Ben Debates Top Hostage Negotiator Chris Voss on Iran War
3/28/202625 mincomplete
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0:15Are negotiations happening with Iran?
0:17Are they not happening with Iran?
0:19It seems like every 24 to 48 hours, we're getting different messaging contradictions.
0:26On the one hand, you'll have a post like this, March 22nd, 2026, from Donald
0:32Trump's social media account. If Iran doesn't fully open without threat the Strait of Hormuz
0:38within 48 hours from this exact point in time, the United States of America will
0:45hit and obliterate their various power plans, starting with the biggest one first.
0:50Thank you for your attention to this matter.
0:5324 hours later, right before the markets open, in all caps, you get the following
0:59message. I am pleased to report that the United States of America and the country
1:04of Iran have had over the last two days very good and productive conversations regarding
1:09a complete and total resolution of our hostilities in the Middle East, based on the
1:15tenor and tone of these in -depth, detailed, and constructive conversations, which will continue throughout
1:20the week. I have instructed the Department of War to postpone any and all military
1:25strikes against Iranian power plants.
1:28It should also be noted that back in June of 2025, Donald Trump had stated
1:34that Iran's nuclear facilities had been totally obliterated and any suggestion otherwise would be completely
1:41fake news. Now, Iran responded by saying this was Donald Trump trying to engage in
1:47market manipulation. Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Aragchi, says there are no negotiations.
1:54The fact that they are now talking about negotiations in the first place is an
1:59admission of defeat. Didn't they say unconditional surrender?
2:03So why are they now mobilizing their highest officials to negotiate with us at all?
2:09For countries we have identified as friends, we will allow them to pass through the
2:13Strait of Hormuz, including China, Russia, India, Iraq, and Pakistan.
2:17But there is no reason to allow our enemies to pass through the Strait of
2:20Hormuz. The enemy must learn a lesson.
2:23Never dare attack again. And the damages to the Iranian people must be fully compensated.
2:29International guarantees are not 100 % guarantees.
2:33The intrinsic guarantee we have created ourself means no one dares go to war with
2:38the Iranian people anymore. So far, no negotiations have taken place.
2:43And a ceasefire without guarantees is a vicious cycle that repeats the war.
2:49Many foreign ministers in the region have contacted Tehran and Iran's stance has been principled
2:55and firm. This war clarified many facts.
2:58If the U .S. has bases in your Arab nation countries, it only makes you
3:03a target. Meanwhile, you have Donald Trump saying that the war has essentially been won.
3:11Here's a statement that Donald Trump made March 24th, 2026.
3:15He says, it's over. We've won it.
3:17It's ours. Here, play this clip.
3:19Well, I think we're going to end it.
3:21I can't tell you for sure.
3:25You know, I don't like to say this.
3:27We've won this. This war has been won.
3:30The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news.
3:33I mean, the New York Times, you read the New York Times, it's like we're
3:36not winning a war where they have no Navy and they have no Air Force
3:39and they have no nothing.
3:40And we literally have planes flying over Tehran.
3:44Then you have Donald Trump saying the following on Iran.
3:48This was from a cabinet meeting that was on Thursday.
3:51They are saying to the people, he's saying the Iranians are saying this is a
3:54disaster. That's why they're talking to us.
3:57They're facing disaster. Let's play it.
3:59The Iranian regime is now admitting to itself that they have been decisively defeated.
4:05They're saying to people, this is a disaster.
4:09They know that's why they're talking to us.
4:11And they're only, they wouldn't talk otherwise, but they're talking to us because they've got
4:17a disaster on their hands.
4:18They're defeated. I want to bring on a guy by the name of Chris Voss.
4:23Chris Voss writes one of the, or has written one of the preeminent books on
4:27negotiation that's out there. Never split the difference.
4:32Negotiating as if your life depended on it.
