by John Kerry
My first visit to Oman was memorable. Not only was it the start of a years-long endeavor, but it was one of the most generous and heartfelt welcomes I had received anywhere. Sultan Qaboos and I sat out on the veranda of one of his spacious, light-stoned palaces overlooking the Gulf, discussing politics, art, music and our shared appreciation of classic cars. Around lunchtime, he escorted me to another part of the palace—this one even larger—where, as we were serenaded by members of the royal orchestra, who played a medley of American songs, we enjoyed a spectacular Middle Eastern feast and turned finally to the topic at the forefront of both our minds: whether the United States and Iran could overcome our respective skepticism and begin to negotiate a solution to the nuclear challenge.
The sultan told me he believed there was a real opportunity at hand. Traditionally, within the Iranian government, the nuclear issue had been managed by hard-liners on the Supreme National Security Council. But the sultan was encouraged because the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, had decided to transfer oversight to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, meaning it would be under the purview of then minister Ali Salehi, an MIT-trained nuclear expert. Salehi was the godfather of the Iranian nuclear program, and for that reason, he enjoyed the trust of the supreme leader. But, the sultan argued, Salehi was also one of the biggest advocates in Tehran for giving diplomacy a chance. I would later find out that the sultan’s instincts with respect to Salehi were dead-on, as usual.
Notwithstanding the sultan’s sense of opportunity, we both understood the very real obstacles to progress. At the top of the list were decades of mutual distrust and deception. Both sides had significant political concerns as well, which, ironically, were not entirely dissimilar: both governments were facing elections and had to appease large constituencies of powerful people who were vehemently opposed to direct talks between the countries. In the broad sweep, to Americans, Iran was a terrorist state, guilty of trashing our embassy and taking hostages, of killing Americans with IEDs and bombs in Iraq and Lebanon, of interfering with governments in the region in furtherance of spreading its “revolution.” To Iranians, America was the “Great Satan,” untrustworthy overthrower of their government with the CIA, a supporter of the Shah and his torturing secret police, guilty of standing by while Saddam Hussein gassed Iranians and then complaining about Iran’s support for Assad. Perceptions and feelings were strong on both sides. There was a lot to work through, and finding a mutually agreeable way forward would be challenging, potentially even impossible.
With that in mind, Sultan Qaboos shared important guidance during that first meeting. “There must be a sense of genuine, mutual respect underlying this negotiation,” he told me. “If the Iranians feel bullied or condescended to, they will walk away at once.” I took this advice to heart. The talks that followed were often tense, if not heated. But despite huge substantive differences, they were always cloaked in a mantle of respect. It made all the difference.
• • •
I LEFT MUSCAT heartened by our conversation and returned to Washington a few days before Christmas. I quickly briefed the White House and State Department. There were still a number of unanswered questions, but President Obama agreed that there appeared to be a basis for real dialogue with the Iranians.
He also agreed that continuing to communicate with the Iranians via messages passed through Muscat wouldn’t get us very far; ultimately, we would need to sit down face-to-face with the Iranians themselves. I arranged to return to Muscat on January 3, 2012, to discuss how the Omanis could help bring about such a dialogue.
These initial conversations had energized me. During the Christmas holidays with the family in Ketchum, Idaho, I spent considerable time on the phone with Salem, my staff and others involved in the effort. Now I believed we had a real opportunity to prevent a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. I wanted to make sure we didn’t squander it.
I did take some time off. For the past twenty-five years, on Christmas Day, we have played an annual late-afternoon ice hockey game with neighbors in Sun Valley. It’s great fun—usually. Kids of all ages play, from four to seventy-four. It isn’t “real” ice hockey, though it requires real skating; we play “broom” hockey—small sticks with a shortened blade and a hardened rubber ball. Only a few folks ever wore shin guards or hockey pants. It was purposely pretty tame, although depending on who had the ball, the pace could get fast.
At one point I was chasing the ball, when Tom Hanks—one of our neighbors in Idaho—slipped and fell right in front of me. I was going to either crash into him or try to jump over him and avoid a collision. I opted for the latter. Unfortunately, just as I was halfway over and clearing him, he started to get up, not seeing me coming. As he went up, he caught the shins of my legs, which forced them up and my face down into the ice. My head hit with a crack that was heard from one end of the ice to the other. It happened so quickly there was no time to cushion the face-plant with my arm or hand. I knew instantly I had broken my nose. I went straight to the hospital, where they informed me I would need to wait for the swelling to go down to have it properly set. I wound up with two huge black raccoon eyes and a swollen broken nose complete with beaten boxer look. A week later, when I was scheduled to return to the Middle East, the bruises had barely dissipated. I grabbed a pair of big black sunglasses and off I went.
In Muscat, we got down to business pretty quickly. President Obama relayed a number of concerns, which I conveyed to the sultan. One thing particularly preoccupied the president: How serious were the Iranians? Would whoever they sent to meet with us have authority to actually negotiate, or were they engaged in a stunt to be used against us down the road? Before we would agree to any meeting, we hoped Sultan Qaboos could vouch for Iran’s motives. Could he convey confidence in the diplomats charged with negotiating on Iran’s behalf? I asked the sultan if he would be willing to visit Iran to take a full personal measure of Iranian intentions. In an extraordinary gesture, the sultan, who seldom traveled officially because of health challenges, made an official visit to Tehran, where he met with the supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei to discuss the possibilities.
