The Sultan of Oman has a flair for the dramatic.
We were sitting over a lavish lunch in a palace designed by the Sultan himself in Oman’s capital city of Muscat, near the tip of the Arabian Peninsula, when I heard the familiar strains of John Philip Sousa’s “Liberty Bell” march. Sultan Qaboos, dressed in a long flowing robe with a ceremonial dagger on his belt and a colorful turban on his head, smiled and looked up. On a balcony above us, partially hidden by a screen, was part of the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra. It was a typical gesture for a shrewd and gracious leader who valued his relationship with the United States, loved music, and used his absolute power to modernize his country over four decades of rule.
What the Sultan had to say was even more dramatic. It was January 12, 2011, just days before the Arab Spring would upend the chessboard of Middle East geopolitics. I had just come from Yemen, Oman’s troubled southern neighbor, and was headed to a regional conference in Qatar to warn leaders that without economic and political reform, their regimes would “sink into the sand.” But today the Sultan’s focus was on Iran.
The standoff over Iran’s illicit nuclear program was escalating, and it posed an urgent threat to regional and global security. Since 2009 the Obama Administration had pursued a “dual-track” strategy of pressure and engagement, but negotiations between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, Russia, China, Britain, and France), plus Germany—the so-called P5+1—were going nowhere. The prospects of armed conflict, possibly including an Israeli strike to knock out Iranian nuclear facilities like the ones carried out against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007, were mounting.
“I can help,” the Sultan said. He was one of the few leaders seen by all sides as an honest broker, with close ties in Washington, the Gulf states, and Tehran. He proposed hosting secret direct talks between the United States and Iran to resolve the nuclear issue. Previous attempts to engage Iran’s theocratic regime had failed, but the Sultan thought there might be a chance for him to facilitate a breakthrough. Secrecy would be necessary to prevent hard-liners on all sides from derailing talks before they had a chance to get going. Was I willing to explore the idea?
On the one hand, there was no reason to trust the Iranians and every reason to believe they would exploit any opportunity for delay and distraction. New negotiations could turn into a rabbit hole that would buy the Iranians time to race closer to their goal of a nuclear weapon that would threaten Israel, their neighbors, and the world. Any concessions we offered as part of these talks could undo years of careful work to build an international consensus for tough sanctions and increased pressure on the regime in Tehran. On the other hand, the Sultan’s offer could be our best chance to avoid conflict or the unacceptable prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran. Our failure to pursue diplomacy could end up fraying the broad international coalition we had built to impose and enforce sanctions on Iran.
While it is hard to believe, given all that has happened since, Iran was once a Cold War ally of the United States. The country’s monarch, the Shah, owed his throne to a 1953 coup supported by the Eisenhower Administration against a democratically elected government thought to be sympathetic to Communism. It was a classic Cold War move for which many Iranians never forgave America. Our governments enjoyed close relations for more than twenty-five years—until, in 1979, the autocratic Shah was overthrown by a popular revolution. Shiite fundamentalists led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini soon seized power and imposed their theocratic version of an Islamic republic on the Iranian people. Iran’s new rulers were implacably opposed to America, calling us “the Great Satan.” In November 1979, Iranian radicals stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and held fifty-two Americans hostage for 444 days. It was an appalling breach of international law and a traumatic experience for our country. I remember watching nightly news reports in Little Rock counting the number of days the hostages had been held captive as the crisis went on and on without an end in sight. It became even more tragic when a rescue mission by the U.S. military ended with the crash of a helicopter and a transport plane in the desert that killed eight servicemembers.
The Iranian Revolution led to decades of state-sponsored terrorism. The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard and Hezbollah, which served as an Iranian proxy, carried out attacks across the Middle East and the world. Their crimes included the bombings in Beirut, Lebanon, of the U.S. Embassy in April 1983, which killed sixty-three people, including seventeen Americans; the attack on the U.S. Marine barracks that October, which killed 241 Americans; and the 1996 bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed nineteen U.S. Air Force personnel and wounded hundreds of others. Iran also targeted Jews and Israelis, including bombing an Israeli cultural center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1994, killing eighty-five people and injuring hundreds more. On a regular basis the State Department designated Iran as the world’s “most active state sponsor of terrorism” and documented its links to bombings, kidnappings, hijackings, and other acts of terrorism. Iranian rockets, automatic weapons, and mortars were also being used to kill U.S. troops as well as our partners and civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Given this history, the prospect of a nuclear-armed Iran represented a serious security threat to Israel, Iran’s neighbors in the Gulf, and, by extension, the world, which is why the UN Security Council had passed six resolutions since 2006, calling on Iran to cease its weapons program and abide by the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. Like more than 180 other nations, Iran is a signatory to the Treaty, which gives countries the right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes but requires those with existing nuclear weapons to pursue disarmament and those without nuclear weapons to foreswear acquiring them. Allowing Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon in violation of this treaty could open the floodgates on proliferation, first in the Middle East among its Sunni-led rivals, and then around the world.
We knew Iran had worked for years to develop the technology and materials necessary to build a bomb, despite condemnation and pressure from the international community. In early 2003, Iran possessed about a hundred centrifuges for enriching uranium, one of the two ways to fuel nuclear weapons, the other being plutonium. Centrifuges spin at incredibly fast speeds, enriching uranium to a high enough level that it can be used to build a bomb. This is a difficult and precise process that requires thousands of centrifuges. Over the next six years, with the international community divided and Iran denying access and information to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it steadily expanded its program. By the time President Obama took office, Iran had about five thousand centrifuges. Despite Iran’s leaders’ claims that their nuclear program was intended for purely peaceful scientific, medical, and commercial purposes, their scientists were working in secret in hardened bunkers built deep inside mountains, enriching uranium at levels and quantities that led reasonable people to harbor well-founded suspicions of their intentions.
For a brief period in the late 1990s, there was hope that Iran might choose a different course. In 1997, Iranians elected as President a relative moderate, Mohammad Khatami, who said in an American TV interview that he wanted to tear down the “wall of mistrust” between Iran and the United States. The Clinton Administration was understandably wary in the wake of the Khobar Towers attack, but Bill responded with cautious reciprocal steps, including mentioning Iran in a video message marking Eid al Fitr, the feast at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. “I hope that the day will soon come when we can enjoy once again good relations with Iran,” he said. The administration sent out a number of diplomatic feelers in an attempt to start a dialogue, including a letter delivered via our mutual friend the Sultan of Oman. In 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright offered a more public olive branch by formally apologizing for the American role in the 1953 Iranian coup and easing certain economic sanctions. But Iran never followed through, in part because hard-liners restrained Khatami’s ability to act.
That groundwork may have helped encourage Khatami to reach out after the 9/11 attacks in the hopes of cooperating with the United States in Afghanistan, which shares a border with Iran. But President Bush’s speech in 2002, in which he named Iran, Iraq, and North Korea an “Axis of Evil,” ended any chance of further dialogue between our countries at that time. The Europeans then took the lead on negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program, but those talks fell apart after Khatami was replaced in 2005 by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier and provocateur who threatened to wipe Israel off the map and insulted the West at every turn.
As a Senator representing New York during the Bush years, I advocated for increasing pressure on the regime in Tehran and its proxies, voting to impose sanctions on Iran and to formally designate the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization. As I stated again and again, “We cannot, we should not, we must not permit Iran to build or acquire nuclear weapons.” Yet without a broad international consensus, unilateral U.S. sanctions did little to curb Iranian behavior.
