IT took five years of negotiations to end the Vietnam War. The Paris Accords were signed in January 1973 by a beleaguered presidential administration after five years of negotiations that had begun in 1968. The most important breakthroughs along the way occurred in the secret talks held between Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho who represented the Viet Cong. There were 68 rounds of these secret talks that Kissinger describes in his memoirs, and the one thing to take away from it is how meticulous, exacting and diabolically complicated these kinds of talks can be.

Of course, there are key differences between then and now. That war dragged on for years, had close to a million combatants (all told) from both sides, tens of thousands of Vietnamese prisoners exchanged for hundreds of American ones, and the talks involved four sides. This war is less than two months in, has seen no ground engagements save for a limited operation, has no prisoners, and only two sides that need to be brought together for an agreement. This makes the diplomacy somewhat less complicated. But even then, it is a good idea to not underestimate the task at hand.

My main concern here is that the Iranians have not yet made a clear demonstration of their leverage in this war, and for that reason, may not be ready to make a deal just yet. Their main leverage is economic, and the real impact of that is yet to be felt. It is possible they want the real impact of their actions to hit the markets first before........

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