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“- Our negotiations happening with the Ron,”
are they not happening with the Ron? It seems like every 24 to 48 hours, we're getting different messaging, contradictions. On the one hand, you'll have a post like this. March 22nd, 2026 from Donald Trump's social media account.
If the Ron doesn't fully open without threat, the straight of her moves within 48 hours. From this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various power plans,
starting with the biggest one first. Thank you for your attention to this matter. 24 hours later, right before the markets open, in all caps, you get the following message. I am pleased to report that the United States of America
and the country of Iran 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, based on the tender and tone of these in-depth
“detailed and constructive conversations,”
which will continue throughout the week. I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military strikes against Iranian power plans. It should also be noted that back in June of 2025, Donald Trump had stated that Iran's nuclear facilities
had been totally obliterated, and any suggestion otherwise would be completely fake news. Now, Iran responded by saying this was Donald Trump trying to engage in market manipulation. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Iraqchi,
says there are no negotiations. The fact that they are now talking about negotiations in the first place is an admission of defeat. Didn't they say unconditional surrender? So why are they now mobilizing their highest officials
to negotiate with us at all? For countries we have identified as friends, we will allow them to pass through these straightive or moves, including China, Russia, India, Iraq, and Pakistan, but there is no reason
to allow our enemies to pass through these straightive or moves.
The enemy must learn a lesson, never dare attack again
and the damages to the Iranian people must be fully compensated. International guarantees are not 100% guarantees. The intrinsic guarantee we have created ourselves, means no one dares go to war with the Iranian people anymore. So far, no negotiations have taken place.
And a ceasefire without guarantees is a vicious cycle that repeats the war. Many foreign ministers in the region have contacted Tehran and Iran's stance has been principled and firm. This war clarified many facts.
If the US has bases in your Arab nation countries and only makes you a target. Meanwhile, you have Donald Trump saying that the war has essentially been won. Here's a statement that Donald Trump made,
March 24th, 2026. He says it's over. We've won it. It's ours. You'll play this clip.
- Well, I think we're gonna end it. I can't tell you, if you sure.
You know, I don't like to say this.
We've won this, this war has been won.
The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news. I mean, the New York Times, you read the New York Times. It's like, we're not winning a war where they have no navy and they have no air force
and they have no nothing. And we literally have planes flying over Tehran. - Then you have Donald Trump saying the following on Iran, this was from a cabinet meeting that was on Thursday.
They are saying to the people, he's saying the Iranians are saying, this is a disaster. That's why they're talking to us. They are facing disaster, let's play.
- The Iranian regime is now admitting to itself that they have been decisively defeated. They're saying to people, this is a disaster.
“They know, that's why they're talking to us.”
And they're only, they wouldn't talk otherwise. But they're talking to us because they've got a disaster in their hands, they're defeated. - I want to bring on a guy by the name of Chris Voss. Chris Voss writes one of the,
or has written one of the preeminent books on negotiation that's out there,
never split the difference.
Negotiating as if your life depended on, and in Chris, as we have thousands of marine expeditionary units now heading to the straight of Hormuz, as there talks about a ground invasion, potentially of Carg Island, the 86th Airborne Division
being sent in. This is one of those moments where quite literally life's depend on this negotiation. I want to take your temperature and your approach on the status of these negotiations, generally,
and how you kind of view a framework of negotiations here through the prison. And I'll make this disclosure. I've read your book back in 2019. It was a book that I actually teach in my law school class, as well.
So I'm fascinated and interested to hear how your mind thinks about the framework for this negotiation. - Yeah, well, there's a lot of talk going on in the me on both sides. I mean, both sides are very aware of the positioning
of their conversation in the media is more to affect their supporters and their allies, more than it is to affect the other side.
“That's why in the media most of the time,”
what's being said, it's hard to understand and hard to interpret, 'cause you don't know what ears they're trying to target at the moment. Most of the time, it's not the ears that you expect it to be. - So it's really hard to get a firm read on this
based on context without also knowing what's going on behind the scenes of conversations. You know, one side is calling it in the negotiations. The other side saying, well, we're talking, we're not negotiating.
I mean, these are matters of distinction, face saving, characterizations in public. So without being told, being said explicitly, and clearly those conversations going on through Pakistan at this point in time
as many years, relaying information. So there are conversations taking place in different sides, are characterizing in different ways, you know, 100% sure what ears are trying to hit with their statements.
