U.S. and Iran Agree to Speed Talks to Defuse Nuclear Issue
Published: September 27, 2013 537 Comments
(Page 2 of 2)
The state news channel, the Islamic Republic of Iran News Network, had
not mentioned the phone call with Mr. Obama as of midnight Friday after
word of it broke, and the original messages on Mr. Rouhani’s Twitter
account were deleted and replaced with more anodyne comments. But Mr.
Rouhani’s office announced the call in a statement carried by the
Iranian state news agency.
Todd Heisler/The New York Times
President Hassan Rouhani of Iran at a news conference
Friday at a hotel near the United Nations. He then headed to the
airport.
Multimedia
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Text: Obama’s Remarks on Iran and the Budget Debate in Congress (September 28, 2013)
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“This voice contact has for now replaced the actual shaking of hands,
but this is clearly the start of a process that could in the future lead
to a face-to-face meeting between both leaders,” said Amir Mohebbian, a
political adviser close to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
Abbas Milani, an Iranian scholar at Stanford University, said Mr.
Rouhani wanted to avoid looking as if he was making concessions. “The
U.S. and the West have wisely decided to allow the regime to make its
claims of victory at home, so long as they play earnest ball in meetings
abroad,” Mr. Milani said. A call to a leader on the way to the airport
may not be normal protocol, he added, but “in this case it was adroit
policy for both sides.”
American advocates of closer relations between the two countries were
optimistic. “The phone call wasn’t just history,” said Joseph
Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, an arms control group,
who attended a dinner with Mr. Rouhani in New York. “It helped
fundamentally change the course of Iranian-U.S. relations. We’re on a
very different trajectory than we were even at the beginning of the
week.”
But others expressed caution, arguing that Iran was reaching out only
because of the sanctions that have strangled its economy.
“The economic pain now is sufficient to oblige a telephone call, though
not a face-to-face meeting,” said Reuel Marc Gerecht, a senior fellow at
the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, which supports stronger
sanctions against Iran. “We will see whether the pain is sufficient for
the Iranians to shut the heavy-water plant at Arak and reverse Iran’s
path to a rapid breakout capacity with enriched uranium.”
Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the Republican majority leader,
criticized Mr. Obama for not pressing Iran to halt what he said was its
support for terrorism and for Syria’s government. “It is particularly
unfortunate that President Obama would recognize the Iranian people’s
right to nuclear energy but not stand up for their right to freedom,
human rights or democracy,” he said.
In announcing the call with Mr. Rouhani, Mr. Obama said that only
“meaningful, transparent and verifiable actions” on the nuclear program
could “bring relief” from sanctions.
“A path to a meaningful agreement will be difficult, and at this point,
both sides have significant concerns that will have to be overcome,” he
said. “But I believe we’ve got a responsibility to pursue diplomacy, and
that we have a unique opportunity to make progress with the new
leadership in Tehran.”
Recognizing the delicacy of the outreach effort, Mr. Obama made a point
of trying to reassure Israel that he would not jeopardize an ally’s
security. “Throughout this process, we’ll stay in close touch with our
friends and allies in the region, including Israel,” he said.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel is scheduled to visit Mr. Obama at the White House on Monday.
Before leaving New York, Mr. Rouhani said his government would present a
plan in three weeks on how to resolve the nuclear standoff. “I expect
this trip will be the first step and the beginning of constructive
relations with countries of the world,” he said at a news conference.
He went on to say that he hoped the visit would also improve relations
“between two great nations, Iran and the United States,” adding that the
trip had exceeded his expectations.
Mr. Rouhani and his aides have been on an extraordinarily energetic
campaign to prove that they are moderate and reasonable partners and to
draw a stark contrast with his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. But Mr.
Rouhani has yet to propose anything concrete to suggest how different
the Iranians really are in their approach. The first glimpse of that is
due to come on Oct. 15 and 16, when Iran plans to present its own road
map in Geneva.
Mr. Rouhani emphasized that his government had the authority and the
will to reach a nuclear settlement within what he called “a short period
of time.” But he was visibly irritated when asked whether his
diplomatic blitz was merely designed to buy time with his Western
interlocutors.
“We have never chosen deceit as a path,” he said. “We have never chosen secrecy.”
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- dr. bob solomon
To Maureen Dowd and others who belittled Obama for not shaking hands with Rouhan at the UN, let us now praise famous men who have good sense. They talked today, A after more than 35 years of foolish silence, the Iranian UN ambassador had said, no meeting per se settles anything -- but talking might start the process rolling. Well done, US, well done, Iran..
2 questions remain: Can't we ask why has this taken so long? And why did some naive people think a smile and handshake meant anything? Politics is the art of the possible, someone said. That wasn't idle talk.- Jack
- Illinois
The headline says it all. First time in 34 years.
Add that headline to the ongoing negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians and the ongoing negotiations to rid Syria of chemical weapons we have the ingredients of the most sweeping foreign policy developments in my recollection. I believe that it would also be in
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