Jarrett’s Secret Iran Talks Raise Questions About Obama’s Intentions
During the presidential debate on foreign policy, President Obama denied that his administration was preparing to conduct secret talks with Iran after the presidential election, as a New York Times story alleged. But according to a report published today in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot and on its English-language website Ynet.com, such talks are not only planned but have been going on for months and are being led by presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett. This raises questions not only about whether the president will stand by his pledge in the debate that any deal with Iran must require them to give up their “nuclear program,” but also whether she is negotiating a compromise along the lines sought by the Europeans in the P5+1 talks. In that compromise, Tehran would be allowed considerable leeway in terms of its nuclear future. It also places in context the administration’s absolute refusal to agree to “red lines,” in response to Israel’s request that the U.S. promise diplomacy would not be allowed to drag on until it would be too late to take action to forestall Iran’s nuclear goal.
That secret talks are going on with Iran is, in itself, hardly surprising since Tehran has been holding off-and-on talks with the West about the nuclear issue for years. But Jarrett’s involvement signals the importance the issue has for Obama because of her standing as a senior advisor and her close personal connection with the Obama family. But by putting someone with no background on security issues in charge of this track, Obama may be signaling that the president’s goal here is not an Iranian surrender of nuclear capability, but rather a political compromise that may not eliminate the threat of an Islamist bomb sometime down the road.
Jarrett was born in Shiraz, Iran (her father ran a hospital there) but left when she was 5, though she is said to have spoken Persian as a child. But that’s the extent of her expertise on the country. Her main qualification is that she is a close confidante of both the president and his wife. She is also widely given credit for helping to jump-start the president’s career by introducing him into the corrupt world of Chicago politics, where she was a significant player. That gives her credibility with the Iranians since she has a direct line to the White House. But if a re-elected Obama is rightly suspected of wanting to show more “flexibility” with America’s foes, then the Jarrett caper seems to be evidence that he is more interested in making this sore issue go away rather than pushing Iran hard to give up the possibility of attaining a weapon.
Though Jarrett and Obama may think their Chicago background makes them tough, the Iranians have made fools of every Western negotiator they’ve dealt with in the past decade, because of their tenacity and willingness to use the charade of talks as a way to run out the clock while their scientists get closer to achieving the country’s nuclear ambition. While the sanctions that the administration reluctantly put in place against Iran have caused the country economic pain, the American conviction that this gives them leverage over the ayatollahs may be mistaken. So long as the Iranian regime believes they can outlast and out-talk the West on this issue, it’s doubtful they can be compelled to sign a deal that would eliminate the nuclear threat–or to observe it even if they did.
While the president has been talking tough about Iran during the election year, it remains to be seen how tough his envoy has been with the Iranians in their secret talks. If Ms. Jarrett emerges with a deal sometime after the election, the suspicion is that her goal is more to get the president off the hook for his promises than to actually stop the Iranians.
In October 2012 it was revealed that for several months, Jarrett, who had no experience in international negotiations, had been leading secret negotiations with representatives of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, in an effort to develop normalized relations between the U.S. and Iran.
President Obama staked out some new ground on Iran in an effort to curry favor with pro-Israel voters by stating clearly that the only deal possible with Iran would preclude the sort of compromises on the nuclear question that the foreign policy establishment and Europe favors:
And we hope that their leadership takes the right decision, but the deal we’ll accept is they end their nuclear program. It’s very straightforward.But already we’re starting to hear people say that we shouldn’t have believed our ears when he said that. At JTA’s Capital J blog, Daniel Treiman writes that I am taking it all too literally. Apparently, when Obama says “nuclear program” he doesn’t mean the Iranian nuclear program but rather their weapons development program. While I think there’s no way to interpret Obama’s statement in any way but the way one I pointed to, I wonder if that’s what the president’s apologists will be saying if after the election, he begins talks with Iran that will allow their nuclear program to continue.