- Yeah, you know, Chris, one of the things
“that I think was a real revelation to me”
when I read your negotiating book, though, that negotiation, despite it being often portrayed on TV as a lot of fast-talking people. (murmurs) - Is a lot more about listening, gathering data,
assessing the situation, feeling each other out, trying to find the known unknowns,
and ultimately why your group is called
the Black Swan group is these unknown unknowns, et her out there, which if you could really identify those. So your framework, I think, could apply here. Can you talk about the framework of thinking about negotiations and data gathering
in situations like this, or in hostage crises in general? - Yeah, well, you try to find out what really deep down a side matters to the other side. What are the core values? The real issue in many cases is autonomy.
Nobody likes to be forced to the table. They like to feel like that they made a choice to be there. Autonomy is actually more important than survival. Maslow's hierarchy needs our hypothesis that survival was number one with Maslow,
isn't 100% accurate, and what I usually ask people is, name a civilization in the history of mankind, has been content in slavery. You can't find one. United States is a country that give me liberty
or give me debt. We didn't invent that phrase or that attitude, but what that tells you is autonomy is more important than survival. At the end of the day, people are gonna really make decisions
whether or not they feel they were autonomous in that decision or whether or not they were fuel forced into it. - And that's kind of the concern
That I have amongst a lot of other concerns
in the negotiations where you have somebody like a Pete Higgseth saying, we negotiate with bombs.
“And then, one of the things you always talk about”
in your book, Chris, is this idea of do not set arbitrary deadlines that you can't meet against yourself? So when you have the threat of force, and then you say, we're gonna bomb the hell out of you.
I mean, that's the language that Higgseth uses. We're gonna bomb the hell out of you. We're gonna whatever, we're gonna do it right away. And then, you know, you have this line where we're actually, I mean, what did Trump say?
He said, I wanna control the straight of her moves with the Iatola, and we can do it together as a joint venture. And you could say, that's just a lot of noise, and that's part of the cloud inspector of these negotiations,
but setting deadlines against yourself that you ultimately can't meet.
I always think that's a problem in a negotiation,
if that's actually what's happening. And then, removing the autonomy from the other side and then negotiation, by saying, hey, we wanna talk to you, but we're also about to kill you, and we're planning on killing you,
and then, you know, this guy, Ali Lard Johnny, who was one of the people we were purportedly talking, we just, you know, you do us, and as well, kill the guy. So, I guess the Iranian perspective on a lot of this, though, is, every time you say you're negotiating with us,
you then kill somebody or you bomb, so how could we even start the negotiations? And then, finally, Chris, you have the Oman
“far and minister who is the hand-picked mediator, right?”
There's a lot of noise, as you say, from the outset. True, but there was a guy that we hand-picked the Oman far and minister who went on CBS before this war started, and said, hey, we had a productive conversation.
We need to iron out the technical details on Monday, and then the war starts, and the guys like, from Oman, what happened? I mean, we thought we had a deal, and that doesn't, does that complicate the negotiation?
- Well, it does, if you, if you seal that noise, and so, to back up a little bit, the hostage negotiator, I mean, when I got a guy inside of a bank, I still got a SWAT team on the outside. Now, SWAT team is a part of the negotiating team.
Now, we're not gonna go to violence first,
but at some point in time, there are minor incremental things to be done to remind the other side that, you know, they can't, they can't toy with you,
“they can't lengthen this out, manipulate you”
for now till eternity, which is kind of what the Iranians are famous for doing. You know, half measures and agreements that they don't intend to comply with. And a mediator gets in a middle of a mediator's ego
gets more invested in getting some kind of deal, as opposed to a deal that's gonna be workable, and they can be, they can be fake that by somebody that, who says, well, I'll try, well, a mediator says, oh, we're close to a deal.
The other side said, I'll try. Well, I'll try means I have no intention of complying. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna fake you, Greek. And mediators are famous for being suckered by that. So I don't put a lot of stock in what a mediator's assessment
in any negotiation that if mediators were phenomenal at settling things, then everything would be settled by mediators. - Right, although right now it does seem that the primary objective is to open the straight of hormones.
Right, that's the main, not regime change, anymore, to enter into an agreement where Iran would agree, to not enrich its uranium, which was apparently agreed to at that mediation. But now, I doubt that that was ever actually agreed
to by the Iranians, and Iranians made it quite clear to what call in a face-to-face meeting, that they felt that they had the right to enrich a uranium from now until the end of time. So regardless of what the mediator said,
yeah, Iranians never said that in face-to-face negotiations.
