\tWendy Sherman speaks during a meeting in Wellington, New Zealand in August 2022. | Hagen Hopkins\/Getty Images\t<\/p>\n
American and Iranian negotiators are reportedly\u00a0getting closer\u00a0to a deal that would end the weeks-long war between the nations, following the collapse of in-person talks in Islamabad last weekend. In his announcement Sunday, Vice President JD Vance initially sounded pretty hopeless about the whole thing, as you might expect of a man whose\u00a0dreams had just been smashed. But now there are reports of backchannel phone calls, Pakistani delegations, frameworks of frameworks\u2026it\u2019s all very\u00a0The Diplomat.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Incidentally, my colleagues at the\u00a0Today, Explained\u00a0podcast just scored a fascinating interview with an actual diplomat: Wendy Sherman, the former deputy secretary of state and President Barack Obama\u2019s top negotiator for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. So this morning, we\u2019re turning to Sherman to (try to) understand the Trump administration\u2019s screwups in Iran in 2026.<\/p>\n
In\u00a0her new interview with Vox\u2019s Noel King, Sherman cautioned against being too \u201creductive\u201d in discussing the outcomes of the war or the talks. (Iran\u00a0has\u00a0absolutely been weakened, she said.) But she outlined five areas where the Trump administration\u2019s approach has, so far, failed.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Problem No. 1: They sent the B team to negotiate<\/p>\n
Nearly 300 Americans descended on Islamabad for the most recent round of US-Iranian negotiations, including national security advisers, regional specialists, and Vice President JD Vance, who led the US delegation. But earlier rounds of negotiations were helmed by guys like Jared Kushner (Donald Trump\u2019s son-in-law) and Steve Witkoff (Trump\u2019s personal friend). Whatever their merits, neither man holds any particular expertise on Iran (or a real government position).\u00a0<\/p>\n
To further complicate matters, the US attacked Iran twice during previous rounds of ceasefire negotiations that Kushner and Witkoff hosted. So they don\u2019t exactly radiate credibility, Sherman said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Problem No. 2: They pursued a strategy that benefited Russia<\/p>\n
Whatever the outcome of these peace talks, no one makes out better than Russian President\u00a0Vladimir Putin. While the war in Iran is costing the US\u00a0something like $2 billion a day, it could generate\u00a0as much as $151 billion\u00a0in additional\u00a0revenue\u00a0this year for the Russian government.<\/p>\n
Russia benefits both from rising oil prices and from the relaxation of long-standing US sanctions, which Trump partially lifted in March. That windfall has already eased a domestic economic crisis in Russia and allowed Putin to continue his Ukraine war.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But that\u2019s not the only way that Russia \u2014 and other US adversaries, including China \u2014 benefit from the war in Iran. The US will also emerge from the conflict weaker than it began, Sherman said: \u201cWe have just spent billions of dollars. We have reduced our inventory of weapons that we may need for other theaters. We have undermined our alliances.\u201d<\/p>\n
Problem No. 3: They badly damaged the world economy<\/p>\n
At this point, I probably don\u2019t need to list the myriad and diverse ways that the war \u2014 and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz \u2014 has destabilized the global economy. Just this Tuesday, Britain\u2019s finance minister slammed Trump for what she called a costly \u201cmistake\u201d and \u201cfolly.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whatever you make of that \u201cfolly\u201d bit, however, the cost was predictable, Sherman said. In fact, it came up repeatedly during the 2015 nuclear negotiations.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe constantly said to the United States Congress, \u2018if we risk war, it could close the Strait of Hormuz; it could increase the gas prices; it could take down the international economy,\u2019\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
Problem No. 4: They did not, in fact, have the Iranians\u2019 \u201cbacks\u201d<\/p>\n
President Trump initially urged Iranians to rise up against the regime, promising that the US would support them. Now, regime change is no longer a focus of either the US military campaign or negotiations to end it. That\u2019s a major blow to many pro-democracy activists in Iran and throughout the Iranian diaspora, as the writer and advocate\u00a0Roya Rastegar wrote for Vox\u00a0last month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIranian citizens who do want freedom\u2026have been completely forgotten in this process,\u201d Sherman said. \u201cThe regime in place in Iran now is more hardline than the one before, if you can believe it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Problem No. 5: They actually made the nuclear problem worse<\/p>\n
As\u00a0my colleague Joshua Keating has written, Trump\u2019s quest to stop Iran from getting a nuke could actually\u00a0encourage\u00a0the regime to seek out a bomb. Why? Because in the present world (dis)order, that actually looks like the best or only way to protect against US intervention.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, if Iran gets a bomb, other countries will want one too \u2014 including close US allies, Sherman said. So the world may ultimately become\u00a0more\u00a0likely to see a nuclear attack because of Trump\u2019s war.<\/p>\n
The bottom line? \u201cThe United States, in my view, has been set back.\u201d<\/p>\n
Listen to\u00a0the full interview with Wendy Sherman here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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