It wasn’t all that long ago that the Obama administration was insisting that the nuclear deal with Iran was not a forerunner of warmer relations with the unrepentant outlaw nation.
The context, of course, was the widespread accusation, vociferously denied, that the steady stream of astonishing U.S. capitulations to Iran at the negotiating table were linked to a covert effort to enlist Iran’s help against ISIS and other terrorist movements in the Middle East.
Thus, last March, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said:
Even as we negotiate, this in no way represents a broader warming of ties, lessening of concerns on our part. This is not about a broader rapprochement in any way. This is about the nuclear issue and that’s it. We are not linking the nuclear agreement or a successful nuclear agreement to a warming of ties, to a broader rapprochement on other issues, or in general….
Rapprochement would indicate or would suggest some broader warming of ties where we don’t have serious concerns about human rights, about terrorism, about Syria, about Hizbullah…. I can’t predict what would happen in two or five or 10 or 15 years, and the president, separately from the nuclear negotiations, has spoken multiple times about some day we would like to have a different relationship with Iran.
And in early 2014 The New York Times reported that the Obama administration prevailed upon UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to rescind an invitation to Iran to attend a peace conference on Syria, reportedly on the grounds that Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force was a major party to the Syrian conflict.
As Secretary of State Kerry put it at the time, “Iran is currently a major actor with respect to adverse consequences in Syria.”
Since Iran in recent weeks seems to have taken every opportunity to proclaim its belligerence and spew some rather extreme threats in the direction of the United States while vowing to destroy Israel, it was dismaying to learn that the U.S. is nonetheless looking to include Iran in peacekeeping efforts. A New York Times report this past Sunday about the change said it all.
Headlined “Shifting Direction, Kerry Aims to Include Iran in Effort to End the Conflict in Syria” the story explained the change:
[W]ith the Islamic State terrorist group making gains in Syria, a tidal wave of migrants swamping Europe, no formal peace talks in sight and Russia engaged in a military buildup at an air base in Latakia, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast, Mr. Kerry is now reaching out to Iran, which has been a major backer of the Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, to see if there is a basis for resuming negotiations. Mr. Kerry has also been consulting with Russia, European nations, and Arab states.
To be sure, Iran has strenuously denied it has any desire to be included in international efforts organized by the U.S. Yet we continue to believe that a good part of its agenda in the nuclear negotiations was to emerge as the preeminent power in its part of the world. Substantively, it seemed to have scored a major victory, given the palpably inadequate inspection and accountability provisions of the accord. Certainly there can be no doubt that Iran emerged from the talks as an international player. After all, it secured restoration of tens of billions of dollars of frozen assets, is now at least an incipient nuclear power, and negotiated the six major powers in the world to better than a draw.
With all that, Iran was not even asked to change its policies in terms of the human rights of its people or its support for the likes of Bashar al-Assad and Hizbullah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups around the world.
The developments in Syria are obviously serious and arguably game changing. And it bears watching as to whether those who feared the U.S. took a dive in the nuclear negotiations in the hope of getting Iran to abandon its terrorist ways were correct from the get go. This is not merely an academic issue. Was an inherently risky deal that would likely lead to a nuclear Iran deemed acceptable for extraneous reasons?