In the first of several one-on-one conversations, Khaji and I sat privately after the opening plenary meeting. He was approachable but guarded, and acknowledged that he was encouraged that we were finally talking to each other directly. He appealed almost plaintively for acceptance of Iran’s right to enrich, implying that it would be hard to engage without it. At one point he pulled out a bulky file of papers, which appeared to be Omani notes from alleged conversations with various Americans, including members of Congress, acknowledging Iran’s right to enrich. I explained that in our political system, members of Congress did not speak for the president. I repeated our position, said I was sure those conversations were taken out of context or were well-meaning Omani garbles, and stressed that we needed to focus on what was practical if we were going to get this process off the ground.
We spent the next couple days covering essentially the same terrain over and over. I took evening walks with Khaji around the officers’ club compound, and Jake and my other colleagues had similar chats with their counterparts. There was a powerful cognitive dissonance at the heart of our discussions at this stage, which never entirely disappeared throughout the secret talks. The Iranians would maintain, in a tone of wounded pride, that the nuclear problem was all a big misunderstanding, that they had done nothing wrong, never had explored steps toward a bomb, and had acted within their international rights. Sanctions were unjust and should be lifted. We responded firmly that the Iranians would never get anywhere in nuclear negotiations if they didn’t realize that they had a gaping credibility problem—not just with the United States but with the wider international community.
Near the end of our final session on March 3, Jake and I told the Iranians bluntly that there wasn’t much point in continuing the secret talks if they weren’t going to think much more seriously about the tangible steps they would need to take. The Iranians were wildly unrealistic in their expectations; they weren’t in the same ballpark, or even playing the same sport, as an increasingly determined international community.
Zabib made an impassioned plea as we wrapped up the last meeting. He recounted a trip to New York years before, and a large sign he had encountered at JFK airport on his arrival. Torturing his English syntax a bit, he recalled that it read “Think the Big.” “That’s what you Americans must do,” he said. “Think the big. If you do, everything will become better.” I smiled at Jake. Neither of us could think of a succinct way to explain that the issue here was not the elasticity of our thought process, but the seriousness of Iran’s commitment. So we simply urged them to think about everything we had discussed over the previous three days in Oman, and to consider the choices that lay before them.
It was an incongruous conclusion to an incongruous first round. We reported back to Washington that we were “miles apart on substance.” Khaji was an able diplomat, but not empowered. None of that was unexpected, after so many years of not talking to one another directly. The atmospherics were significantly better than the more sterile P5+1 process had been, with at least the possibility of less polemical and more practical conversations, and maybe more room for creativity. Zabib’s plea to “think the big” did not exactly fill us with confidence, but it was at least a start.
We retraced our seventeen-hour journey and arrived back in Washington on March 4, our secret still intact. The next day, with Secretary Kerry out of the country, the president asked to see Jake and me in the Oval Office so we could report directly on our discussions in Oman. The president was sitting in his usual chair in front of the fireplace, having just finished his regular morning intelligence briefing. He listened attentively. We went through our impressions, careful not to oversell what was just a first step on a long road. “I never expected immediate progress,” the president said. “This may or may not work. But it’s the right thing to do. Let’s just hope we can keep it quiet, and keep it going.”
* * *
* * *
WE HAD LEFT that Omani beach compound still not convinced that our secret initiative had a future. Events over the rest of the spring were not reassuring. The P5+1 met with Jalili and the Iranians in Almaty in early April, but made no headway. We had made clear through Salem Ismaily and the Omanis that we were ready to resume the back-channel talks, but the Iranians were consumed by the run-up to their presidential elections in June. There was no point in running after them; we had no idea who would succeed Ahmadinejad, and it made sense to wait and see.
The unexpected election of Hassan Rouhani in June 2013 created a modest new sense of possibility. A former lead nuclear negotiator and a wily survivor in the unsentimental world of revolutionary Iranian politics, Rouhani saw the toll that international sanctions (as well as Ahmadinejad’s erratic populist mismanagement) had taken on the country’s economy. He managed to persuade the Supreme Leader that Iran needed to explore a more serious nuclear negotiation and consider some real compromises, or face a resurgence of the internal political unrest that had jarred the regime in the summer of 2009. In hindsight, it was useful to have launched the secret channel while Ahmadinejad was still president and before Rouhani was elected. Had we waited until after the election, it might have appeared to the ever-suspicious Khamenei that we were fixated on Rouhani and neglecting the ultimate decision-maker. It also cost Rouhani far less political capital to push for direct talks with the Americans when the more hawkish Ahmadinejad government had already crossed that Rubicon.
Rouhani had a resourceful partner in his new foreign minister, Javad Zarif, who emerged as the new face of Iranian diplomacy. With a doctorate from the University of Denver, where he (like Condi Rice) had studied under Madeleine Albright’s father, Zarif had served for many years as Iran’s permanent representative to the United Nations in New York. He was a formidable diplomat. He knew how to navigate his own treacherous political system and squeeze the most out of his instructions—and he knew how to use his talents and sympathetic image, as well as a sometimes frustrating gift for melodrama, to cajole and maneuver the rest of us.
