I'm John Batchelor. I welcome my good colleague, Mary Kistel, Executive Vice President

Stevenson,

Incorporated, former senior advisor to the Secretary of State, much traveled as a State Department representative for the United States. Before that, many years at the editorial page of the Wall Street

Journal. Mary, we're surrounded by talking tables. The immediate table talk that we learn about this morning is a table

talk between Washington and Tehran, between the peoples of the Islamic Republic and the

people's of the Trump administration, too. The other tables are around me. There's one for Lebanon and Hezbollah.

There's one for Hamas.

I believe it's either in Cairo or Qatar.

Take your choice.

There's certainly a table in Moscow and one in Washington, but there are talks on Venezuela ongoing.

There are even talks on Cuba.

That's the buffet.

We will begin with the talks on Iran because that's your experience in the first term. My memory of those days is that JCPOA was not

helpful for turning off the suspect nuclear weapons program. But what we learned in the severe sanctions that the first Trump administration lowered on Iran

is that the Ayatollah does not make concessions.

Good evening to you, Mary.

Good evening to you, John.

Well, that's absolutely correct.

You have to understand not just the nature of the counterparty who's sitting across the table from you,

but their history of action or inaction.

And it's very clear with the current leadership in Tehran that there's more than 40 years of

history that shows that it's not just a revolutionary regime and name, but in action.

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