Can the U.S. and Iran rescue talks from ‘unrealistic’ expectations?

0:00Support for Here and Now Anytime comes from MathWorks, creator of MATLAB and Simulink software, to design and develop engineered systems, accelerating the pace of discovery in engineering and science. Learn more at mathworks.com. WBUR Podcasts, Boston. They don't give in easily. You have to be pretty tough to make progress. So I think now they feel like it's a setup. The Trump administration just wants full capitulation. And that's not likely to happen. There's no deal with Iran. So the U.S. goes back to what it thinks is its Trump card, threatening more attacks.

0:56It's Monday, April 13th, and this is Here and Now, Anytime from NPR and WVU. I'm Chris Bentley.

1:05Today on the show, peace talks between the U.S. and Iran fell apart after just a day. It's a dangerous bend of history that we are in the middle of, And we would certainly like to see talks resume and some kind of durable peace framework emerge over a period of time. It certainly can't happen in another one shot or black swan kind of arrangement. In a few minutes, we'll get the view from the talks host country, Pakistan. But first, Vice President J.D. Vance said the U.S. and Iran could not reach a deal over the weekend. and now the U.S. is threatening to blow up the ceasefire by attacking ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

1:49President Trump today said Iranian ships testing what he's calling a naval blockade would be, quote, eliminated. For more, we called up former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who was the lead negotiator for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under President Obama, which President Trump tore up in his first term. Wendy Sherman told Robin Young, It seems like this time the Trump administration barely tried to reach a deal. It's quite extraordinary. First of all, you cannot do a negotiation with Iran in one day. You can't even do it in a week. It takes time. The Europeans actually were negotiating with Iran for, oh, I don't know, a decade.

2:30And then it took us to get to a deal a good 18 months after some months of running around the country, not world, not doing very much. So I think that it was unrealistic to expect something in one day. And the Trump administration came in with maximalist demands and actually just wanted Iran to capitulate. No nation, even one as odious as the Iran regime is going to capitulate. And you use the word odious. You, as well as many others critical of what President Trump, how he's carrying this out, all agree that this is an odious leadership of Iran. But let me just, devil's advocate, you know, President Trump and his allies feel that what has been missing, the reason it took you so many years to get a deal, the reason it took Europe so many years to negotiate is because they didn't have the punch that he has.

3:25Well, I am all for punch. President Obama deployed the massive ordinance penetrator, which President Trump ultimately used because we wanted to have a credible threat of force. So I agree you need some punch. However, let's take this blockade. I understand that President Trump thinks if Iran has more economic pain, and it certainly has had a lot, and this will give them more, that they might be more flexible at the negotiating table. But we don't know what the second, third, and fourth order effects will be. Are we going to stop a Chinese ship? Are we going to stop a Russian ship? Will Iran use its coastal missile batteries?

4:08Will it use its drones? Will it attack our Gulf partners and allies? Will it use its fast boats to come after our ships? So thinking through what those second, third, and fourth order effects are, and most importantly, of course, what's it going to do to the price of oil? Even though the U.S. has lots of oil itself, the price is decided globally. So you restrict the amount of oil that can move through the world. It means that Americans are going to see not only their gasoline go up, they're going to see their groceries going to go up. They're going to see the price of an MRI because of helium go up.

4:46Farmers are going to have a hard time getting things planted because the cost of fertilizer is going to go up. So there's a lot at stake here for everyday Americans and their ability to live their lives. And why do you think, and you've said this, that it's harder now? You know, two things have happened that make this more difficult. You know, Iran has been negotiating with the U.S. June, October, and then seen assaults. You say Iran is actually more dug in than ever. So what makes it harder? I think they are more dug in because, as you pointed out twice before, when they were negotiating with Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, and they thought they were in the midst of a negotiation, they were attacked.

5:28And so they fully expect that we are not partners who actually will negotiate in good faith. It's not about trust. I don't trust the Iranians. They don't trust me. I never did. I respected that they had interests. I knew that they were coming to the table with their own politics, not politics I agree with. But you have to understand the culture. This is a culture of resistance. They don't give in easily. You have to be pretty tough to make progress. So I think now they feel like it's a setup. The Trump administration just wants full capitulation. And that's not likely to happen. I have to ask you, do you think there should be a change in the negotiating team?