In a 2007 essay in the journal Foreign Affairs, I argued, “The Bush Administration refuses to talk to Iran about its nuclear program, preferring to ignore bad behavior rather than challenge it.” And, “If Iran does not comply with its own commitments and the will of the international community, all options must remain on the table.” Without being specific, “options” could be read as including potential military action, but I emphasized that the first choice should be diplomacy. After all, if the United States could negotiate with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, with thousands of their missiles pointed at our cities, we should not be afraid to talk with other adversaries such as Iran under appropriate conditions. This was a delicate balancing act—raising the prospect of military action while also pushing for diplomacy and restraint—but it was hardly novel. Effective foreign policy has always involved the use of both sticks and carrots, and finding the right balance between the two is more art than science.
During the heat of the 2008 Presidential primaries, I jumped on Senator Obama’s statement in a debate that he would meet with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea “without precondition” during the first year of a new administration. Return to diplomacy, I said, engage with these countries, but don’t promise to reward them with a high-profile Presidential meeting unless we get something in return. In response his campaign accused me of toeing the Bush line and refusing to talk to our adversaries. None of this was particularly illuminating for voters, but that’s life on the campaign trail. I also caused a bit of a stir in April 2008 when I warned Iran’s leaders that if they launched a nuclear attack on Israel on my watch, the United States would retaliate and “we would be able to totally obliterate them.” That got Tehran’s attention, and Iran actually filed a formal protest at the UN.
After President Obama asked me to be Secretary of State, we started talking about crafting a more effective approach toward Iran. Our goal may have been straightforward—prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons—but the path to achieve it was anything but.
By early 2009, Iran appeared to be on the rise in the Middle East. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq had removed Iran’s nemesis Saddam Hussein and put in place a Shiite government more to its liking. U.S. power and prestige in the region were at a low. Hezbollah had fought Israel to a bloody stalemate in Lebanon in 2006, and Hamas was still firmly in control of the Gaza Strip after a two-week Israeli invasion in January 2009. Sunni monarchs in the Gulf watched in fear as Iran built up its military, extended its influence, and threatened to dominate the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. Inside Iran the regime’s iron grip was unchallenged, and it enjoyed booming oil exports. President Ahmadinejad was a bellicose peacock strutting on the world stage. But the real authority rested with the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini in 1989 and made no secret of his hatred for America. The hard-line Revolutionary Guard was amassing such significant power within Iran, including vast economic holdings, that the country appeared to be moving toward a military dictatorship under the veneer of clerical leadership. I made some waves when I noted this trend during a trip to the Gulf.
Faced with this difficult landscape, President Obama and I were determined to use both engagement and pressure to present Iran’s leaders with a clear choice: If they complied with their treaty obligations and addressed the international community’s concerns about their nuclear program, then they could benefit from improved relations. If they refused, they would face increased isolation and even more painful consequences.
One of President Obama’s first gestures was to send two private letters to Ayatollah Khamenei offering a new diplomatic opening. He also recorded video messages aimed directly at the Iranian people. Like my husband’s efforts a decade before, these feelers were met with a stone wall in Tehran. None of us were under any illusions that Iran was going to change its behavior simply because a new American President was willing to talk. But we believed that the effort to engage would strengthen our hand in seeking tougher sanctions if Iran rejected our overtures. The rest of the world would see that the Iranians, not the Americans, were the intransigent ones, and that would make them more likely to support increasing pressure on Tehran.
An early avenue we explored was possible cooperation on Afghanistan. After all, back in 2001, in the early days of the war, there had been exploratory talks about working together to stem the drug trade and stabilize the country. Since then, however, Iran had played a much less constructive role. In the lead-up to a major international conference on Afghanistan organized by the UN at The Hague at the end of March 2009, I had to decide whether to support the UN’s extending an invitation to Iran. After consulting with NATO allies, I described the upcoming conference as “a big tent meeting with all the parties who have a stake and an interest in Afghanistan.” That left the door open for Iran; if they showed up, it would be our first direct encounter.
Tehran ended up sending a Deputy Foreign Minister to The Hague, whose speech included some positive ideas for collaboration. I did not meet with the Iranian diplomat, but I did send Jake Sullivan to speak with him to raise the prospect of direct engagement on Afghanistan.
Jake also hand-delivered a letter requesting the release of three Americans being detained in Iran: a retired FBI agent named Robert Levinson, a graduate student named Esha Momeni, and an American journalist of Iranian Japanese descent named Roxana Saberi. Roxana was arrested in Tehran and accused of espionage only days after I took office in January 2009. After a hunger strike and persistent lobbying by the United States and others, she was released in May. She came to see me at the State Department soon after and told me about her harrowing ordeal. Robert Levinson is still being held. Esha Momeni, who had been out on bail but barred from leaving the country, was allowed to return to the United States in August 2009.
At the same conference at The Hague, Richard Holbrooke had a brief exchange with the Iranian diplomat at an official lunch, though the Iranians later denied the encounter took place.
The second half of 2009 turned out to be full of unexpected developments that dramatically reshaped the international debate about Iran.
First came the Iranian elections. In June, Ahmadinejad was declared the winner of a Presidential vote that was, by all accounts, deeply flawed if not totally rigged. Large crowds gathered in the streets of Tehran and throughout the country to protest the results. It was a surprising moment, as the Iranian middle class demanded the democracy that the 1979 revolution had promised but never delivered. The protests gained strength and were known as the Green Movement. Millions of Iranians took to the streets in an unprecedented display of dissent, many even calling for an end to the regime. Security forces responded with brutal violence. Citizens marching peacefully were beaten with batons and arrested en masse. Political opponents were rounded up and abused, and several people were killed. People around the world were horrified by video footage of a young woman shot dead in the street. The violence was shocking, but the repression was in keeping with the regime’s abysmal human rights record.
Within the Obama Administration we debated how to respond. “We are monitoring the situation as it unfolds in Iran, but we, like the rest of the world, are waiting and watching to see what the Iranian people decide,” I announced as the protests picked up steam but before the worst of the crackdown. “We obviously hope that the outcome reflects the genuine will and desire of the Iranian people.”
Contacts in Iran urged us to stay as quiet as possible. They worried that if the United States spoke out in support of the demonstrators, or overtly tried to insert ourselves into the situation, it would allow the regime to dismiss the protests as a foreign plot. Many of our intelligence analysts and Iran experts agreed. Still there was a strong temptation to stand up and proclaim our support for the Iranian people and our disgust with the heavy-handed tactics of the regime. That felt like the appropriate role for America to play, in keeping with our democratic values.
After listening to all the arguments, the President grudgingly decided that we would better serve the aspirations of the Iranian people by not putting the United States in the middle of the crisis. It was a difficult, clear-eyed tactical call. It was not, as some commentators speculated at the time, because the President cared more about engaging with the regime than standing up to it. This was about doing what we believed was the right thing for the protesters and for democracy, nothing more. Behind the scenes my team at the State Department stayed in constant contact with activists in Iran and made an emergency intervention to prevent Twitter from shutting down for maintenance, which would have deprived protesters of a key communications tool.
In retrospect I’m not sure our restraint was the right choice. It did not stop the regime from ruthlessly crushing the Green Movement, which was exceedingly painful to watch. More strident messages from the United States would probably not have prevented the outcome and might even have hastened it, but there’s no way of knowing now if we could have made a difference. I came to regret that we did not speak out more forcefully and rally others to do the same. In the aftermath of the crackdown in Iran, I resolved to step up efforts to provide pro-democracy activists with tools and technology to evade government repression and censorship. Over the next few years we invested tens of millions of dollars and trained more than five thousand activists around the world.
