00:00What's your take on who's being sent to these meetings and whether or not they're going to be productive?
00:05Well, I think it's a good thing. I think it's a good thing if the United States and Iran are
00:08actually talking as opposed to simply tweeting at each other, you know, nasty things that suggest a breakdown.
00:15But we've seen this movie before, you know, heading into a week in which I think the president is probably
00:19concerned about market reaction.
00:22He wants to send a positive signal that maybe at a minimum these talks could be extended and the ceasefire
00:29could continue.
00:31But the fundamental problem, and there are two of them, have not been addressed.
00:34One is that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, and there's no indication that unless the United States puts something
00:40serious on the table to compensate Iran in some way, sanctions relief or something else, that the Iranians are inclined
00:44to open it.
00:45And second, this nuclear material, which we've talked about, you know, for weeks now, highly enriched uranium that Iran retains,
00:52despite the United States having bombed it many times and told Iran they have to give this up in order
00:57for the war to end.
00:58Those are the two big issues in the talks, and we don't see many closer to resolving them.
01:01John, I want to ask you about realism in the context of these negotiations.
01:04And you have a deep familiarity, of course, with negotiations involving the Iranians.
01:08And we've talked over the last few weekends just about the amount of time it took to get to the
01:11JCPOA agreement.
01:13This was something we measured in months, not in weeks or days, as it seems like we're trying to do
01:17here.
01:18So I'm curious what you observed about that first round of talks when the vice president went to Pakistan, emerged
01:24from those meetings with nothing to show for them.
01:26Now we have Steve Witkoff going there.
01:28What does it say to you about how we should be thinking realistically about the way that these two sides
01:34can come to some sort of agreement here to stop the fighting in the Middle East?
01:39Well, as you said, I was part of negotiations with Iran that took place over a period of several years.
01:44Even the final phase of the negotiations to reach the Iran nuclear deal back in 2015 took 19 consecutive days
01:52for the secretary of state deployed to Vienna to really just finish off the last few issues in the talks.
01:58It was the longest any secretary of state, John Kerry, in that in that case, had ever been outside the
02:03country in one place in the history of the United States.
02:07Negotiations with the Iranians take time.
02:08They take patience.
02:10They take expertise.
02:11And airdropping the vice president into Pakistan for one day was never going to get the job done.
02:17I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing if J.D. Vance does not go to this round.
02:21The vice president has many wide ranging responsibilities, probably can't just live in Pakistan for long enough to get a
02:27deal like this done.
02:28But whoever goes is going to have to treat this as a serious, detailed technical exercise.
02:35The Iranians know what they're looking for.
02:36They know the file and they are going to be willing to put in the time.
02:39We have to be willing to take that same approach.
02:42Talk to us about the technical aspect of that, because one of the criticisms I've heard from people inside the
02:47State Department at the IAEA is that Steve Wyckoff may be very good.
02:50at negotiating in his private sector life, but he's not a technical expert.
02:55He does not know the ins and outs of nuclear material, how to move it, you know, enrichment levels, things
03:00like that.
03:01And they're not bringing those experts with them, even for these brief stints of negotiations.
03:07Do you think, have you heard concern that they don't have the knowledge base to successfully carry out these negotiations?
03:13Is there a chance they're going to get hoodwinked by the Iranians?
03:17Well, look, not every negotiator can be an expert on all of the different elements involved in these talks.
03:23There are technical issues regarding nuclear physics and the inputs to a potential nuclear weapon.
03:28There are technical sanctions issues, legal technicalities about how you would give Iran maybe sanctions relief in some cases and
03:35not in others.
03:36Very careful wording.
03:37You don't need to be an expert in all those things.
03:39But as you just said, what you do need is expertise in the team while you're negotiating so that you
03:44can check Iranian demands against somebody who really does know the ins and outs and what the implications of a
03:50concession or a demand might be.
