October 04-2013
Presidents Obama and Rohani did not meet at the UN last week, but they did talk by phone. That encounter had the effect of avoiding a handshake photo that could have been embarrassing for Rohani at home while still carrying forward the desire of both Obama and Rohani to “break the ice.”
In Iran, the official emphasis was put on the point that Obama initiated the phone contact. It is very important for the regime to portray the Americans as desperately chasing after Iran and desirous of contact with the country because it is so influential in global terms.
An Iranian official in Tehran told Reuters the call from Obama was “totally unexpected.”
But Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser, said Rohani’s staff had contacted her office and said Rohani would be willing to take a phone call from Obama. Obama then called Rohani while he was in his limousine being driven to JFK airport to fly home.
That angered many in Tehran and Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi openly dismissed Rice’s remarks. “One of their officials said something wrong,” he said on national television. “We have never trusted Americans. We will not trust them along the course either.”
But Rice who initiates a contact does not have the political weight in Washington that it has in Tehran. Furthermore, Rice always said that Obama had initiated the effort days earlier to have a face-to-face meeting with Rohani at the UN when both men were there last Tuesday.
The to-do over who originated the call got no attention in the United States but was noted by many in Iran and prompted several jokes. One went: “I know Rohani called Obama first. Then Obama told him, ‘It’s better that I call you since you are under sanctions and your call may cost a lot.’”
The phone conversation lasted 15 minutes, though with translation, that meant a conversation only half as long. Still, it was far longer—and likely more substantive—than the mere meet-and-greet handshaker Obama had originally proposed.
The White House had originally hoped and encouraged Rohani to come to a UN luncheon where delegation leaders always gather the opening day of the UN General Assembly session. But the White House seemed unaware of the fact that Iran’s presidents never come to that luncheon because wine is served.
White House proposals for an “encounter,” as officials called it, somewhere else in the UN corridors came to naught when Iran said it was “too complicated.” Rohani himself said later in Tehran that there was no time to do all the preparations—briefing papers and talking points—required before such a face-to-face meeting. But such a meeting in front of cameras would require no preparation at all since there could be no substantive discussion at all in front of cameras.
It was widely assumed that Rohani was actually concerned about the reaction of hardliners back home.
But the failure to meet produced disappointment among many of Rohani’s supporters. It isn’t known whom Rohani talked with in the period between rejecting the face-to-face meeting Tuesday afternoon and proposing the phone call Friday morning to Rice’s office.
As related by Obama, he emphasized both his willingness to talk and his conviction that negotiations would not be easy.
The previous day, Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif and Secretary of State John Kerry met at the UN with the other members of the Big Six. At the end of the meeting, Zarif and Kerry stepped into a side room together without any aides and met for 30 minutes. That may have been the single most important meeting of the week. Both emerged smiling. It is assumed they discussed each country’s bottom lines and red lines.
Kerry himself played down the meeting saying it did not resolve the multitude of issues between Washington and Tehran. “One meeting and a change in tone—which was welcome—doesn’t answer those questions yet,” Kerry said.
Zarif later told reporters, “We agreed to jump start the process.” But at a briefing minutes later, a State Department official said, “There was not an agreement…. Nothing has been agreed upon…. It is a long way from agreement.”
Kerry made clear that sanctions would not be lifted until Iran acted. “The United States is not going to lift the sanctions until it is clear that a very verifiable, accountable, transparent process is in place, whereby we know exactly what Iran is going to be doing with its [nuclear] program.”
The meeting was not the first between US and Iranian foreign ministers since the revolution, but it was the first private meeting. Madeleine Albright met Kamal Kharrazi, foreign minister under President Khatami, at a meeting with a dozen other foreign ministers discussing Bosnia, and Colin Powell was seated beside Kharrazi at a dinner in Egypt where they exchanged courtesies.
In the Rohani-Obama phone conversation, US officials said Obama also made a point of seeking the release of three Americans held in Iran: Amir Hekmati, Robert Levinson and Saeed Abedini.
The conversation ended with Rohani bidding adieu in English, “Have a nice day,” and Obama closing in Farsi, “Khoda hafez.” That showed Obama has expanded his Persian vocabulary beyond the “Salaam” and “Eid-e mobarak” he has used before.
In Iran, the Rohani website said the two presidents also discussed “cooperation in regional issues,” which White House officials did not mention. The Islamic Republic always likes to make it appear that Iran is contacted about broad Middle Eastern policy because of its importance as a power.
But the importance of the phone call was not in the items that came up, but in the mere fact of a contact. “The biggest taboo in Iranian politics has been broken,” said Ali Vaez, an Iranian analyst with the International Crisis Group.
It was the first telephone exchange between Iranian and American chiefs of state since January 1979 when President Jimmy Carter spoke to the Shah by phone just days before he left Iran.
The announcement of the phone call was first made on Rohani’s Twitter account. Although Iran insists Rohani has no Twitter account and the tweets come from supporters, the fact is the Twitter account has been used to break news multiple times and could not have spoken of the call without Rohani being involved.
Minutes after that tweet, Obama appeared in the White House pressroom and gave a long statement about the call.
In a press conference at Mehrabad Airport on his return from New York, Rohani made a major point of the fact that Obama had acknowledged Iran’s nuclear rights during the phone conversation. US officials said the same thing. But that was nothing new. President Bush publicly recognized Iran’s right to nuclear power almost a decade ago after Iran signed an agreement with Russia to authorize Russia to remove all spent fuel form the Bushehr nuclear power plant. Spent fuel can be used to make weapons.
Obama said in his statement about the phone call, “I’ve made it clear that we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy in the context of Iran meeting its obligations.” (Emphasis added.)
Rohani also specifically said Obama came up with the idea for the call. “The White House contacted us and expressed the willingness of the US president to have a phone conversation for some minutes,” Rohani told the press conference.
At a briefing for reporters in New York, a senior administration official said the events of the week and Rohani’s eagerness to talk to Obama was not a result of “goodwill” by the Iranian government, but the result of sanctions. “We believe that Iran has an imperative to improve its economy because every single economic indicator is negative for them,” he said.
“If President Rohani is going to fulfill his commitments to improve the Iranian economy, he is going to need to achieve sanctions relief. That can only be achieved through a meaningful negotiation and agreement with the international community. So that’s what I think gives us a sense that there’s a basis for progress here.”
Looking ahead, one White House official told Reuters that the Administration is in discussions with Congress to expand the president’s authority to issue sanctions waivers so that US negotiators can make a concrete deal with Iran on this particular sanction being lifted for that particular action on the nuclear program being taken. Without waiver authority, the president will be hobbled in talks because for many sanctions he could only say that he would appeal to Congress to lift sanctions if Iran did such-and-such.
It is important to put the week’s events in perspective. Reading the news coverage in Iran, one would believe that President Obama has been coping with nothing but the Iran issue all week long. However, the comments he made on his telephone call with Rohani were only one-third of a lengthy statement that dealt primarily with the budget impasse with Congress. And while the telephone call was newsy, the day before Obama made it he met in the White House with Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and then made the rarest of rare gestures by walking to the White House portico with him to see him off.