By September, with Khamenei and Ahmadinejad back firmly in control in Tehran, there was a new flash point. For more than a year, Western intelligence agencies had been monitoring what was believed to be a secret Iranian enrichment facility under construction beneath the mountains near the city of Qom, southwest of Tehran. After the debacle of faulty intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, there was understandable caution in jumping to conclusions regarding Iran, but this was a deeply troubling development. The facility was just months away from completion and, if finished, would enhance Iran’s ability to build a nuclear bomb because of its protected location. When the Iranians discovered that we were aware of their deception, they scrambled to cover it up. On September 21, 2009, they delivered a low-key letter to the IAEA admitting the existence of a small pilot project near Qom that had somehow never been mentioned before.
We decided to expose the truth on our own terms. That week world leaders were gathered for the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly in New York. We knew that public disclosure of Iran’s secret enrichment facility near Qom would cause an uproar—one we hoped to use to our advantage. President Obama was set to chair a meeting of the Security Council on nuclear security, and P5+1 negotiators were about to open a new round of talks with the Iranians. We had to choreograph carefully the disclosure with our British and French allies to maximize our leverage with both the Iranians and those countries predisposed to give them the benefit of the doubt, especially Russia and China. If handled deftly, this explosive revelation could tip the diplomatic balance against Iran and help move us toward tougher international sanctions.
In President Obama’s suite at the Waldorf Astoria hotel, we huddled to plot our strategy. One option was to have the President make a dramatic presentation of the intelligence about the Qom facility at the Security Council. That would have conjured up memories of both the famous confrontation between U.S. Ambassador to the UN Adlai Stevenson and his Russian counterpart during the Cuban Missile Crisis and the infamous presentation by Secretary of State Colin Powell about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Neither was a precedent we wanted to repeat. We also wanted to be sure we had fully coordinated with our allies and briefed the IAEA, the Russians, and the Chinese in advance. So we decided against the UN Security Council route.
On the afternoon of September 23, President Obama, National Security Advisor Jim Jones, and I met in the Waldorf for an hour with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, his Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, and his National Security Advisor Sergei Prikhodko and presented the evidence about Qom. In the first meeting between the two Presidents that spring in London, Medvedev had admitted that Russia had underestimated Iran’s nuclear program, but this new information about Iranian deception still shocked the Russians. It was the only time in the four years I served as Secretary that I can remember seeing the steely Lavrov appear flustered and at a loss for words. Afterward Medvedev surprised the press by talking tougher on Iran than they’d ever heard before: “Sanctions rarely lead to productive results—but in some cases sanctions are inevitable.” Reporters peppered the White House staff with questions about what had caused the noticeable change in Russian rhetoric, but we weren’t ready to go public yet with the Qom news.
Plans took shape for an announcement two days later at the G-20 summit in Pittsburgh, where many of the same world leaders would travel from New York. When the time came, President Obama stepped to the podium alongside British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and French President Nicolas Sarkozy. “The size and configuration of this facility is inconsistent with a peaceful program,” President Obama declared. “Iran is breaking rules that all nations must follow.”
Events were moving quickly now. On the first day of October, representatives of the P5+1 met in Geneva with an Iranian delegation. I sent Under Secretary of State Bill Burns to represent the United States and meet privately with the Iranian negotiator. Under growing international pressure, Iran agreed to allow IAEA inspectors to visit the secret site near Qom, which they did later that month.
The other item on the agenda in Geneva was the Tehran Research Reactor, which was given to Iran by the United States in the 1960s to produce medical isotopes to be used in diagnosis and treatment of diseases. Over the summer of 2009, Iran reported that it was running out of the nuclear fuel rods needed to power the reactor and produce the isotopes. While Iran did have a supply of low-enriched uranium, it did not have the higher-enriched uranium required for the fuel rods, so it asked the IAEA for assistance in meeting their fuel needs on the open market. This request caught the eye of American nuclear experts, including the State Department’s Bob Einhorn, who began working on a creative plan to solve several problems at once. What if Iran sent all, or at least a significant percentage, of its uranium stockpile abroad, and in return got back fuel rods that could power the research reactor but could not be used for a bomb? That would answer their legitimate needs while setting back their weapons program many months, perhaps up to a year. If the Iranians accepted, we’d have time to work toward a more comprehensive deal that would answer all our concerns about the nuclear program. If they refused, then their true ambitions would be exposed. In August I had discussed the idea with Russia’s Lavrov and argued that transferring low-enriched uranium out of Iran would reduce tensions in the region. I hoped that if the United States and Russia worked together to show unity, it would force the Iranians to respond. He agreed, saying, “We should look at this request seriously. We are ready in principle to participate with you.”
Now, in the Geneva talks, it was time to put the proposal on the table and see how the Iranians would react. During a lunch break Burns suggested to the chief Iranian negotiator, Saeed Jalili, that they have a direct discussion apart from the bigger group. When Jalili agreed, Burns outlined the terms we were offering. Jalili knew he was facing a united international community and an undeniably fair and reasonable offer. He had no choice but to agree. Einhorn and the Iranian deputy negotiator went over the details point by point. The Iranians accepted all of it, with one proviso: nothing could be said publicly until after they’d gone back to Tehran and shared the agreement with their superiors.
When the negotiators reconvened later in the month at the IAEA in Vienna, the Iranians had changed their tune. Jalili’s discussions in Tehran had not gone well. Hard-liners in the government were dead set against the deal. Now the Iranians were saying they were willing to give up a smaller amount of low-enriched uranium, and they wanted to store it in a remote part of Iran rather than send it abroad, both of which were unacceptable. It would defeat the whole purpose of denying them enough enriched uranium to make a bomb. The IAEA urged them to return to the terms of the original agreement, but without success. The Vienna meetings ended in failure. The deal was dead.
As President Obama had promised during his campaign, we had tried to engage Iran. Now, he decided, it was time to ramp up the pressure and sharpen the choice facing Iran’s leaders. To impose real consequences, however, we would need the rest of the world to join us.
Susan Rice, our Ambassador to the UN, reported that finding the votes for a strong resolution in the Security Council would be a hard lift. I was hearing the same thing from my foreign counterparts. “We don’t think this is the time to discuss sanctions against Iran,” Chinese Foreign Minister Yang told me in January 2010. “Once sanctions become the order of the day, it might be difficult to resume talks for a considerable period of time.” Yes, China and Russia agreed in principle that Iran should not be allowed to develop or possess nuclear weapons; they just weren’t willing to do much to stop it.
Nonetheless I believed that with the wind now at our backs, it was worth trying to overcome this opposition and push tough new sanctions through the Security Council. Throughout the spring of 2010 we worked aggressively to round up the votes. I threw myself into it, with a wide-ranging diplomatic effort that reminded me of backroom negotiations in the Senate, with all the horse trading, arm-twisting, vote counting, alternating appeals to principle and self-interest, and hard-ball politics that go into passing major legislation.
While attention generally focuses on the five permanent members of the Security Council because we each have the power to veto any resolution, there are actually another ten seats on the Council that rotate among other nations selected for two-year terms by the General Assembly. To be adopted, a Security Council resolution must avoid a veto but also garner nine votes out of fifteen total members. That made small countries with rotating seats such as Uganda and Lebanon very important. And it was why I spent time over my four years courting nations that didn’t normally play a big role in international affairs, such as Togo, but whose votes I knew we would need at pivotal times.