Sultan Qaboos also raised the issue of uranium enrichment, which had been one of the core points of conflict in previous negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Iran had argued for many years that, as a party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), it had every right to enrich uranium as long as it stayed fully within the constraints of the NPT. We consistently made clear that the NPT—the central pillar of global nonproliferation efforts—outlines only a right to nuclear power. It does not, and has never, granted parties a defined “right” to enrich uranium themselves. This is a fact I was careful to emphasize from day one in my discussions with the Omanis and by extension the Iranians. Nevertheless, there are thirteen countries, all members of the NPT, including the United States, that have enriching capacity within the constraints of NPT compliance, which includes more rigorous, intrusive accountability than applied to other nations. The Iranians argued that as long as they were in full compliance, they should be allowed to do what other nations were already legally doing. They had a right to peaceful nuclear power and insisted they didn’t want to be forced into dependency on the Russians or any other country for their nuclear reactor fuel.
Leaving aside whether Iran had the “right” to enrich, deep down I also understood that unless we were willing to discuss the possibility that Iran’s enrichment could continue under carefully defined limits, there was no way we would gain the access, accountability, transparency and restraint necessary to know for certain Iran was not pursuing a weapons program. There might not even be a way to get Iran to the table. The average person in Iran bristles at the notion that his country can’t do what other sovereign nations do just because the United States says so. Iranians see that as complete capitulation at the hands of an America that for too long interfered in their sovereignty under the Shah. It’s asking too much for even a more moderate Iranian administration to accept.
The position of the United States had long been that any enrichment, however minor, would be a deal breaker. But our P5+1 negotiating partners unanimously moved away from this position. They decided, particularly given what other countries were doing, that some future enrichment would have to be discussed for the Iranians to take any negotiation seriously. I also learned in private conversations that despite its public position, the George W. Bush administration had quietly, privately come to agree with this position, though they had never landed on what structure or levels that might take. Deep down, I agreed too. And, as I came to learn, so did President Obama.
In the weeks that followed, Salem and I remained in close touch, speaking regularly on the phone and occasionally in person in one city or another. One night that spring, we spent hours at a table at Morton’s steak house in Georgetown, crafting a detailed blueprint of how a secret back-channel dialogue could work—down to how the delegations would enter and exit the sessions without arousing suspicion, and how many people would be involved.
I believed we had a clear opening for diplomacy.
Most of the National Security Council members agreed that the Omani channel should be explored. Hillary Clinton had some initial doubts about the Omanis. She was not yet convinced they could deliver or that we should trust the track being offered. Everyone acknowledged the difficult history of dealing with Iran but also understood that past opportunities for diplomacy had been squandered. We all remembered reports of an opening the Bush administration rejected in 2003, back when Iran was spinning only 164 centrifuges. Head-to-head talks never happened. In the meantime, despite the aggressive sanctions we put in place, Iran brought more than 1,700 new centrifuges online.
I understood Hillary’s caution, even if I disagreed with her. At one point, Tom Donilon convened a meeting in his office. My job, he told me, was to try to convince Hillary that we had to pursue this opportunity. It’s not that she wasn’t supportive of diplomacy to address the Iran nuclear challenge—she was—but she was not confident we had the opening the Omanis claimed. She had met with Sultan Qaboos about a year before my trip to Muscat and remained unconvinced that Iran had any desire to reach a deal. She was worried we’d appear too eager to make a deal and be embarrassed before anything was resolved. In the end, importantly, she supported the approach.
The president ultimately agreed to the back channel, though the internal debate had clearly resonated. Early that spring, he set up a call with the sultan to discuss the details. I don’t know exactly what was said, but Salem called my Senate office shortly after it ended. He was concerned. The leaders’ conversation had left Sultan Qaboos anxious, and he wasn’t sure the United States was as committed as I’d conveyed. Would I speak to him? I called the sultan and reassured him we were on track.
Maintaining momentum would not be easy. For one thing, there seemed to be a reluctance to settle on a date. The Omanis repeatedly submitted suggestions: April 20? No. April 24? No. May 1 or May 8? Won’t work. After a while, they grew frustrated that an answer did not seem forthcoming.
There was also indecision as to whom the administration would send to the meeting and whether it made any sense for me to join the delegation. The sultan had made clear to me that he would be more comfortable with me there since he and Salem had gotten to know me well, but I also realized that, as a former nominee for president and a longtime senator with close ties to the current president, I was too visible for what was supposed to be a discreet, low-profile exchange. One afternoon, when Tom Donilon and I were discussing the delegation, he said offhandedly, “Depending on what happens in the next term, you don’t want to be directly communicating with the Iranians.” It was a valid point, though I was surprised. This was a few months before President Obama pulled me aside during the 2012 campaign debate prep, where I played Mitt Romney, to let me know someone would be in touch with me to discuss my potentially taking part in the second-term administration.
