Window Seat on the World

by Glen Johnson

  He had notes on his lap, a phone to his ear, and a tin of his favorite Boston Chipyard chocolate chip cookies on the table beside him. It wasn’t a posed shot. Kerry had a secure phone in his room throughout his hospitalization, and he was on and off with his staff and the administration. The cookies had a nonmedicinal healing power.

  One of the first well-wishes he received was an email from Foreign Minister Zarif. Perhaps the most gracious came from German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, a colleague in the P5+1. Writing on parchment by hand with a blue fountain pen, the foreign minister said Kerry was “indispensable” to the nuclear talks and his return was eagerly awaited.

  On June 12, 2015, Kerry put on gray slacks, a blue blazer, and a pair of tennis shoes in preparation to leave Massachusetts General Hospital. He stopped on the way out to visit a young man who’d broken his neck in an accident, and then the secretary climbed out of a wheelchair and onto crutches to come outside and address a group of reporters waiting in front of the glistening Charles River.

  “It’s really wonderful just to get outdoors, see the summertime,” he said. “Dr. Dennis Burke is a carpenter-surgeon-genius, and he and his team have been so attentive, unbelievably thoughtful. He’s put together a leg that was broken on the femur, and he tells me—and I’m confident—that I’ll be as good to go as I was before, if not stronger. So, I look forward to that.”

  Turning back to business, Kerry argued his time laid up was not wasted.

  “The one good thing, I will tell you, about being on your back for few days, it gives you time to think and it gives you clarity,” he said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think about some of the challenges that we face, some things we could perhaps tweak, things we need to do, and also to feel good about the things that I think we’re doing very well.”243

  A reporter asked if he felt his injury had hurt the pace of the nuclear negotiations, which were supposed to be concluded by July 1—little more than two weeks away.

  “My absence really wasn’t an absence in the sense of I had no plans to be personally involved with my foreign minister counterparts until a week or two from now. Our team is in Vienna now working out very complex annexes, details of this agreement,” he said.244

  The secretary rode in a Dodge minivan to his home on Beacon Hill. The next day, he did an interview with the hometown Boston Globe, during which he spoke about the irony of his accident.

  “I’m just navigating my way at about 2 miles an hour . . . and this curb appears out of nowhere while I’m focused on the motorcycle,” he said. “And the bike just freezes.”245

  Nonetheless, he said he planned to ride again.

  “Are you kidding?” he told the reporter who asked the question. “I’m just going to make sure I never take my eye—I’m not going to look at the motorcycle instead of what’s right in front of me.”246

  He also vowed to adhere to the deadline for completing the talks.

  “If you don’t get this done on the schedule, then mischief-makers step in everywhere,” Kerry said. “You have plenty of folks in Iran who would love to not see the deal, hard-liners. . . . You have people here in the United States who don’t want the deal.”247

  Three days later, the secretary got into his van and drove to Logan Airport for the flight back to Andrews Air Force Base. He got on and off his plane with the help of a covered scissors lift. Ten days after that, on June 26, 2015, he felt well enough to climb up the normal red-carpeted steps, even if he was on crutches.

  Once the door to our C-32 closed, the plane took off for Vienna, Austria.His broken leg on the mend, John Kerry was headed back to Europe and the Iran nuclear talks.

  _________

  SECRETARY KERRY HAD TWO key partners when he arrived in Vienna. One was US Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz. The other was Jon Umlauf, a US Army Captain who was a physical therapist. Both proved indispensable in their ability to negotiate the final agreement.

  Moniz was a fellow Bay Stater and Stanford-trained scientist who once chaired the Physics Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.248 He was brought into the negotiations five months earlier to serve as a counterpoint to Ali Akbar Salehi, whom the Iranians had named as their top technical expert.

  Salehi was head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran and, in an amazing coincidence, had earned his doctorate at MIT while Moniz was at the Cambridge, Massachusetts, school.249

  Not only were the two able to speak the same scientific language, but they also had a personal connection.

