Negotiating with Iran? Waters always muddy there

So are there any substantive negotiations taking place, as Trump avers?  Or “talks”?  Or even “talks about talks“?  Well something, probably: but there’s very good reason to be genuinely confused rather than just plain disbelieving.

Here’s a first-hand story.

Back in the mists of time, when dinosaurs (Saddam, Khomeini etc) roamed the earth, I was working for a US oil company.  Then, as now, there was an American embargo on selling stuff to Iran; but the Iranians needed specialised oil products that they were unable – strange though this may sound – to produce locally themselves: and somehow we had State Department approval to sell it to them.  But it had to be done very discreetly.

Negotiations commenced, in London and Hamburg, with no American staff members involved.  There were several difficult issues to resolve, so it wasn’t a simple horse-trade on price; and the whole thing was quite drawn-out.  We had an OK working relationship with our Iranian opposite numbers.

Then one day another Iranian turned up unannounced at our London offices and sought a meeting: he knew all our names & telephone extensions.  We hastily convened, and he laid out on the table all the paperwork relating to the deal, announcing that we would be dealing with him from now on.  Being somewhat taken aback, we were entirely non-committal and progressed nothing beyond making a few notes.  Upon his departure we called our previous contacts, who told us to have nothing to do with this individual, and that the whole episode was “a mistake” and should be forgotten.

We could only conclude there were competing middle-men in play and that in this murky world, copies of the paperwork could be procured for a price.  The complicated deal eventually came to completion after several more weeks.

But not without another remarkable episode.  With a particularly knotty issue being thrashed out, one of our interlocutors suddenly leaned forward and said in agitated tones:  you must concede this point to me, otherwise my family will be arrested!

I have been in many a difficult & protracted negotiation, including with Russians and Chinese counterparties.  But this is not a gambit I have met, before or since.  I have to tell you that we politely ignored his personal anxieties (genuine or otherwise) and proceeded with getting to the ultimate handshake by more conventional horse-trading.

Yes, customs & practices in that part of the world are, well, a bit different (I could tell you other stories about dealing with Arab counterparties – and Russians** & Chinese, too.)  For all his vaunted “New York real-estate expertise” Steve Witless-Dummkopf doesn’t look to me like the kind of person who’d be much good at figuring out what’s really going on.  Heaven help us all.

ND

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** The critical trap with Russians is their readiness to fall silent in meetings for very sustained periods of time – the record in my experience was something like 45-50 minutes: a tactic designed to make the other side’s nerve crack & offer just any concession they can think of to break the apparently awful deadlock.  Well, if that’s all you are made of, it’ll work every time.  But ‘silence implies nothing’ is the operative axiom.  Oh, and never get stuck with a firm homebound airline booking (which most people do, just to get out of the miserable surroundings).  They’ll back you up against it every time.