The Secretary (24 page)

The Turks were still looking for ways to revive the deal put on the table in October
in Geneva—1,200 kilograms of low-enriched uranium shipped out of Iran, highly enriched
uranium (HEU) sent back. Iran had told the Turks it would consider shipping out the
uranium but only after it had received the nuclear fuel for the research reactor.
This was not acceptable to the P5
+
1. It would take a year to produce the fuel, during which time Iran’s own centrifuges
would continue spinning, augmenting its uranium stockpile. But Davuto
ğ
lu insisted this was still a good first step to build trust.

It’s a good deal, this will work, he said. You can’t just expect the Iranians to give
up their uranium; you have to understand them, he argued. And he insisted that Turkey
was a tough negotiator; it would be strict with the Iranians.

Clinton had no trouble understanding Davuto
ğ
lu’s motives: he was trying to protect his country from the impact of sanctions and
conflict. She disagreed with his approach. This was becoming the bazaar. Bob Einhorn,
the State Department’s nuclear expert, was brought in to explain in detail what was
wrong with the deal the Turks were proposing: this was no longer about when the uranium
left Iran and when it was sent back in. Almost six months had passed since the deal
was put on the table, and Iran’s centrifuges had continued spinning. Iran now had
much more than the 1,500 kilograms of uranium it had in October. The 1,200 kilograms
were no longer 80 percent of Iran’s stockpile, but barely 50 percent. Iran would be
left with enough uranium to continue working toward a nuclear weapon. Back in October
in Geneva, the Russians had refused to make the offer based on an ongoing percentage.
Even they were keen to just pin down a number and get the uranium out quickly. More
importantly, the P5
+
1 wanted Iran to stop enriching uranium to the level of 20 percent. The more such
uranium Iran produced, the closer it would get to what it needed for an atomic bomb.

If the Turks wanted to go ahead, Clinton and Einhorn said, they had to ask for much
more than 1,200 kilograms. If you can pull a rabbit out of a hat, more power to you,
Clinton told Davuto
ğ
lu, but we are really skeptical. With his sunny, positive disposition, Davuto
ğ
lu didn’t hear no.

As rough and assertive as Americans could be in negotiations, there were times when
they were also too polite. Again, Obama attempted to encourage responsible leadership
among the rising powers, as he had in person during his meeting with Lula and Erdo
ğ
an a few weeks earlier. On April 20, Lula received a letter from the White House that
explained again why their proposal was not acceptable—this would not work as a confidence-building
measure, certainly not for the United States and the P5
+
1. But in an attempt to be encouraging, Obama’s letter ended by describing possible
compromises with Iran, including the possibility that 1,200 kilograms of uranium would
be put in escrow immediately in Turkey, a country Iran trusted. Twelve hundred—that
number just wouldn’t go away. When the State Department officials read the letter,
they were alarmed by how vague it was about red lines for the escrow proposal to be
acceptable. Mostly, they were distressed to see the mention of the 1,200 kilograms.

Deep down, American officials perhaps did not believe that the new powers could make
any progress in their talks with the Iranians. Washington continued to negotiate the
text of a sanctions resolution with Moscow and Beijing. But by May 13, alarm bells
were ringing wildly in Washington. Clinton got on the phone to Davuto
ğ
lu. The 1,200 kilograms were not enough, she explained, the United States and its
allies would never accept a deal with that amount in it. Crucially, Iran still had
to stop enriching its uranium to 20 percent. She was going against the letter that
the White House had sent to Lula, in essence contradicting the president, something
she had never done before, but the situation required urgent damage control. This
was not going to delay the sanctions, she said. Finally, Clinton told Davuto
ğ
lu that it was time for the Turks to put an end to their enterprise with the Brazilians.

But the Turks had stopped listening to Clinton. In front of them was a letter, in
black and white, by the president of the United States mentioning the magic number
1,200. They were certain that their escrow proposal would work, and they were going
to prove to Washington that Turkey could be a trusted broker, an indispensable problem
solver, a new world power. Obama’s letter was all they needed to go to Iran. And they
were now locked into their approach with Lula.