  Captain Umlauf, meanwhile, was a humble, soft-spoken member of the armed forces tasked with an important mission, albeit not a military one. He had to rehab the secretary of State so he could complete the talks and his recovery from a serious injury.

  The Pennsylvanian was the perfect fit for Kerry. Umlauf had no outward opinions on the subject occupying the secretary’s mind, but had intense thoughts about how to make his leg better.

  Umlauf also broadened his gaze, taking staffers for runs, analyzing their gaits, and making recommendations for improving their strides. He carried a goody bag filled with pamphlets on better eating, sleeping, and exercise habits.

  The captain was a godsend halfway through an exhausting term that was rapidly eroding everyone’s physical fitness.

  The first morning back in Vienna, on June 27, 2015, another of our travel routines took shape, which ended up being a good thing. While the schedule we were handed before landing in Austria called for us to be there only until July 2—the day after the deadline for any final deal—we ended up staying a total of eighteen days.

  Once again, each day resembled the plot from the movie Groundhog Day.

  Kerry huddled first with Undersecretary Wendy Sherman, his top deputy in the negotiations, as well as Moniz, his chief science adviser. Then the secretary would lean into his crutches and make his way down the hall so the group could meet with the Iranians.

  When that meeting broke, Moniz and Salehi would often sit down together, seeking to resolve any technical matters factoring into the discussions. Sherman would reconvene with her counterparts and their respective aides, tackling the next items on the staff agenda.

  Kerry, meanwhile, would get back in his motorcade and return to his hotel for a PT session with Umlauf.

  When the staff and technicians were ready for more senior-level decisions, Secretary Kerry and Foreign Minister Zarif would return and take their seats across from one another to work through the next issue needing high-level negotiation.

  They met in the Palais Coburg, a Neoclassical palace turned into a thirty-three-room luxury boutique hotel. With its gilded ceilings and polished marble and parquet floors, it had a five-star rating and prime location next to the Parkring, the innermost of several beltlines around central Vienna. The hotel was run by a gregarious character, general manager Roland Hamberger.250

  He delighted in welcoming the secretary with a bubbly laugh and energetic handshake each time his motorcade pulled up to the back door. Hamberger also proudly donned a red bib and blue polka-dotted pants for a cookout he threw when the lingering negotiations kept his American guests abroad for their Fourth of July national holiday.

  We stayed about six blocks away at the Hotel Imperial, another five-star property built in the Italian neo-Renaissance style. While its guest roster has included many famous names, including Queen Elizabeth II, silent-film star Charlie Chaplin, and rock guitarist Pete Townshend, the Imperial also has a dark past.251

  Adolf Hitler worked at the hotel while growing up in Vienna, and the German leader returned as an honored guest in 1938.252 In fact, banners bearing the Nazi swastika once hung from the balcony attached to the suite used by Kerry. We were stunned to hear the story and later find black-and-white photos of that moment.

  On a more contemporary note, the hotel also is home to the Imperial Torte, a chocolate cake layered with marzipan. It’s tucked into a pinewood box and sold to tourists from around the globe.253

  Captain
Umlauf would lead Secretary Kerry through exercises or massage his muscles to prevent atrophy. He accompanied Kerry when he took walks on his crutches and offered advice when the secretary started to wane physically.

  The ebb and flow of the negotiations proved fortuitous, because Kerry had fairly regular opportunities to exercise and rest before having to sit back at a table and plow through difficult disputes.

  As The New Yorker recounted in its reconstruction of the talks, the parties reached agreement first on the terms to limit Iran’s future nuclear program. The more sensitive issues about sanctions relief or other topics usually bogged down because they had a connection to Iran’s military, especially the Revolutionary Guard, which was strongly opposed to any softening with the West.254

  (Top) Secretary Kerry thanks Jake Sullivan and Bill Burns for their preliminary work. (Bottom) Negotiations at the Palais Coburg.

