Thread by @lrozen

I don’t have any experience w/ North Korea nuclear diplomacy. I covered US/international nuclear diplomacy with Iran intensively since 2012

Am so grateful to @AlMonitor which let me cover the years of mid level talks in Geneva & Vienna & wherever where often nothing much happened

& if a US negotiator often at truly last minute said there was room on the plane, let me get on the plane.

there is often body language or a stray expert to talk to or something one observed that is not a diplomatic breakthrough but

combined with other reporting, some that came after, one learned key breakthroughs or shifts had occurred.

one of the later ones was when AEOI chef Salehi joined the talks in the winter of 2015, shortly after Munich security conference.

Zarif or US side had realized without iran nuclear chef buy in, they could never get Iran to agree to actually cut their enrichment capacity

was an obama admin red line, partly based on his discussions with netanyahu, that he could not accept deal that did not extend iran breakout

to minimun one year. so salehi joined talks, as moniz counterpart, & fairly quickly iran agreed to reduce its natanz centrifuges which

it had always refused to do. by early april, had framework of jcpoa agreed, by july 14, comprehensive deal agreed.

and even with opposition from Netanyahu and some pro Israel groups, Congress did not in end vote to block the deal in august 2015.

Then, ahead of implementation day, Iran had to basically dismantle all of these parts of its program and have IAEA verify it to get relief

Iran did so, IAEA verified it, & on same day, in Jan.2016 there was partial US Iran prisoner swap, which unfortunately left Siamak Namazee

behind, later followed by detention of his father and others.

even many Republican critics of deal in 2015 acknowledge in 2017/18 Iran has implemented it more than they expected. & there’s not good

alternative.

or there is not a better alternative.

Remember interviewing former top diplomat Bill Burns in August 2015, just after JCPOA reached, about what will next US admin do?

& he said what he told his Iranian counterparts, is perfect implementation matters. basically implementation over time will build confidence

so that the next US admin, whether Clinton or R, sees the benefit. and Iran did its part. (& suspect they were worried abt clinton win too)

experience seeing the ups and downs of US/intl Iran nuclear diplomacy, with its ups and downs and compromises

have made me guess you would say dismayed at Trump/Pompeo team’s extraordinary arrogance & untested swagger. they basically got nothing.

which, in normal context of there being no good options on North Korea, would understand. but in context of their derision

of Iran nuclear deal, they are fools, and bullshitters. and arrogant pricks. and don’t deserve any good will.

the standards they have set themselves by dissing incredibly hard diplomacy to get iran nuclear deal they’re trying to kill is quite high

and they have hardly begun to meet it

maybe they will learn to have a little humility. maybe they will show results, at some point. maybe not

PS shout outs to my talks stalking partners in crime @Hannahkaviani & Niloofar

PS2/ don’t think ever fully unpacked from those talks. u kind of wash wash bag, dry clean dry clean bag, & keep rest of everything there