In early March 2010, I visited Lula in Brasília. I explained why this would be a bad outcome and tried to dissuade him from pursuing it, but Lula would not be deterred. He rejected my view that Iran was only playing for time. During my visit I explained publicly, “The door is open for negotiation. We never slammed it shut. But we don’t see anybody even in the far-off distance walking toward it.” I went on: “We see an Iran that runs to Brazil, an Iran that runs to Turkey, an Iran that runs to China, telling different things to different people to avoid international sanctions.”
President Obama followed up with a letter to Lula in April underscoring our concerns: “Iran appears to be pursuing a strategy that is designed to create the impression of flexibility without agreeing to actions that can begin to build mutual trust and confidence.” He conveyed the same message to Erdoğan in Turkey. Meanwhile, lending credence to our argument, Iran pledged to continue enriching uranium. Their only goal seemed to be to derail the sanctions drive at the UN.
With Lula set to visit Tehran, I called Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and urged him to see the Iranian efforts for what they were, “an elaborate dance.” But he was full of confidence for what could be achieved. Finally I grew exasperated and exclaimed, “There has to be an end to the process. At some point, there has to be a day of reckoning.” Amorim argued that it might be easier for the Iranians to make a deal with Brazil and Turkey than with the United States. I doubted something positive could come from the meeting and worried that it was happening at a particularly precarious time because we were finally close to an agreement with the Chinese and Russians on the text of a new sanctions resolution at the UN. Neither Moscow nor Beijing were particularly enthusiastic about the process, and I sensed that if they saw an opportunity to bolt and give Iran more time, they would take it in a flash.
That was my immediate concern when I saw the news that Lula, Erdoğan, and Ahmadinejad had reached an agreement. In case there was any doubt, Amorim confirmed it at a press conference. “This plan is a route for dialogue and takes away any grounds for sanctions,” he said.
When we spoke afterward, the Foreign Ministers of Brazil and Turkey both tried to sell me on the merits of the deal. They reported on their tough eighteen-hour negotiations and tried to convince me that they had succeeded. I think they were surprised that their triumph was being greeted with such skepticism. But I wanted to see action from Iran, not more words. “We have a saying that the proof is in the pudding,” I told Amorim. “I agree that the tasting of the pudding is key, but there must be time to get the spoon out and have time to try it,” he replied. To that I replied, “This pudding has been in for over a year now!”
The urgent question now was whether we could hold together the sanctions resolution in the face of this new gambit. We had an agreement in principle with China and Russia, which I hurried to announce as soon as possible after the press conference in Tehran. But until votes were actually cast in New York, nothing was set in stone. When Beijing issued a cautious statement welcoming the Brazil-Turkey deal, I could feel the ground beginning to shift. Fortunately I was scheduled to fly to China a few days later for high-level talks with the Chinese leadership. Iran would be at the top of the agenda, alongside North Korea and the South China Sea.
Over a long dinner with Dai Bingguo at the Diaoyutai Guesthouse, we talked through the issue. I walked through our objections to the Brazil-Turkey proposal and reminded Dai of the long record of Iranian double-dealing, including the deception at Qom. It was time to resolve any remaining issues with the text of the sanctions resolution, I said. As usual, Dai was thoughtful but firm, with his eye on both the sweep of history and the bottom line. China was uncomfortable with the international community imposing penalties on states except in the most egregious instances, and it certainly did not want any of its commercial interests threatened by sanctions. Compounding their reluctance, only a year earlier we had gone through a similar exercise when seeking to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea. So we were asking them to hold their nose and go along for the second time in as many years.
I reminded Dai that China’s main interest in the Middle East was stability, which ensured the steady flow of oil. If our push for sanctions at the UN failed, there would continue to be the potential for military confrontation. That could spike the price of oil and wreak havoc with the global economy. Alternatively, if China chose to reduce its commercial ties to Iran, we could help it find other sources of energy. In the end, I was blunt. This is important to us, I told Dai. If we’re going to build a cooperative relationship, as Presidents Obama and Hu had pledged, then we need China to be with us at the Security Council.
