Wendy Sherman

We said they could only have so many kilograms of a stockpile, not enough for a nuclear weapon.

that there would be extensive monitoring and verification by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and other countries would begin to be able to do commerce inside of Iran.

The U.S.

still had an embargo, but that would put our European colleagues on the ground in Iran, and we hoped over time that might open up channels to work on several other issues as well.

And we knew at the time, if we could not make a deal

then we might find ourselves in military conflict and it would be terrible.

All of the things that have happened now, we knew would happen.

It really depends on what the objectives are for the president of the United States and for Iran.

Right now, what President Trump has said is he wants to make sure Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon.

He wants to make sure they don't have missiles or the development of missiles that could reach the United States that could bring a nuclear weapon our way.

He wants to open the Strait of Hormuz.

He wants to stop Iran from funding proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas, the Houthis in Yemen, because he thinks they are

create a risk for Israel, who is our ally, and create a risk for all of the countries in the Gulf region.

That's a lot of things to want.

Iran, on the other hand, now sees that it has control of the Strait of Hormuz, and so they're looking to maintain that leverage because it allows them to project power in the region.

They want to ensure that they maintain the

a right to enrichment.

The United States does not believe countries have a right to enrichment, and they want to be able to continue to have relationships with Hezbollah and Hamas and the Houthis.

So there's a big gap, and it's sort of curious because the negotiation team on our side is quite small.

The negotiation team on their side includes