When I finished, the place exploded in applause. I closed the meeting, and minister after minister came up to me to thank me for the commitment I’d shown. Tzipi Livni and Abu Alaa said almost the same thing: “You really do understand.” As secretary, I rarely let my emotions show. My style was to be coolly analytical and, if necessary, unfailingly tough. I hadn’t planned this more emotional appeal; it had just felt right, and I followed my instincts. I was glad I did.
…
ANNAPOLIS WAS EMBLEMATIC of more than forward movement in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The countries represented there—with the exception of Syria—were also the bulwark of resistance to Iran. We’d hoped to get one further UN Security Council resolution before the end of the year. Hank Paulson and I had unilaterally designated Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) as a proliferator of weapons of mass destruction and its elite and brutal Quds Force as a supporter of terrorism, the first time that we’d blacklisted entire government institutions in Iran. We also designated three Iranian state-owned banks: Bank Melli and Bank Mellat for their involvement in proliferation activities and Bank Saderat as a terrorist financier. No U.S. citizen or private organization would be permitted to engage in financial transactions with these entities or their members, and foreign businesses would likely be deterred from doing so as well, given how pervasively entangled the IRGC had become in the Iranian economy.
Hank had also launched his “road show,” as the former investment banker called it, warning European financial and corporate executives of the dangers of doing business in Iran. It was his own terrific idea—a kind of whisper campaign in which the secretary of the treasury would remind those global economic and financial giants that Iran was a complex place where enterprises’ associations with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction weren’t always apparent. He pointedly asked, do you want to wake up one day to find that the Iranian bank or company that you’ve been dealing with is actually an IRGC front? Do you want to risk your reputation? It was very effective. German Chancellor Angela Merkel was so impressed that she planned a meeting with her country’s business community to urge them to cut back on financial ties with Iran.
Then, in November 2007, we received a National Intelligence Estimate that judged with “high confidence” that Iran had halted its suspected nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. Anyone who read that assessment would be shocked, since the implications of this finding were very different from those of the estimate presented two years prior. More worrisome to us, though, was the manner in which the phrasing of the 2007 NIE seemed to downplay the equally significant judgments contained within it. The mere fact that a nuclear weapons program had even existed in Iran, regardless of when—or indeed whether—it was halted, suggested to us that the country’s supreme leader had intended to pursue nuclear weapons at some point in time. Furthermore, if the assessment was accurate, it had developed this program in defiance of its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
The key statement was buried in the middle of the declassified version of the estimate: “Iran’s civilian uranium enrichment program is continuing.” This finding struck at the heart of the argument: the technical capabilities that Iran was actively pursuing through a civilian program could be converted clandestinely to produce nuclear weapons. Given its past pursuit of a secret nuclear weapons program, it would not be unreasonable to assume that Tehran might intend to pursue one again. But we knew that in the public sphere this conclusion would be overshadowed by the NIE’s more prominently featured assessments.
In the NSC, we debated for several weeks precisely what to do about the estimate. Given the failed intelligence of the Iraq war, we were suspicious of its assessments. The Vice President argued briefly that we should simply reject the NIE. But that didn’t seem feasible, given the failure to find WMD in Iraq and what that had done to our credibility regarding intelligence. So the President decided to declassify the estimate’s main findings and release them before they leaked. At least that way we could provide context for the information.
When we released the declassified version of the NIE in December, few of our closest allies accepted its central findings—not the British, not the French, and most especially not the Israelis. All told us that they believed the estimate to be wrong. The Russians crowed that they’d always said there was no military element to the Iranian program. We were trapped. And the poorly constructed NIE, today universally recognized as flawed, did damage to our diplomatic efforts.
I felt especially bad for Nick Burns, who was trying to negotiate sanctions with his counterparts when the NIE became public. He hadn’t been able to tell the other negotiators what was coming. Needless to say, the momentum toward a resolution stalled. And Chancellor Merkel canceled her meeting with the German business community.
A Day of Great Tragedy and Mourning
AS THE END of the year approached, the world was serving up new problems, but I was by now accustomed to the fact that my inbox never got smaller. With the Middle East a little better, I took a trip to Ethiopia, calling together the African Union to address the deteriorating situation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Darfur, the implementation of the peace agreement in Sudan, and the instability in Somalia.
Shortly after Christmas 2006, the Islamic Courts, a group of fundamentalist militias, had overrun the minimal resistance of Somalia’s security forces and started to take over strategic parts of the country. Meles Zenawi, the prime minister of neighboring Ethiopia, had warned that the situation in Somalia was becoming intolerable for his country. He was worried about the possible spillover effects of having a violent extremist group gain a foothold in territory adjacent to his country.
On December 29 Meles called me. At the time I was with my cousin at her house in Atlanta for a few days of vacation before returning to Washington. “I will make this quick, and I want to be out as soon as possible,” he said. I knew exactly what he meant—he planned to deploy Ethiopian forces across the border into Somalia to rout out the militants. Frankly, I didn’t try to dissuade him. The disciplined Ethiopian troops expelled the Islamists and occupied the upper third of the country. I was relieved that the al Qaeda–associated groups had been denied a safe haven.