  (Top) One-on-one meeting in New York. (Bottom) A final phone call to free Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian.

  (Top) P5+1 session in Lausanne. (Middle) Secretary Kerry flying back to Vienna after bike accident. (Bottom) Counsel from expert Jim Timbie.

  (Top) Wendy Sherman reviews gives and gets. (Middle) Lobbying French foreign minister for implementation. (Bottom) Signing sanctions relief.

  Zarif and President Rouhani, viewed as moderates, tried to minimize antagonizing the hard-liners. That prompted them to broach the possibility of reopening the framework agreement that had been so roundly criticized at home.

  Meanwhile, Kerry and the other P5+1 members worried about Iran using money from any sanctions relief to bolster the Revolutionary Guard, or the country’s support for terrorist groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

  “The 30th is tomorrow,” Kerry wrote to Zarif in an email he read aloud to us on June 29, 2015. “So, Javad, either we get serious and treat this professionally or it is over.”

  Referring to the interim agreement, he said, “We are not going to renegotiate Lausanne, plain and simple.”255

  Hours before Hamberger threw the Americans their Fourth of July barbecue dinner, Kerry and Zarif realized the two sides always ate separately.

  The Austrian government, keen to host such a historic international negotiation, not only had paid to rent the entire Palais Coburg but also picked up the tab for the lunch and dinner buffets that fed the two negotiating teams. The Iranians would eat in one room, the P5+1 members next door. Both sides would discuss their own strategy while refueling.

  Sometimes the Iranians indulged themselves and got takeout from the McDonald’s restaurant several blocks away. Fast food was not available in Tehran—home to such knockoff Western restaurants as Pizza Hot and Mash Donald’s256—so the Iranians had become prodigious consumers of Big Macs and Filet-O-Fish sandwiches during their visits to Vienna.

  On July 4, 2015, Zarif asked Kerry if he’d like to come into the Iranian dining room and join his team for lunch. The secretary accepted and the two sides sat down to a buffet of Persian food after the Iranians held their 1 p.m. prayers.

  “It was ten times better than the food we ate on our side of the house,” a US aide told The New Yorker. “It was a moment where it was clear—we knew it, sort of, without remarking on it—that these relationships had really developed over time.”257

  Secretary Kerry himself told Undersecretary Sherman afterward, “Wendy, I think there’s a deal there.”258

  She replied, “I agree with you. Yesterday, I wasn’t so sure; today, I see the way there.”259

  _________

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, UNDERSECRETARY Sherman sat on the floor next to Kerry so the two could review a list of potential “gets” and “gives” written by hand on a piece of oversized paper torn from an easel stand.

  The undersecretary for political affairs is one of the most powerful jobs in the State Department. The person holding the title oversees each of the six regional bureaus and all the bilateral policy issues bubbling up in each of them.

  Sherman was an experienced and relentless diplomat who previously negotiated with North Korea during the Clinton administration. During the Obama administration, she was perfect for rebutting the Iranian hard-liners. She didn’t suffer fools gladly, as any staffer who tried to check a suitcase while traveling with her learned. The undersecretary would tote only a carry-on so she could get to work immediately upon arriving in a foreign capital.

  Sherman was deferential to Kerry but didn’t feel the same compunction with most others. Once, when the secretary walked into a briefing room, she offered him her chair, saying, “Take mine. I’m sure somebody else will get up and give me theirs.”260

  Her spine was a complement to Kerry’s heart.

  Sherman managed not only a complex and detailed negotiation with the Iranians but a diverse group of lawyers, technical specialists, and diplomats. She earned the nickname Silver Fox because of her monochromatic hair color, and her staff gave her a T-shirt with a “Team Silver Fox” logo on it during their stay in Vienna.

  When Sherman had finished briefing Kerry on July 5, 2015, Zarif came to the secretary’s suite for continued discussions.

  The parties had already blown through a deadline on July 1, 2015, and there was growing speculation they might miss another on July 7.