- I mean, well, that's also assuming that Wood Coff told the truth about that, because the all I know is that the foreign minister said that that's not the case. And then the British National Security Advisor,
who was also in the room, said that he was surprised that there, I mean, if you don't believe the Oman Foreign Minister, sure, wasn't there a British National Security Advisor in the room who also says that Wood Coff was not being fully honest
as well in the room. But I guess one of the broader points, though, is we've also now removed the sanctions on Iranian oil and Russian oil from this war. So they've made billions of dollars.
Like is that rewarding them?
They go, wow, this is the first time
that we've got sanctions removed. We're making billions of dollars.
If we were critical of Obama's deal, say,
because $1.4 billion flew to Iran in response to also having oversight, well, now Iran gets to sell all of this oil that it wasn't able to sell before. And now, the U.S. as well, they were selling it anyway. But then what's the point of sanctions in general
if that's the case?
“- Yeah, well, I mean, I think the one thing”
that everybody continues to miss here, which is different about the American president. And he's just interested in collaboration. He's really care who's in charge on the other side. As long as you collaborate in collaborations
the two-way street, then you notice, he's not calling for democratic elections in Iran. And he's trying to leave and attack the people who want to collaborate with, not just United States, but with the rest of the world.
I mean, opening the streets of Hormos and collaboration with the Iranians. He's constantly trying to indicate, well, just collaborate fairly across the board. And it'll be relatively easy life.
This is a first American president that anytime that we've ever gotten into a conflict in the other country hasn't demanded a change of government to become democracy. And that's actually refreshing.
He's taken in an unusual approach
“of collaboration separate from what form of government you have.”
- You think that's a good thing? - Well, whether or not we forced democracy on somebody, we have an any forced democracy on anybody. - No, I mean, to give the example of hostage negotiations, right?
- Yeah, okay. - And you know hostage negotiations. - There's that rumor, yes. (laughing) So, isn't what Trump's doing would basically be like,
if you and the hostage taker, rather than coming up with a plan to release the hostages, you're said, you know what? Let's do some collaboration. I'm gonna collaborate with you, the hostage taker.
Let's take the hostages together. Let's make a ton of money. And I'll become the hostage taker with you and will sell the hostages out. And then all of our friends and those families
that want the hostages released, will, will's, where the United States, where the FBI and where the hostage taker.
If you were able to get a million bucks for it,
imagine what we could do together, we'll get 20 million bucks for those hostages. So don't you have to though, talk about values and principles and any negotiation,
rather than just the transactional outcome because then the hostage negotiator and the hostage taker could collaborate. Isn't that what happened in Venezuela with Trump and Delcy Rodriguez?
And now the top torturer has become the defense minister there. Is that a good outcome? I mean, it's a resolution, but is that an outcome that we wanted? - Well, I mean, those are great questions.
And so it's worth asking that and wondering if, whether or not that's the outcome. So to go back to the hostage example, like if I'm, if I'm talking to a guy inside a bank, my first thing on collaboration is I want you to live.
Now, if we can both agree on a collaboration that you live, then let's work our way back to where we are now and then so that everybody lives. That's the real collaboration from a hostage negotiator. Now, the bank on the inside may have no desire to live.
I can't change that. We actually call high risk indicators. Gary Nesner, my boss came up with these indicators
of the person on the other side, it's never gonna make the deal.
In the black swan group, we call them seven percentors. Why do we say seven percentors? 'Cause hostage negotiators are successful 93% of the time, which means 7% that deals never gonna happen. And in any given negotiation,
there are three kinds of negotiation.
“The deals you should make, the deals you shouldn't make”
and the deals that you're never gonna make. And your first job is to try to sort out which of those three bucket you're in. If the other side's never gonna make a deal, no matter what kind of magic ones I have,
I gotta be able to recognize ahead of time that it's never gonna happen, then I have to reassess the situation. So the first part, the second part I'd like to talk about and when you mention Venezuela,
let's compare Venezuela to Iraq. The problem with taking out an entire regime is that the country falls into chaos. And Iraq falls into chaos and drags the vast majority of the Sunni Middle East down with it.