By the conclusion of the evening, I felt I had put the process back on track. I cemented that impression in discussions over the next few days with President Hu and Premier Wen. The drive toward new sanctions could continue. “We are pleased with the cooperation that we’ve received. We have a P5+1 consensus,” I announced after my meetings in Beijing. All that was left to do was work out the fine print. “There is a recognition on the part of the international community that the agreement that was reached in Tehran a week ago between Iran, Brazil and Turkey only occurred because the Security Council was on the brink of publicly releasing the text of the resolution that we have been negotiating for many weeks. It was a transparent ploy to avoid Security Council action.”
The vote in New York was set for June 9. Susan and her team were still going back and forth with the Chinese on the final list of specific Iranian companies and banks to sanction, and we were mounting a final push to get more of the nonpermanent members of the Security Council on board. At a minimum we wanted to see abstentions rather than nays.
Meanwhile I had to attend a meeting of the Organization of American States in Lima, Peru. It turned out to be a fortuitous detour. China’s Ambassador to the United States, Zhang Yesui, was also in town to attend the OAS meeting, and I invited him to my hotel for a drink. I hoped we could settle the sanctions list once and for all. The J. W. Marriott in Lima is perched atop the Costa Verde cliffs, with a striking view of the Pacific. When Ambassador Zhang arrived, I led him over to a quiet table in the bar where we could talk. I had been visiting with members of the State Department press corps, who were enjoying pisco sours, a local favorite that mixes Peruvian liquor with lime juice, egg whites, and bitters, and many of the reporters remained at the bar. They had no idea that negotiations were going on right under their nose. At one point an ebullient Mark Landler of the New York Times approached our table bearing two pisco sours. Who says diplomacy can’t be effective and fun at the same time? I smiled and accepted. Zhang politely followed suit. And there, over Peruvian cocktails, we reached a final understanding on the sanctions designations.
The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1929 by a vote of 12 to 2. It imposed the strictest sanctions in history on Iran, targeting the Revolutionary Guard, arms sales, and financial transactions. Only Turkey and Brazil, still unhappy about their failed diplomatic maneuver, voted no. Lebanon abstained after last-minute outreach by me, Vice President Biden, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a prominent Lebanese American. I had called Lebanese President Michel Suleiman hours before from Colombia and urged him not to vote no, which he was inclined to do based on his political necessities at home. I knew he was navigating some difficult decisions, and I was pleased with the abstention.
The resolution was far from perfect—securing consensus with Russia and China had required compromises—but I was proud of what we had achieved. During the Bush years Iran had managed to play the world’s great powers against one another and avoided serious international sanctions for its misdeeds. The Obama Administration changed that.
Despite our success, I knew this was just the beginning. The UN resolution opened the door for much tougher additional unilateral sanctions by the United States and other countries. We had coordinated with Congressional leaders throughout this process, and soon Congress approved a law th
at would hit even harder at Iran’s economy. I was also talking to our European partners about new steps they would take as well.
Even as the pressure built, we kept the offer of engagement on the table. In December 2010, I traveled to Bahrain for a conference on security in the Persian Gulf. We knew that a delegation of Iranian diplomats was also expected to attend. Despite the brief contacts made at previous summits by Richard Holbrooke and Jake Sullivan, I had never yet come face-to-face with an Iranian counterpart. I decided to use the opportunity to send a message. In the middle of my speech at a gala dinner in a Ritz-Carlton ballroom, I paused and said, “At this time, I would like to address directly the delegation at this conference from the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The room grew still. The Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was sitting just a few seats away. “Nearly two years ago, President Obama extended your government a sincere offer of dialogue. We are still committed to this offer,” I said. “You have the right to a peaceful nuclear program. But with that right comes a reasonable responsibility: that you follow the treaty you signed, and fully address the world’s concern about your nuclear activities. We urge you to make that choice—for your people, your interests, and our shared security.”
