Whether it is a substantive wage negotiation between trade unions and employers or negotiations between countries aimed at bringing a war to an end, there are striking commonalities when such negotiations reach an impasse or go off the rails.The authoritative negotiation programme at Harvard University in the US offers several guidelines on aspects that negotiating parties should carefully consider in advance to avoid being caught off guard if negotiations break down.According to the Harvard guidelines, the following questions should be considered beforehand: why would the other party want to negotiate with me? What do I have that the other party wants? How will historical relationships and cultural differences affect the negotiations? What would constitute a win for me, and how does that differ from the other party’s perspective? Am I negotiating with the right team on my side — and on the other side?Nicholas “Fink” Haysom, who was involved in the Convention for a Democratic South Africa (Codesa) and the negotiations over South Africa’s new constitution, published an article in 2002 entitled “Forty-one lessons from the South African negotiations”. In his guidelines he pointed out that all parties involved must commit to the negotiation process in order to reach an agreement and that unreasonable demands and conditions should be avoided.Unreasonable demands and conditions are often the death knell for wage negotiations. In a current negotiation with an iron ore mining company, for example, the employer has made the condition that its wage increase offer, which is below the inflation rate, will apply only if employees work on all 12 public holidays. It is not only trade unions that can act unreasonably.In addition to the unreasonable demands made by both Iran and the US, Iran is playing a game of cat and mouse with the US, and one wonders whether the American negotiators are experienced enough and have properly taken all the essential guidelines into account.Brett McGurk, a former US diplomat who was involved in hostage negotiations in Tehran, believes the US approaches negotiations through a lens of “power”, whereas Iran negotiates through a lens of “possession”. The US believes military action and economic pressure will force Iran to make concessions, while Iran believes it possesses something of value that it will not readily give up.McGurk explains that despite representing the world’s most powerful country, he found himself on the back foot because Iran possessed something ― people ― for which it could set the price. For Iran, possession therefore carries more weight than power. In addition to its nuclear programme, Iran now also partly controls the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic economic lever whose financial and political exchange value is astronomical, McGurk believes.The Americans should also have given greater consideration to cultural differences, as Iran’s ideological doctrines and the regime’s anti-Western agenda may not have been sufficiently taken into account.Turning back to trade union negotiations, it is clear that many employers underestimate the ideological foundations of certain trade unions. Striking for months, despite the loss of salary income, can be ideologically justified if conditions in a workplace are such that the strike is seen as an extension of their struggle against a capitalist system that exploits workers.Roger Fisher and William Ury of Harvard, authors of Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In, believe a neutral and credible facilitator should be used in large-scale or complex negotiations.During the recent Eskom wage negotiations, we experienced firsthand how a capable facilitator guided us towards a win-win three-year agreement. The art lies in getting the facilitator to understand your position and, often unconsciously, to help advance it. However, parties must guard against a facilitator deliberately favouring the opposing party.If a country such as China is supporting Iran behind the scenes financially and with military equipment, intending to weaken the US economy, an agreement remains a moving target that lies largely beyond the control of the American negotiators.During the negotiations over South Africa’s new constitution in 1994-96, Cyril Ramaphosa chaired the Constitutional Assembly. As a junior civil servant in the department of constitutional development, I observed how, drawing on his many years of experience as a trade union negotiator, he employed the fine art of negotiation.Among other things, Ramaphosa paraphrased the parties’ positions for the purposes of the minutes. He often articulated the ANC’s positions more strongly than they had originally been presented, while he paraphrased the National Party’s positions in such a way that, sitting in my corner, I wondered why people were nodding in agreement to their own detriment when it was not actually what they had said.Similarly, I wonder what role Qatar and Pakistan, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as the primary facilitator, are playing in the US-Iran negotiations. If the US negotiators cannot persuade the facilitators to view the American position through a US lens, the facilitators become little more than messengers for the US.An analysis of the negotiating teams shows that Iran has the more experienced individuals. If a country such as China is supporting Iran behind the scenes financially and with military equipment, intending to weaken the US economy, an agreement remains a moving target that lies largely beyond the control of the American negotiators.The consequences of failed interstate negotiations, as well as employer-trade union negotiations, are almost always destructive and have a ripple effect. In the case studies mentioned above the consequences are also closely intertwined.The failed negotiations between the US and Iran affect the global economy. Higher fuel prices in turn put pressure on local wage negotiations and can fuel strikes. Strikes undermine investor confidence and harm the local economy. In this way, the ripple effect of failed negotiations spreads further and further, and the economic consequences are ultimately felt at every level.• Gideon du Plessis is general secretary of trade union Solidarity.