by Susan Rice
Most of my visits and occasional phone calls with the Iranian ambassador were to deliver or receive a message between our capitals or to discuss issues of concern. I pressed for the release of three captured American hikers, who were eventually freed, and for the return of Robert Levinson, a former FBI agent who disappeared in Iran in 2007 and is still missing, believed to have been kidnapped by Iranian officials. I demanded an end to attacks committed by Iranian forces against U.S. military personnel in Iraq and conveyed the U.S. determination to retaliate. On behalf of the Department of Defense, I proposed the establishment of a U.S.-Iran military-to-military hotline to avoid unintended conflict in the Gulf, but Iran did not agree. At times, I was compelled to endure Khazaie’s complaints about FBI surveillance of him and his personnel in New York. Frequently, we discussed Iran’s nuclear program, and I warned that the U.S. was committed to halting it—by whatever means necessary.
On rare occasions when we passed each other in the U.N. corridors, Khazaie and I acted as if we did not know each other. Once, we exchanged hot words at a distance in a large U.N. committee meeting over an issue related to the U.S. role as host nation of the U.N. But apart from my work to sanction Iran harshly, we rarely had occasion to cross paths publicly. Remarkably, for years our private channel remained unknown to most, save the FBI and, I imagine, the Israelis.
Even as the U.S. government moved to increase pressure on Iran, we needed a way to communicate with the hostile regime. The Swiss embassy in Tehran, which we used for consular matters after we closed our own embassy in Tehran in 1979, was not suitable for sensitive political messages. Just as we have long had a discreet “New York channel” with the North Koreans, a backdoor way of exchanging messages utilizing their U.N. Mission in New York, we needed a confidential and reliable channel to Iran. Early in my tenure, due to my trusted role in the administration and my proximity to the Iranian ambassador in the relative discretion New York afforded, I was tapped by the White House to open an invisible line of communication with Iran.
Yet, even as we established a dialogue, relations between our two countries, long fraught, were about to become more strained. In addition to North Korea, the Obama administration had inherited the challenge of eliminating Iran’s nuclear program. Unlike North Korea, Iran did not yet have any nuclear weapons, but it had the facilities to make fissile material and was stockpiling that material swiftly so that it could make a bomb within two to three months, if it so decided. From the outset, the Obama administration was committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, which would threaten U.S. forces in the region, Israel, our Gulf partners, and even Europe.
Our strong preference was to accomplish this objective through a combination of increased economic pressure and diplomacy, but President Obama remained ready to use force if other options failed. At the same time, Obama wanted to demonstrate respect for the Iranian people who suffered under an odious, repressive regime. To this end, President Obama began the practice of delivering an annual Nowruz (New Year’s) message to the Iranian people. Out of pragmatism, we also signaled our willingness to engage in dialogue—sometimes blunt—with the Iranian government on its nuclear program, Iran’s support for terrorism, and other matters of grave concern to the U.S.
Two developments in 2009, however, underscored the need for fresh sanctions on Iran. First, after declaring victory in Iran’s presidential election, which was deeply marred by irregularities, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s noxious incumbent president, ordered a vicious crackdown on civil society, beating and killing scores of peaceful protesters in the streets of Iran’s major cities. Next, in September, the U.S. revealed the existence of a secret, undeclared, underground Iranian nuclear facility, which lent new impetus to our efforts to pressure Iran to come to the negotiating table.
Caught red-handed, Iran tried to get ahead of international pressure by agreeing to meet with the five permanent members of the UNSC plus Germany and the European Union (known as the P5+1) in Geneva to discuss its nuclear program. In October, Iran allowed international inspectors to visit the previously secret facility at Fordow and declared itself willing to ship most of its enriched uranium abroad to be converted into a scarce fuel for making medical isotopes, in order to buy time for real negotiations on its nuclear program. Iran, however, soon reneged on that bargain. The IAEA reported that Iran had enriched some uranium to 20 percent (close to bomb-grade quality) and continued working on warhead designs far longer than previously suspected. Iran’s recalcitrance in the face of unprecedented U.S. willingness to negotiate on the nuclear program galvanized the Obama administration’s push for much tougher sanctions.
