How We Got the Iran Deal—And Why We’ll Miss It

Wednesday, October 17, 2018
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM
(Pacific)
William J. Perry Conference Room
Encina Hall, Second Floor, Central, C231
616 Jane Stanford Way, Stanford, CA 94305
Speaker: 
  • Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman

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*Event co-hosted with the Middle Eastern Initiative

Speaker Bio: Wendy R. Sherman is Senior Counselor at Albright Stonebridge Group and former Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs.  In January 2019, Ambassador Sherman will join Harvard Kennedy School as a professor of the practice in public leadership and director of the School’s Center for Public Leadership.  She serves on the boards of the International Crisis Group and the Atlantic Council, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group.  Ambassador Sherman led the U.S. negotiating team that reached agreement on a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between the P5+1, the European Union, and Iran for which, among other diplomatic accomplishments, she was awarded the National Security Medal by President Barack Obama.  Prior to her service at the Department of State, she was Vice Chair and founding partner of the Albright Stonebridge Group, Counselor of the Department of State under Secretary Madeleine Albright and Special Advisor to President Clinton and Policy Coordinator on North Korea, and Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs under Secretary Warren Christopher.   Early in her career, she managed Senator Barbara Mikulski’s successful campaign for the U.S Senate and served as Director of EMILY’S list.  She served on the President’s Intelligence Advisory Board, was Chair of the Board of Directors of Oxfam America and served on the U.S. Department of Defense’s Defense Policy Board and Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Proliferation and Terrorism.  Ambassador Sherman is the author of Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power and Persistence published by PublicAffairs, September 2018.

Abstract: During the international negotiations that resulted in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman led the team of American diplomats representing the United States. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the agreement is formerly know, was not perfect, but it did offer the best possible assurance that Iran would never obtain a nuclear weapon. But in May of this year, President Trump made the decision to pull out of the deal—a move that will go down as one of the worst foreign policy blunders in U.S. history, according to Ambassador Sherman. Here, the Ambassador will discuss how the Iran nuclear deal came to be—and why we will all miss it.