Mark Halperin

Is Iran even open to that?

The president says yes.

The president of the United States says yes, that that's going to have to happen.

Presumably, Iran has said something to give assurances that they're open to that.

Because while they claim to be open to that before this war started, the reason this war started was the U.S.

stopped believing that Iran was a good faith actor at all.

on this question of giving up its nuclear weapons.

When I ask people in the United States, government, how can you negotiate with these people who have a long track record of lying,

of cheating in the nuclear programs, of evading any sort of monitoring done by the international community, how can you trust them?

The answer is, well, it's going to be a lot of verification.

It's going to take a lot of convincing that Iran's telling the truth.

So I was skeptical before the president's deadline on Tuesday that they could reach an agreement because they are so far apart on so many issues.

including nuclear.

Now, there's other things like Iran says America can't have military bases in the Middle East.

That's a non-starter too.

But the president has made a non-starter getting rid of the nuclear material.

And honestly, I don't think there's anybody in the U.S.

government, maybe in the Iranian government, who can tell you, yes, Iran's going to give up its material.

Don't know.

And the last ambiguity I want to talk about is this notion of a 10-point plan.