Assembling nine votes among fifteen skittish Council members proved to be tricky. In one of my many strategy sessions with Britain’s David Miliband during this period, he made the point that it was not enough to convince China to hold off on vetoing the resolution; we needed affirmative support in order to bring other undecided votes along. “On our number counting, it otherwise seems dicey,” he said. “There is danger if they abstain that we may lose Nigeria, Uganda, Brazil, Turkey.” I was doing my own counting and did not believe we would lose Uganda or Nigeria. Brazil and Turkey would be another story. “And it is still an open question if the Russians will vote for the resolution if the Chinese abstain,” David continued. “We believe they will,” I responded, “but the cost might be a weaker resolution.” On it went.
In mid-April I made my pitch to Yoweri Museveni, President of Uganda. Ahmadinejad was due in Uganda the next day, as part of Iran’s diplomatic counterattack designed to block new sanctions, so it was crucial that I got to Museveni first to secure his agreement. It helped that I had known him since 1997, when I first visited his country, and that my husband and I had kept in touch with him since. I reminded him that the Obama Administration had tried to engage with Iran and that the international community had made good-faith offers. Iran had rejected every entreaty, defied the international community, and continued to enrich uranium at high levels. I also warned that if diplomacy failed, the result might be military action, which no one wanted to see. This would prove to be a compelling argument for many wavering countries. “We want to work with you to send the most powerful message to Iran and demonstrate that there still is time for Iran to change its behavior,” I said.
Museveni was circumspect. “I will tell [Ahmadinejad] two things,” he said. “First, we uphold the right of all countries to access nuclear energy for electricity and other uses, and second, we are totally against proliferation of nuclear weapons. This is the message I will put in my written speech for the banquet. I will encourage him to open his country to inspection if he has nothing to hide.” I pressed the point: “If you have your experts look at the IAEA report where they lay out the issues, it is hard not to have suspicions.” “I agree with you,” he replied. “For Iran to have nuclear weapons, that means Saudi Arabia and Egypt will have to do the same. That affects us directly and we can’t support that. I will have a frank discussion with the President.” In the end Uganda voted for the sanctions.
As Miliband rightly observed, China represented the key vote. If we could convince Beijing to come around, the rest of the Security Council would likely fall into place. In New York, Susan Rice and her team were working with other delegations on language for the sanctions resolution. The Chinese and Russians kept trying to weaken the terms. We made some concessions, but we saw no point in passing another toothless resolution. In April, President Obama invited leaders from around the world to Washington for a summit on nuclear security. He took the opportunity to sit down with Chinese President Hu Jintao to talk about Iran. I listened as the two Presidents went back and forth in a side room off the main Convention Center floor. China had extensive commercial ties with Tehran and depended on Iranian oil to fuel its rapid industrial growth. President Hu agreed that Iran should not acquire nuclear weapons, but he was leery of any steps that felt too aggressive. Finally the two Presidents agreed to back “substantial” measures, without clarifying exactly what that would mean.
Not long afterward I followed up with Chinese State Councilor Dai Bingguo. China was still blocking important elements of the draft sanctions resolution, especially meaningful measures on finance and banking activity directly tied to Iran’s illicit nuclear activities. “I must say, China’s response, while having evolved helpfully, still falls short of the reciprocal effort we expected from President Hu’s conversation with President Obama,” I told Dai. “We need to act in a quick and unified manner through a meaningful resolution if we are to reduce the growing risk of conflict in the region and give space for a political solution.” I said that lack of international unity and resolve would undermine the interests China was seeking to protect, including maintaining stability in the Middle East, keeping oil prices stable, and protecting the recovery of the global economy. “We want to avoid events that will escape our control,” I added.
Dai admitted that he too was dissatisfied, but he remained optimistic. For the moment, so was I. We kept talking to the Chinese and the Russians. The gaps were narrowing, and it felt as though we were getting close to an agreement that would impose the strictest sanctions in history.
But then, just when our goal was in sight, events took another unexpected turn. On May 17, 2010, in a triumphant press conference in Tehran, the Presidents of Brazil, Turkey, and Iran announced they had reached an agreement for Iran to swap low-enriched uranium for reactor fuel rods. Superficially their deal resembled the offer Iran had spurned the previous October. But in fact it was deeply flawed. The deal did not account for the fact that Iran had continued to enrich uranium for several months since the earlier proposal and the transfer of the same amount of uranium would now leave it with a significant stockpile. Unlike in the October agreement, Iranians would retain ownership of the uranium they sent abroad and reserved the right to pull it back at any time. Most troubling, though, was the fact that Iran continued to proclaim its right to enrich uranium to higher levels, and there was nothing in this new agreement to stop it or even to indicate that it would discuss the matter with the IAEA or P5+1. In short, this agreement would address Iran’s need to find fuel rods for its research reactor, but it would do precious little to answer the world’s concerns about its illegal weapons program. Given the timing, I was sure it was an Iranian attempt to derail our push for sanctions at the UN—and there was a good chance it would succeed.
Ever since the October 2009 agreement collapsed, Turkey and Brazil had been making noises about revisiting it. Both countries held rotating seats on the UN Security Council and were eager to exercise increased influence on the world stage. They were prime examples of the “emerging powers” whose rapid economic growth was fueling big ambitions for regional and global clout. They also happened to have two confident leaders in Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, both of whom considered themselves to be men of action able to bend history to their will. Once they had set their sights on brokering a solution on Iran, there was little that could dissuade them from trying, even if only lackluster—or even counterproductive—results emerged.
The United States and the other permanent members of the Security Council reacted cautiously to Brazil and Turkey’s early efforts. After so much duplicity, we worried that Iran might exploit the good intentions of Brazil and Turkey in order to protect its nuclear program and fracture the growing international consensus against it. Our concerns grew as it became clear that the Iranians had no intention of stopping their enrichment activities and were suggesting they would give up their uranium in small batches rather than in one big shipment, as originally envisioned. Over time that would mean they would never be without enough nuclear material to build a bomb.
In early March 2010, I visited Lula in Brasília. I explained why this would be a bad outcome and tried to dissuade him from pursuing it, but Lula would not be deterred. He rejected my view that Iran was only playing for time. During my visit I explained publicly, “The door is open for negotiation. We never slammed it shut. But we don’t see anybody even in the far-off distance walking toward it.” I went on: “We see an Iran that runs to Brazil, an Iran that runs to Turkey, an Iran that runs to China, telling different things to different people to avoid international sanctions.”
President Obama followed up with a letter to Lula in April underscoring our concerns: “Iran appears to be pursuing a strategy that is designed to create the impression of flexibility without agreeing to actions that can begin to build mutual trust and confidence.” He conveyed the same message to Erdoğan in Turkey. Meanwhile, lending credence to our argument, Iran pledged to continue enriching uranium. Their only goal seemed to be to derail the sanctions drive at the UN.
With Lula set to visit Tehran, I called Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and urged him to see the Iranian efforts for what they were, “an elaborate dance.” But he was full of confidence for what could be achieved. Finally I grew exasperated and exclaimed, “There has to be an end to the process. At some point, there has to be a day of reckoning.” Amorim argued that it might be easier for the Iranians to make a deal with Brazil and Turkey than with the United States. I doubted something positive could come from the meeting and worried that it was happening at a particularly precarious time because we were finally close to an agreement with the Chinese and Russians on the text of a new sanctions resolution at the UN. Neither Moscow nor Beijing were particularly enthusiastic about the process, and I sensed that if they saw an opportunity to bolt and give Iran more time, they would take it in a flash.
That was my immediate concern when I saw the news that Lula, Erdoğan, and Ahmadinejad had reached an agreement. In case there was any doubt, Amorim confirmed it at a press conference. “This plan is a route for dialogue and takes away any grounds for sanctions,” he said.