6:11It's led by Vice President J.D. Vance. We saw him belittle, you know, a supposed ally, a Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office. Then there's Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. His background is in real estate and development, as is White House Special Envoy of the Middle East, Steve Witkoff. His background is in real estate. Do you think there needs to be a change? Well, look, at least when they went to Islamabad this time, they brought some experts with him. That had never happened before. And this is a highly technical negotiation. I had a team and thousands of people in the U.S. government behind me, Secretary Ernie Moniz, who's a nuclear physicist, a joint Secretary Kerry, who has had decades of negotiating experience.

6:55But I had a team of people and lawyers and technical experts and physicists, because I'm none of those things, but I can bring people together and figure out how to get where the President of the United States has set out parameters. I'd also note, Robin, that because of what has happened over the past months, the IRGC, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the toughest, the most hardline element of Iran is even more now in charge. And my greatest fear is that they will believe they now must have a nuclear weapon to be able to deter us and others from attacking them in the future. And that will be very bad for the world because other countries will feel like they need to get a nuclear weapon as well.

7:39Wendy Sherman, lead negotiator for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under President Obama. She also worked in the Biden administration. Thank you. Thank you.

7:49Coming up, Robin gets another perspective on the negotiations from a Pakistani senator in just a minute. We'll be right back.

8:04Hey, it's Ben Brock Johnson from WBUR Podcasts. As a dad, I will say that climate change feels overwhelming. But my kids, they meet every challenge with so much imagination. That's why we made The Midnight Rebellion, a podcast for our whole family where we can put our heads together because every choice we make can help save the planet. Find and listen to The Midnight Rebellion in your podcast feed right now.

8:55having a dedicated coach in your corner and get 50 % off your first coaching session at strawberry.me slash NPR. So how is the collapse of peace talks between Iran and the U.S. being felt in the host country, Pakistan? Pakistani leaders were actively involved in trying to bring the two sides together. The country's army chief kept an open phone line with President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. Now the question is, can that country bring the two sides back to the table? and what impact will it have on Pakistan? The billboards proudly proclaiming the Islamabad peace talks have reportedly been taken down.

9:33Sherry Rahman is in Islamabad. She's the majority leader in Pakistan's Senate and a former ambassador to the U.S. Senator Rahman, welcome. Yes, thank you very much. And we're reading reports here in the U.S. that the excitement that was building there in Islamabad evaporated within a few minutes on Sunday when Vice President Vance told reporters that there had been no success. How would you, first of all, characterize the feeling there in Pakistan? So I think that there were very high expectations from what were billed as talks. I did not at any point imagine that this would result in an immediate accord or outcome.

10:15But instead, we saw it as the beginning of a process, rather an icebreaker, really, because what Pakistan had done was almost impossible, pulling two very aggrieved combatants out of a hot war, out of a raging war. And even the JCPOA, that last nuclear agreement with Iran and between Iran and the United States took 20 months of very hard slog. So I don't understand how a breakthrough of any kind was expected out of what should be really have been billed as an icebreaker. And in many cases it was, but I really don't. I do understand how many people in Pakistan and the region and the world over who were looking, were holding their breath for something positive to come out.

11:12So, yes, of course, that should have gone on. Talks should have continued. The New York Times is reporting that schools in Pakistan have been closed for weeks, civil servants working only four days a week to save energy costs because of the stress on the economy of Pakistan of the closing of the straits. So obviously you have your own personal reasons for wanting these talks to happen. How is Pakistan being hurt by the war? So like the rest of South Asia, Pakistan obviously is impacted on its energy security. A great deal of our fossil fuels are imported, as you all know. And so it has a direct impact on Pakistan, the cost of living, energy supplies, petrol, as well as other efficiencies in our grid.

12:04But we do, of course, have had a huge savings on the country going inescapably solar. So we've had ups and downs and schools are pretty much open now. But the planning for a protracted war in terms of oil blockades and energy prices going up and the constant net premium on energy shipments coming through the Gulf and this vital strait were obviously built into the calculus of any responsible government, including the provinces. And they had to be done because, you know, you have to build a scenario where the impacts and the shocks on the population are as reduced as possible naturally. Yeah. So it sounds, Senator Rahman, as if you would really like to see those billboards go up again soon.

