‘We want to get this thing over with’: How Trump officials overcame skepticism of Iran to reach an agreement
By Alayna Treene, CNN
(CNN) — Over the past two weeks, President Donald Trump’s national security team met nearly every day to discuss an evolving agreement to end the Iran war, with many concerned that Tehran would not hold up its end of the bargain, administration officials directly involved in the negotiations said.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth were among the “most pessimistic” about whether the Iranians would honor their commitments to make substantive concessions on their nuclear program, even if they agreed to negotiate on that issue, one of the officials said. But at various points, nearly ever senior official — including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Vice President JD Vance and Trumps envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner — raised serious reservations, the officials said.
They ultimately reached Trump-driven consensus: “We want to get this thing over with,” an administration official directly involved in the talks told CNN. During an internal meeting at the White House roughly two weeks ago, they decided to press for a general agreement to reopen the Strait of Hormuz and outline a broad framework on dismantling Iran’s nuclear program. None ultimately opposed moving forward on that, an official involved in the talks said, and the administration decided to reassess where things stand during a 60-day period for highly-technical talks.
“The consensus of the team was we want to get this thing over with, and the deal is the way to do it in a way that maximizes our upside and minimizes our downside,” the official said. “That was sort of the way that we approached it, and all of us have different concerns and different questions.”
The president’s view, another person familiar with the matter said, was key.
“We ended the war because Donald Trump wanted to end the war, and felt like he had enough to end the war,” the person said. “The entire administration is aligned on ending this.”
The internal debate and discussion had raged for weeks, and Ratcliffe, in particular, offered blunt assessments of what he viewed as Iran’s possible duplicitousness, officials said. One source said that, at times, Ratcliffe has pointed out that the intelligence the CIA has collected on Iran does not line up with the commitments Iran is making to the US, both in official and back-channel conversations. But that source added: “The director wasn’t taking a position. He doesn’t take policy positions.”
“Obviously he gives deference to Vance and Witkoff and Kushner — they’re the ones doing the actual negotiations. He’s not negotiating at all, he’s not a policymaker. He provides the intelligence backdrop to those negotiations,” the source said.
Another US official said virtually everyone shared Ratcliffe’s skepticism of Iran. “They lie like we breathe,” said one US official, “so we expect that.”
The official said, though, that intelligence of an opposing side’s private view of a deal is “always lagging” and generally indicates wariness of negotiations.
“They end up, like, talking about every way they can avoid doing the deal, and then if we’re skilled, we’re able to get them to a place where they have no choice but to do the deal we want,” the official said.
The US official said the Iranians were privately “telling us all the right things,” which helped persuade the administration to move forward.
“Whether they are being honest is a question, whether they have the political ability and maneuver in their system is a question, but I think that the consensus view was that we should proceed to this phase,” the official said.
A Pentagon spokesman said Hegseth was aligned with Trump’s goals. “Of course, Secretary Hegseth supports the Peace Deal with Iran and all of President Trump’s objectives,” chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told CNN in a statement.
A White House official said in a statement: “President Trump listens to all opinions on any given issue — but everyone understands he is the final decisionmaker. This MOU meets all of the redlines that the administration has long articulated by ensuring that Iran can never possess a nuclear weapon, they cannot keep their highly enriched uranium, and they cannot hold the world’s energy supply hostage. The President will only agree to a good deal for the American people, and both this MOU and a final agreement will ensure the short- and long-term safety and security of the United States.”
The CIA declined to comment.
Looking for an off-ramp
Inside the West Wing, many senior officials had long been pushing for an off-ramp from the war, motivated by a wide range of factors.
Members of Trump’s political team advocated for a way out to protect vulnerable Republicans ahead of the November midterm elections and the president’s political legacy. Treasury Scott Bessent shared concerns over the war’s detrimental impact on the economy. Energy Secretary Chris Wright was wary of the effects to the world’s energy industry, officials familiar with the matter said.
“There was broad acknowledgement that if this went on, it was going to get even worse,” one source familiar with the talks said.
White House chief of staff Susie Wiles is viewed internally as a leading voice in wanting to end the war, the officials said. She has repeatedly told White House advisers to be more honest with the president about the realities of the war and more vocal in their perspectives so he has all the necessary information to make his decision, officials said.
One source said she wanted to “wrap this up for a long time.”
Witkoff and Kushner, who have been at the forefront of direct negotiations with Middle Eastern mediators and the Iranians over the course of the war, were viewed internally as more optimistic about the possibility of reaching a deal, though they also had approached Iran’s dedication to the nuclear provisions with a dose of skepticism.
“But not a single person stepped up and said no, this is a bad idea. Everybody was pretty much on board, like, ‘yeah, let’s make this deal, let’s open the straits, and then let’s see where we are in a few months,’” an administration official said.
Trump, too, very much wanted the war to end. Officials argued that the president’s very vocal and public criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the G7 summit this week shows how personally invested he has become in ending the war. Trump has been incredibly frustrated with what he views as Netanyahu acting to undermine the agreement, they said.
The administration official said the administration essentially decided two weeks ago on the broad outlines of a deal it would find palatable. “If we can open the straits, if we can get some commitments on the nuclear material, and if we can make sure that we don’t have to give anything until they give everything — that basic three-part structure was agreed upon as of a couple of weeks ago,” the official said. They then worked to get Iran to commit.
“We were focused on Iran,” Trump said Tuesday. “That’s going to be in the back, in the rearview mirror.”
No text of a deal has yet been released, and the administration already has faced criticism from some GOP hawks. It’s been Vance, one of the war’s most vocal internal skeptics, who was left to sell it to the public, with one Vance official noting he already had a series of media interviews scheduled to promote his new book.
The vice president said on the “Megyn Kelly Show” Tuesday that “delicate diplomatic” considerations were stopping the US from releasing the text of the agreement, because mediators had asked the US “to sequence this in the right way.” And while he defended its terms, he also suggested the US was in a good position even if Iran ultimately walked away.
“But if they don’t comply with the deal, the straits are still open, we’ve still done incredible damage to their nuclear program, and it’s really, you know, we can get on with our lives as a country,” he said.
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