When we spoke afterward, the Foreign Ministers of Brazil and Turkey both tried to sell me on the merits of the deal. They reported on their tough eighteen-hour negotiations and tried to convince me that they had succeeded. I think they were surprised that their triumph was being greeted with such skepticism. But I wanted to see action from Iran, not more words. “We have a saying that the proof is in the pudding,” I told Amorim. “I agree that the tasting of the pudding is key, but there must be time to get the spoon out and have time to try it,” he replied. To that I replied, “This pudding has been in for over a year now!”
The urgent question now was whether we could hold together the sanctions resolution in the face of this new gambit. We had an agreement in principle with China and Russia, which I hurried to announce as soon as possible after the press conference in Tehran. But until votes were actually cast in New York, nothing was set in stone. When Beijing issued a cautious statement welcoming the Brazil-Turkey deal, I could feel the ground beginning to shift. Fortunately I was scheduled to fly to China a few days later for high-level talks with the Chinese leadership. Iran would be at the top of the agenda, alongside North Korea and the South China Sea.
Over a long dinner with Dai Bingguo at the Diaoyutai Guesthouse, we talked through the issue. I walked through our objections to the Brazil-Turkey proposal and reminded Dai of the long record of Iranian double-dealing, including the deception at Qom. It was time to resolve any remaining issues with the text of the sanctions resolution, I said. As usual, Dai was thoughtful but firm, with his eye on both the sweep of history and the bottom line. China was uncomfortable with the international community imposing penalties on states except in the most egregious instances, and it certainly did not want any of its commercial interests threatened by sanctions. Compounding their reluctance, only a year earlier we had gone through a similar exercise when seeking to impose tougher sanctions on North Korea. So we were asking them to hold their nose and go along for the second time in as many years.
I reminded Dai that China’s main interest in the Middle East was stability, which ensured the steady flow of oil. If our push for sanctions at the UN failed, there would continue to be the potential for military confrontation. That could spike the price of oil and wreak havoc with the global economy. Alternatively, if China chose to reduce its commercial ties to Iran, we could help it find other sources of energy. In the end, I was blunt. This is important to us, I told Dai. If we’re going to build a cooperative relationship, as Presidents Obama and Hu had pledged, then we need China to be with us at the Security Council.
By the conclusion of the evening, I felt I had put the process back on track. I cemented that impression in discussions over the next few days with President Hu and Premier Wen. The drive toward new sanctions could continue. “We are pleased with the cooperation that we’ve received. We have a P5+1 consensus,” I announced after my meetings in Beijing. All that was left to do was work out the fine print. “There is a recognition on the part of the international community that the agreement that was reached in Tehran a week ago between Iran, Brazil and Turkey only occurred because the Security Council was on the brink of publicly releasing the text of the resolution that we have been negotiating for many weeks. It was a transparent ploy to avoid Security Council action.”
The vote in New York was set for June 9. Susan and her team were still going back and forth with the Chinese on the final list of specific Iranian companies and banks to sanction, and we were mounting a final push to get more of the nonpermanent members of the Security Council on board. At a minimum we wanted to see abstentions rather than nays.
Meanwhile I had to attend a meeting of the Organization of American States in Lima, Peru. It turned out to be a fortuitous detour. China’s Ambassador to the United States, Zhang Yesui, was also in town to attend the OAS meeting, and I invited him to my hotel for a drink. I hoped we could settle the sanctions list once and for all. The J. W. Marriott in Lima is perched atop the Costa Verde cliffs, with a striking view of the Pacific. When Ambassador Zhang arrived, I led him over to a quiet table in the bar where we could talk. I had been visiting with members of the State Department press corps, who were enjoying pisco sours, a local favorite that mixes Peruvian liquor with lime juice, egg whites, and bitters, and many of the reporters remained at the bar. They had no idea that negotiations were going on right under their nose. At one point an ebullient Mark Landler of the New York Times approached our table bearing two pisco sours. Who says diplomacy can’t be effective and fun at the same time? I smiled and accepted. Zhang politely followed suit. And there, over Peruvian cocktails, we reached a final understanding on the sanctions designations.
The UN Security Council passed Resolution 1929 by a vote of 12 to 2. It imposed the strictest sanctions in history on Iran, targeting the Revolutionary Guard, arms sales, and financial transactions. Only Turkey and Brazil, still unhappy about their failed diplomatic maneuver, voted no. Lebanon abstained after last-minute outreach by me, Vice President Biden, and Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a prominent Lebanese American. I had called Lebanese President Michel Suleiman hours before from Colombia and urged him not to vote no, which he was inclined to do based on his political necessities at home. I knew he was navigating some difficult decisions, and I was pleased with the abstention.
The resolution was far from perfect—securing consensus with Russia and China had required compromises—but I was proud of what we had achieved. During the Bush years Iran had managed to play the world’s great powers against one another and avoided serious international sanctions for its misdeeds. The Obama Administration changed that.
Despite our success, I knew this was just the beginning. The UN resolution opened the door for much tougher additional unilateral sanctions by the United States and other countries. We had coordinated with Congressional leaders throughout this process, and soon Congress approved a law that would hit even harder at Iran’s economy. I was also talking to our European partners about new steps they would take as well.
Even as the pressure built, we kept the offer of engagement on the table. In December 2010, I traveled to Bahrain for a conference on security in the Persian Gulf. We knew that a delegation of Iranian diplomats was also expected to attend. Despite the brief contacts made at previous summits by Richard Holbrooke and Jake Sullivan, I had never yet come face-to-face with an Iranian counterpart. I decided to use the opportunity to send a message. In the middle of my speech at a gala dinner in a Ritz-Carlton ballroom, I paused and said, “At this time, I would like to address directly the delegation at this conference from the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” The room grew still. The Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki was sitting just a few seats away. “Nearly two years ago, President Obama extended your government a sincere offer of dialogue. We are still committed to this offer,” I said. “You have the right to a peaceful nuclear program. But with that right comes a reasonable responsibility: that you follow the treaty you signed, and fully address the world’s concern about your nuclear activities. We urge you to make that choice—for your people, your interests, and our shared security.”
Afterward, as dinner was breaking up and everyone was shaking hands, I called out to Mottaki, “Hello, Minister!” He muttered something in Farsi and turned away. A few minutes later we ran into each other again, outside in the driveway. I offered another friendly greeting, and again he refused to reply. I smiled to myself. In his first inaugural address, President Obama had told Iran and other pariah states that we would “extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist.” Mottaki had just demonstrated how hard this was to achieve. But, in fairness, we had just successfully campaigned around the world to impose crippling sanctions on his country. Engagement and pressure. Carrots and sticks. This was the nature of diplomacy, and we were playing a long game.
This was the backdrop against which, in January 2011, the Sultan of Oman made his offer to me of secret direct talks with Iran. Engagement through the P5+1 process had stalled. Intercession by well-intentioned third parties had also failed. Again and again Iran had proven to be intransigent and untrustworthy. Yet there was reason to think that, despite all this, the Sultan might actually be able to deliver. After all, he had done it in the case of the imprisoned American hikers.
Back in July 2009, three young Americans were arrested by Iranian security forces while hiking in the mountainous border area between northern Iraq and Iran and charged with espionage. Joshua Fattal, Shane Bauer, and Sarah Shourd were living and working among the Kurds of northern Iraq, and there was no reason to suspect them of being spies. From Washington it was impossible to know exactly what happened or even whether or not the trio had strayed across the border. But the incident echoed the kidnapping of two American journalists near the border between China and North Korea just a few months before and posed an immediate problem. As in North Korea, we had no diplomatic relations with Iran and no embassy in Tehran to provide assistance. We had to rely on the Swiss as our formal “protecting power” to represent us. But the Iranians initially refused to grant consular access to the Swiss diplomats, meaning nobody was allowed to visit the detained Americans, as required under the Vienna Convention that governs diplomatic relations among nations. I made a public appeal for the hikers’ release, which I repeated frequently over the following months, and enlisted the Swiss to send private messages as well.
