THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2024 55 Fast forward nearly 20 years. In 1998, after serving as U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Miller joined Search to work on our initiative to improve U.S.-Iranian relations, something he could not have done from inside the government. Ever the optimist, Miller believed that at some future time Iran and the United States would start talking about the most critical issue that separated them: namely, Iran’s nuclear posture. He reasoned that for negotiations to be successful, the two countries would need to find mutually acceptable solutions to technical issues, and he thought that Search could provide an unofficial forum in which experts from both countries could start that process. In 2005 Miller convened a group that included a United Nations nuclear inspector, Iran’s former chief negotiator on nuclear matters, a hydrogen bomb designer, and several others with similar credentials. The group focused on providing impartial analysis and creative problem-solving. Miller kept White House and State Department officials informed, and they privately urged him to continue. We at Search became prime interlocutors between the U.S. and Iran because the two governments were not connecting in any meaningful way. Over the next two years, our nuclear group met on six occasions with Javad Zarif, then Iran’s ambassador to the UN. Zarif later became foreign minister, and he personally negotiated the eventual nuclear agreement. Miller also met privately with Zarif about once a month. Here is what Zarif had to say about our involvement during this period: “I believe you saved our negotiations. … Without the work of the group, I believe discussions would have ended. … If there is any outcome of the negotiations that is to the satisfaction of both sides, it will be a derivative of the discussions of this group.” Just after President Barack Obama was inaugurated in 2009, Miller arranged for and then attended confidential meetings in Europe and New York between former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization. Both men had access to top-level policymakers. We never learned what Salehi told Iranian leaders, but we knew that Perry personally reported to Obama that agreements on nuclear
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