The Back Channel

by William J Burns

  In late 2001, the U.S. intelligence community began to track two clandestine nuclear sites in Iran: a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a facility in Arak that could eventually produce weapons-grade plutonium. These efforts, undeclared to the IAEA, built on Iran’s overt civilian nuclear energy program, which began during the shah’s time—ironically, with the initial support of the United States.

  The revelation of the covert sites in the summer of 2002 set off a diplomatic dance that continued for the next several years. The UN Security Council passed resolutions demanding that Iran suspend its enrichment work. Iran instead plowed stubbornly ahead. Given the unwillingness of the Bush administration to engage directly with Iran, our European allies (the United Kingdom, France, and Germany, or the “EU-3”) began a negotiation with the Iranians that showed fitful progress, as Tehran sought both to preserve its enrichment program and the long-term possibility of weaponization and at the same time avoid economic sanctions. Russia and China later joined the EU-3, which was eventually rebranded as the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany).

  This all boosted the market for international diplomatic acronyms, but didn’t make much of a dent in Iranian behavior. By the last year of the Bush administration in 2008, despite the imposition of several rounds of UN sanctions against Iran and growing international concern, the Iranians had accumulated half the amount of low-enriched uranium they would need to enrich further and make a single bomb. They were spinning more than four thousand primitive IR-1 centrifuges at Natanz, and were making halting progress toward more sophisticated models.

  While the American intelligence community concluded famously in 2007 that the Iranian leadership had suspended its weapons work back in 2003, the fact that they were clearly determined to keep their options open in the face of mounting international pressure was deeply troubling. An unconstrained Iranian nuclear program or a regime clearly bent on a weapons program would add yet another layer of risk and fragility to an already unstable region. Our friends—the Gulf Arab states and, especially, Israel—had to take that threat seriously.

  As the Bush administration grappled with the damage done by the Iraq War, some of its senior figures began to recognize that its stubborn insistence on not engaging directly in P5+1 diplomacy with Iran had become counterproductive. An early probe for direct talks in May 2003, orchestrated by the enterprising and well-intentioned Swiss ambassador in Tehran, was never pursued. I was traveling in the region when Tim Guldimann, about to complete his ambassadorial tour in Iran, came to Washington and met with my deputy, Jim Larocco, to present a short paper that he insisted had been drafted in cooperation with Iran’s ambassador in Paris, the nephew of Iranian foreign minister Kamal Kharazi. Guldimann said the whole effort had been sanctioned at high levels of the Iranian government. The document itself was intriguing, offering a wildly ambitious dialogue across the whole range of U.S.-Iranian differences. Jim and my other NEA colleagues pressed Guldimann hard on who exactly in Tehran had endorsed the paper, and how explicitly that was conveyed. Guldimann was too vague for Jim’s taste. The tangled history of ill-sourced messages and double-dealing cast a shadow on our deliberations.

  We conveyed the document and an account of Jim’s conversation to Secretary Powell and Deputy Secretary Armitage—noting our doubts that it bore the stamp of the highest level of Iran’s leadership, but recommending that we test the proposition and reopen the contacts with Iran that had been suspended a year earlier. Powell and Armitage agreed. But in the heady immediate aftermath of the invasion of Iraq, there was little White House interest in talking to a charter member of the “axis of evil,” and a conviction that direct engagement would be a reward for bad behavior. For Vice President Cheney and hardliners in the administration, the calculus was clear: If the Iranians were worried about being next on the American hit parade after Saddam, it wasn’t a bad idea to let them stew a little.

  Throughout the remaining two years of my time in NEA we continued to make the case for dialogue with Iran. I repeated the argument in my December 2004 transition memo to Secretary Rice. I also added a proposal—which was adopted—to restart a serious program of Persian-language training for a small cadre of American diplomats, and then station them in several posts on Iran’s periphery to develop expertise and prepare for an eventual resumption of contacts. The “Iran Watchers” initiative had as its inspiration what we had done more than seven decades before in preparing Russian-language specialists for eventual reopening of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.