We stayed in close touch with the hikers’ distraught families, and in November, I invited them to my office at the State Department so we could meet in person. It took months for the Swiss Ambassador in Tehran to get into the notorious Evin Prison to see the three Americans. They had been held for months without formal charges or access to legal representation. With the help of the Swiss, the mothers of the hikers were given visas to travel to Iran just after Mother’s Day. I met with them again before they left and sent my prayers with them to Tehran. They were permitted a tearful reunion with their children but were not allowed to bring them home. The whole scene was used by Iran as a publicity stunt.
Throughout this ordeal I tried every back channel we could find to persuade the Iranians to release the hikers. I asked Jake Sullivan to take on the project. At a conference in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the summer of 2010, I sent Jake to hand the Iranian Foreign Minister a message about the hikers, just as we had done the year before in The Hague for the other detained Americans. But the key contact was in Oman. One of the Sultan’s top advisors approached Dennis Ross, President Obama’s top Iran advisor, and offered to serve as a go-between.
The Omanis were as good as their word. In September 2010, Sarah Shourd was released on bail. Once she left Iran, I called the Sultan to thank him and see what could be done about the remaining two hikers (it would take another year to win their release as well). “We are always ready to do what’s right to help,” the Sultan told me. His comment was still in my head as we sat and talked in January 2011.
Freeing a detained hiker was a far cry from facilitating sensitive talks about the future of Iran’s nuclear program. But the Sultan had shown he could get results. So I listened carefully to his proposal for a new substantive back channel, and I asked if we could be sure that the Iranian side would actually be authorized to negotiate in good faith. After all, we’d invested lots of time in the P5+1 process, only to see the agreement made in the room overruled back in Tehran. The Sultan couldn’t make any promises, but he wanted to try. I agreed that if we proceeded, absolute secrecy would be needed. We didn’t want another circus with lots of posturing for the press and political pressure from back home. Even under the best of circumstances, this was a long shot. But it was worth testing. I told the Sultan I would talk with President Obama and my colleagues in Washington but that we should begin thinking about how to put his plan into motion.
For the next several months, we proceeded cautiously. There were real concerns about whom we would be talking to and what their motivations were. President Obama was wary, but interested. He called the Sultan himself at one point to probe the viability of the diplomatic channel. We kept the circle small. Bill Burns, Jake, and I worked with a tight team at the White House that included Tom Donilon, by then the National Security Advisor; his Deputy, Denis McDonough; Dennis Ross, until his departure in November 2011; and Puneet Talwar, the national security staff’s Senior Director for Iran, Iraq, and the Gulf States. The Omanis passed messages back and forth with us about how talks might take shape and what kind of delegation would be sent. To no one’s surprise, it was difficult to get straight answers out of the Iranians on even the simplest questions.
In the fall our confidence about proceeding took a hit when U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies uncovered an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador in Washington. An Iranian national was arrested at the airport in New York and confessed to an elaborate scheme right out of a show like 24 or Homeland. It involved attempting to recruit a Mexican drug cartel to bomb a restaurant where the Ambassador was known to eat. Fortunately the Mexican hit man turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. We had evidence suggesting the conspiracy was conceived, sponsored, and directed by senior officials in Iran. Not long after, the chief of Iran’s Navy unnerved global markets by warning that it could close the Strait of Hormuz at any time, which would choke off much of the world’s oil supplies.
At this point, in October 2011, I decided to return to Muscat and pay a second visit to the Sultan. He was still keen to get talks going and suggested that we send an advance team to Oman to discuss the logistical issues in person, since passing messages wasn’t going so well. I agreed, so long as the Iranians were serious, and the Sultan could provide us with assurances that they would speak for the supreme leader. I also urged the Sultan to convey a stern warning to the Iranians about the Strait of Hormuz. After the conversation, we began making secret arrangements to send Jake and Puneet and a small team to begin these conversations. Senator John Kerry talked to an Omani close to the Sultan and kept us informed of what he heard.
For the delicate first meeting with the Iranians, Jake was not the most experienced diplomat at the State Department I could have chosen, but he was discreet and had my absolute confidence. His presence would send a powerful message that I was personally invested in this process. In early July 2012, Jake quietly left one of my trips in Paris and caught his own flight to Muscat. His destination was such a closely held secret that other members of my traveling team, colleagues who worked with him around the clock both at home and on the road, assumed that he had a family emergency of some kind and were worried about him. Remarkably they did not learn of his true mission until reading about it in the press more than a year later.
Once on the ground in Oman, Jake and Puneet slept on the couch at an empty embassy house. The Iranian advance team came with a series of demands and preconditions, none of which was acceptable. They were there, which was something in and of itself, but clearly skittish, perhaps reflecting an ambivalent and divided leadership back in Tehran. Jake reported his impression that the Iranians weren’t yet ready to engage seriously. We agreed to keep the channel open and to wait and see if conditions improved.
Throughout this period, even as we pursued this secret avenue of engagement, we worked steadily to increase international pressure on the Iranian regime and counter its aggressive ambitions. One priority was to expand our military partnerships in the Gulf and deploy new military resources across the region to reassure our partners and deter Iranian aggression. We stayed in close and constant coordination with Israel and took unprecedented steps to protect its military superiority over any potential rivals. I asked Andrew Shapiro, my longtime Senate aide and now Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, to help make sure Israel was equipped with highly advanced weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. We worked with the Israelis to develop and build a multilayered air defense network that included upgraded versions of the Patriot missiles originally deployed in the 1991 Gulf War, new advanced early warning radar, antirocket batteries called “the Iron Dome,” and other systems to protect against ballistic missiles known as “David’s Sling” and the “Arrow-3 Interceptor.” During the conflict with Hamas in Gaza in late 2012, the Iron Dome proved effective in protecting Israeli homes and communities.
I also spent many hours with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussing our dual-track strategy and trying to convince him that sanctions could work. We agreed that a credible threat of military force was important—which is why President Obama and I repeatedly said “All options are on the table”—but we had different views on how much we should telegraph in public. I told him that President Obama was serious when he said we would not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear bomb and that “containment” was not our policy. Containment might have worked with the Soviet Union, but given Iran’s ties to terrorism and the volatility of the region, we didn’t think a nuclear-armed Iran was any more acceptable—or containable—than the Israelis did. So all options really were on the table, including military force.
In addition to our work with the Israelis, the Obama Administration also increased America’s own sea and air presence in the Persian Gulf and deepened our ties to the Gulf monarchies, who viewed Iran with great alarm. I worked with the Gulf Cooperation Council on a dedicated ongoing security dialogue, and we conducted joint military exercises with GCC members. Convincing Turkey to host a major radar installation also helped us build a new missile defense system that would protect our allies in Europe from a possible Iranian attack.
