The daily Yedioth Ahronoth carried a very confusing article that first said Jarrett was just trying “to establish a line of communication with Iran,” but later in the same article claimed that talks have actually been “going on for several months” and were led by Jarrett.
At one point, the article said she “is assisting the US government [to] communicate behind the scenes with the representatives of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenehi,” while at another point it said Jarrett “led” the talks.
Perhaps strangest of all, the news report said the talks were taking place in Bahrain. That raised many eyebrows as it appeared unlikely Iran would want to conduct something so sensitive as talks with the United States in a country where the government is extremely hostile to the Islamic Republic.
It sounded to many like just the latest in many efforts to try to get direct, bilateral talks going with the Islamic Republic since Barack Obama became president almost four years ago.
All those efforts have been aimed at reaching Khamenehi, who controls the issue of US policy and who has stomped repeatedly on proposals by underlings to hold high-level state-to-state talks with Washington.
Khamenehi has not, however, vetoed low-level talks and occasional mid-level talks over the decades. For years, under President George W. Bush, low-level Iranian and American diplomats at the UN in New York met every few weeks. At higher levels, the US ambassadors to Iraq and Afghanistan have held some talks with Iranian diplomats.
None of these talks came to any conclusion. However, after the Taliban were toppled in Afghanistan, US and Iranian career diplomats—not revolutionary figures—worked very well together at getting Afghan politicians to agree on a new government to run the country.
It isn’t clear why Jarrett is involved, if the Israeli news story is accurate. It may be because she was born in Shiraz, where her American father worked at the hospital the United States helped to create there. She left Iran at age five and lost her ability to speak Farsi when she returned to the United States. But some may think her tenuous link to Iran might help open the door.
More likely, it is her ties to Obama that would bring her into the effort. Jarrett is probably the closest adviser Obama has in the White House. She helped get him involved in Chicago politics two decades ago and is very close to Obama and his wife both personally and politically. Jarrett’s involvement would signal to Iran that the president is directly involved and interested in contacts and that the approach is not just some State Department ploy.
Others see a more sinister possibility. The commentator Jonathan S. Tobin wrote Monday about Jarrett’s alleged involvement, noting that she is a political aide to the president, not part of the foreign policy establishment. He speculated: “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.”
The commentary reflects the worst of rightwing suspicions about Obama and the common belief on the far right that Obama is prepared to sell out American interests.