  By the time I returned to Washington from Moscow in the spring of 2008, the mood had begun to shift a little. Chastened by the postwar mess in Iraq, President Bush had replaced Don Rumsfeld with Bob Gates at the Pentagon. The vice president’s hawkish views were less dominant, and Rice was pressing on several fronts for more active American diplomacy.

  In late May 2008, I sent Secretary Rice a long memo entitled “Regaining the Strategic Initiative on Iran.” I began by arguing that “our Iran policy is drifting dangerously between the current muddle of P5+1 diplomacy and more forceful options, with all of their huge downsides.” Our unwillingness to engage directly with Tehran was costing us more than the Iranians, and deprived us of valuable leverage. “The regime has constructed a narrative which portrays Iran as the victim of implacable American hostility,” I wrote, “increasingly gaining the diplomatic upper hand regionally and globally, with the American administration—not Iran—increasingly the isolated party. Reviving significant pressure against Iran’s nuclear program requires us to puncture that narrative.”1

  I had two practical suggestions. First, it was long past time for the United States to join our European, Russian, and Chinese partners at the negotiating table. I had few illusions that the government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, let alone the deeply suspicious Supreme Leader, was ready to negotiate seriously. By not engaging, we were giving them an easy out—allowing them to hide behind the pretext that they couldn’t really be sure about P5+1 proposals, because the Americans weren’t there to back them up. Our physical presence would put us on the high ground, put the Iranians on the defensive, strengthen solidarity with our negotiating partners, and better position us to pivot to more sanctions if Tehran balked again.

  My second idea would revive an initiative that had already been kicked around at lower levels in the administration. I suggested to Rice that we should propose quietly to the Iranians that we staff our interests section in Tehran with a few American diplomats, revising the arrangement that had been in effect since the assault on our embassy in Tehran in 1979, under which the Swiss represented our interests in Iran. We would reciprocate by allowing the Iranians to staff their interests section in Washington, managed by the Pakistani government, with a handful of Iranian diplomats. Like the argument for joining the P5+1 talks, the focus was on tactical advantages. I had little expectation that the Supreme Leader would actually agree to such a proposal. The last thing he wanted to see was a long line of Iranian visa applicants around a U.S. diplomatic facility in Tehran staffed by Americans; for the Ayatollah Khamenei, this would be the ultimate Trojan horse. The proposal, which would inevitably become public, would only further cement our grip on the high ground. I suggested that we pitch the idea to the Iranians through the Russians, who had good high-level channels in Tehran and whose support would be crucial if we had to go back to the UN Security Council for tougher sanctions.

  I concluded with a broad argument, echoing the classic containment concept that Rice knew so well as a recovering Sovietologist. In dealing with a profoundly hostile adversary beset by its own serious internal contradictions, I said, “a successful strategy will require calculated risk-taking on our part…with the same combination of multiple pressure points, diplomatic coalition-building, wedge-driving among Iran and its uneasy partners, and selected contacts with the regime that animated much of Kennan’s concept.” Moreover, we should
simultaneously explore “creatively subversive ways to accentuate the gap between the regime’s deeply conservative instincts and popular Iranian desire for normalization with the rest of the world, including the U.S.”2

  Rice saw the possibilities immediately, and knew that we needed to inject some new American initiative into nuclear diplomacy with Iran. The proximate opportunity in the talks themselves was the presentation by Javier Solana, the de facto European Union foreign minister, of a renewed P5+1 proposal to Iran. The essence of his proposal was a freeze on Iranian nuclear activities, including enrichment, and a reciprocal freeze on new UN Security Council sanctions, which would allow space for negotiations on a comprehensive nuclear deal. Solana conveyed this plan in Tehran in June 2008, and the Iranians pledged to respond at a follow-up meeting in Geneva in July. Rice decided to seek the president’s approval for me to attend the Geneva meeting—and to also get his blessing on the interests section idea.

