by Kim Ghattas
Standing behind the light-brown wood lectern with a State Department seal, a glass of water at hand, P. J. rifled through his white ring binder with a Red Sox sticker on the cover. The binder was divided by region, country, and issue and contained detailed talking points; it was a visual aid that helped him spell out American policy on an ongoing issue or update us if something had moved. But depending on who showed up, the range of questions was like a political knowledge pop quiz, totally disconnected from the news. Sometimes, there was nothing in the binder, and P. J. would have to recall from memory the exact position of the United States on countries he hadn’t thought of for a while.
On that day, Turkey only came up briefly toward the end, and reporters were mostly eager to know whether there was any sign that Ankara was going to support Washington’s drive for another round of sanctions against Iran. P. J. said Turkey was being helpful. Really? Yes, really, he insisted. He referred to Turkey’s efforts to continue engaging with Iran and said the United States and Turkey shared a common objective, which was to make sure Iran did not become a nuclear state.
“Did the secretary show the Turkish foreign minister a draft of the resolution, which they hadn’t seen up until now?” asked a Turkish journalist.
“[The meeting] was about a strategic approach to Iran. This was not about the nuts and bolts of a resolution.”
“But only yesterday, he complained that you didn’t show him the draft. He made a speech yesterday. He complained that the Americans refused to give us a plan.”
“And we pledged during the meeting that we would have further discussions and consult closely with Turkey as a resolution draft emerges,” P. J. answered.
Forty minutes later, we had run out of questions and left the room, unaware of what had been a crucial item on the agenda for Clinton and Davutoğlu. They had continued the discussion started at the Nuclear Summit by Obama, Erdoğan, and Lula. None of it had been reported yet, but Erdoğan and Lula weren’t simply making a vague proposal for more diplomacy; they were suggesting hands-on deal making.
* * *
The meeting between Clinton and Davutoğlu had not been about the nuts and bolts of a Security Resolution as P. J. had accurately told us. I would learn later it had been about the nuts and bolts of a deal with Iran that would help avoid further sanctions.
Davutoğlu began by explaining to Clinton again, as he had so often, why Turkey understood Iran better than the United States did. We’ve known Iran for hundreds of years, he would say. As a friend of the Iranians, we can speak bluntly to them, something the West could not do. Mostly, he insisted that Turkey’s foreign policy was about giving a sense of justice and vision to the region; they would not admonish or threaten the Iranians in public, American-style.
The Turks were still looking for ways to revive the deal put on the table in October in Geneva—1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium shipped out of Iran, highly enriched uranium (HEU) sent back. Iran had told the Turks it would consider shipping out the uranium but only after it had received the nuclear fuel for the research reactor. This was not acceptable to the P5 + 1. It would take a year to produce the fuel, during which time Iran’s own centrifuges would continue spinning, augmenting its uranium stockpile. But Davutoğlu insisted this was still a good first step to build trust.
It’s a good deal, this will work, he said. You can’t just expect the Iranians to give up their uranium; you have to understand them, he argued. And he insisted that Turkey was a tough negotiator; it would be strict with the Iranians.
Clinton had no trouble understanding Davutoğlu’s motives: he was trying to protect his country from the impact of sanctions and conflict. She disagreed with his approach. This was becoming the bazaar. Bob Einhorn, the State Department’s nuclear expert, was brought in to explain in detail what was wrong with the deal the Turks were proposing: this was no longer about when the uranium left Iran and when it was sent back in. Almost six months had passed since the deal was put on the table, and Iran’s centrifuges had continued spinning. Iran now had much more than the 1,500 kilograms of uranium it had in October. The 1,200 kilograms were no longer 80 percent of Iran’s stockpile, but barely 50 percent. Iran would be left with enough uranium to continue working toward a nuclear weapon. Back in October in Geneva, the Russians had refused to make the offer based on an ongoing percentage. Even they were keen to just pin down a number and get the uranium out quickly. More importantly, the P5 + 1 wanted Iran to stop enriching uranium to the level of 20 percent. The more such uranium Iran produced, the closer it would get to what it needed for an atomic bomb.
If the Turks wanted to go ahead, Clinton and Einhorn said, they had to ask for much more than 1,200 kilograms. If you can pull a rabbit out of a hat, more power to you, Clinton told Davutoğlu, but we are really skeptical. With his sunny, positive disposition, Davutoğlu didn’t hear no.
As rough and assertive as Americans could be in negotiations, there were times when they were also too polite. Again, Obama attempted to encourage responsible leadership among the rising powers, as he had in person during his meeting with Lula and Erdoğan a few weeks earlier. On April 20, Lula received a letter from the White House that explained again why their proposal was not acceptable—this would not work as a confidence-building measure, certainly not for the United States and the P5 + 1. But in an attempt to be encouraging, Obama’s letter ended by describing possible compromises with Iran, including the possibility that 1,200 kilograms of uranium would be put in escrow immediately in Turkey, a country Iran trusted. Twelve hundred—that number just wouldn’t go away. When the State Department officials read the letter, they were alarmed by how vague it was about red lines for the escrow proposal to be acceptable. Mostly, they were distressed to see the mention of the 1,200 kilograms.