My main concern was that the meeting take place and take place soon, not who would go. More than a year had passed since my first meeting with Salem. In the meantime, Iran had continued to march closer to a weapon. We needed to send a team—any team—to determine whether direct engagement was possible, before we missed the opportunity for good.
President Obama wisely sent Hillary’s deputy chief of staff, Jake Sullivan, and National Security Council staffer Puneet Talwar, who would later become my assistant secretary for political-military affairs, as well as an IT expert and an interpreter. Jake and Puneet, both smart and capable, were playing key roles on the national security team but were conveniently little known at the time, which made them perfect for the task. They took some extraordinary measures to protect the secrecy of their trip. No one was taking any chances.
The meeting went off without a hitch, but neither side thought it was particularly productive. Jake and Puneet were instructed not to show any latitude on enrichment, which angered the Iranians. In turn, the Iranians showed little willingness to accept even modest restrictions on their program.
And yet, the fact that they showed up at all, with the blessing of the supreme leader, demonstrated that they were taking the prospect of diplomacy seriously. That alone was a significant development—an encouraging sign in the wake of nearly forty years of nothing but invective.
As the summer continued, the external situation grew even more precarious. Israel was sending signals, both publicly and privately, that Iran was approaching a red line, and in response, there were more and more signals that the IDF was prepared to attack. It reached the point where national security experts were examining the phases of the moon for a signal of when it might happen. Common wisdom suggested Israeli military leaders would choose a new moon, when the sky was particularly dark, lending itself to a stealth attack.
The priority at that moment was convincing Israel to refrain from bombing Iran—at least temporarily. The back channel, for all intents and purposes, was put on hold. It would be several months before Iran and the United States reconvened.
• • •
THE AGGRESSIVE SANCTIONS regime we and our international partners were pursuing was having a dramatic impact on Iran’s economy, without question, but it was simultaneously strengthening the Iranians’ resolve to accelerate their nuclear program. Time was running out. We were essentially at the threshold point of a nuclear-armed Iran.
It was time, President Obama determined, to signal to Iran that the United States was willing to discuss the possibility of an agreement in which Iran could continue to enrich uranium on a limited basis. After all, the rest of our P5+1 negotiating partners had already come to that conclusion. We were the only holdouts. At some point, the United States would likely share the blame for the world missing an opportunity to solve the crisis peacefully.
With the Omanis’ help, we began to plan for another sit-down with the Iranians. I was strongly supportive of Bill Burns, the deputy secretary of state, leading the U.S. delegation. Bill, a career Foreign Service officer, was hugely respected at Foggy Bottom. He stood out as one of the most capable career diplomats the department has ever known. I knew he had the respect of former secretary of state Clinton as well as the president. In fact, one of the first things I did when I got to the State Department was ask Bill to postpone his long-planned retirement from the Foreign Service and remain as deputy secretary—in large part because I knew how valuable his expertise would be to the Iran effort. I was fortunate he agreed to do so.
The president and I knew that Bill’s involvement in the back channel would serve two goals: first, it would prove how serious we were about the talks, and second, we hoped it would encourage high-level participation on the Iranian side. President Obama also wanted to make sure the meeting was held after I was sworn in as secretary of state. We wanted it to be patently clear that the U.S. government was unified as these talks got under way.
I was sworn in on February 1, 2013. Bill and the rest of the delegation traveled to Muscat in e
arly March. He delivered the message the Iranians needed to hear: the United States would be prepared to explore a limited, exclusively peaceful domestic energy enrichment program, provided Iran would commit to sharp, permanent, verifiable constraints.
• • •
THE PROCESS WAS put on hold as Iran’s presidential election approached in June 2013. When the more moderate candidate, Hassan Rouhani, won, we were surprised and encouraged. Rouhani had campaigned on repairing Iran’s ties with the international community. He had also spent sixteen years as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. In that role, he had been deeply involved in previous rounds of nuclear negotiations. We didn’t know whether that would prove to be helpful or the opposite, but we figured some expertise was preferable to ignorance.
We also took some comfort in Rouhani’s appointment of Javad Zarif to serve as foreign minister and oversee the nuclear file. His reputation from his nearly ten years as Iran’s permanent representative at the UN was well known. He knew the international playing field as well as anyone. He had spent many years in the United States, was fluent in English and well versed in American culture. In addition, Zarif’s predecessor, Ali Salehi, who was essential in setting up the back channel, was appointed to lead Iran’s atomic energy program. These appointments seemed to reinforce Iran’s serious purpose. I was cautiously optimistic our effort would be reinvigorated—a belief that was confirmed when I heard from Salem that Rouhani’s team wasted no time in reaching out to the Omanis with a clear message: they were eager to move forward.
Bill led another delegation to Muscat weeks after Rouhani’s inauguration in August. We spoke nightly while he was there. He described a fundamental change in the mood of the talks. For the first time, our delegation perceived a real sense that the Iranians shared our desire to find a way forward. Previously, the meetings had largely been one lengthy speech after another, each person talking past the next. Now there was genuine dialogue.
