

NPR's Diaa Hadid in Islamabad, thank you so much for being with us, Diaa.

You're welcome, Scott. Thank you.

Polls leading up to Hungary's national election tomorrow signal trouble for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

They show the 62-year-old Orbán trailing a younger challenger by double digits. President Trump, a big booster of Orbán's, sent Vice President J.D. Vance to Budapest earlier this week to drum up support: "And I stand here today because President Trump and I stand with Europe.

We stand for sovereignty. We stand for Hungary. And we stand shoulder to shoulder with the man who has done more to defend those values than anyone else: Viktor Orbán." NPR's Rob Schmitz was at the rally where Vice President Vance spoke.

He joins us now from Budapest: Rob, thanks for being with us.

Morning, Scott.

How can you measure the effect that Vice President Pence's appearance had on the Hungarian electorate?

It's hard to measure. You know, I've been speaking to voters in various parts of Hungary this week, and for those who support Viktor Orbán, they were thrilled that Vice President Pence made this visit to their country. But these are voters who were going to vote for Orbán anyway. I did manage to speak to voters who would be, I guess, in the swing voter category, and I got the sense that they had already made up their minds and that someone like Vice President Vance was not going to sway them.

Can you tell us why you believe Viktor Orbán is so far behind in the polls at the moment?

Well, in his nearly 16 straight years in power, Orbán has never had a challenger like he has now. And that challenger is a man named Péter Magyar. He's 45 years old. And like Orbán, he's a conservative. He actually comes from Orbán's own party. But unlike Orbán, he wants a closer relationship with the European Union, and he's made a name for himself by highlighting examples of what he calls Orbán's corruption as prime minister. Here's some tape from Magyar from a rally this past week. [Speaker] And Scott, he's saying here to his supporters that the vile power of Viktor Orbán does not represent the interests of Hungarians. They proudly say they represent Russian interests rather than Hungarian and European interests, he said.

And Rob, how close is Viktor Orbán to Russia and Vladimir Putin?

Viktor Orbán and his government are very close allies to the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin. In fact, in the days leading up to the election, recordings of Orbán's foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, speaking to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov were released, and they showed Szijjártó offering to hand over internal EU documents to Lavrov, as well as offering to lift EU sanctions that are placed against family members of Russian oligarchs. And that's something that Peter Magyar has called treasonous. And it's worth pointing out here that Orbán's campaign posters throughout Budapest have pictures of a smiling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy with the words, "Do not let him have the last laugh." Orbán has made an enemy out of Zelenskyy and blames him for starting the war, even though Russia invaded Ukraine in the first place.

And what else do Hungarians tell you about this election?

Well, we've met a lot of voters this past week, and I covered the last election here 4 years ago, and I'd say anecdotally I'm finding more and more voters this time around who have voted for Viktor Orbán in the past who are now changing their votes to Péter Magyar because they are fed up with the inflation in this country, the state of the economy, and the politics of Orbán. But Orbán is a survivor, and he's managed to stay in power this long, so it'll be interesting what happens tomorrow night when the votes are counted.

NPR's Rob Schmitzer will be hosting All Things Considered live from Budapest as votes come in on Sunday. So let's be sure to tune in. Rob, thanks so much for being with us.

Thanks for having me.

Washington, D.C. has had a busy 2 weeks, but Congress was out of town.

They return Monday, and they have a short amount of time to get a long list of things done. NPR congressional reporter Eric McDaniel is here to talk about it. Hi, Eric.

Hey there.

So what is on this big to-do list?

So President Trump, in addition to all the news he made on Iran last week, wants the Department of Homeland Security reopened. I'm sure I don't have to tell anyone, you've been hearing about this shutdown for so long, it's become the longest agency shutdown ever. And there is a plan: first pass a short-term bill to fund the whole agency Z-minus immigration enforcement, then go through the longer process of funding all of DHS for the rest of Trump's time in office. Agencies, as you know, are typically just funded for a year at a time, so that's a big deal. The issue is that this is a plan Republican leaders came up with, and there are a lot of rank-and-file House Republicans who aren't on board for the short-term part of the deal. They're quick to point out that Speaker Mike Johnson himself called it a joke just before they left town.

They got to figure that out to make sure airport security agents and others in the agency get their regular pay, But they've also got another big deadline, right?

Right. And this is huge. They need to renew the government's big spying tool. It's called FISA 702. That is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. It expires on April 20th. That's in just a week or so. And 702 lets the government collect the communication of more than 300,000 foreign nationals located outside of the United States without a warrant. Those make up a huge part of the details that go into things like Trump's daily intelligence briefing.

Remind me again, why is this so controversial?

So it's controversial because those foreign nationals occasionally talk to people here inside the US. And so those communications get scooped up as part of this too. And usually to read your private communications or mine, law enforcement, in this case the FBI, has to convince a court that there's reason to believe that you may be doing something crooked. That's not so with FISA. There's administrative hurdles that are pretty stringent, but a court doesn't have to give any specific permission for agents to look through your stuff.

Well, talk to me more about the people who are opposed to this.

So what makes this fun to cover for me is it's not your usual partisan split. It's a different kind of ideological one, namely lawmakers who care a lot about privacy. And you get really weird combinations of folks calling for reform, right? You get the Democratic senator from Washington State working with the Republican senator from Utah, the Ohio Republican representative working with the California Democrat. And they actually might have enough support that Speaker Mike Johnson would have to let them propose some changes to the bill. Before it actually gets renewed.

What kind of changes are they looking for?

Well, the biggie is a warrant requirement before you can search for Americans' information in this big trove of stuff. The intelligence community and its allies, they hate that one. They say it's way too burdensome, that courts aren't set up for the thousands of asks that would be required, and it could preclude them from doing something like search to see where an American kidnapping victim is mentioned in terrorist communications, or at the very least slow that process way down. Civil liberties folks, though, they say that the bar should be high for a search of an American's communications. Per the Fourth Amendment.

And I imagine that lawmakers will have something to say about the war on Iran as well.

They will indeed. Democrats in both chambers are going to force votes attempting to constrain the president on the war. The Constitution, of course, gives Congress the power to declare war, although it hasn't worked that way in practice in a while. Those votes are expected to fail, as have all the past go-rounds at this. But after the president's post about ending Iranian civilization before he announced the ceasefire last week, Democrats have a lot of appetite to put Republicans on the record for supporting the war, which remains really unpopular with the American public.

And supporting that war, it will likely eventually include voting on whether to approve $1.5 trillion for the Department of Defense.

Right. The Trump administration recently asked for all that money as the annual appropriations for the Pentagon, and that's a record amount, way more than the government spends on non-military discretionary spending. And the thing is, we have no idea yet how much of that is aimed just at funding this conflict with Iran specifically.

Sounds like you're saying this is going to be a busy week.

I think that's right.

That's congressional reporter Eric McDaniel. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me.

And that's Up First for Saturday, April 11th, 2026. I'm Scott Simon.

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