That same day, Vladimir Putin visited Iran to press for a return to negotiations. According to the briefing I received from the Russians, Khamenei told Putin that Iran “might consider a moratorium on enrichment activities.” Putin seemed to have proposed a variation of the double time-out. His visit was seen as a signal that Russia would not stand for U.S. military action. In a speech at the Caspian Sea summit, Putin emphasized the right of all countries to nuclear technology, and the importance of “respecting each other’s interests and sovereignty, and refraining not only from any use of force whatsoever, but even from mentioning the use of force.”[29]
Despite these positive glimmers, Ali Larijani resigned his post only days after Putin’s summit speech. In Tehran, a government spokesman announced that Larijani had previously “resigned a number of times” and that the president had “finally accepted his resignation.” Saeed Jalili, deputy foreign minister and a known confidante of Ahmadinejad’s, was Larijani’s replacement.
Larijani’s resignation did not really come as a surprise, despite the success of the work plan. All of his efforts to find a formula for sustained negotiation with the P-5+1 had been blocked. But this was not a good development. It meant that Javier Solana, who even under more auspicious circumstances had not succeeded as point man for the P-5+1, would now be trying to wring concessions out of a hard-line Iranian conservative. When Solana called to brief me on the results of his first meeting with Jalili, he said nothing much had come out of it. I had expected little else.
Rice and I had not spoken in months when she called me at the end of October. “You seem to be picking on us more than picking on the Iranians,” she said. “Well,” I replied, “you’ve been throwing curve balls at me for no good reason.” Of course I supported the Security Council’s call for Iran to suspend its enrichment activities, I told her, and I continued to press Tehran to do so, or at least not to expand capacity. On that front, we seemed to be having moderate success; our latest reports indicated that Iran had built no new cascades and was not feeding much material into the roughly three thousand centrifuges in operation.
As for sanctions, this was a policy judgment for the Security Council, but I continued to see evidence that sanctions could not be viewed as an overall solution. Pressure only hardened the Iranian position, which was why Larijani had been so frustrated. “The only way in which Iran might suspend enrichment,” I said to Rice, “is through negotiation, with active U.S. engagement, plus a face-saving formula and a gesture of good intention.”
I mentioned the possibility that I would soon go to Tehran to meet with Ayatollah Khamenei. In that context, I asked her about the American bottom line on the conditions for negotiation. If Iran agreed to a freeze, Rice replied, they could meet with the other members of the P-5+1, but the United States would take part only based on Iran’s full suspension.
“Even if the suspension were only for two months,” she said, “I would personally be ready to participate in talks with them, and to engage on all issues.” But suspension remained a red line she could not cross.
There was some hope that direct interaction with the Supreme Leader of Iran would help explain international perceptions of Iran’s actions and reinforce the benefits to Iran of increased levels of cooperation. An opportunity for me to meet with Ayatollah Khamenei had been some time in the making. Two days before I was due to leave for Tehran, however, Olli got a message that, while I had meetings confirmed with President Ahmadinejad, Jalili, and Aghazadeh, it would not be possible at this stage for me to see Khamenei. In that case I wanted to cancel the trip. The reply came the next morning: “The Supreme Leader sends all the best to you,” I was told, “but he believes it would be better all around if the visit took place after the next Board meeting.”
Two senior members of Iran’s negotiating team with whom I had been working for years dropped by to explain that the meeting with the Supreme Leader remained very important as a means of altering the dynamic within Iran—meaning, I assumed, that if I could explain certain perspectives directly to Khamenei, it might be a means of moderating the hard-liners. But Khamenei was concerned that my visit should not be interpreted as an attempt by Tehran to exert pressure on the Agency, which it might if I came to Iran ahead of giving my November report to the Board. I told the Iranians the next chance for a trip to Tehran would not come before the second part of December. The situation was getting precarious, I warned them. “You should not take the prospect of military force too lightly,” I said. In the absence of my trip, I took the opportunity to pass along that Condoleezza Rice would be willing to join the negotiations if they were willing to undertake a two-month suspension. The timing was right: the U.S. administration was eager for a foreign policy success.
This was precisely why they were so keen for me to meet with Khamenei, the Iranians said, to explain to him what needed to be done and the potential benefits. The next morning, they called to ask if I would consider visiting Iran the weekend before the November Board meeting, but the timing was now inappropriate. Without the guarantee of a substantial breakthrough, the trip would be seen as a publicity stunt and could backfire for everyone.
With the work plan well under way, but controversies still raging over Iran’s nuclear program and how to deal with it, affirmation of the Agency’s approach came from an unlikely source: a new U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. On December 3, while I was in Montevideo, I received the news of the estimate and my office emailed a copy of the published part, the executive summary. The essence of the NIE findings was that Iran had pursued a nuclear weapons program in the past, but that these efforts had ceased in 2003.
From Uruguay, I dictated a press release to one of my assistants, Syed Akbaruddin, a shrewd, soft-spoken Indian diplomat. “The NIE estimate,” I wrote,
tallies with the Agency’s consistent statements over the last few years that, although Iran still needs to clarify some important aspects of its past and present nuclear activities, the Agency has no concrete evidence of an ongoing nuclear weapons program or undeclared nuclear facilities in Iran.
I urged all parties to re-engage in negotiations without delay.
The National Intelligence Estimate was also obviously a surprise to the Bush administration. Bush made an inexplicable attempt to declare that the findings changed nothing. Iran, he declared, was still dangerous. And the report and its authors were promptly vilified by U.S. hardliners and their supporters in Israel. But the report undeniably took the wind out of the sails of those who wanted to present Iran as an imminent threat and press for a confrontational approach. On my return to Vienna, I received a follow-up briefing by U.S. intelligence. They did not share the supposed evidence that had led them to confirm the existence of a past Iranian nuclear program, other than to refer to the same unverified set of allegations about weaponization studies that had already been discussed with the Agency. They did note that Khamenei remained, in their view, as powerful as ever, and they emphasized the importance of my upcoming visit to Iran.
For the IAEA, the National Intelligence Estimate was a breath of fresh air. It validated the Agency’s assessment of the Iranian nuclear threat and was a vindication of my past few years of vigorous advocacy for a diplomatic solution. As in the case of Iraq, the Agency’s analysis and instincts had proved to be on target. Also as in Iraq, none of the key figures in Western governments bothered to acknowledge the validity of our judgment, let alone apologize for the grief they had caused us.
29
Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, “Putin Puts Forward a War-Avoidance Plan,”