Again, the ball was in my court: I had to deliver strong new sanctions, but this time there was less pressure to get it done fast. I was given time to maximize the impact of the outcome. In January 2010, I began negotiations with the P5 and Germany on a new sanctions resolution.
During my time as ambassador, I came to know my fellow P5 counterparts extremely well—their skills, weaknesses, temperaments, and idiosyncrasies. In this period, I spent far more time with each of these men than with my husband, and at times I felt that we were almost as familiar. I enjoyed each of my counterparts to varying degrees and more so over time, but we all sometimes fought one another with a vehemence and a vengeance that only married couples could muster.
My British colleague, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, was likable and highly capable but the most fastidious of my colleagues. While Mark and I agreed on the substance of most matters, we sometimes differed on the means of achieving our goals. For instance, I grew impatient with Mark over Syria when he would allow negotiations with the Russians to drag on for months, make last-minute concessions, and then become indignant when, predictably, Moscow ordered Churkin to veto. We could have put forward tougher texts that fully reflected the frustration of the Council with the Assad regime and garnered the same result in far less time, but Mark kept hoping that he could potentially bring the Russians along.
French ambassador Gérard Araud eventually became one of my favorite colleagues, but only after we frequently butted heads, and he and his staff trashed me repeatedly to the press. Gérard is extremely smart, hilarious, acerbic, and was one of the few openly gay ambassadors in New York. He has zero patience for Yankee sophistry. He loves New York City, is a well-read scholar of history and literature, and views much of the world as beneath him.
In December 2010, I hosted Gérard and the entire U.N. Security Council for two days of meetings on Capitol Hill, at the State Department, and with President Obama. Ian and I kicked the occasion off with a reception for ambassadors and their spouses at our home in Washington. Thirteen-year-old Jake was already known to many of my colleagues (not just Vitaly) because of his passion for foreign policy, which had only intensified through many visits to the U.N. and conversations with U.N. representatives from around the world. Jake was a knowledgeable and poised interlocutor, but back then his views often diverged from official U.S. policy. For instance, the Arab ambassadors at the U.N. found charming Jake’s strong sympathies for the Palestinian cause, which compelled me to limit his unsupervised conversations with them. (In the years since, Jake’s views have migrated toward the opposite extreme of uncritical support for the Netanyahu government.) During this rare party in Washington, Jake engaged the ambassadors in erudite conversation. He opined to the Indian representative (against U.S. policy) that India ought to be a permanent member of the Security Council and later asked the Chinese ambassador’s wife, “Why does China manipulate its currency?” eliciting a flummoxed response.
At eight, Maris was more reserved and committed no diplomatic faux pas. Attired in a fancy dress, she nicely greeted guests with a warm smile and friendly banter. When she came up to join me as I conversed with Gérard, she offered a cheerful hello. Gérard looked down contemptuously at her and sneered, “I don’t like children.” Maris was both shocked and unimpressed. I should have been outraged but was more amused. Gérard can be con
descending; but as I learned, he is also a great ally in battle and can be charmingly self-effacing. I also came to like his partner Pascal very much, and when Gérard moved to Washington as French ambassador to the U.S., a posting he initially dreaded but came to like, we remained on good terms.
My second Chinese counterpart, Li Baodong, who once served as a low-level U.S. embassy Beijing employee and later China’s ambassador to the U.N. in Geneva, replaced my friend Zhang Yesui as China’s permanent representative in 2010. At first, Baodong didn’t appear to have the heft, grace, or measured temperament of Yesui. Initially, he also seemed unsure of himself, or at least uncomfortable in English. With time, I got to know him better. He is, in fact, plenty canny and smart, and grew increasingly effective over time. By 2013, after a number of revealing one-on-one discussions about North Korea and our respective policies, I came to respect his skills and directness as well as to enjoy him as a colleague.