13:00You took the words out of my mouth. I think all rational people in the world, not just myself, would like to see talks resume because conflict isn't bringing any victories for anybody here. And I don't think there'll be any particular winners in this war. from the climate taking a battering to human lives and the costs of surviving this kind of conflict, which is protracted, which could be catastrophic, which could also radiate out to the rest of the world, is actually, it's a dangerous bend of history that we are in the middle of. And we would certainly like to see talks resume and some kind of durable peace framework emerge over a period of time.

13:48It certainly can't happen in another one shot or black swan kind of arrangement. It has to be protracted for it to be sustainable, for it to matter. And different kinds of teams have to be involved. It's a question of what you really want, what the stakeholders want from the outcome. and obviously the two main stakeholders are Tehran and Washington here. That's Senator Sherry Rahman, Majority Leader in Pakistan's Senate, former Ambassador to the United States. Thank you so much, Senator Rahman. You're welcome.

14:24We've got to take one more short break and we'll be right back.

14:37We will continue to follow the news out of the Middle East, of course, but there's lots of other stories we're following at hereandnow.org as well. For instance, how is the crew from Artemis 2 adjusting to life back on Earth? It's not easy getting to the moon and back, and being in zero-G takes a toll on the body. They're also not the last crew that's going to make the trip, says NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. I mean, this is not a once-in-a-lifetime, which you hear sometimes around here. This was a once-in-a-lifetime. No, it's not. This is just the beginning. We are going to get back into doing this with frequency, sending missions to the moon until we land on it in 2028 and start building our base.

15:17What's next for the Artemis mission after its initial success? Find that conversation at hereandnow.org. And while you're there, we're also talking about some more speculative science. You might have seen or read about that billionaire Brian Johnson, who's trying to live forever. He uses unproven rejuvenation technologies for reversing aging, like obsessively measuring obscure biomarkers in his blood and undergoing hyperbaric oxygen therapy. Most people can't afford that, even if they wanted it. But Kara Swisher took a test drive of some of the tech billionaires' attempts at living forever and joined Robin Young to talk about it.

16:00Well, I've known Brian for a long time, and I actually had him to my conference. I had a very famous tech conference. And he was there talking about brain science and AI and stuff like that well before other people were. Then he took a sharp left turn into this thing where he is just perfecting himself. But it doesn't help to know what makes Brian Johnson live longer. It doesn't help the rest of us very much. Even though he open sources a lot of this stuff, then he gives suggestions. But that only has to do what helps Brian Johnson. And so I think a lot of people feel that the numbers are the only thing that matters.

16:31And Brian spends a lot of time measuring himself. You repeat over and over how great if we could invest some of these billions into preventive medicine. Which keeps you alive longer. Let me tell you, the more we spend on preventative medicine, the lower our health care bills will be at the end of our lives or most of the costs come in, and the less we'll die of stupid things. That's the irony of all this. Well, and you also point out as you do some of these things, like you wear a VO2max mask, which measures how efficiently your muscles use oxygen, to measure your fitness on a treadmill. VO2max is a really interesting data point.

17:06What it is is you want to improve the efficiency of your muscles working with your heart. And you don't actually need to do the test I did to do it, but that's not a bad number to know to try to improve. Should we buy one? No. No, of course not. And that's my whole point is that some of these things, you know, if you want to do it, knock yourself out. Others are somewhat dangerous, like a hyperbaric chamber. People like putting themselves in on a regular basis. And they're doing that at these very fancy health clubs. There's all kinds of potential things that could happen. But they say, no, it makes me feel better.

17:36And I'm like, if you have a wound, sure. If you have the bends, I highly recommend a hyperbaric chamber, right? Right. So some of this stuff is a lot of this stuff is sort of a catch all for general health. It can like red light can help in some cases of inflammation. But now it's being sold as this absolute fixing everything about your wrinkles. And it's just not true. There's more to that conversation. Spoiler alert. Swisher says rather than obsess over trendy technological inventions, the keys to a healthy long life are nothing new. nutrition, exercise, sleep, and social connections. If you want to listen to the whole story, you can find it right now at hereandnow.org.

18:23But that'll be it for the podcast today. Here and Now Anytime comes from NPR and WBOR Boston. Today's stories were produced by Wilder Fleming and Jenea Walker. Today's editors were Todd

18:49Thanks for listening. We'll be back with you tomorrow.

19:03Thank you.