But now almost a year later, Ethiopian troops were still in the country. The longer they stayed, the greater the instability seemed to grow as they became a target for terrorism and tribal opponents.
The meetings in Africa at the end of 2007 were in part intended to push the African Union and the United Nations to take on greater responsibility in stabilizing Somalia. Every effort in the last several decades to govern the country had failed, and the territory had consequently emerged as a safe haven for terrorism. The latest transitional government was a pathetic collection of decent people who hadn’t even been able to reside in the country before the Ethiopian invasion.
I met the putative Somali president in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and knew right away that he had no chance of stabilizing his country. He and his colleagues were a government in name only. The meeting ended as so many did—with a call to find an answer through the international community and an increased deployment of African Union (and perhaps UN) peacekeepers. I was getting tired of this.
The chaos in Somalia had brought the world face-to-face with an age-old problem: pirates. These armed raiders had become a scourge in the Gulf of Aden, attacking cargo ships off the horn of Africa and taking refuge in Somalia’s weakly governed territory. After several high-profile incidents of armed robbery by these pirates, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a Chapter VII resolution in December 2008 authorizing states to conduct land-based operations into Somali territory to pursue the perpetrators. As I worked on this problem, I could not help but reflect on the fact that Thomas Jefferson had confronted the Barbary pirates at the dawn of the Republic. Some things, I guess, never change.
WHEN I HELD an end-of-the-year press conference to review all that we’d don
e in every region of the world, I felt good about 2007. We’d recovered a lot of lost ground from the year before. In our last meeting before Christmas, I told the President that I was looking forward to one last year in which we could tie up a lot of loose ends and maybe—just maybe—declare the creation of a Palestinian state. Don’t tempt fate, something inside me whispered.
Two days after Christmas, that little voice turned out to be prophetic. I was sitting in my den—having decided to work at home in advance of my trip to Atlanta the next day—when CNN flashed a news bulletin. Benazir Bhutto had come under attack as she was campaigning in Rawalpindi; there had been gunfire and an explosion, but the extent of her injuries was not known. I called Anne Patterson, who was hearing from Bhutto’s people that their leader had been mortally wounded. Within a few minutes that news was confirmed. Benazir Bhutto was dead. Images of mourning and chaos rushed across the screen. Pakistan was again in a deep, deep crisis.
The following day we held an NSC meeting on the situation in Pakistan. There was little to do except assess the situation and wait for the chaos to begin. I visited the Pakistani Embassy and signed a condolence book. “This is a day of great tragedy and great mourning,” I said at the embassy. “She was a courageous woman … the way to honor her memory is to continue the democratic process in Pakistan so that the democracy she so hoped for can emerge.”
I got into my waiting car and experienced a feeling of deep sadness and emptiness. Benazir Bhutto’s death was very bad news for Pakistan—and for the United States. And for me it was a personal blow. I’d helped Bhutto return to Pakistan in the hope that she could lead her country out of crisis. Now she was dead. It felt as if yet another chance for a democratic and stable Pakistan had died with her.
47
A FINAL YEAR
THE PRESIDENT BEGAN his last year in office with a trip to the Middle East—one of two that he would make in a matter of six months. There was an air of anticipation, even optimism, as we departed for Jerusalem. September 11, 2001, had highlighted the malignancy of the region, particularly the freedom gap and the virulent ideologies that filled the vacuum. We had been drawn deeper in, trying to address the void with support for democracy—sometimes from afar and sometimes, as in Iraq, on the ground through the sacrifice of American lives and treasure. A new historical epoch had begun, and like all transformative change it was a rocky road. Yet, with one year left, the outlines of a different Middle East were discernible: a fragile democratic pathway for Iraq; Lebanon enjoying greater sovereignty and freedom; and, for Palestine and Israel, negotiations toward a two-state solution, living together in democracy and peace.
I knew how much the President had looked forward to his trip to Israel and to seeing its people. Walking together in Capernaum, where Jesus had lived, we shared the religious power of the moment. And at Yad Vashem the President closed a historical chapter by admitting that the United States should have bombed the railways in Europe leading to the death camps. Holocaust scholars and survivors had been waiting to hear that for more than fifty years. The President had been beloved in Israel since the early days of the administration, when he had steadfastly supported the right of Israel to defend itself and challenged the Palestinians to find new leadership untainted by terrorism.
No trip to the Middle East ever unfolded without controversy, however. The President decided, against the wishes of the Israelis, to travel by car to Bethlehem in the West Bank. When one goes by helicopter, it is easy to miss the ugliness of the occupation, including the checkpoints and the security wall. I insisted that the President needed to see it for himself and it would have been an insult to the Palestinians if he didn’t. Riding in the car with him, I could see the look on his face. We sped through wide-open barriers, but the graffiti-laden wall couldn’t be ignored, even at high speed. “This is awful,” he said quietly.
“Yes, it is. That’s why there has to be a Palestinian state,” I said. He nodded sympathetically.
