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What the phone call signifies

I hope you’ll excuse me for not getting too excited about President Obama’s call to President Rouhani yesterday.  I find it hard to work up enthusiasm for Rouhani, who is clearly trying his best to preserve and prolong the theocratic regime in Iran, not reform it.  But the phone call was a fitting climax to four days of Iranian charm offensive and significant in one important respect:  it demonstrated that Washington is prepared to accept the Islamic Republic as the legitimate government of Iran and is not supporting regime change there, as Obama stated clearly in his United Nations General Assembly speech.

That is an important concession to the Iranians, who have good reason to believe that previous American governments have sought to unseat the ayatollahs in favor of something more closely resembling a democratic regime.  But it is a necessary concession.  There is no way to end Iranian nuclear weapons ambitions without treating its current government as legitimate and sovereign, even if diplomatic recognition and exchange of ambassadors remain in the distance.

Obama and Rouhani agreed to accelerate the nuclear talks, which are slated to reconvene next month.  Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif has wanted to “jump start” them, finishing in six months.  This presumably means Tehran will put forward a big package in October without responding to the more modest step-by-step proposal that the P5+1 (that’s US, UK, France, China and Russia + German) have already tabled.  The Iranian aim is relief from all sanctions while maintaining the “right” to enrichment and presumably reprocessing technology.  The P5+1 want a verifiable and definitive end to any and all Iranian efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.  Those are in principle compatible aims, but the zone of possible agreement is narrow.  There are serious sequencing problems:  the Iranians will want sanctions relief early while the P5+1 will want it late.

So we are on a diplomatic path for the next six months to a year, one that now has a degree of presidential commitment on both sides that has been lacking.  The problem is that neither president has complete control of his own side in the negotiation.  While Rouhani claims to have all the authority he needs to strike a nuclear deal, the Supreme Leader could intervene at any moment to make agreement impossible.  On the American side, Congress is the uncertain factor, especially as Israel wields a good deal of influence there.  An agreement on the nuclear program may not require formal Congressional approval, but implementing it by lifting sanctions does.  President Obama will need to present to Congress a truly air tight agreement that leaves Iran no wiggle room to develop nuclear weapons, even in secret.

Syria is the unmentioned factor in the US/Iranian rapprochement.  Tehran has to be pleased that President Obama is focusing attention on destroying Syria’s chemical weapons capability and not on ending Bashar al Asad’s rule.  The Americans are backing away from serious support for the Syrian opposition, which they see as ineffectual at best and compromised by jihadist fighters at worst.  While Geneva 2 remains a hope, and might even convene in October, there is little sign of progress in convening a negotiation that the opposition says must begin with Bashar al Asad stepping down from power.  Nothing about the situation on the ground suggests the regime is near its natural end.  Fighting has broken out between the more moderate Syrian Free Army and the Islamic State of Iraq.  Some fighters have abandoned the Syrian Opposition Coaliton (Etilaf).

So is Syria being sacrificed in order to get a nuclear deal with Iran?  I am not privy to the Administration’s thinking on this tradeoff and they would never admit it in public.  The circumstances may be fortuitous.  Etilaf is in no position to offer assurances that extremists will not be able to take power if Bashar al Asad is deposed.  Nor can the Coalition speak in Geneva for the bulk of the fighters waging war against Asad.  So it looks very much as if the nuclear deal with Iran will take precedence while a political solution in Syria languishes.  That is consistent with what President Obama said at the UN General Assembly.  The phone call confirms this, too.