Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

by Chris Voss

In recent years, Iran has put up with sanctions that have cost it well over $100 billion in foreign investment and oil revenue in order to defend a uranium-enriching nuclear program that can only meet 2 percent of its energy needs. In other words, like the students who won’t take a free $1 because the offer seems insulting, Iran has screwed itself out of its chief source of income—oil and gas revenue—in order to pursue an energy project with little expected payoff. Why? Again, fairness. For Iran, it’s not fair that the global powers—which together have several thousand nuclear weapons—should be able to decide if it can use nuclear energy. And why, Iran wonders, is it considered a pariah for enriching uranium when India and Pakistan, which clandestinely acquired nuclear weapons, are accepted members of the international community? In a TV interview, former Iranian nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian hit the nail on the head. “The nuclear issue today for Iranians is not nuclear,” he said, “it’s defending their integrity [as an] independent identity against the pressure of the rest.” You may not trust Iran, but its moves are pretty clear evidence that rejecting perceived unfairness, even at substantial cost, is a powerful motivation.