Even as we shored up our defenses, we also went on the offense to increase pressure on Iran in the hopes of changing its leaders’ calculus. Through legislation and executive action, the Obama Administration and Congress worked together to pile on tougher and tougher sanctions, all building on the original Security Council measures put in place in the summer of 2010. Our goal was to put so much financial pressure on Iran’s leaders, including on the military’s growing number of business ventures, that they would have no choice but to come back to the negotiating table with a serious offer. We would go after Iran’s oil industry, banks, and weapons programs. And we would enlist insurance companies, shipping lines, energy traders, financial institutions, and many other actors to cut Iran off from global commerce. Most of all, I would make it my mission to convince the top consumers of Iran’s oil to diversify their supplies and buy less from Tehran. With each one who agreed, Iran’s coffers took another big hit. Iran’s lifeblood was its oil; it was the world’s third largest exporter of crude, which brought in much-needed hard currency. So we did everything we could to make it harder for Iran to do business, particularly around oil.
The Europeans were essential partners in this effort, and when all twenty-seven members of the European Union agreed to impose a full boycott of Iranian oil, it was a huge blow. Bob Einhorn, the expert who helped craft the original October 2009 Tehran Research Reactor swap plan, and Under Secretary of Treasury David Cohen went to work finding the most creative and effective ways to enforce all our new sanctions. Freezing the assets of Iranian banks made it impossible for Iranian tankers to buy insurance on the international market and cut off access to global financial networks. It was a full-court press.
Under a new law signed by President Obama in December 2011, other countries had to demonstrate every six months that they were meaningfully reducing consumption of Iranian oil or face sanctions themselves. To put this into practice, I turned to our newly created Bureau of Energy Resources, headed by Carlos Pascual. Everywhere Iran tried to sell its oil, our team was there, offering up alternative suppliers and explaining the financial risks of conducting a transaction with a global pariah. Iran’s major customers faced difficult choices with significant economic consequences. Thankfully many of them showed far-sighted leadership by embracing the opportunity to diversify their energy portfolios.
We were just as active in places like Angola, Nigeria, South Sudan, and the Persian Gulf, encouraging Iran’s competitors to pump and sell more of their own oil, to keep the market balanced and prevent damaging price spikes. Iraq’s resurgent oil industry, long a U.S. priority, proved invaluable. But the most crucial new supplies came from our own backyard. As American domestic oil and gas production increased dramatically, thanks to new technologies and exploration, our energy imports plummeted. This took pressure off the global market and made it easier to exclude Iran, as other nations could rely on the supply America no longer required.
The biggest consumers of Iranian oil, and the hardest to convince to turn off the spigot, were in Asia. China and India, in particular, depended on Iranian oil to meet their rapidly expanding energy needs. The advanced economies of South Korea and Japan were also highly dependent on imported oil. Japan faced an added burden because of the meltdown of the Fukushima nuclear plant and the resulting moratorium on nuclear power. Nonetheless the Japanese pledged to cut their consumption of Iranian oil significantly, a courageous commitment under the circumstances.
India, by contrast, initially publicly refused Western entreaties to reduce their reliance on Iranian oil. In our private conversations Indian leaders agreed that peace in the Middle East was important and were acutely aware that 6 million Indians lived and worked in the Gulf and could be vulnerable to political or economic instability. At the same time, though, India’s fast-growing economy depended on a steady supply of energy, and they worried that their energy needs were so great that there was no viable way to meet them without Iranian oil. Left unsaid was another reason for their reluctance: India, which had championed the “nonaligned movement” during the Cold War and still prized its “strategic autonomy,” simply hated to be told what to do. The more loudly we urged them to change course, the more likely they were to dig in their heels.
In May 2012, I visited New Delhi to make the case in person. I argued that maintaining a unified international front was the best way to persuade Iran to return to the negotiating table, achieve a diplomatic solution to the impasse, and avoid a destabilizing military conflict. I outlined the advantages of a diversified energy supply and talked about potential alternatives to Iran available on the market. I also assured the Indians that, if they took positive steps, we would make clear that it was their decision, however they chose to characterize it. All we cared about was the end result, not beating our chest. That seemed to make a difference. When Minister of External Affairs S. M. Krishna and I went out to talk to the media, we were of course asked about the Iran issue. I deferred to Krishna to answer first. “Given our growing demand, it is natural for us to try and diversify our sources of imports of oil and gas to meet the objective of energy security,” he said. “Since you asked a specific question about Iran, it remains an important source of oil for us, although its share in our imports are declining, which is well known. Ultimately, it reflects the decision that refineries make based on commercial, financial and technical considerations.” That was good enough for me. I promised Krishna that I would send Carlos and his team of experts to Delhi to help speed those “totally non-Iran-related” decisions.
In the end our efforts led to every major Iranian customer, even the most reluctant, agreeing to reduce their purchases of Iran’s oil. The result was dramatic. Inflation in Iran soared by more than 40 percent, and the value of the Iranian currency declined dramatically. Oil exports declined from 2.5 million barrels of crude each day in early 2012 to around 1 million, which resulted in a loss of more than $80 billion in revenue.
Iranian oil tankers sat idle, with no markets to visit and no foreign investors or insurance companies willing to back them, and Iranian jets rusted in their hangars, with no replacement parts available. Big multinational companies like Shell, Toyota, and Deutsche Bank began pulling out of Iran. Even Ahmadinejad, who long tried to deny that sanctions would have any effect, began complaining about the “economic assault.”
For years I had been talking about “crippling sanctions,” and now it was coming true. Bibi Netanyahu told me he liked the phrase so much that he had adopted it as his own. I took pride in the coalition we assembled and the effectiveness of our efforts, but no pleasure in the hardship that Iran’s people suffered because of their leaders’ choice to continue defying the international community. We made every effort to ensure that the sanctions didn’t deprive Iranians of food, medicines, and other humanitarian goods. And I looked for opportunities to emphasize that our quarrel was with the government of Iran, not its citizens, including in an interview broadcast in Farsi on Voice of America’s Parazit program, Iran’s equivalent of The Daily Show. The people of Iran deserved a better future, but that would not be possible unless their leaders changed course.
Through it all, Iran remained defiant. It continued to be linked to new terrorist plots around the world, in Bulgaria, Georgia, and Thailand. Tehran worked to undermine neighboring governments and incited unrest from Bahrain to Yemen and beyond. It poured money and weapons into Syria to prop up its ally Bashar al-Assad and support his brutal crackdown against the Syrian people. Eventually it sent in Revolutionary Guard trainers and Hezbollah fighters to further bolster Assad. And, of course, it continued to advance its nuclear program in violation of Security Council resolutions and refused to engage in good faith with the P5+1. In public President Obama and I stressed that the window for diplomacy was still open but that it would not remain so forever. In private we maintained some hope that the Omani channel would ultimately yield progress. The more pressure we mounted and the more the Iranian economy crumbled, the more incentive Tehran had to reconsider its posture.
That’s exactly what started happening toward the end of 2012, just as my time at the State Department began to draw to a close. Iran’s economy, regional position, and international reputation were all in shambles. President Ahmadinejad’s second term was a disaster, and his political standing at home had collapsed, along with his once close relationship with the Supreme Leader and other powerful conservatives and clerics who truly held the levers of power in Iran. Meanwhile the Omanis indicated that the Iranians were finally getting ready to move forward on the long-awaited secret talks. They wanted to send a Deputy Foreign Minister to meet with my Deputy Bill Burns in Muscat. We agreed.
In March 2013, a few weeks after my term as Secretary ended, Bill and Jake returned to Oman to see what this new opening might yield. The answer was still disappointing. The Iranians seemed to be struggling with what to do. Some elements of their government clearly favored serious engagement, but other powerful forces were holding the negotiators back. Once again our team came home with the impression that the time was not yet ripe for a breakthrough.
