WASHINGTON—As US President Donald Trump inches closer to a potential deal with Iran, a bitter truth has emerged, one plain to anyone who has sat across from Iranian negotiators (or in a room down the hall): Getting Iran to the table is relatively easy. Making a deal is harder. Implementing a deal is all that really matters.
We learned this firsthand through flights halfway around the world, Iran’s maddening insistence on negotiating through intermediaries, and the endless, grinding waiting. These experiences—which the Trump administration is all too familiar with—also helped produce the 2023 deal to secure the release of wrongfully detained Americans from Iran.
Abram Paley holds a rare distinction: he is the last American official to sign a deal with Iran. That agreement secured the release of five Americans in exchange for the commutation of the sentences for five Iranians held in US prisons and the transfer of frozen Iranian assets from South Korea to restricted accounts in Qatar. Those assets remain frozen, at least for now. Nate Swanson was in the White House the day the hostage deal was implemented, serving in the National Security Council (NSC).
As friends and former colleagues, we have had a running exchange of calls, texts, and emails over the past few weeks revisiting our own experiences, the lessons we drew from them, and what matters in the current moment. What follows is an abridged version of that conversation.