4:36And Chris, as we have thousands of Marine expeditionary units now heading to the Strait
4:43of Hormuz, as there are talks about a ground invasion, potentially of Karg Island, the
4:4986th Airborne Division being sent in.
4:52This is one of those moments where quite literally lives depend on this negotiation.
4:58I want to take your temperature and your approach on the status of these negotiations
5:04generally and how you kind of view a framework of negotiations here through the prison.
5:11And I'll make this. disclosure i've read your book back in 2019 it was a
5:15book that i actually teach in my law school class as well so i'm fascinated
5:19and interested to hear how your mind thinks about the framework for this negotiation yeah
5:25well there's a lot of talk going on in the media on both sides i
5:29mean they're both both sides are very uh aware of the the positioning of their
5:36conversation in the media is more to affect their supporters and their allies more than
5:42it is to affect the other side that's why in the media most of the
5:44time what's being said it's it's hard to understand and hard to interpret because you
5:48don't know what ears they're trying to target at the moment most of the time
5:54it's not the years that you expect it to be so it's really hard to
5:58get a firm read on this based on context without also knowing what's going on
6:02behind the scenes of conversations you know one side is calling it negotiations the other
6:07side saying well we're talking we're not negotiating i mean these are uh these are
6:13matters of distinction face -saving characterizations in public so without without being told what's being
6:19said explicitly and clearly there's conversations going on through pakistan at this point in time
6:24as mediators um relaying information so there are conversations taking place and different sides are
6:31characterizing it in different ways you're not 100 sure what ears are trying to hit
6:36with their statements yeah you know chris one of the things that i think was
6:40a real revelation to me when i read your negotiating book though that negotiation despite
6:48it being often portrayed on tv as a lot of fast talking people blah blah
6:53blah blah blah blah blah blah blah is a lot more about listening gathering data
6:58assessing the situation feeling each other out trying to find the known unknowns and ultimately
7:06why your group is called the black swan group is these unknown unknowns that are
7:11out there which if you can really identify those so your framework i think could
7:17apply here can you talk about the frame the framework of thinking about negotiations and
7:24data gathering in situations like this or in hostage crises in general yeah well you
7:30try to find out what really deep down inside matters to the other side uh
7:34what are the core values the real issue in many cases is autonomy nobody likes
7:40to be forced to the table uh they like to feel like that they made
7:44a choice to be there autonomy is actually more important than survival maslow's hierarchy of
7:49needs our hypothesis that survival was number one with maslow isn't 100 accurate and what
7:56i usually ask people is um name a civilization in the history of mankind has
8:01been content in slavery you can't find one the united states is a country that
8:06give me liberty or give me death we didn't invent that phrase or that attitude
8:10but what that tells you is autonomy is more important than survival and at the
8:14end of the day people are going to really make decisions whether or not they
8:17feel they were autonomous in that decision or whether or not they will feel forced
8:21into it and that's kind of the concern that i have amongst a lot of
8:27other concerns in the negotiations where you have somebody like a pete hegseth saying we
8:35negotiate with bombs and then one of the things you always talk about in your
8:41book chris is this idea of do not set arbitrary deadlines that you can't meet
8:48against yourself so when you have the threat of force and then you say we're
8:55gonna bomb the hell out of you i mean that that's the language that hegseth
8:59uses we're gonna bomb the hell out of you we're gonna whatever we're gonna do
9:03it right away and then you know you have this you know line where we're
9:08actually i mean what what did trump say he said i want to control the
9:13strait of her moves with the ayatollah and we can do it together as a
9:18joint venture and you could say that's just a lot of noise and that's part
9:22of the the the cloud inspector of these negotiations but setting deadlines against yourself that
9:29you ultimately can't meet i always think that's a problem in a negotiation if that's
9:34actually what's happening and then removing the autonomy from the other side in the negotiation