President Obama’s short congratulatory message to Rouhani received a rapid and positive reply. Rouhani was inaugurated on August 4, and two days later announced publicly his readiness to resume the P5+1 talks. The Iranians also told the Omanis that they wanted to restart the back-channel process, and Salem came away from conversations in Tehran that summer convinced of newfound seriousness. We agreed to meet again at the beach compound in early September.
In preparation, we took stock of our approach. Our long-term challenge remained the same: to cut off the pathways that the Iranians might use to develop a nuclear weapon. By the time of Rouhani’s inauguration, they had accumulated a substantial stockpile of enriched uranium. Meanwhile, they were continuing construction of their heavy water plant at Arak, moving steadily to create a potential plutonium pathway to a bomb. A covert effort remained our biggest concern.
We had substantial negotiating assets. UNSC sanctions, as well as U.S. and EU measures, were having a major impact. Markets for Iran’s oil exports were rapidly contracting, and Tehran was starved for hard currency, with over $100 billion in oil revenues frozen and inaccessible in overseas banks.
We were determined to get the most out of that leverage. A two-stage process still made the most sense, given the mistrust between us, and the urgency of freezing their nuclear progress to give us time to try to negotiate a comprehensive deal. We’d seek in an initial phase to stop the advance of the Iranian nuclear program, across all of its fronts, in return for no further nuclear sanctions. In addition, we’d try to roll back key aspects of their program, especially their 20 percent enrichment effort, in return for limited sanctions relief. We’d also seek initially to apply the most intrusive inspection procedures possible, across the entire supply chain, from uranium mines and mills to centrifuge production and storage. That would create a solid precedent for longer-term verification provisions in a comprehensive agreement.
T
he president convened a session shortly before we returned to Oman to give us our final guidance. Vice President Biden, Secretary Kerry, and Susan Rice, who had recently succeeded Tom Donilon as national security advisor, were there too, along with a tiny circle of officials who knew of the back channel. All the principals by this point knew the details of the nuclear issue and our approach. The president’s grasp of arcane technical details was impressive, as was John Kerry’s, who was eager to dive in himself at the right time.
As the president concluded the meeting, he motioned Jake and me over as he walked out the door of the Situation Room. “You guys know what needs to get done,” he said. “I trust you. So don’t screw it up.” He smiled slightly, but we couldn’t decide whether to feel buoyed by his confidence, anxious about his warning, or some of both. Those are the moments when you’d almost prefer the comfortable straitjacket of fourteen pages of single-spaced instructions.
The Iranian delegation this time was led by two deputy foreign ministers, Majid Takht-Ravanchi and Abbas Araghchi. In Zarif’s mold, both had done graduate degrees in the West, Ravanchi at the University of Kansas and Araghchi at the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. Both were tough Iranian patriots, skeptical of doing business with Americans and dogged in arguing their positions. We discovered that they could also be creative problem-solvers. In the hours and hours of conversations that followed, we exhausted the whole range of emotions, searching for practical solutions, occasionally pounding the table or walking out of the room, and sometimes even finding a little bit of humor in our shared predicament. While trust was always in short supply between Iranians and Americans, I developed considerable professional respect for Ravanchi and Araghchi, although I doubted that expressing that publicly would be career-enhancing for either of them.
Ravanchi and Araghchi were professional diplomats, not ideologues, but they were no less committed to Iran, no less proud of the revolution, no less determined to show that they could hold their own in the diplomatic arena. They were often guarded about the difficulties they faced at home, although they would sometimes confide that they had a Supreme Leader who was just waiting to say “I told you so” and prove that the Americans could not be trusted and that Obama was just as bent on regime change as Bush.
From the start, the atmosphere in the September round was much different, and more encouraging, than what we had experienced in March. We conducted the negotiations in English, without translation, which made for much easier and more informal discussions. Ravanchi and Araghchi were comfortable in their interactions with us, always careful to stay within the bounds of their instructions, but uninhibited in going back and forth in more formal plenary sessions or smaller conversations. They agreed that first day that a two-phase approach was best. We talked about the broad outline of a comprehensive deal, but agreed quickly that we’d get stuck if we tried at this early stage to get much beyond general principles. We spent most of our time on what it would take to put together a six-month interim accord. They had thoroughly digested our exchanges with Khaji. While they would regularly come back at the issue of a “right” to enrichment, they understood our position and didn’t belabor the point, at least at this stage.
The pattern for our meetings in the back channel soon took shape. We would begin with a five-on-five plenary session, and then break for separate conversations, sometimes one-on-one and often Araghchi and Ravanchi with Jake and me, while our colleagues would get into more detail on the limitations and verification measures we had in mind, and the sanctions relief at the front of the Iranians’ mind.
Our biggest challenge was countering Iranian expectations of the magnitude of sanctions relief that we could offer for the interim phase. We believed that the best tool we had for providing limited relief was the frozen oil revenue that was gradually building up in foreign banks, at a rate of roughly $18 billion every six months. Metering out a fraction of those funds would allow us to preserve the overall architecture of sanctions, and keep all the leverage we’d later need for comprehensive talks. Not surprisingly, the Iranians had a vastly different definition of what “limited” relief meant. They insisted stubbornly that all $18 billion should be released in return for their acceptance of six-month limitations on their program. We indicated early on that we could consider no more than about $4 billion.