  Kerry got on his crutches and made his way out the front door of the Palais Coburg so he could address the international press corps, which was now growing impatient by the delays.

  “I’ve said from the moment I became involved in this we want a good agreement, only a good agreement, and we’re not going to shave anywhere at the margins in order just to get an agreement,” the secretary said on July 5, 2015. “This is something that the world will analyze, experts everywhere will look at. There are plenty of people in the nonproliferation community, nuclear experts, who will look at this. And none of us are going to be content to do something that can’t pass scrutiny.”261

  He immediately pivoted on his heels and crutched his way back into the hotel for another formal negotiating session with Zarif. It was quickly clear the two were losing patience themselves.

  Sitting in our dining room, which shared a wall with the Blue Salon where Americans and Iranians routinely met, we could hear yelling—mostly the shouts of Zarif.

  Jason Meininger, the secretary’s senior aide, got up. He opened the door to the negotiating room and told the group that others could hear their noise. The Iranians later spread a story that one of Zarif’s bodyguards had to come into the room to restore the peace after his boss’s feisty outburst.

  The rest of the P5+1 foreign ministers returned to Vienna on July 6, 2015, and worked past midnight, their coats off, their ties loosened.

  At one point, Zarif grew angry again when he felt pressure from Federica Mogherini, who had replaced Baroness Ashton as the European Union high representative for foreign affairs. She suggested the talks might end because of Iran’s intransigence.

  “Never threaten an Iranian!” the foreign minister yelled, according to numerous accounts afterward.262

  “Or a Russian!” replied Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, seeking to break the tension with a flash of humor.263

  The group sessions recurred during the next three days—Groundhog Day—prompting Secretary Kerry to complain their posturing and speechmaking had broken the momentum he created during his one-on-one negotiations with the Iranians.

  “We’ve got to get going,” he said to Rob Malley, the White House senior director for Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf States. “We’ve had too much process. We have to negotiate.”264

  On the afternoon of July 11, 2015, Kerry asked for some time alone in the Palais Coburg courtyard. Sitting on a wicker chair amid well-groomed topiaries, he leafed through documents and used his preferred Uni-ball pen to jot down notes on his favorite paper, a leftover legal pad whose binding was embossed with the words “United States Senate.”

  The former criminal prosecutor wanted to bring the case to a close—either
with a deal or an acknowledgment one couldn’t be reached—so he distilled his thoughts into a final argument for his Iranian counterpart.

  “At that point, I knew it was up to me,” Kerry later told me.265

  The final forty-eight hours of the negotiations were a frenzy of talks, phone calls from National Security Adviser Susan Rice, and emails with President Obama.

  On July 12, 2015, as the momentum continued to build, Kerry had dinner with his fellow foreign ministers at the top of the Hotel Sofitel, a skyscraper overlooking central Vienna.

  At 10:35 a.m. the next day, Kerry authorized the US Air Force to release a notice telling the Austrians our plane was departing on July 14, 2015.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow, folks—one way or another,” the secretary told us.266

  He shuttled between meetings with the Iranians and his fellow foreign ministers the rest of the day.

  At 10:03 p.m., Kerry met in his hold room at the Palais Coburg with Mogherini, the EU high representative. At 10:15 p.m., Lavrov—whose Russian Federation held sway with Iran—joined. At 10:48 p.m., Zarif entered.267

  The three had met for barely two minutes when we heard Zarif shouting again.

  After several minutes, Secretary Kerry popped his head out and asked Undersecretary Sherman if there was any small concession they could make to mollify the Iranian.

  “It’s Middle Eastern pride,” Kerry told her.268

  “No, it’s Middle Eastern souk,” Sherman replied, referring to the regional bazaars where haggling was expected.269

  One State Department official was charged with maintaining a list of Iranians who might gain sanction relief under the nuclear deal. He said there were eleven low-level people he’d been holding back who could be added to the agreement without objection from the White House.