9:39by saying hey we want to talk to you but we're also about to kill
9:43you and we're planning on killing you and and then you know this guy ali
9:46larajani who was one of the people we were purportedly talking we just we you
9:50know us and israel killed the guy so i guess the iranian perspective on a
9:55lot of this though is is every time you say you're negotiating with us you
9:59then kill somebody or you bomb so how could we even start the negotiations and
10:03then finally chris you have the oman foreign minister who was the hand -picked mediator
10:08right we there's a lot of noise as you say from the outset true but
10:12there was a guy that we handpicked the oman foreign minister who went on cbs
10:17before this war started and said hey we had a productive conversation we need to
10:22iron out the technical details on monday and then the war starts and the guys
10:26like from oman what what what happened i mean we we thought we had a
10:31deal and that doesn't does that complicate the negotiation well it does if you if
10:37you see all that noise and so back up a little bit hostage negotiator i
10:42mean when when i got a guy inside of a bank i still got a
10:46swat team on the outside now i'm not a swat team is a part of
10:51the negotiating team now we're not going to go to violence first but at some
10:54point in time there are minor incremental things to be done to remind the other
10:58side that you know they can't they can't toy with you they can't lengthen this
11:04out manipulate you uh for from now till eternity which is kind of what the
11:10iranians are famous for doing you know half measures and agreements that they don't intend
11:15to comply with and a mediator gets in the middle of a mediator's ego gets
11:21more invested in getting some kind of deal as opposed to a deal that's going
11:26to be workable and they can be they can be faked out by somebody that
11:29who says well i'll try well uh media says oh we get you know we're
11:34close to a deal the other side said i'll try well i'll try means i
11:38have no intention of complying i'm just gonna i'm gonna fake agree and mediators are
11:42famous for being suckered by that so i don't put i don't put a lot
11:45of stock in what a mediator's assessment in any negotiation that if mediators were phenomenal
11:50at settling things then everything would be settled by mediators right although right now it
11:58does seem that the primary objective is to open the strait of hormuz right that's
12:07the main not regime change anymore um to enter into an agreement where iran would
12:13agree to not enrich its uranium which was apparently agreed to at that mediation but
12:21now i doubt that i doubt that that was ever actually agreed to by the
12:26iranians and the iranians made it quite clear to whitkoff in a face -to -face
12:30meeting that they felt that they had the right to enrich uranium from now until
12:35the end of time so regardless of what the media said the iranians never said
12:39that in face -to -face negotiations i mean well that's also assuming that whitkoff told
12:45the truth about that because the all i know is that the foreign minister said
12:50that that's not the case and then the british national security advisor who was also
12:56in the room said that he was surprised that there i mean if you don't
13:00believe the oman foreign minister sure but wasn't there a british national security advisor in
13:05the room who also says that whitkoff was not being fully honest as well you
13:10know in the room but i guess one of the broader points though is we've
13:14also now removed the sanctions on iranian oil and russian oil from this war so
13:21right they've made billions of dollars like is that rewarding them and they go wow
13:27this is the first time that we've got sanctions removed we're making billions of dollars
13:32if we were critical of obama's deal say because 1 .4 billion dollars flew to
13:39iran in in response to also having you know oversight well now iran gets to
13:45sell all of this oil uh that it wasn't able to sell before and now
13:50the us says well they were selling it anyway but then what's the point of
13:53sanctions in general if that's if that's the case yeah well i mean i think
13:57the one thing that everybody continues to miss here which is different about this american
14:00president is he's just interested in collaboration he doesn't really care who's in charge on
14:05the other side as long as you collaborate and collaboration is the two -way street
14:09now they're not you notice he's not calling for democratic elections in iran and he's
14:16trying to get rid of he's trying to leave intact the people that want to
14:19collaborate with with uh with not just the united states but with the rest of
14:23the world i mean opening the straits of hormuz in collaboration with the iranians he's
