Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are meeting in Istanbul today for their first direct peace talks in more than three years. US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is not attending, says he does not expect a “breakthrough”. Donald Trump says he will meet Vladimir Putin “as soon as we can set it up”. MPs are debating the bill to legalise assisted dying in England and Wales today for the first time since significant changes were made to it, including removing the need for a High Court judge to sign off each request. A second vote on the bill is expected in June. The annual Sunday Times rich list reveals the biggest decline in UK billionaires in the chart’s history, from 165 last year to 156 today. In top spot is 85-year-old Gopi Hinduja with a fortune of £35bn, despite losing £5.2m a day over the past 12 months, while King Charles’s wealth has increased by £30m to £640m, putting him level with Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murthy.

Why Iranians want a deal with Trump

In the past month, says Alex Vatanka in Foreign Policy, talks between Tehran and Washington have “shifted into overdrive”. After a seven-year freeze, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has made a “stunning, if not entirely surprising” reversal, approving a new nuclear deal with only “basic red lines”. In 2019, when Donald Trump sent Japan’s then prime minister Shinzo Abe to open talks in Tehran, Khamenei vowed never to negotiate with the US president, calling him only “that man”. Today, such hauteur is no longer an option: Iran’s economy has been crippled by two decades of international sanctions; inflation and unemployment are rampant; Tehran’s regional proxies Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis are being mullered; and even Iran’s prodigious oil reserves are going untapped because the government lacks the funds to invest. So “Khamenei has opted for diplomacy”.

To die-hards in Iran’s anti-American camp, any talks at all are simply unconscionable. But these voices represent a “tiny fringe”, who are painted by the country’s burgeoning pro-democracy camp as “ideological dinosaurs”. And the nutters are up against the 80% of Iranians who approve of negotiations, along with the large cohort of pragmatists in the regime and the “battered business class”, all of whom long for a deal. Insiders say Khamenei’s inner circle started “quietly engaging” Trump’s people two years ago, to prepare for any scenario in last year’s election. Cleverly, Iran’s pragmatic and technocratic factions have publicised the Ayatollah’s endorsement of nuclear talks. Now hardline critics must either fall into line, or risk publicly challenging Khamenei and inciting the ire of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Some of the “euphoria” surrounding the talks is clearly premature – the fourth round last weekend in Oman contained “no apparent breakthrough”. But for the first time in a while, “both sides seem determined to continue negotiating”.