Afterward, as dinner was breaking up and everyone was shaking hands, I called out to Mottaki, “Hello, Minister!” He muttered something in Farsi and turned away. A few minutes later we ran into each other again, outside in the driveway. I offered another friendly greeting, and again he refused to reply. I smiled to myself. In his first inaugural address, President Obama had told Iran and other pariah states that we would “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Mottaki had just demonstrated how hard this was to achieve. But, in fairness, we had just successfully campaigned around the world to impose crippling sanctions on his country. Engagement and pressure. Carrots and sticks. This was the nature of diplomacy, and we were playing a long game.
* * *
* * *
This was the backdrop against which, in January 2011, the Sultan of Oman made his offer to me of secret direct talks with Iran. Engagement through the P5+1 process had stalled. Intercession by well-intentioned third parties had also failed. Again and again Iran had proven to be intransigent and untrustworthy. Yet there was reason to think that, despite all this, the Sultan might actually be able to deliver. After all, he had done it in the case of the imprisoned American hikers.
Back in July 2009, three young Americans were arrested by Iranian security forces while hiking in the mountainous border area between northern Iraq and Iran and charged with espionage. Joshua Fattal, Shane Bauer, and Sarah Shourd were living and working among the Kurds of northern Iraq, and there was no reason to suspect them of being spies. From Washington it was impossible to know exactly what happened or even whether or not the trio had strayed across the border. But the incident echoed the kidnapping of two American journalists near the border between China and North Korea just a few months before and posed an immediate problem. As in North Korea, we had no diplomatic relations with Iran and no embassy in Tehran to provide assistance. We had to rely on the Swiss as our formal “protecting power” to represent us. But the Iranians initially refused to grant consular access to the Swiss diplomats, meaning nobody was allowed to visit the detained Americans, as required under the Vienna Convention that governs diplomatic relations among nations. I made a public appeal for the hikers’ release, which I repeated frequently over the following months, and enlisted the Swiss to send private messages as well.
We stayed in close touch with the hikers’ distraught families, and in November, I invited them to my office at the State Department so we could meet in person. It took months for the Swiss Ambassador in Tehran to get into the notorious Evin Prison to see the three Americans. They had been held for months without formal charges or access to legal representation. With the help of the Swiss, the mothers of the hikers were given visas to travel to Iran just after Mother’s Day. I met with them again before they left and sent my prayers with them to Tehran. They were permitted a tearful reunion with their children but were not allowed to bring them home. The whole scene was used by Iran as a publicity stunt.
Throughout this ordeal I tried every back channel we could find to persuade the Iranians to release the hikers. I asked Jake Sullivan to take on the project. At a conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the summer of 2010, I sent Jake to hand the Iranian Foreign Minister a message about the hikers, just as we had done the year before in The Hague for the other detained Americans. But the key contact was in Oman. One of the Sultan’s top advisors approached Dennis Ross, President Obama’s top Iran advisor, and offered to serve as a go-between.
The Omanis were as good as their word. In September 2010, Sarah Shourd was released on bail. Once she left Iran, I called the Sultan to thank him and see what could be done about the remaining two hikers (it would take another year to win their release as well). “We are always ready to do what’s right to help,” the Sultan told me. His comment was still in my head as we sat and talked in January 2011.
Freeing a detained hiker was a far cry from facilitating sensitive talks about the future of Iran’s nuclear program. But the Sultan had shown he could get results. So I listened carefully to his proposal for a new substantive back channel, and I asked if we could be sure that the Iranian side would actually be authorized to negotiate in good faith. After all, we’d invested lots of time in the P5+1 process, only to see the agreement made in the room overruled back in Tehran. The Sultan couldn’t make any promises, but he wanted to try. I agreed that if we proceeded, absolute secrecy would be needed. We didn’t want another circus with lots of posturing for the press and political pressure from back home. Even under the best of circumstances, this was a long shot. But it was worth testing. I told the Sultan I would talk with President Obama and my colleagues in Washington but that we should begin thinking about how to put his plan into motion.
