Dr. Janice Stein

I think misreads deeply what goes on when you decapitate a leadership like this.

I think a big problem for the United States is they don't know who they're negotiating with.

Yeah.

It's bad on both sides.

Right.

It's bad because the Americans are sending business people with no experience keeping the experts out.

And it's complicated on the Iranian side because they're patching over these political differences.

But boy, they're bubbling right beneath the surface.

And you can it's an advanced picture, I think, of the infighting we will see inside Iran once the act of fighting is over.

You know, let me try to make the most charitable case I can and then say, no, those are not.

And I certainly don't want them there alone, which is functionally what we've got.

You know, diplomats like everybody else have their culture.

So they work very carefully, very slowly.

They bring documents with them to the table and technical experts who can solve.

And, you know, Peter, it's interesting because there's a culture, an international culture around how you do this.

So I'll give you a document.

and you'll say no i don't like this phrase or i don't accept this phrase and then you'll put some square brackets around it that's a signal to me that you can't accept that we'll work our way through the whole document once and we'll have square brackets from you square brackets for me then we'll go to round two and we'll focus on the material that's in the square brackets and see how many we can reduce

So it's very deliberate.

It's very linear.

And it breaks often only when the heads of the delegations ask for pauses to consult their experts.