Chris Voss

And so to back up a little bit, a hostage negotiator, I mean, when I got a guy inside of a bank, I still got a SWAT team on the outside.

Now, I'm not – a SWAT team is part of the negotiating team.

Now, we're not going to go to violence first, but at some point in time, there are minor incremental things to be done to remind the other side that they can't toy with you.

They can't lengthen this out, manipulate you.

from now till eternity, which is kind of what the Iranians are famous for doing.

You know, half measures and agreements that they don't intend to comply with.

And a mediator gets in the middle.

A mediator's ego gets more invested in getting some kind of deal as opposed to a deal that's going to be workable.

And they can be faked out by somebody who says, well, I'll try.

Well,

A mediator says, oh, we're close to a deal.

The other side said, I'll try.

Well, I'll try means I have no intention of complying.

I'm just going to fake agree.

And mediators are famous for being suckered by that.

So I don't put a lot of stock in a mediator's assessment in any negotiation that if mediators were phenomenal at settling things, then everything would be settled by mediators.

Yeah, I doubt that that was ever...

actually agreed to by the iranians and the iranians made it quite clear to whitcoff in a face-to-face meeting that they felt that they had the right to enrich uranium from now until the end of time so regardless of what the media said the iranians never said that in face-to-face negotiations i mean well that's also assuming that whitcoff told the truth about that because the all i know is that

Yeah, well, I mean, I think the one thing that everybody continues to miss here, which is different about this American president, is he's just interested in collaboration.

He doesn't really care who's in charge on the other side, as long as you collaborate and the collaboration is a two-way street.