For the next several months, we proceeded cautiously. There were real concerns about whom we would be talking to and what their motivations were. President Obama was wary, but interested. He called the Sultan himself at one point to probe the viability of the diplomatic channel. We kept the circle small. Bill Burns, Jake, and I worked with a tight team at the White House that included Tom Donilon, by then the National Security Advisor; his Deputy, Denis McDonough; Dennis Ross, until his departure in November 2011; and Puneet Talwar, the national security staff’s Senior Director for Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf States. The Omanis passed messages back and forth with us about how talks might take shape and what kind of delegation would be sent. To no one’s surprise, it was difficult to get straight answers out of the Iranians on even the simplest questions.
In the fall our confidence about proceeding took a hit when U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies uncovered an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington. An Iranian national was arrested at the airport in New York and confessed to an elaborate scheme right out of a show like 24 or Homeland. It involved attempting to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to bomb a restaurant where the Ambassador was known to eat. Fortunately the Mexican hit man turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. We had evidence suggesting the conspiracy was conceived, sponsored, and directed by senior officials in Iran. Not long after, the chief of Iran’s Navy unnerved global markets by warning that it could close the Strait of Hormuz at any time, which would choke off much of the world’s oil supplies.
At this point, in October 2011, I decided to return to Muscat and pay a second visit to the Sultan. He was still keen to get talks going and suggested that we send an advance team to Oman to discuss the logistical issues in person, since passing messages wasn’t going so well. I agreed, so long as the Iranians were serious, and the Sultan could provide us with assurances that they would speak for the supreme leader. I also urged the Sultan to convey a stern warning to the Iranians about the Strait of Hormuz. After the conversa
tion, we began making secret arrangements to send Jake and Puneet and a small team to begin these conversations. Senator John Kerry talked to an Omani close to the Sultan and kept us informed of what he heard.
For the delicate first meeting with the Iranians, Jake was not the most experienced diplomat at the State Department I could have chosen, but he was discreet and had my absolute confidence. His presence would send a powerful message that I was personally invested in this process. In early July 2012, Jake quietly left one of my trips in Paris and caught his own flight to Muscat. His destination was such a closely held secret that other members of my traveling team, colleagues who worked with him around the clock both at home and on the road, assumed that he had a family emergency of some kind and were worried about him. Remarkably they did not learn of his true mission until reading about it in the press more than a year later.
Once on the ground in Oman, Jake and Puneet slept on the couch at an empty embassy house. The Iranian advance team came with a series of demands and preconditions, none of which was acceptable. They were there, which was something in and of itself, but clearly skittish, perhaps reflecting an ambivalent and divided leadership back in Tehran. Jake reported his impression that the Iranians weren’t yet ready to engage seriously. We agreed to keep the channel open and to wait and see if conditions improved.
Throughout this period, even as we pursued this secret avenue of engagement, we worked steadily to increase international pressure on the Iranian regime and counter its aggressive ambitions. One priority was to expand our military partnerships in the Gulf and deploy new military resources across the region to reassure our partners and deter Iranian aggression. We stayed in close and constant coordination with Israel and took unprecedented steps to protect its military superiority over any potential rivals. I asked Andrew Shapiro, my longtime Senate aide and now Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, to help make sure Israel was equipped with highly advanced weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. We worked with the Israelis to develop and build a multilayered air defense network that included upgraded versions of the Patriot missiles originally deployed in the 1991 Gulf War, new advanced early warning radar, antirocket batteries called “the Iron Dome,” and other systems to protect against ballistic missiles known as “David’s Sling” and the “Arrow-3 Interceptor.” During the conflict with Hamas in Gaza in late 2012, the Iron Dome proved effective in protecting Israeli homes and communities.
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