Former Iran deal negotiator: 60 days is a ‘pretty short period of time’ for nuclear talks

Skip to content

Former Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman on Sunday said that a 60-day timeframe outlined in a draft peace plan for the U.S. and Iran to negotiate the Tehran’s nuclear program is a “pretty short period of time.”

Sherman poured cold water on the emerging peace deal while speaking with ABC’s Martha Raddatz on “This Week,” stressing that she hoped “there will be a signing sometime soon, and at least we’ll start trade movement and prices over some months will come down.”

“They say that they will negotiate the final details for about 60 days, just 60 days. That’s a pretty short period of time, given what you went through during the JCPOA,” Raddatz said, referring to the Obama administration’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) deal with Iran.

“Indeed it is,” Sherman replied. “I think it’s very good, ostensibly. There is a provision that if both parties agree, they can continue after 60 days, and I can assure you, they will not get all of this done in 60 days.”

Sherman, who led nuclear negotiations with Iran in 2015, said she and her colleagues initially set up a six-month timeframe to develop a final deal with Iran, but it ultimately took them 18 months. She emphasized that the U.S. needs an “expert team, including nuclear physicists, treasury experts, sanctions experts, commerce experts, lots of lawyers, intelligence assets, to really get such a deal done.”

The former ambassador also noted that one of the top Iranian negotiators, Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, is “very tough, he’s very smart.”

“One of the really sad parts, and unfortunate parts, of this war –– and all of the decapitation of the first and maybe second layers of the regime –– is that we now have more hardliners in place than we had before, and it was pretty hardline to begin with,” Sherman added.

President Trump and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday said the U.S. and Iran were on the verge of signing a final deal to end the conflict on Sunday.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz told Raddatz that the administration was “confident” that the deal would be signed by then.

“Again, I’ll let the final details be announced by them,” he said. “I don’t want to get ahead of the president or the vice president, but they have every intent of getting this done today.”

The draft deal includes the U.S. releasing $25 billion in frozen Iranian assets, while Iran would agree not to produce or acquire nuclear weapons, a senior Iranian official told Reuters.

But a new round of Israeli strikes in Beirut “are creating issues” in finalizing the deal, a source told NewsNation, The Hill’s broadcast partner. The ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon was one of Iran’s conditions to maintain a ceasefire with the U.S.

Tags

Abbas Araghchi

Barack Obama

Donald Trump

Martha Raddatz

Mike Waltz

Obama

Wendy Sherman

Copyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.