Then events intervened once more. That spring Iran geared up for new elections to replace Ahmadinejad as President. It was hard to believe it had already been four years since massive protests filled the streets of Tehran after the previous vote. Since then the regime had been ruthless in driving political opposition underground and stamping out dissent. In keeping with this record, the authorities handpicked every candidate in the 2013 race and disqualified anyone not deemed conservative or loyal enough. They even barred Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a leader of the 1979 revolution, former President, and influential cleric, because he was perceived to present a challenge to the regime. The eight candidates who made it through all had close ties to the Supreme Leader and solid regime credentials. In short, the powers that be in Iran were playing it as safe as possible.
Saeed Jalili, the country’s dogmatic nuclear negotiator, was seen as the Ayatollah’s preferred choice and therefore the presumed front-runner. He campaigned on vacuous slogans about “Islamic development” and avoided talking much about the failing economy or questioning Iran’s disastrous foreign policy. Out among the people, there seemed to be little interest or excitement for the election, which was the regime’s goal. But frustration was not hard to find. Western media quoted a forty-year-old garage owner outside Qom, the city with the secret nuclear facility unmasked in 2009, grumbling about the economy: “I love Islam, but how do we fix 100 percent inflation? I’ll vote for anybody with a good plan, but until now I haven’t seen any candidate with clear ideas for the future.”
Then, in the final days before the June election, something remarkable happened. In the middle of the regime’s carefully orchestrated election, these frustrations burst into public view, and the contradictions and failures of the regime’s policies were suddenly being questioned before the entire country. In an explosive nationally televised debate, Jalili’s opponents went after him aggressively for his mismanagement of the country’s nuclear policy and the terrible toll it had taken on the economy. “Being conservative does not mean being inflexible and stubborn,” said Ali-Akbar Velayati, a former Foreign Minister with a reputation as a hard-liner. “We can’t expect everything and give nothing,” Mohsen Rezaei, a former senior commander in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, piled on, questioning the mantra of resistance against the world. “Do you mean that we have to resist and keep people hungry?” he asked. Jalili tried to defend his stonewalling at the most recent P5+1 talks—“They wanted to exchange a jewel for candy,” he protested—and invoked the Supreme Leader in his defense. But that didn’t stop the attacks. Hassan Rouhani, a former chief nuclear negotiator himself and the closest person to a moderate in the race because of his talk of “constructive interaction with the world,” slammed Jalili for allowing Iran to be sanctioned at the UN Security Council. “All of our problems stem from this,” he said. “It’s good to have centrifuges running, providing people’s lives and sustenance are also spinning.” Iranians watching at home must have been in a state of shock. They had rarely been allowed to witness a debate like this before.
On Election Day, in June 2013, Iranians turned out in surprisingly large numbers and elected Rouhani in a landslide. This time there would be no attempt to reverse the results or steal the election. Crowds gathered in the streets chanting, “Long live reform.” Rouhani took office in August and immediately began making conciliatory statements toward the international community and even tweeted good wishes on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year.
I was now a private citizen, but I watched all this with great interest and a healthy dose of skepticism. The Supreme Leader still held all the real power, especially when it came to the nuclear program and foreign policy. He had allowed Rouhani’s election and was so far tolerating all this talk of a new direction, even quietly defending the new President against attacks from unsettled hard-liners, all of which perhaps meant that he understood how unsustainable the regime’s policies had become. But there was no reason yet to believe that he had fundamentally decided to change course on any of the core issues at the heart of Iran’s belligerence toward its region and much of the world.
But behind the scenes, after the election of Rouhani, the Omani channel was heating up. The Sultan was the first foreign leader to visit Rouhani in Tehran. President Obama sent another letter and this time got a positive response. In Muscat, Bill and Jake, who was by this time Vice President Biden’s National Security Advisor, resumed meeting with Iranian officials, who were finally empowered to negotiate from the highest levels. Maintaining strict secrecy was more important than ever, to preserve Rouhani’s fragile credibility back home. Relatively quickly the outlines of a preliminary deal began to take shape. Iran would halt advances in its nuclear program and allow new inspections for six months in exchange for modest sanctions relief. That would open a window for intense negotiations to address the international community’s concerns and resolve all outstanding issues. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, an experienced negotiator and the first woman to hold that position, joined the discussions in Oman and helped hammer out the details.
The teams also discussed the possibility of a historic face-to-face meeting between Presidents Obama and Rouhani in New York at the UN General Assembly in late September. At the very last minute, however, the Iranians failed to deliver on the meeting, an indication that divisions and misgivings continued inside the regime. But the two leaders did speak on the phone—as Rouhani’s limousine was driving him to the airport for his flight home. It was the first such conversation since 1979. My successor, Secretary Kerry, met with the new Iranian Foreign Minister, Javad Zarif, and the administration began briefing key allies about the progress achieved in the secret talks. Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu warned in a speech to the UN that Rouhani was a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
In October, the secret Oman channel began to merge with the official P5+1 process in Geneva that Wendy Sherman had been leading for the United States. Bill and Jake participated, but they took elaborate measures to stay out of sight of the press, including staying at a separate hotel and going in and out of service entrances.
In November, Secretary Kerry flew to Geneva twice in the hopes of pushing the negotiations over the finish line. There were still big concerns to work out: Would Iran stop all enrichment of uranium, or could it be allowed to continue enriching to a level far below what was needed for a bomb? For Rouhani, maintaining even a low level of enrichment provided him important political cover. But the Israelis and others thought that such a concession would set a dangerous precedent. Then there was the question of how much sanctions relief to provide. Again some were against giving any ground unless Iran took irreversible and verifiable steps to dismantle its nuclear program. Bibi scoffed that the P5+1 was preparing to offer Iran the “deal of the century” on a silver platter.
Kerry and Wendy pressed ahead with President Obama’s backing and, along with our partners, managed to fashion a compromise. Iran agreed to eliminate its stockpile of higher-enriched uranium and continue enriching only to 5 percent (far below weapons grade); keep thousands of centrifuges offline, including all of its next-generation centrifuges; allow intrusive inspections; and stop work on new facilities, including a plutonium reactor. In return the international community would provide several billion dollars in sanctions relief, mostly from previously frozen Iranian assets. From the White House President Obama hailed the deal as “an important first step toward a comprehensive solution” and credited years of patient diplomacy and pressure.
When we came into office back in 2009, the international community was fractured, diplomacy was stalled, and the Iranians were marching steadily toward a nuclear weapon. Our dual-track strategy of engagement and pressure reversed those trends, united the world, and finally forced Iran back to the negotiating table. I remained skeptical that the Iranians would deliver a final comprehensive agreement; I had seen too many false hopes dashed over the years to allow myself to get too optimistic now. But this was the most promising development in a long time, and it was worth testing to see what could be achieved.
Although it took five years to get this initial deal, the hardest work was still ahead. All the tough issues that had bedeviled Iran’s relationship with the international community are still unresolved. And even if the nuclear issue was eventually satisfactorily settled by an enforceable agreement, Iran’s support for terrorism and its aggressive behavior in the region would remain a threat to the national security of the United States and our allies.
Going forward, Iran’s leaders—its Supreme Leader in particular—face real choices about the future. At the time of the Iranian Revolution in 1979, Iran’s economy was nearly 40 percent larger than Turkey’s; in 2014 this is reversed. Is the country’s nuclear program worth beggaring an illustrious civilization and impoverishing a proud people? If Iran had a nuclear weapon tomorrow, would that create even one more job for a country where millions of young people are out of work? Would it send one more Iranian to college or rebuild the roads and ports still crumbling from the war with Iraq a generation ago? When Iranians look abroad, would they rather end up like North Korea or South Korea?