Deep down, American officials perhaps did not believe that the new powers could make any progress in their talks with the Iranians. Washington continued to negotiate the text of a sanctions resolution with Moscow and Beijing. But by May 13, alarm bells were ringing wildly in Washington. Clinton got on the phone to Davutoğlu. The 1,200 kilograms were not enough, she explained, the United States and its allies would never accept a deal with that amount in it. Crucially, Iran still had to stop enriching its uranium to 20 percent. She was going against the letter that the White House had sent to Lula, in essence contradicting the president, something she had never done before, but the situation required urgent damage control. This was not going to delay the sanctions, she said. Finally, Clinton told Davutoğlu that it was time for the Turks to put an end to their enterprise with the Brazilians.
But the Turks had stopped listening to Clinton. In front of them was a letter, in black and white, by the president of the United States mentioning the magic number 1,200. They were certain that their escrow proposal would work, and they were going to prove to Washington that Turkey could be a trusted broker, an indispensable problem solver, a new world power. Obama’s letter was all they needed to go to Iran. And they were now locked into their approach with Lula.
It was less clear what Brazil wanted out of the deal. Trade relations between the Latin American giant and Iran were also growing, and sanctions would affect Brazil’s economy. But from Washington’s perspective, it looked like a freelance mission, good old contrarian politics to spite Uncle Sam. Brazil was part of the Non-Aligned Movement formed in the 1960s to counter American imperialism. Celso Amorim, the Brazilian foreign minister, and Lula, a former union leader, were driven by reflexive third-world ideology; they believed deeply in Brazil’s rise and saw America as an obstacle to their emergence on the global stage. The Brazilians were the B in BRICS—with Russia, India, China, and South Africa, newly developed, emerging economic powers. Apart from Russia, the other BRICS were also testing their newfound political power. The author and foreign policy columnist Fareed Zakaria called it the “rise of the rest.” The BICS, sans Russia, protested that the international institutions set up after World War II, from the United Nations to t
he International Monetary Fund, were anachronistic, relics of an antiquated status quo. France and Britain had long lost their empires, the Soviet Union had disintegrated, and America was no longer the superpower it once was. China and Russia had permanent seats on the UN Security Council, and Brazil, India, and South Africa argued that they should get one too. Along with Turkey, the emerging powers felt they should be given the power they deserved. This was their chance to grab it.
* * *
On May 15, Lula arrived in Tehran to attend a summit of developed and developing countries. Iran was not part of the movement but was an honorary member as a country that stood against U.S. hegemony. After a phone call between Davutoğlu and his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, the Turkish ball of energy got on a plane to Tehran. Mottaki, Amorim, and Davutoğlu spent eighteen hours hammering out the details of an agreement. On Sunday evening, when they felt a deal was in sight, Davutoğlu called his boss and told him to fly to Tehran.
On Monday morning, a deal was finalized. Iran had agreed to put 1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium in escrow in Turkey, in return for nuclear fuel. The uranium would remain the property of Iran, and Tehran could ask that it be sent back at any time. It looked like refreshing, creative diplomacy on an issue of international magnitude by someone other than America.
“My expectation is that after this declaration there will not be a need for sanctions,” Erdoğan said in Tehran. He posed for a picture with the Brazilian and Iranian presidents. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a small man from a modest background, a hard-line conservative animated by religious fervor. Standing between the portly Lula and the tall Erdoğan, he grabbed their hands and lifted them in the air like trophies. He had pulled Turkey and Brazil into his orbit, splitting the international community.
The Turks often boasted that their president was the only leader who could go to Iran and meet the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and then fly across the Atlantic and sit in the Oval Office with Obama. They were needed; they played a key role that no one else could fill. But Erdoğan looked slightly uncomfortable in the picture. He never showed many teeth when he smiled, but the corners of his lips were barely turned upward as he stood next to Ahmadinejad.
A few hours later that Monday, Washington awoke to the picture of a victorious Ahmadinejad and news of the pact. At the White House and the State Department and on Capitol Hill, people looked at Erdoğan standing next to the Iranian leader and they saw the image of betrayal—America’s ally and its archenemy were brothers? Someone had hit the accelerator button on the rise of the rest, and the result was a chaotic mess. The Turks had not consulted with Washington before signing; in fact no one had called Washington since Clinton and Davutoğlu had spoken on the thirteenth. For the United States, this was like a sixteen-year-old with a learner’s permit taking his new car for a spin and forgetting he still needed an adult sitting in the car.
The Obama administration had also worked for eight months to get Beijing and Moscow on board with the sanctions, and Washington was stuck on that path as well. One official told me that it was hard to predict what Washington would have done if the Turks had actually managed to secure an ironclad deal involving the removal of 80 percent of Iran’s uranium. Perhaps the United States would have been willing to take a diplomatic gamble and test the Turkish deal with Iran, on the condition that Russia and China would commit to going ahead with the agreed sanctions if Iran did not ship out its uranium. No one had a sure answer to that hypothetical question.
