with deputy secretary of state william byrnes, under secretary wendy sherman, and biden adviser jake sullivan. in the end they came up with diplo speak, creative ambiguity. the text t t t says a final agreement, hopefully in six months, would involve a mutually defined enrichment program with practical limits. and inspections, all to be negotiated. both sides declare victory. critics say it sows the seeds for problems down the road. >> it is a huge difference. this is not about two people trying to put the best face on a deal as they walk out. >> reporter: but in tehran, people are celebrating at the prospect of getting even some relief from crippling sanctions says nbc's ali aruzi. >> there is a sense of cautious euphoria here. iranians are eager for economic prosperity after years of sky high prices. now they're hoping for tangible changes that will affect their buying power and quality of life. >> reporter: did the u.s. win or cave? experts say it's too early to tell. it depends if the temporary freeze leads to a bigger deal permanently removing the chance that iran could build a nuclear w

the top two officials were deputy secretary of state bill burns a and buckekeket official named jake sullivan who use to be at the state department and currently actually serves as vice president by his top national security official at bill burns is someone who has worked on the iraq issue for several years. jake's olive and is someone who is very widely respected at the white house the state department and that in the tube and they really forged his spring strong relations with iranian officials at both before the election and after the election. their approach men between tehran and washington had been building for some time in potential tax which infuriated close us ally israel. the us kept the march meet team from its allies is that inconsiderate to the mep that substance but it did have to brief israel and its five negotiating partner is at about these meetings that happened during the fall and the president canceled the most sensitive of these three feeds himself and that was with israeli prime minister benjamin netanyahu maniac who was scheduled to come to the white house for a visit

jake sullivan, the national security adviser to the president and bill burns, the deputy secretary oftate meeting with iranians directly, not in first year but after a lot of groundwork was laid. but this is basically what obama laid out originally. he wanted to talk to enemies of the united states and auk to adversaries and did it in a different way that he said he wanted in which it was much more -- >> the challenge of this exact moment is keeping congress from imposing tougher sanctions that would totally scuttle this deal. it seems to me and luke was saying this as well, harry reid is the key person here. you can have senate democrats like chuck schumer and others saying it is not a good deal but it's up to harry reid to bring something to the floor of the senate. reid weighed in on whether he would bring sanctions to the floor. let's listen to that. >> the way i feel about it today, is the same way i felt about it last week. i said when we come back, we'll take a look at this to see if we need stronger sanctions and that's why i'm going to look at ken johnson chairman of the bank

he fwan to work that route and followed up with bill burns and jake sullivan from the state department president's office, and hammered out the actual wording which explains why both israel and the frieenc memorably in early november balked because they were given la language that had been worked out in private. >> they said, huh? the most interesting thing to me in that the new he details we know of secretary kerry's early diplomacy before he was secretary is that not only did that begin before he was secretary of state, it began well before the current regime in iran took power. and so the obama administration was going out on a limb, going on two years ago by saying maybe, possibly, there's a deal to be done here. let's get an intermediary to feel them out and see whether this is possible. it certainly didn't lack possible under the ahmadinejad re jaem but he only had a year left in office so they were trying to think ahead of it. it could have gone terribly wrong and we would have never known about it. >> and ruth and susan, let's take a look at the president in all of this. susan,

the deputy secretary of state, bill byrnes and wendy sherman and jake sullivan from the vice president's office for a year. this was before rouhani's election. this was something president obama has been wanting to do. he only told israel, he only told netanyahu about it in september at their meeting right before the u.n. general assembly. that's one of the reasons why netanyahu's speech to the u.n. was as strong and angry as it was. >> mike, one other thing i heard from an arab leader this weekend was, he said you guys cheated on us. you guys went behind our back for six months. didn't let us know that you were talking to our enemy. you don't treat us well. then you go behind our back and talk to our enemy. we're going to hear a lot more about this, by the way, publicly from arab states moving forward. mike? >> well, off of that, richard, let me ask you, is that region, saudi arabia, israel, are they safer today now that we are talking with iran than prior to talking to iran? and the second aspect of the question is, with regard to the sanctions, what are the odds that the united states

the deputy secretary of state bill burns and vice president biden's national security adviser jake sullivanave these meetings to which no one was supposed to know about. and no one did know about. >> although you and your colleagues have been investigating these meetings since last spring. so what did you know at the time, and did you think it was leading up to a deal like the one we got in geneva last night or early this morning? >> certainly not back in march when we first heard about it. shortly after this first meeting, which was kind of a test to see whether this channel would work, whether oman was a good place to have it and whether the iranians who were then under president ahmadinejad, very hard line, very antagonistic toward the west, to test whether the iranians were willing to have such a channel of communication. at that point, no, we did not know that it was going to eventually lead to a deal. because at that point, the nuclear talks were really kind of going nowhere. the iranians had not shown much of a willingness under president ahmadinejad to engage. so when rouhani came i