14:28constantly trying to indicate look just just collaborate fairly across the board and it'll be
14:35a relatively easily easy life this is the first american president that any time that
14:39we've ever gotten into a conflict with another country hasn't demanded a change of government
14:45to become democracy and that's actually refreshing he's he's taken an unusual approach of collaboration
14:52separate from what form of government you have you think that's a good thing whether
15:00or not they we force democracy on somebody we haven't had any success force in
15:04democracy on anybody no i mean to to give the example of hostage negotiations right
15:11yeah okay you you know you know hostage negotiations there's that rumor yes um so
15:19isn't what trump's doing would basically be like if you and the hostage taker rather
15:25than coming up with a plan to release the hostages you said you know what
15:30let's do some collaboration i'm going to collaborate with you the hostage taker let's take
15:36the hostages together let's make a ton of money and i'll become the hostage taker
15:42with you and we'll sell the hostages out and then you know all of our
15:46friends and those families that want the hostages released we'll we'll we're the united states
15:53we're the fbi and we're the hostage taker if you were able to get a
15:57million bucks for it imagine what we could do together we'll get 20 million bucks
16:02for those hostages so don't you have to though talk about values and principles in
16:08any negotiation rather than just the transactional outcome because then the hostage negotiator and the
16:14hostage taker could collaborate isn't that what happened in venezuela with trump and delcy rodriguez
16:20and now the top torturer has become the defense minister there is that a good
16:24outcome and i mean it's a resolution but is that an outcome that we wanted
16:30well i mean those are great questions and it's a it's worth asking that and
16:36wondering if whether or not that's the outcome so to go back to the hostage
16:42example like if i'm if i'm talking to a guy inside a bank my first
16:48thing on collaboration is i want you to live now if we can both agree
16:55on a collaboration that you live then let's work our way back to where we
17:01are now and then so that everybody lives that's the real collaboration from a hostage
17:08negotiator now the bag on it on the inside may have no desire to live
17:13i can't change that we actually call high risk indicators gary nessner my boss came
17:20up with uh with these indicators or the person on the other side is never
17:23going to make the deal uh in the black swan group we call them seven
17:27percenters why do we say seven percenters because hostage negotiators are successful 93 percent of
17:33the time which means seven percent the deal is never going to happen and in
17:36any given negotiation there there are three kinds of negotiation the deals you should make
17:41the deals you shouldn't make and the deals that you're never going to make and
17:45your first job is to try to sort out which of those three bucket you're
17:51in if if the other side is never going to make a deal no matter
17:54what kind of magic ones i have i got to be able to recognize ahead
17:59of time that it's never going to happen then i have to reassess the situation
18:03so the first part um the second part i'd like to to talk about it
18:09and when you mentioned venezuela let's compare venezuela to iraq the problem with taking out
18:16an entire regime is that the country falls into chaos and iraq falls into chaos
18:23and drags the vast majority of the sunni middle east down with it and we
18:28get isis which is one of the worst things that we thought al -qaeda was
18:32bad and isis was even worse so the and the big mistake with the american
18:38government at that point in time is we decided that the debathification of iraq we
18:43had to take out all of their politicians all of their bureaucrats the entire government
18:48structure and that became a black hole that the middle east hasn't still fully come
18:53back out of so the avoidance of these black holes of anarchy and chaos and
18:59murder and bloodletting without in which is still what's going on in different parts of
19:05the release avoiding that in venezuela is probably a good idea right if though the
19:12hostage taker was told you know what you get to stay in the bank i
19:20mean imagine if you said here's what we're going to do you stay in the
19:23bank we're going to make money together you keep the hostages we sell that i
19:29can go there sorry brother we we take the house i mean that's you know
19:33you know that's look i doing doing the other work is very is very hard
19:38and it almost raises the question though whether you talk about iraq or iran or
19:46venezuela or anywhere and i think this is the broader question and it's not necessarily