Treiman backs up his argument by pointing to the fact that the president followed his statement by saying a deal would be enforced by “intrusive” inspections. Fair enough. That sounds like a reference to inspections that would supposedly ensure that the Iranians are not enriching uranium to the point where it could be used for a weapon.
However, here again the president doesn’t say weapons program. He says “nuclear program.”
There is a deal to be had, and that is that they abide by the rules that have already been established; they convince the international community they are not pursuing a nuclear program; there are inspections that are very intrusive. But over time, what they can do is regain credibility. In the meantime, though, we’re not going to let up the pressure until we have clear evidence that that takes place.Unlike some politicians, the president is generally fairly careful about the way he uses words. Nor, if we are to believe the Democrats who refer to him as deeply knowledgeable about every nook and cranny of foreign policy, can we believe that he doesn’t understand the difference between a reference to a “nuclear program” and a nuclear weapons program.
I will readily concede to Treiman that I doubt the president has any intention of keeping his word about preventing Iran from having a “nuclear program” should he receive a second term in office. But if he does push toward a North Korea-style deal that will be easily evaded, the record will note that it will be a direct contradiction of what he said in the debate.
Iran's Nuclear Program (Nuclear Talks, 2012)
AP Photo/GeoEye/SIME
Iran’s nuclear program is one of the most polarizing issues in one of the world’s most volatile regions. While American and European officials believe Tehran is planning to build nuclear weapons, Iran’s leadership says that its goal in developing a nuclear program is to generate electricity without dipping into the oil supply it prefers to sell abroad, and to provide fuel for medical reactors.
Iran and the West have been at odds over its nuclear program for years. But the dispute has picked up steam since November 2011, with new findings by international inspectors, tougher sanctions by the United States and Europe against Iran’s oil exports, threats by Iran to shut the Strait of Hormuz and threats from Israel signaling increasing readiness to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities.
In late August 2012, international nuclear inspectors reported that Iran had already installed three-quarters of the nuclear centrifuges it needs to complete a deep-underground site for the production of nuclear fuel.
The report by the International Atomic Energy Agency detailed how Iran used the summer to double the number of centrifuges installed deep under a mountain near the holy city of Qum, while cleansing another site where the agency has said it suspects that the country has conducted explosive experiments that could be “relevant” to the production of a nuclear weapon.
The report was followed by new efforts by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to step up pressure on the Obama administration to establish “red lines” of intolerance for Iran’s nuclear activities. In September, during a speech at the United Nations, Mr. Netanyahu warned that Iran’s capability to enrich uranium must be stopped before the spring or early summer of 2013. The speech suggested that Israel would not take military action on its own before then.
Israel has been pushing the United States to take military action to damage Iran’s program before it reaches the point at which it has the capability to make an atomic bomb, or to give Israel a green light to launch its own airstrike.
President Obama has rejected the Israeli call for a red line at that point. But in a speech to the United Nations on Sept. 25, he repeated his position that the United States would work to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. Mr. Obama’s Republican challenger, Mitt Romney, has been sharply critical of the president for not taking a tough enough line on Iran, and for not supporting Israel strongly enough.
Iran Has Agreed to Talks, Say U.S. Officials
In October, The New York Times reported that the United States and Iran had agreed in principle for the first time to one-on-one negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, according to Obama administration officials, setting the stage for what could be a last-ditch diplomatic effort to avert a military strike on Iran.
Iranian officials have insisted that the talks wait until after the presidential election, a senior administration official said, telling their American counterparts that they want to know with whom they would be negotiating.
In November, a new report by U.N. inspectors asserted that Iran was set to sharply expand its uranium enrichment in an underground plant after installing all the centrifuges it was built for. The report also showed that Iran’s stockpile of its most sensitive nuclear material — which could relatively quickly be processed further to bomb-grade uranium — had grown and was getting closer to an amount that could be sufficient for a nuclear weapon.
The report also said that satellite photographs show Iran has worked for months to alter another site that the agency has long suspected may have been used for weapons-related experiments.
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