David E. Sanger

It was intended to make sure that the Iranian program stayed in a box and that you would have at least a year's notice if the Iranians were racing for a bomb.

Then President Trump pulled out and the Iranians stayed in accord with the agreement for a year or two, then decided they were chumps to do that.

And they did race right to the edge of a bomb.

But, you know, Michael, I've been thinking about this, and there's no chance that we can go back to the kind of negotiation that took place in 2015.

Why?

That was quite limited.

It was just focused on the Iranian nuclear program, and even the effort by the U.S.

to expand it out to missiles failed.

But today, the war has unleashed so many more issues beyond the nuclear program itself.

I mean, first, the Iranians have demonstrated a huge ability to disrupt the global economy, to shut off the Strait of Hormuz.

That's now going to become a focus of negotiation.

In a way, it wasn't even a month ago.

Right.

In 2015, there was very little trust between the Iranians and the Americans, unpopular as the Obama deal was in Washington.

It was even more unpopular in Tehran.

We forget that because no one believed the U.S.

would carry through and lift sanctions.

Today, there's even less trust.

Back then—

the Iranians committed as part of the 2015 agreement that they would never seek a nuclear weapon, I'm not sure that the new government of Iran could get away with that today.