  One morning in early July, I rode over with the secretary to one of her regular sessions with President Bush to make our pitch. Now nearing the end of his tenure, he looked a little grayer, but his decency and good humor were undiminished.

  “Burnsie,” he said with a familiar smile as I walked in behind the secretary, “it’s good to have you back in Washington.” Vice President Cheney sat in an armchair next to the president, less visibly enthused about my homecoming. I joined Rice on a couch alongside Bush, and she quickly laid out our case. The president asked a couple questions about how the interests section proposal would work, and expressed skepticism about what impact joining the Geneva talks with the Iranians would have on their behavior, but saw the value of trying both. The vice president started to object, arguing that we shouldn’t reward the Iranians by appearing at a meeting. Bush cut him off. “Dick,” he said with a wave of his hand, “I’m okay with this, and I’ve made up my mind.” A lot had changed since the first term and the run-up to the Iraq War, I thought to myself. Diplomacy had its uses after all.

  On July 19 in Geneva, amid massive media attention, I broke the taboo on direct American participation in the nuclear talks. I joined my P5+1 colleagues around an oblong table in a cramped meeting hall in the old city. I had been reminded by the secretary and Steve Hadley to keep my game face on and look appropriately sober while the cameras filmed the opening of the first session. They had also both suggested that it might be best to remain silent during the talks and simply witness the Iranian reply to Solana. The first point made sense. The second did not. If the purpose of joining the talks was to emphasize our seriousness and tag Iran as the diplomatic problem child, the silent treatment would backfire. Looking across the table directly at Saeed Jalili, the head of the Iranian delegation, I made a simple statement. I said that I hoped the Iranians understood the significance of the signal we were sending by joining the talks. We knew what was at stake on the nuclear issue; we were determined to prevent Iran from developing a bomb and to hold it to its international obligations; and we were firmly behind the P5+1 proposal. I emphasized that Iran had a rare opportunity before it; we could only hope that it would take advantage of it.

  Jalili took careful notes, and smiled faintly throughout. I got lots of sidelong glances from him and his colleagues, who seemed to find the American presence unnerving. Jalili then embarked on nearly forty minutes of meandering philosophizing about Iran’s culture and history, and the constructive role it could play in the region. He could be stupefyingly opaque when he wanted to avoid straight answers, and this was certainly one of those occasions. He mentioned at one point that he still lectured part-time at Tehran University. I didn’t envy his students.

  Jalili wound up his comments by handing over an Iranian “non-paper.” The English version was mistakenly headed “None Paper,” which turned out to be an apt description of its substance. Solana and the rest of us looked at it quickly, at which point my French colleague helpfully groaned and muttered, “Bullshit,” which caused Jalili to look somewhat startled—and me to lose my game face. Fortunately, the cameras were long gone.

  In a quick note to Secretary Rice that evening, I reported that “five and a half hours with the Iranians today were a vivid reminder that we may not have been missing all that much over the years.” Nevertheless, our P5+1 colleagues were delighted that the United States was now visible and engaged. The Russians and Chinese seemed particularly impressed. However disappointing the Iranian response, we were back on the high ground.3

  Neither joining the Geneva meeting nor the interests section initiative produced any substantive breakthroughs as the Bush administration came to an end. I joined Rice for a quiet meeting with Sergey Lavrov in Berlin later in July, and pitched the interests section idea. Lavrov agreed readily that Russia would convey it to Ali Akbar Velayati, the Supreme Leader’s foreign policy advisor. But then the war in Georgia intervened, the Russians lost interest in being the messenger, we lost interest in the Russians, and the idea never went any further. We had, however, laid some of the groundwork for Barack Obama’s much more active and imaginative approach to the Iranian nuclear dilemma.

