BRADLEY KLAPPER, JULIE PACE and MATTHEW LEE
WASHINGTON (AP) - The United States and Iran secretly engaged in a
series of high-level, face-to-face talks over the past year, in a
high-stakes diplomatic gamble by the Obama administration that paved the
way for the historic deal sealed early Sunday in Geneva aimed at
slowing Tehran's nuclear program, The Associated Press has learned.
The
discussions were kept hidden even from America's closest friends,
including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago, and
that may explain how the nuclear accord appeared to come together so
quickly after years of stalemate and fierce hostility between Iran and
the West.
But the secrecy of the talks may also explain some of
the tensions between the U.S. and France, which earlier this month
balked at a proposed deal, and with Israel, which is furious about the
agreement and has angrily denounced the diplomatic outreach to Tehran.
President
Barack Obama personally authorized the talks as part of his effort -
promised in his first inaugural address - to reach out to a country the
State Department designates as the world's most active state sponsor of
terrorism.
The talks were held in the Middle Eastern nation of
Oman and elsewhere with only a tight circle of people in the know, the
AP learned. Since March, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns and
Jake Sullivan, Vice President Joe Biden's top foreign policy adviser,
have met at least five times with Iranian officials.
The last four
clandestine meetings, held since Iran's reform-minded President Hassan
Rouhani was inaugurated in August, produced much of the agreement later
formally hammered out in negotiations in Geneva among the United States,
Britain, France, Russia, China, Germany and Iran, said three senior
administration officials. All spoke only on condition of anonymity
because they were not authorized to discuss by name the highly sensitive
diplomatic effort.
The AP was tipped to the first U.S.-Iranian
meeting in March shortly after it occurred, but the White House and
State Department disputed elements of the account and the AP could not
confirm the meeting. The AP learned of further indications of secret
diplomacy in the fall and pressed the White House and other officials
further. As the Geneva talks appeared to be reaching their conclusion,
senior administration officials confirmed to the AP the details of the
extensive outreach.
The Geneva deal provides Iran with about $7
billion in relief from international sanctions in exchange for Iranian
curbs on uranium enrichment and other nuclear activity. All parties
pledged to work toward a final accord next year that would remove
remaining suspicions in the West that Tehran is trying to assemble an
atomic weapons arsenal.
Iran insists its nuclear interest is only in peaceful energy production and medical research.
The
diplomatic gamble with Iran, if the interim agreement holds up and
leads to a final pact preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons,
could avert years of threats of U.S. or Israeli military intervention.
It could also prove a turning point in decades of hostility between
Washington and Tehran - and become a crowning foreign policy achievement
of Obama's presidency.
But if the deal collapses, or if Iran
covertly races ahead with development of a nuclear weapon, Obama will
face the consequences of failure, both at home and abroad. His gamble
opens him to criticism that he has left Israel vulnerable to a country
bent on its destruction and that he has made a deal with a state sponsor
of terrorism.
The U.S. and Iran cut off diplomatic ties in 1979
after the Islamic Revolution and the storming of the U.S. Embassy in
Tehran, where 52 Americans were held hostage for more than a year. But
Obama has expressed a willingness since becoming president to meet with
the Iranians without conditions.
At the president's direction, the
United States began a tentative outreach shortly after his inauguration
in January 2009. Obama and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei, exchanged letters, but the engagement yielded no results.
That
outreach was hampered by Iran's hardline former president, Mahmoud
Ahmedinejad, whose re-election in a disputed vote in June of that year
led to a violent crackdown on opposition protesters. The next month,
relations seemed at another low when Iran detained three American hikers
who had strayed across the Iranian border from Iraq.
Ironically, efforts to win the release of the hikers turned out to be instrumental in making the clandestine diplomacy possible.
Oman's
Sultan Qaboos was a key player, facilitating the eventual release of
the hikers - the last two of whom returned to the United States in 2011 -
and then offering himself as a mediator for a U.S.-Iran rapprochement.
The secret informal discussions between mid-level officials in
Washington and Tehran began.
Officials described those early
contacts as exploratory discussions focused on the logistics of setting
up higher-level talks. The discussions happened through numerous
channels, officials said, including face-to-face talks at undisclosed
locations. They included exchanges between then U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations Susan Rice, now Obama's national security adviser, and
Iran's envoy to the world body, the officials said. National Security
Council aide Puneet Talwar was also involved, the officials said.
The
talks took on added weight eight months ago, when Obama dispatched the
deputy secretary of state Burns, the top aide Sullivan and five other
officials to meet with their Iranian counterparts in the Omani capital
of Muscat. Obama dispatched the group shortly after the six powers
opened a new round of nuclear talks with Iran in Almaty, Kazakhstan, in
late February.