19:51a negotiation question but i think we're seeing it at home should we even be
19:57doing this stuff in the first place and if ultimately the whole goal of spending
20:02billions of taxpayer dollars is to basically take out one ayatollah and put in another
20:09ayatollah who's more extreme and they now control the strait of her moves yes we
20:15did a deal right it was the negotiate your 93 percent number i could do
20:20a hundred percent negotiations if i just gave the other side you know you know
20:24a deal that was mutually beneficial actually not true not true um uh you can't
20:33and that was a hard thing that i learned in negotiations was the guy is
20:37never going to make a deal and is never going to give up exploiting you
20:40as soon as you give them what they asked for their response is oh you
20:45misunderstood that was a down payment we weren't asking for that to settle the deal
20:50we're asking that just as as the beginning as as an opening that was simply
20:54a down payment and and that's a hard thing to recognize when you got somebody
20:58playing that kind of game on the other side it's an endless game of exploitation
21:02from that side the seven percenters you'll never make the deal because whatever you give
21:07them will never be enough now isn't that though precisely the problem with what trump
21:15is doing with putin that every time you know whitkoff who you mentioned let me
21:21ask you a question ben if trump cured cancer would you say that he was
21:25wasting his time he shouldn't have been doing that no i would say it's great
21:28but if he's but but if he spread cancer cancer i would say it's bad
21:31but you know what yeah yeah i i I think you're picking on him a
21:36little bit. I think I think it feels like that whatever he's done, you're going
21:41to find a way to say it's wrong.
21:43No, I think that if there are positive accomplishments that are made, if there are.
21:49Which ones are? Name a positive accomplishment so far.
21:52Look, I think that if there could actually be peace that could be brought to
21:56the Middle East, if there could be stability that's there, I think I think that
22:00could be a good thing.
22:01I mean, right now, if Trump could actually bring if gas prices were down, gas
22:08prices. So far, zero positive accomplishments.
22:11Right now, I don't think there's any.
22:13I really don't. Right now, under Trump, right now, I can't name one.
22:18In comparison to, say, any American president since World War II, because that's when the
22:24Western, the West remade the Middle East at their whim.
22:27Yeah, Donald Trump, in my view, in my humble view right now, is destroying the
22:33post -World War II framework.
22:35I think he's making America weaker.
22:37I think he's harming our alliances.
22:39I think, you know, the great nation of Canada being one of the first places
22:45that he attacks is very damaging.
22:47I believe in free trade agreements, generally speaking.
22:52I obviously want to make sure we protect our domestic businesses, but we've been pulled
22:56out a lot of a lot of deals, even a deal that he negotiated.
23:00I mean, he negotiates the United States, Mexico, Canada agreement.
23:05He says it's a stupid agreement.
23:06If you're going to negotiate your if you're going to attack your own deals as
23:10stupid, you know, it's it's it's it's a tough one for me.
23:14And I'll just say this before we go, although I'm happy to keep on talking.
23:19I just think the American people right now are very curious what the hell is
23:25going on. And I just think the American people are suffering and they're saying we
23:29can't afford things. We're psychologically tortured, living paycheck to paycheck.
23:34We're out there struggling. Why are we in this war?
23:37Why is there all this chaos?
23:39What's happening? You know, that's how I feel about it.
23:43But these are fair questions.
23:45I mean, these are fair questions and trying to gain a perspective on it is
23:50definitely a struggle. I think these are fair questions.
23:54Well, I appreciate your book.
23:56I appreciate the book. I think it does give a great framework into thinking about
24:01things, data gathering and truly thinking about negotiation, not as violence and beating you and
24:10destroying you and crushing you, but that you can gain tactical advantage by listening, hearing
24:17other sides, you know, and trying to forge a middle ground.
24:21So the book is called Never Split the Difference, Negotiating as if your life depends
24:26on it by Chris Voss.
24:27And Chris is also the head of the Black Swan Group.
24:30Thanks, Chris. You've been very kind.
24:33I appreciate the conversation. I appreciate the conversation too.
24:37It's a good discussion. Come back.
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