The P5 ambassadors worked intimately together for months as we negotiated on Iran sanctions. Employing the same tactic as on North Korea, I initially proposed a long list of powerful sanctions, aiming to drive the negotiation to its maximal outcome. Unlike North Korea, however, Iran was not an issue on which my European colleagues were prepared to defer to the U.S. For years, under President Bush, the U.S. had refused even to sit at the negotiating table with Iran, leaving the diplomacy as well as previous rounds of sanctions in Europe’s hands. The Europeans—France, Germany, and the U.K. (EU-3)—expected to drive the push for strong new sanctions in New York. Ambassador Araud, who had previously been France’s chief negotiator on Iran, especially resented my determination to play a leadership role in the negotiation. Yet I was under clear instructions from Washington to ensure we got what we needed and thus to keep control of the negotiations. President Obama’s policy and prestige were on the line, and we could not afford to outsource this effort. Thus, I had to balance Washington’s anxiety with the Europeans’ pride and deeper experience on this issue. To do so, I tried to ensure that the Iran negotiation was a truly collaborative effort with the EU-3, where we agreed initially on what we sought to achieve and worked together to maximize our success. Our comparative advantage was the U.S.’s superior ability to obtain agreement from the highly reluctant Chinese and Russians on a strong resolution.
President Obama met with Chinese president Hu Jintao in Washington in April 2010, on the margins of the first Nuclear Security Summit. Obama seized that opportunity to press Hu on tough new sanctions on Iran. China was a major trading partner of Iran, relied on Iranian oil, and had refused thus far to engage seriously in any concrete discussion of additional sanctions. But Obama’s personal intervention opened the door to increased Chinese flexibility such that, following the meeting, Obama dispatched me to meet with my Chinese counterparts that same afternoon in Washington. The talks that followed over the subsequent weeks yielded considerable progress with the Chinese, which demonstrated to the Europeans the critical value of U.S. leadership, even if they didn’t like to admit it.
Russia was the next target, and here Secretary Clinton played an important role in preparing the battlefield with Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. Even more critically, President Obama had forged a collaborative relationship with Russia’s young new president, Dmitri Medvedev, and used their tie to encourage Russia to accept more expansive penalties on Iran. With these openings, I was able to move the negotiation forward in New York so that, by May, we had a strong text that was broadly agreed upon among the P5 and Germany. We achieved that in part by providing Russia and China with Washington’s assurances that the U.S. would not penalize their economic interests beyond what they had agreed to in the sanctions, a pledge that was honored more in the breach once Congress enacted intensified U.S. national sanctions.
Prior to the U.N. vote, we also needed to manage Congress carefully, which was chomping at the bit to impose unilateral U.S. sanctions on Iran and frustrated at the slow pace of the negotiations in New York. I had numerous discussions with senior Democratic members of the House and Senate. These exchanges generally followed the same line as with Howard Berman of California, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, whom I repeatedly urged, “Please, please, give us more time. I’m confident that we’ll get a good resolution out of the Security Council. But not if Congress acts first. If Russia and China see Congress go ahead and act unilaterally, including with penalties that hit them indirectly, I promise you we will lose them in New York. Russia and China will pocket congressional action as an excuse to avoid passing U.N. sanctions and turn around and argue that we acted in bad faith by targeting their economic interests.” Berman understood that while the U.S. could always impose national sanctions, we needed a U.N. resolution for the European Union to act as well as to compel other countries to impose far more powerful multilateral sanctions. Getting the New York–Washington sequence right was critical and, ultimately, we managed to keep Congress onside.