Either way, the Turks and the Americans had both failed at the exercise: the Turks hadn’t listened when Hillary had warned them the devil was in the detail of the 1,200 kilograms. The White House was guilty of a vague letter, perhaps unable to accept that the Turks could get the Iranians to sign off on a deal, any deal. The Brazilians had gotten what they wanted—making life difficult for the United States. And Iran had hoodwinked everybody. An editorial in the state-run Kayhan newspaper the next day boasted about Iran’s cunning gamble, insisting that Tehran had not signed an agreement, just a nonbinding declaration. Another “written agreement and proper arrangement” was needed before any fuel exchange would take place. Ahmadinejad had seen the Brazilian and Turkish effort as a gift from heaven: he could buy time, delay sanctions, and cause havoc in the established channels of international diplomacy.
Despite their fury, the Americans were still delicate in their reaction to the Turks. Standing behind his lectern, P. J. acknowledged the Turkish and Brazilian effort but said Washington was still studying the details of the deal—a diplomatic way of saying, “The deal is awful, but we can’t get ourselves to say it.” He faced an onslaught of questions. Matt Lee of the AP went first.
“Why is this [deal] even remotely acceptable?”
Others chimed in.
“Why don’t you just reject this?”
“Were you informed of the Turkish and Brazilian effort while they were under way?”
P. J. tried his best to defend American diplomacy without alienating proud Turkey. But the Turks were not into nuances: they weren’t picking up on the coolness of the American reaction. The Russians were more forthcoming—President Dmitry Medvedev said the deal would not satisfy the international community and indicated that work at the UN would continue.
The following morning, on Tuesday the eighteenth, fresh off the plane from Tehran and more ebullient than ever, Davutoğlu gave a press conference in Istanbul.
“With the agreement yesterday, an important psychological threshold has been crossed towards establishing mutual trust,” Davutoğlu told reporters.
“Sanctions, the discussions on sanctions, will spoil the atmosphere, and the escalation of statements may provoke the Iranian public opinion,” he added. Turkish diplomacy had won the day in his view: there would be no sanctions against Iran.
But a few hours later, just after ten in the morning in Washington, Clinton was appearing in the Senate for a hearing and she announced her own diplomatic coup. After victory had been announced in Tehran, she had helped seal the deal the administration had been working on for months—consensus with Russia and China on the text of a resolution, the broadest, most comprehensive set of sanctions against Iran to date.
“With all due respect to my Turkish and Brazilian friends, the fact that we have Russia on board, China on board and that we’re moving early this week, namely today … put[s] pressure on Iran which they were trying to somehow dissipate,” Clinton told the senators.
Across time zones and oceans, word was starting to reach Turkey that America was displeased. Journalists were calling up officials at the foreign ministry to ask for their reaction to Clinton’s announcements.
“Are you kidding?” one of them asked when a journalist shared the news about the sanctions. “This can’t be good.” The Turks were in disbelief—maybe they were misreading something. A few hours later, when Clinton was back from Capitol Hill, Davutoğlu called her. He was still on a high and spent forty-five minutes trying to explain to her why this was a great achievement, a great day.
I don’t think so, replied Clinton tersely. The Turks felt like they had been stabbed in the back. They bristled at the way Russia, China, and the United States had looked past their own differences and banded together to elbow out the rising powers. The powers of yesterday behaved like they still ran the planet, the Turks thought, it was so Cold War.
* * *
A few weeks later, the sanctions were put to a vote at the UN Security Council, and everybody relived the trauma of old and new powers pulling in different directions. Despite much lobbying, Turkey and Brazil voted against the resolution. The United States was outraged and this time stated clearly and publicly how disappointed it was in its NATO ally. The vote was excruciatingly painful for Ankara, but the Turks felt stuck. They had worked hard to gain Tehran’s trust and couldn’t suddenly vote to punish them at the UN; it would have been their undoing as a broker in the region. And they were in lockstep with their new partner Lula,
whose presidency was coming to an end in six months. The Turks were bitter about the Brazilians and dismissive about their role. Months later, a Turkish official would tell me: “Lula said no at the Security Council and then left. Who remembers Lula today? But for us it was very difficult to say no to the U.S.”
Washington’s relationship with countries in its backyard, like Brazil, had always been fraught, but Turkey was a NATO member, a stalwart ally of the United States in the region, and home to American military bases. Turkey undermining the United States on an issue of such strategic import as Iran was not part of the agreement. Something was broken. With so many countries clamoring for a share of the global power pie, power was becoming more and more diffuse, and it clearly wasn’t just because China was becoming stronger. The Obama administration was trying to harness the energy of these new powers and encourage them to take on world responsibilities. But the United States also wanted and needed to remain at the center of all the action; the superpower wasn’t about to let go of the reins. It was a learning process, and this first real-life exercise on a key issue had gone terribly wrong. Even dealing with the Chinese seemed easier—at least their rivalry was predictable. The United States still had the world’s biggest military, bigger than those of the next three countries combined, and this was unlikely to change for some time. But military might alone was no longer enough to project power, especially when budgets were being cut. America had to reinvent its diplomacy.