The New York Times reports today that President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden say that the crackdown on opposition leaders in Iran will not deter them from seeking to engage the country’s top leadership in direct negotiations.
In an interview with The New York Times, a day before his scheduled departure for Moscow on Sunday, Mr. Obama said he had “grave concern” about the arrests and intimidation of Iran’s opposition leaders, but insisted, as he has throughout the Iranian crisis, that the repression would not close the door on negotiations with the Iranian government.
“We’ve got some fixed national security interests in Iran not developing nuclear weapons, in not exporting terrorism, and we have offered a pathway for Iran to rejoining the international community,” Mr. Obama said. …
Before Iran’s disputed election on June 12, the president’s top aides say, they received back-channel indications from Iran — from emissaries who claimed to represent the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — that the country would respond to Mr. Obama’s overtures this summer. But the crackdown and the divisions among senior clerics about the legitimacy of the election and Ayatollah Khamenei’s credibility have changed the political dynamics. Senior administration officials said they have heard nothing from Iran’s leaders.
The administration, meanwhile, has been preparing for two opposite possibilities: One in which the Iranian leadership seeks to regain a measure of legitimacy by taking up Mr. Obama’s offer to talk — a situation that could put Washington in the uncomfortable position of giving credibility to a government whose actions Mr. Obama has deplored — or one in which Iran rejects negotiations. Mr. Obama told Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in May that if there were no progress on the Iranian nuclear issue by the year’s end, the administration would turn to other steps, including sanctions. Mr. Obama hinted at an even shorter schedule during the interview on Saturday.
“We will have to assess in coming weeks and months the degree to which they are willing to walk through that door,” he said.
Israeli officials have a different take on the events unfolding in Iran, according to Ha’aretz:
Israel is urging the United States and other countries to start preparing now for the possibility that Washington’s proposed dialogue with Iran will fail, by readying a "Plan B" that includes "paralyzing sanctions" and other measures against Tehran.
The U.S. has resisted this idea so far.
The Israeli messages – sent against the background of the recent unrest in Iran – have been delivered to the White House, the State Department and senior officials in the U.S. intelligence community by senior officials in the Prime Minister’s Office and the Foreign Ministry. Similar messages have been sent to senior officials in Germany, Russia, France and Japan.
Israel’s argument is that if the Americans are indeed committed to imposing "paralyzing sanctions" on Iran should the dialogue fail – as both U.S. President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have said in the past – the work of drafting these sanctions must begin now.
"Israel is adjusting its messages to the new circumstances created by the unrest in Iran," a senior government official said. "These things must be stated clearly now so that there is no confusion about our position."
Before the protests in Iran began, the official explained, Israel’s assessment was that the planned American-Iranian dialogue had little chance of succeeding. But in light of the protests, and the need of Iranian hard-liners to shore up their rule, Israel’s intelligence community believes the chances of the dialogue even beginning, much less succeeding, are near zero. …
Read the full story.
Meanwhile, The Associated Press reports that a senior Iranian parliamentary official said Monday that Iran is ready to take "real and decisive" action if Israel attacks its nuclear facilities.
The remarks by Alaeddin Broujerdi, the head of Iran’s parliamentary committee on national security and foreign policy, came after U.S. Vice President Joe Biden signaled that Washington would not try to prevent any such Israeli assault.
"Both the U.S. and Israel are aware of the consequence of an erroneous decision," Broujerdi told reporters at the Iranian Embassy in Tokyo.
"I believe our response will be real and decisive," Broujerdi said. He declined to elaborate. …
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
