Veteran diplomat John Limbert served as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iran in the Obama administration for nine months, departing this past summer.
He writes in a forthcoming U.S. Institute of Peace Iran primer on the Obama administration’s frustrated attempts to negotiate with Iran so far and how both sides, but particularly Iran, beset by internal pressures and deep mutual misunderstandings, “claim the other is not responsive to its messages, and … risk falling into the familiar, dysfunctional ways of the past.”