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  AS HE MADE clear during his campaign for president, Obama sought a mandate to wind down America’s wars in the Middle East and to make diplomacy the tool of first resort for protecting American interests. He advocated direct, unconditional engagement with adversaries, embroiling him in an early disagreement with his hard-nosed rival in the Democratic primaries, Hillary Clinton. By the time he took office in January 2009, Iran loomed as the biggest test of both of those propositions—whether diplomacy backed up by economic and military leverage could produce results, and whether direct contacts with our toughest adversaries could pay off.

  President Obama found an effective partner for his Iran diplomacy in Clinton. She was instinctively more cautious about engaging the Iranians, and more skeptical about the chances of ever reaching an agreement that would deny Tehran a bomb. She agreed, however, that direct engagement was both the best way to test Iranian seriousness and the best way to invest in the kind of wider international coalition that we’d need to generate more pressure on Iran if it failed those initial tests.

  Three days after she was sworn in as secretary of state, I sent Clinton a memo entitled “A New Strategy Toward Iran.” I began by trying to encapsulate our fundamental purpose:

  Recognizing that Iran is a significant regional player, our basic goal should be to seek a long-term basis for coexisting with Iranian influence while limiting Iranian excesses, to change Iran’s behavior but not its regime. That means, among other things, preventing Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability; channeling its behavior so that it does not threaten our core interests in a stable, unitary Iraq and an Afghanistan that is not a platform for the export of violent extremism; and gradually reducing Iran’s capacity to threaten us and our friends through support for terrorist groups. We should also speak out consistently against human rights abuses in Iran.4

  I argued for a comprehensive approach. As with China in the early 1970s, it made sense to employ careful and incremental tactics at the outset, but as part of a coherent long-term strategy. “We should set,” I said, “an early tone of respect and commitment to direct engagement, however severe our differences.” I added the obvious: “Dealing with Iran will require enormous patience, persistence and determination. Deeply conspiratorial and suspicious of American motives, and riven by factions especially eager to undermine one another in the run-up to Iran’s Presidential elections in June, the Iranian elite will be prone to false starts and deceit.” We shouldn’t underestimate the reality that, especially for the Supreme Leader and the hard men around him, animus toward the United States was the core organizing principle for the regime. But, I continued, “we should deal with the Iranian regime as a unitary actor, understanding that the Supreme Leader (not the President) is the highest authority. We have failed consistently in the pa
st when we tried to play off one faction against another.”

  I also emphasized that we shouldn’t lose sight of Iran’s vulnerabilities. “Iran is a formidable adversary…but it is not ten feet tall. Its economy is badly mismanaged, with rising rates of unemployment and inflation. It is vulnerable to the ongoing sharp decline in oil prices, and to its dependence on refined petroleum products. It has no real friends in the neighborhood, distrusted by the Arabs and the Turks, patronized by the Russians, and suspicious of the Afghans.” Finally, I stressed that “we need to be always conscious of the anxieties of our friends, as well as key domestic constituencies, as we proceed with Iran.” I warned that our Sunni Arab partners would be nervous that we were abandoning them for a new Persian love interest. The Israelis would be at least as worried, given the undeniable threat that Iran’s proxies and nuclear and missile programs posed for them. We’d have a big challenge managing Congress and its widespread aversion to serious engagement with Iran. And, I argued, “we must make sure that the Administration speaks with one voice, and avoids the divisions which beset the last Administration.”5

  Convinced by the argument, Clinton brought discipline and skill to the task. President Obama was eager to begin, and he convened a series of meetings in early 2009 to hammer out a broad strategy, close to the one I had tried to lay out for the secretary. Obama’s inheritance on Iran was difficult. When he told the Iranians in his inaugural address on January 20 that “we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist,” Tehran had already stockpiled enough low-enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon. Its missile systems were advancing. And while we had no firm evidence of a revival of Iran’s earlier weaponization efforts, we could never be entirely sure.