It's the Brian Lera Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone.

Well, as you've been hearing on the BBC, at least the U.S. and Iran have pulled back from the kind of mutually assured

destruction threats that both sides were issuing over the weekend, right, about attacking

civilian energy and water infrastructure all over the region. At least there's that. Of course,

that could be a decoy on Trump's part. I don't know if they said that on the BBC, like

hoping Iran will let its guard down after being given this five-day delay in the threat,

and then the U.S. will go in harder. We've seen that kind of thing before, haven't we?

But if we take Trump's written statement this morning at its word, and I'll say it again,

he said the U.S. and Iran, quote, have had over the last

two days very good and productive conversations regarding a complete and total resolution of our

hostilities in the Middle East, unquote. If we take that at its word, I think we have an excellent

guest to discuss what might be in productive conversations to end the war.

Nate Swanson was a U.S. negotiator with Iran last year for the Trump administration.

Before that, he was director for Iran issues at the National Security Council in the Biden administration.

So he's got that kind of

bipartisan cred, including negotiating with Iran for Trump, though we should say he was fired by Trump in

the end. Now he's director of the Iran Strategy Project at the think tank, the Atlantic Council,

and he has an article in foreign affairs called How America's War on Iran

backfired. Tehran will now set the terms for peace. Nate, we appreciate your time with these

latest very high-stakes developments. Welcome to WNYC. Thank you for having me. Would you give

our listeners a little more background on you first? What kinds of negotiations were you involved with for the Trump administration with Iran last year?

What was each side trying to achieve when you were there?

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