Dave Davies

Miller spent 25 years in the State Department advising Republican and Democratic presidents on Middle East policy and playing a key role in the Oslo peace process in the 1990s.

He received the State Department's Distinguished Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards.

He's now a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the author of five books.

We recorded our interview yesterday.

Aaron David Miller, welcome back to Fresh Air.

David, it's great to be here.

I love the program.

Good, good.

Well, let's get into this.

Maybe we should begin by how we got here.

You know, when President Trump announced last week that there was an agreement for a two-week ceasefire and then face-to-face negotiations in Pakistan –

Anybody who'd read the public statements by Trump and the Iranian authorities could see that they were just miles apart.

Was this breakdown after one day about what you expected?

Yeah, when Trump announced the ceasefire, there was no written agreement laying out the terms of the ceasefire.

Is that unusual?

Right.

It's interesting that Trump said in agreeing to the ceasefire and the negotiations that the US had received a 10-point proposal from Iran and believed that it was, quote, a workable basis on which to negotiate.

But the United States didn't release the 10 points, right?

They were subsequently released elsewhere or at least what it was believed to be the Iranian 10 points.

And they were basically a statement of very, very tough demands on the part of Iran, right?