We get ISIS, which is one of the worst things,
we thought Al Qaeda was bad, and ISIS was even worse. So the big mistake with the American government at that point of time was we decided that the debatification of Iraq were to take out all of their politicians,
all of their bureaucrats, entire government structure. And that became a black hole that the Middle East hasn't still fully come back out of. So the avoidance of these black holes of anarchy and chaos and murder and bloodletting without end,
which is still what's going on in different parts of the Middle East. Avoiding that in Venezuela is probably a good idea.
“Right, if the hostage taker was told, you know what?”
You get to stay in the bank.
I mean, imagine if you said, here's what we're gonna do.
You stay in the bank, we're gonna make money together, you keep the hostages. We sell the hostages, sorry, but we take the host. I mean, that's, you know, that's, look, doing the other work is very hard.
And it almost raises the question, though whether you talk about Iraq or Iran or Venezuela or anywhere. And I think this is the broader question and it's not necessarily a negotiation question,
but I think we're seeing it at home. Should we even be doing this stuff in the first place? And if ultimately the whole goal of spending billions of taxpayer dollars is to basically take out one eye atola
and put in another eye atola who's more extreme and they now control the straight of her moves. Yes, we did a deal, right? I was at the negotiate, you're 93% number. I could do 100% negotiations
if I just gave the other side, you know, I, you know, a deal that was mutually beneficial. - That's right, that's right, that's right. - That's right, that's right. - That's right, that's right, that's right.
You can't, and that was a hard thing that I learned in negotiations was,
the guys never gonna make a deal
and it's never gonna give up exploiting you. As soon as you give them what they asked for, their response is, oh, you misunderstood. That was a down payment. We weren't asking for that to settle the deal.
We were asking that just as a beginning as an opening, that was simply a down payment. And that's a hard thing to recognize. When you got somebody pulling that kind of game on the other side, it's an endless game
of exploitation from that side. The seven percenters, you'll never make the deal because whatever you give them will never be enough. - Now isn't that though precisely the problem with what Trump is doing with Putin,
that every time, you know, with Koff who you mentioned, - At least your question, Ben. If Trump cured cancer, would you say that he was wasting his time, he shouldn't have been doing that?
- No, I would say it's great, and if he's spread cancer, I would say it's bad.
“But you know, I think you're picking on him a little bit.”
I think it feels like that whatever he's done, you're gonna find a way to say it's wrong. - No, I think that if there are positive accomplishments that are made, if there are, name a positive accomplishment so far.
- Look, I think that if there could actually be peace that could be brought to the Middle East, if there could be stability, that's there. I think that could be a good thing. I mean, right now, if Trump could actually Britain,
if gas prices were down, gas prices were down, - Zero. - Zero positive accomplishments. - Right now, I don't think there's any, I really don't believe it. - Right now, in your country, right now,
I can't name one. - In comparison to say, any American president since World War II, 'cause that's when the Western, the West remained the Middle East at that one. - Yeah, Donald Trump, in my view,
in my humble view right now is destroying the post-World War II framework. I think he's making America weaker. I think he's harming our alliances.
“I think, you know, the great nation of Canada,”
being one of the first places that he attacks,
it's very damaging. I believe in free trade agreements generally speaking. Obviously, wanna make sure we protect our domestic businesses, but we've been pulled out a lot of deals, even a deal that he negotiated.
I mean, he negotiates the United States, Mexico, Canada, agreement. He says it's a stupid agreement. If you're gonna negotiate, if you're gonna attack your own deals as stupid,
you know, it's a tough one for me. And I'll just say this before we go. Although I'm happy to keep on talking, I just think the American people right now are very curious what the hell's going on.
And I just think the American people are suffering
They're saying we can't afford things.
We're psychologically tortured,
live in paycheck to paycheck. We're out there struggling. Why are we in this war? Why is there all this chaos? What's happening?
You know, that's how I feel about it. - These are fair questions. I mean, these are fair questions
“and trying to gain and perspective on it”
is definitely a struggle. I think these are fair questions. - Well, I appreciate your book. I appreciate the book. I think it does give a great framework
into thinking about things, data gathering, and truly thinking about negotiation, not as violence and beating you and destroying you and crushing you,
“but that you can gain tactical advantage by listening,”
hearing other sides, you know, and trying to forge a middle ground.
So the book is called "Never Split the Difference."
Negotiating as if your life depends on it by Chris Vost and Chris is also the head of the Black Swan Group. Thanks, Chris. - You've been very kind.
I appreciate the conversation. - I appreciate the conversation too. It was good discussion. Come back. I'm going to hit subscribe.
Let's get to seven million subscribers.
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