03:53And one of the problems in this administration is they don't seem to have a lot of respect for expertise.
03:57Many experts in the U.S. government have been driven out of their jobs during the course of the first
04:03one year plus of the Trump administration.
04:05So whether there are even enough people left in these buildings to be able to help the talks is one
04:10question.
04:10Whether if they are there, they're going to be brought to Pakistan, I think, is another.
04:14And if you just look at the history of how these talks have gone up till now, they don't seem
04:19to be relying too heavily on experts.
04:21They go by vibes.
04:22They go by feel.
04:24And that has not worked out so well so far.
04:26John, indulge me for a moment here.
04:28You've done enough cable news to know that the president tweets or posts we have to read from it if
04:31it's germane to what we're talking about here.
04:33So we have a very lengthy post here on Truth Social from the president.
04:36I'm going to read from it.
04:37He addresses what we were covering.
04:38Yesterday, shots fired on these two ships in the Strait of Hormuz.
04:41That wasn't nice, was it, the president writes.
04:43He announces his representatives are going to Islamabad, Pakistan.
04:46They're going to be there tomorrow evening for negotiations.
04:49Then he gets into who actually has closed the strait here.
04:51He says Iran has announced they're closing it.
04:53He says the U.S. has closed it because a blockade was already in place.
04:57Then he talks about a deal.
04:59We're offering a very fair and reasonable deal, the president writes.
05:02And I hope they take it because if they don't, the United States is going to knock out every single
05:05power plant, every single bridge in Iran.
05:08No more Mr. Nice Guy, President Trump writes.
05:10They'll come down fast.
05:12They'll come down easy.
05:12And if they don't take the deal, all caps, it will be my honor to do what has to be
05:17done, which should have been done to Iran by other presidents for the last 47 years.
05:20It's time for the Iranian killing machine to end.
05:24John, let me ask you about the deal.
05:26The president, again, putting it in all caps there.
05:27And I think that's something that stymied me, perhaps, Christina, over the course of the weekend.
05:31What deal is on the table, if any, what the president's talking about?
05:34We've heard about nuclear dust.
05:35We've heard about not having a nuclear program.
05:38Is it clear to you, as somebody who was in government for a long time, continues to follow all of
05:41this, what, in fact, the United States wants in a deal with Iran at this moment?
05:47So the fundamentals of any deal with Iran when it comes to their nuclear program, when it comes to ending
05:52this war.
05:52By the way, when it came to the deal that President Obama negotiated with the Iranians back in 2015 is
05:58some measure of sanctions relief that benefits the Iranian economy.
06:01That is what they are negotiating for.
06:03They fought a war to be able to preserve their nuclear program as it currently exists, to preserve their government.
06:10And the only way that they are going to stop resisting traffic going through the strait is if they are
06:16given some sort of compensation that allows them to begin rebuilding their country.
06:21There's been a tremendous amount of damage done, yes, to Iran's military, but also to many of Iran's civilian structures
06:27and requirements.
06:28And they're going to demand some sort of financial benefit from that, whether that's a toll going through the strait
06:33or sanctions relief.
06:34They're under tremendous sanctions pressure from the United States.
06:37On the U.S. side, they want two things.
06:39They want traffic resuming through the Strait of Hormuz so the global economy can go back to at least a
06:44version of what it was before this war.
06:47And they would like Iran to part with 1,000 pounds, 440 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that Iran retains
06:54that give it a relatively short pathway to a nuclear weapon or to enough material for a nuclear weapon if
06:59they choose to do that.
07:00So those are the two sides.
07:02It's not actually all that complicated at the end of the day.
07:05And so what I would imagine is the United States is putting some versions of financial packages on the table
07:10that would benefit the Iranian economy.
07:12And if the Iranians decide it's enough, they may well take that deal.
07:15If they don't, I think they believe that time is on their side and the economic pain being caused by
07:21the war hurts the United States and its partners and allies more than it hurts Iran.
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