At the time, those main nuclear negotiations were
making little progress, and the Iranians had little interest in holding
bilateral talks with the United States on the sidelines of the meeting
out of fear that the discussions would become public, the U.S. officials
said.
So, with the assistance of Sultan Qaboos, officials in both
countries began quietly making plans to meet in Oman. Burns, Sullivan
and a small team of U.S. technical experts arrived on a military plane
in mid-March for the meeting with the Iranians.
The senior
administration officials who spoke to the AP would not say who Burns and
Sullivan met with but characterized the Iranian attendees as career
diplomats, national security aides and experts on the nuclear issue who
were likely to remain key players even after the country's elections
this summer.
The goal on the American side, the U.S. officials
said, was simply at that point to see if the U.S. and Iran could
successfully arrange bilateral talks - a low bar that underscored the
sour state of relations between the two nations.
Beyond nuclear
issues, the officials said the U.S. team at the March Oman meeting also
raised concerns about Iranian involvement in Syria, Tehran's threats to
close the strategically important Strait of Hormuz and the status of
Robert Levinson, a missing former FBI agent who the U.S. believes was
abducted in Iran, as well as two other Americans detained in the
country.
Hoping to keep the channel open, Secretary of State John
Kerry then visited Oman in May on a trip ostensibly to push a military
deal with the sultanate but secretly focused on maintaining that
country's key mediation role, particularly after the Iranian election
scheduled for the next month, the officials said.
Rouhani's
election in June on a platform of easing sanctions crippling Iran's
economy and stated willingness to engage with the West gave a new spark
to the U.S. effort, the officials said.
Two secret meetings were
organized immediately after Rouhani took office in August, with the
specific goal of advancing the stalled nuclear talks with world powers.
Another pair of meetings took place in October.
Burns and Sullivan
led the U.S. delegation at each of those sessions, and were joined at
the final secret meeting by chief U.S. nuclear negotiator Wendy Sherman.
The
Iranian delegation was a mix of officials the Americans had met in
March in Oman and others who were new to the talks, administration
officials said. All of the Iranians were fluent English speakers.
U.S.
officials said the meetings happened in multiple locations, but would
not confirm the exact spots, saying they did not want to jeopardize
their ability to use the same locations in the future. But at least some
of the talks are believed to have taken place in Oman.
The
private meetings coincided with a public easing of U.S.-Iranian discord.
In early August, Obama sent Rouhani a letter congratulating him on his
election. The Iranian leader's response was viewed positively by the
White House, which quickly laid the groundwork for the additional secret
talks. The U.S. officials said they were convinced that the outreach
had the blessing of Ayatollah Khameni, but would not elaborate.
As
negotiators continued to talk behind the scenes, public speculation
swirled over a possible meeting between Obama and Rouhani on the
sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, which both attended in September
in New York. Burns and Sullivan sought to arrange face-to-face talks,
but the meeting never happened largely due to Iranian concerns, the
officials said. Two days later, though, Obama and Rouhani spoke by phone
- the first direct contact between a U.S. and Iranian leader in more
than 30 years.
It was only after that Obama-Rouhani phone call
that the U.S. began informing allies of the secret talks with Iran, the
U.S. officials said.
Obama handled the most sensitive conversation
himself, briefing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during a
Sept. 30 meeting at the White House. He informed Netanyahu only about
the two summer meetings, not the March talks, in keeping with the White
House's promise only to tell allies about any discussions with Iran that
were substantive.
The U.S. officials would not describe
Netanyahu's reaction. But the next day, he delivered his General
Assembly speech, blasting Rouhani as a "wolf in sheep's clothing" and
warning the U.S. against mistaking a change in Iran's tone with an
actual change in nuclear ambitions. The Israeli leader has subsequently
denounced the potential nuclear agreement as the "deal of the century"
for Iran.
After telling Netanyahu about the secret talks, the
United States then briefed the other members of the six-nation
negotiating team, the U.S. officials said.
The last secret gatherings between the U.S. and Iran took place shortly after the General Assembly, according to the officials.
There, the deal finally reached by the parties on Sunday began to take its final shape.
At
this month's larger formal nuclear negotiations between world powers
and Iran in Geneva, Burns and Sullivan showed up as well, but the State
Department went to great lengths to conceal their involvement, leaving
their names off of the official delegation list.
They were housed
at a different hotel than the rest of the team, used back entrances to
come and go from meeting venues and were whisked into negotiating
sessions from service elevators or unused corridors only after
photographers left.
http://m.apnews.com/ap/db_289563/contentdetail.htm?contentguid=t6SMOF8T
Sunday, November 24, 2013
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