Another problem was Iranian concern about how much they could count on a commitment by the U.S. administration not to enact new sanctions for six months, given the role of Congress. It was not an unreasonable worry. We explained at length how our system worked, and why we believed an administration commitment would hold up, assuming that Iran limited its program substantially along the lines we were discussing. But the Iranians were never entirely reassured by the formulas we offered, and the truth is that we weren’t either, given the uncertain state of American politics. “The best thing we can do,” I told Araghchi, “is make a solid agreement, and then live up to it scrupulously.” Those words would ring hollow a few years later.
While it was clear after this session that we still had a tough slog ahead of us, we could now see that a first-step understanding was possible. With relatively modest sanctions relief, we could freeze their program, and roll it back in some important respects. Rouhani and Zarif seemed to want to show their own critics at home that they could produce early progress and begin to ease sanctions pressure. We reported all this to the White House and Secretary Kerry, conscious of the value of underpromising and overdelivering. We also stressed the Iranians’ concern that we keep this channel secret. In our side conversations, both Ravanchi and Araghchi had worried that premature disclosure would torpedo the talks at home.
We agreed with the Iranians to meet next in New York later in September, when the annual UN General Assembly session would provide good cover for Ravanchi and Araghchi to come with Zarif, as well as Rouhani, who was making his first visit to the UN as Iran’s president. We had four rounds of talks over nearly two weeks in New York, and made considerable progress. Jake and I put an initial draft text on the table in our first discussion with Ravanchi and Araghchi on the evening of September 18, in a room at the Waldorf Astoria. We were acutely aware of the danger of negotiating with ourselves as time wore on, but it quickly became apparent that we could much more effectively drive the process by taking the pen. We also realized that the only way we could really be sure that we were making progress was to put notional understandings on paper. Araghchi in particular bristled at our continuing insistence that we couldn’t provide more than a small fraction of frozen Iranian oil revenue during the initial six-month period, and at our emphasis on mothballing nuclear infrastructure to reassure us that frozen centrifuges could not simply be reactivated. We kept at it, and over the next week painstakingly removed brackets around contested language and agreed on significant portions of the interim agreement.
As productive as the New York rounds were, they had their moments of minor drama too. Just as the Iranians were walking down the hall to our meeting room at the Waldorf, Jake and I noticed that hanging on the wall across from the room was a large framed photo of the shah visiting the Waldorf in the 1970s. We tried to take it down quickly, but it was firmly attached to the wall. Ravanchi and Araghchi didn’t seem to notice as we hurriedly ushered them through the door. The last thing we wanted was to offend our counterparts or inspire a forty-minute recitation about America’s support for the ancien régime.
We conducted several more rounds later in the week across town, away from the hustle and bustle of the United Nations meetings, at a hotel on Manhattan’s West Side. The Iranian delegation had no trouble moving in and out of the hotel quietly. With its kaleidoscope of humanity, Manhattan was one place where five guys with white shirts buttoned all the way up and no ties could blend in easily.
Our progress in the direct bilateral talks set the stage for Secretary Kerry’s first encounter with Zarif, on the margins of a P5+1 ministerial meeting a
t the UN on September 26. In their thirty-minute tête-à-tête, Kerry and Zarif reviewed the encouraging results of the back channel so far, and agreed that we should keep at it. It was the first half hour of what would be endless hours of face-to-face meetings, texts, and telephone calls between them; their relationship and drive was at the heart of everything that was later achieved.
Meanwhile, Jake was trying to explore the possibility of a meeting between Rouhani and Obama. The initial signals we received from Zarif and the Iranian negotiators were positive, but Rouhani and his political advisors got more concerned about the potential backlash in Tehran the more they considered the idea. Rouhani had already made quite a splash at the UN, sounding decidedly unlike Ahmadinejad as he acknowledged the Holocaust, and working with Zarif in a flurry of meetings and interviews to put a much different face on Iranian diplomacy. Once the Iranians began to press us to agree to preconditions for even a brief pull-aside encounter, invoking the familiar plea for some recognition of a “right” to enrich, it was apparent that the effort to engineer a meeting was not worth it.
Somewhat to our surprise, the Iranians came back to us with a proposal for a phone call between the two presidents on Rouhani’s last day in New York. There were no preconditions. The call was connected as Rouhani was in his car on the way to the airport. The brief silence during the connection felt like a lifetime. Not surprisingly, Jake was anxious—about whether he had been given the right number, or whether this was all a setup in which some radio host in Canada would pop up on the line in an elaborate prank. Finally, the call connected. Obama and Rouhani had a cordial fifteen-minute conversation. Obama congratulated Rouhani on his election, and stressed that they now had an historic opportunity to resolve the nuclear issue. Mindful that a variety of foreign intelligence services might be listening, Obama made only an oblique reference to the secret bilateral talks. Rouhani responded in the same constructive tone, closing with a somewhat surreal “Have a nice day” in English. The glimmer of possibility was steadily getting brighter.
The Back Channel Page 40