Just when we were close to finalizing a P5 agreement and taking the text to the full Council, we encountered an unexpected obstacle. Brazil and Turkey—both rotating members of the UNSC with major business interests in Iran and egotistical leaders, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Recep Tayyip Erdog˘an, respectively—tried to derail the sanctions. They proposed that Iran commit to a lesser version of an aborted prior agreement, in which it would ship out of the country its low-enriched uranium in exchange for receiving a higher-grade uranium of the type that could only be used to make medical isotopes, not a bomb. Desperate to avoid sanctions, Iran suddenly embraced this gambit after the Brazilian and Turkish leaders made a last-ditch trip to Tehran. Suddenly, it seemed Russia might be swayed by the Turkish-Brazilian Hail Mary. So, I was relieved that Secretary Clinton intervened successfully with Foreign Minister Lavrov to keep Russia on board. Consequently, the day after Turkey and Brazil triumphantly announced their flimsy deal, the P5 jointly introduced our sanctions resolution for consideration by the whole Council. This move clearly signaled that the key powers were united in dismissing the Lula-Erdog˘an bid as too little too late to halt new sanctions.
UNSC Resolution 1929 was adopted on June 9, 2010, with twelve countries, including all the permanent members, voting in favor, Turkey and Brazil opposed, and Lebanon abstaining. After six months of slogging, I felt gratified and relieved to achieve a considerable success—an exceptionally strong sanctions resolution that laid the predicate for even tougher U.S. and E.U. penalties to follow. The resolution’s provisions included measures that authorized broad financial and banking sanctions and froze the assets of scores of Iranian entities involved in their nuclear program, including affiliates of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, a particularly notorious arm of the Iranian military. In addition, the Security Council authorized intrusive inspections of suspect Iranian cargo, banned the sale to Iran of eight categories of heavy weapons and all related military training, prohibited Iran from launching any ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, and banned Iranian foreign investment in nuclear-related projects.
While many experts at the time doubted that this resolution would push Iran to enter into real negotiations, it ultimately had exactly that effect. Resolution 1929 paved the way to the Iran nuclear deal. After Hassan Rouhani defeated Ahmadinejad to win the presidency in 2013, having run on a platform of engagement with the West to achieve sanctions relief, it was obvious that stringent economic pressure had indeed compelled Iran to come to the negotiating table.
Notwithstanding the high-visibility nuclear challenges posed by Iran and North Korea, the bulk of the U.N. Security Council’s agenda pertained to Sub-Saharan Africa, where conflicts persist, and the U.N. has deployed its largest and most complex peacekeeping and humanitarian missions. In my four and a half years at the U.N., I made eight official trips to Africa, most with multiple stops. Sometimes I traveled independently as an American cabinet official, but often as part of a formal UNSC delegation. The Council spent countless hours worki
ng to stabilize hot spots spanning from Somalia in the Horn of Africa, to Congo in Central Africa, to Côte d’Ivoire and Liberia in the west.
Council members were mostly unified on how to approach these conflicts, with two notable exceptions: Côte d’Ivoire, where Russia maintained a curious commitment to the discredited former leader Laurent Gbagbo; and Sudan and southern Sudan, where Russia and China reliably protected Khartoum from Western countries that strenuously opposed the genocidal regime and supported southern Sudan’s right to self-determination.
Sudan, for me, was a familiar challenge, going back to the Clinton administration when we opposed Khartoum’s support for terrorism and its violent repression of the people in southern Sudan during decades of civil conflict. The people of southern Sudan were black, Christian, and animist, with major cultural and historic differences from their predominantly Arab and Muslim rulers in the north. Southern Sudanese had sought independence for decades; in response, Khartoum employed starvation, aerial bombardment, including of hospitals and schools, and militia raids to terrorize and enslave the southern population and deny them self-determination. The conflict in the south cost an estimated two million lives and was among the deadliest in the world. On a bipartisan basis, the U.S. was united in support of the people of southern Sudan, and Christian groups were especially active on their behalf.