Wendy Sherman speaks during a meeting in Wellington, New Zealand in August 2022. | Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

American and Iranian negotiators are reportedly getting closer to a deal that would end the weeks-long war between the nations, following the collapse of in-person talks in Islamabad last weekend. In his announcement Sunday, Vice President JD Vance initially sounded pretty hopeless about the whole thing, as you might expect of a man whose dreams had just been smashed . But now there are reports of backchannel phone calls, Pakistani delegations, frameworks of frameworks…it’s all very The Diplomat.

Incidentally, my colleagues at the Today, Explained podcast just scored a fascinating interview with an actual diplomat: Wendy Sherman, the former deputy secretary of state and President Barack Obama’s top negotiator for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.…