Once in Bethlehem, we were able to see what the Palestinians had achieved under new leadership—though the trash along the streets seemed to suggest that the Palestinian Authority hadn’t completely mastered the task of governing. The city center, however, looked beautiful, still sparkling from the successful open-air investment conference in Nativity Square for one thousand investors the previous spring. It was a far cry from the days when Israeli gunfire had damaged the Church of the Nativity. The luxury hotel had guests this time, a change from my trip to the city a year before. The situation in the West Bank was improving.
I’d warned the President that the Church of the Nativity was a tad overwhelming for low-church Protestants like the two of us. When I’d visited, I had been put off by some of the icons, including the cherub-like, porcelain Christ doll lying in the manger. The President missed the display, because apparently the little icon is taken upstairs to lie on the altar during the Christmas season—and was still there when we visited in January.
But the most troubling aspect of my visit had been a near confrontation between a Franciscan priest and a Greek Orthodox bishop. The Church of the Nativity is divided into three sections, each controlled by a different Christian sect. The elderly Greek, excited by my visit, had unfortunately crossed into the Franciscan sector. “You don’t belong here! This isn’t your place!” the protective friar had barked. I was startled and appalled. Lord Jesus, I thought, look at what your people have done to your memory. Fortunately, during the President’s visit the warring factions kept to their own pews and everything went smoothly.
Earlier in the day, the President traveled to Ramallah to be received by President Abbas and his government. Abbas had called me to say that he didn’t think they had a proper place for a meal with the President. “You’ve been to the Muqata [the headquarters of the Palestinian Authority]. It isn’t very nice,” he said. I’d assured him that the President would be just fine with the accommodations—and that the food was, in any case, very good.
We drove through the gate and up to a red carpet, where the proud Abbas stood flanked by his newly minted U.S.-trained security forces. The Palestinians played our national anthem and the song that they would use when they had a state. It was a nice moment, as the President acted as if they already had one. As we went to lunch, we passed through hallways that wore a coat of paint so fresh that you could still smell it.
I then accompanied the President to Kuwait and the UAE and broke off to visit Iraq to acknowledge the progress there. Arriving in Saudi Arabia in time for dinner with the king, I walked into the palace and saw the President sitting there in a light blue ski sweater. “It’s a gift from His Majesty,” he blurted out as if to keep me from saying something about it that I might regret. I was grateful that he had given me a heads-up.
We had a big agenda with the Saudis that included Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian peace, and Afghanistan, but the king mostly wanted to talk about Iran. He didn’t leave much doubt about what he thought. He wanted the United States to take decisive action against the Iranian regime.
These conversations were always uncomfortable because the President, though keeping his options open, had no intention of going to war against Iran. There was no easy path ahead. One could not destroy the nuclear program by just attacking a few targets. And the mullahs had made certain that any strike on those facilities would have to take place near major population centers, exposing civilians to danger. Most experts believed that limited military action might actually strengthen the regime—provoking a unifying nationalist response and undermining the reformers. This was a point that we also made repeatedly to the Israelis, who faced an existential threat from the Iranian nuclear program.
The unintended consequences of war with Iran, particularly given the still fragile situation in Iraq, were just too great. In a later meeting with the king, Bob Gates would be considerably blunter about the prospects of a U.S. attack on Iran, saying that the President of the United States would face the wrath of the American people over such a deci
sion. That angered Abdullah, who somehow held out the hope that George W. Bush might be willing to “take care of Iran” before leaving office, this despite the fact that the king would periodically meet with the Iranians and even, on one occasion, actually hold hands with Ahmadinejad. Given that fraternization, the Saudis’ advocacy for tougher action was a little hard to take.
And while the diplomatic track was slow, we were making progress despite the unfortunate framing of the conclusions from the Iran NIE. Shortly after returning from the Middle East, I attended a P5+1 meeting in Berlin and tried to resurrect the Security Council resolution that had been shelved at the end of the year. Most of our meetings had been held in intimate settings such as the British prime minister’s residence or the small room in the French Foreign Ministry. The surroundings helped make the discussions conversational and informal.
The minute we walked into the room in the German Foreign Ministry, though, I knew we had a problem. The room was huge, with a big round conference table and booths for simultaneous translation. The coldness of the room synced perfectly with the chilliness of the interaction. Sergei Lavrov and I sparred as we always did, and when we were still on item number one (of four), after an hour, I asked for a break. Nick Burns and I called Lavrov and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak aside. “Let’s find something we can both live with and then have Nick and Kislyak negotiate the terms of the resolution,” I said. “Then we’ll take it to the others.” I didn’t want to offend our hosts or the other Europeans, but getting Russia and the United States on the same side would save time and frustration. Surprisingly, we came to agreement on a draft text for a UN Security Council resolution against Iran. It would take almost two months to pass the third resolution, but the very fact of the agreement that day in Berlin had stunned the world—especially the Iranians. Coming only a month after the release of the NIE, it was critical in getting us back on track.
No Higher Honor: A Memoir of My Years in Washington Page 74