Granted, "Time" is liberally biased, but now that it's a little dated, in hindsight the article is correct. Again, I ask, why wasn't Rubio negotiating in lieu of Kushner????? Kushner was the one who encouraged Trump to go to war .... now ... here we sit...
'It's Not Working': Diplomats Fear Trump's Iran Envoys Are Making Things WorseAs the Trump administration weighs a second round of U.S.-Iran talks, the failure of negotiations in Pakistan is fueling concern about whether its envoys can deliver a deal.
Former diplomats tell TIME that Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who led the Iran negotiations with Vice President JD Vance, lack the expertise and diplomatic experience needed to secure an agreement. That, they warn, risks prolonging the war and further destabilizing the global economy.
“Iran and the U.S. under Kushner and Witkoff? Failure. They get an F in diplomacy,” said Aaron David Miller, a former US State Department Middle East negotiator who served six secretaries of state.
Miller pointed to Kushner and Witkoff’s track record, citing failed negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and stalled negotiations between Israel and Hamas as Israel continued its strikes in Gaza. He argued that while even the most experienced negotiators would face steep challenges in such conflicts, Kushner and Witkoff failed to convey to either side the sense of urgency that a desirable deal was within reach—an essential condition for pushing negotiations forward.
“You accept the notion that a successful negotiation, if you have urgency, is based on finding some balance of interest between the parties. If you want out of this, I think they're going to have to come up with something that allows the Iranians to say they won something,” Miller said, while suggesting that one possible concession could be giving Iran a pathway to resume uranium enrichment at a much later date.
Doubts over Kushner and Witkoff's diplomatic experience
Asked about Kushner and Witkoff’s future roles in the Iran discussion, a White House official told TIME that Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Witkoff and Kushner “have been working together on these discussions and will continue to do so.”
If talks resume, veteran diplomats say the U.S. delegation must recognize the importance of “doing their homework” and setting clearly defined goals.
David Satterfield, a former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey and a career diplomat for four decades, warned that if the administration cannot clearly articulate a set of strategic goals—both internally and publicly—the chance of reaching a deal with Iran will diminish.
“Not only does the U.S. need to make clear what its goals were, and to know internally where it was prepared to concede, and where it was not prepared to concede, where the line would be held, the red lines, but to have a realistic sense of what the other side was bringing with it,” Satterfield said.
Before joining the Trump administration, both Kushner and Witkoff were real estate businessmen with no government experience. Kushner, who serves the White House as a Special Envoy for Peace, has touted his diplomatic approach centered on finding shared interests.
“Make deals and not lecture the world,” Kushner explained in a joint interview with Witkoff in 2025. “Focus on interests over values sometimes, and figure out where we have joint interests with other countries and pursue those joint interests.”
He has also been accused of downplaying the importance of historical context in negotiations. During the Israel-Hamas war in 2023, Kushner said in an interview with Lex Fridman that he had told previous envoys in the Middle East, “I don't need a headache, and I don't need a history lesson.” ..............
................Lack of nuclear expertise complicates negotiations
Robert Einhorn, former senior State Department official who participated in the Iran nuclear negotiations from 2009 to 2013, said that unlike business deals—where negotiators may have authority to close an agreement on the spot—diplomatic negotiations on issues like denuclearization are constrained by domestic politics on both sides.
“The negotiator at the table has to think about how the domestic audiences will affect the outcome,” Einhorn said. “And I think the negotiator on a nuclear issue is more constrained by his or her government bureaucracy and by public opinion.”
Einhorn also noted that earlier Iran nuclear talks were a “methodical, deliberative interagency process that operated at all levels” of government, and that expert input is critical to achieving goals such as “no enrichment of uranium,” as President Trump demanded in a Truth Social post.
“What does it mean, zero enrichment?” Einhorn asked. “Does it mean no infrastructure supporting enrichment? Does it mean that already existing enriched uranium, including the 440 kilos of highly enriched uranium, would have to be exported or diluted? You have to have experts that understand the various dimensions of the problem.” ..................
https://time.com/article/2026/04/15/diplomats-fear-trump-iran-envoys-kushner-witkoff-nuclear/