It was less clear what Brazil wanted out of the deal. Trade relations between the
Latin American giant and Iran were also growing, and sanctions would affect Brazil’s
economy. But from Washington’s perspective, it looked like a freelance mission, good
old contrarian politics to spite Uncle Sam. Brazil was part of the Non-Aligned Movement
formed in the 1960s to counter American imperialism. Celso Amorim, the Brazilian foreign
minister, and Lula, a former union leader, were driven by reflexive third-world ideology;
they believed deeply in Brazil’s rise and saw America as an obstacle to their emergence
on the global stage. The Brazilians were the B in BRICS—with Russia, India, China,
and South Africa, newly developed, emerging economic powers. Apart from Russia, the
other BRICS were also testing their newfound political power. The author and foreign
policy columnist Fareed Zakaria called it the “rise of the rest.” The BICS, sans Russia,
protested that the international institutions set up after World War II, from the
United Nations to the International Monetary Fund, were anachronistic, relics of an
antiquated status quo. France and Britain had long lost their empires, the Soviet
Union had disintegrated, and America was no longer the superpower it once was. China
and Russia had permanent seats on the UN Security Council, and Brazil, India, and
South Africa argued that they should get one too. Along with Turkey, the emerging
powers felt they should be given the power they deserved. This was their chance to
grab it.

*   *   *

On May 15, Lula arrived in Tehran to attend a summit of developed and developing countries.
Iran was not part of the movement but was an honorary member as a country that stood
against U.S. hegemony. After a phone call between Davuto
ğ
lu and his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, the Turkish ball of energy got
on a plane to Tehran. Mottaki, Amorim, and Davuto
ğ
lu spent eighteen hours hammering out the details of an agreement. On Sunday evening,
when they felt a deal was in sight, Davuto
ğ
lu called his boss and told him to fly to Tehran.

On Monday morning, a deal was finalized. Iran had agreed to put 1,200 kilograms of
low-enriched uranium in escrow in Turkey, in return for nuclear fuel. The uranium
would remain the property of Iran, and Tehran could ask that it be sent back at any
time. It looked like refreshing, creative diplomacy on an issue of international magnitude
by someone other than America.

“My expectation is that after this declaration there will not be a need for sanctions,”
Erdo
ğ
an said in Tehran. He posed for a picture with the Brazilian and Iranian presidents.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was a small man from a modest background, a hard-line conservative
animated by religious fervor. Standing between the portly Lula and the tall Erdo
ğ
an, he grabbed their hands and lifted them in the air like trophies. He had pulled
Turkey and Brazil into his orbit, splitting the international community.

The Turks often boasted that their president was the only leader who could go to Iran
and meet the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and then fly across the Atlantic
and sit in the Oval Office with Obama. They were needed; they played a key role that
no one else could fill. But Erdo
ğ
an looked slightly uncomfortable in the picture. He never showed many teeth when he
smiled, but the corners of his lips were barely turned upward as he stood next to
Ahmadinejad.

A few hours later that Monday, Washington awoke to the picture of a victorious Ahmadinejad
and news of the pact. At the White House and the State Department and on Capitol Hill,
people looked at Erdo
ğ
an standing next to the Iranian leader and they saw the image of betrayal—America’s
ally and its archenemy were brothers? Someone had hit the accelerator button on the
rise of the rest, and the result was a chaotic mess. The Turks had not consulted with
Washington before signing; in fact no one had called Washington since Clinton and
Davuto
ğ
lu had spoken on the thirteenth. For the United States, this was like a sixteen-year-old
with a learner’s permit taking his new car for a spin and forgetting he still needed
an adult sitting in the car.

The Obama administration had also worked for eight months to get Beijing and Moscow
on board with the sanctions, and Washington was stuck on that path as well. One official
told me that it was hard to predict what Washington would have done if the Turks had
actually managed to secure an ironclad deal involving the removal of 80 percent of
Iran’s uranium. Perhaps the United States would have been willing to take a diplomatic
gamble and test the Turkish deal with Iran, on the condition that Russia and China
would commit to going ahead with the agreed sanctions if Iran did not ship out its
uranium. No one had a sure answer to that hypothetical question.

Either way, the Turks and the Americans had both failed at the exercise: the Turks
hadn’t listened when Hillary had warned them the devil was in the detail of the 1,200
kilograms. The White House was guilty of a vague letter, perhaps unable to accept
that the Turks could get the Iranians to sign off on a deal, any deal. The Brazilians
had gotten what they wanted—making life difficult for the United States. And Iran
had hoodwinked everybody. An editorial in the state-run
Kayhan
newspaper the next day boasted about Iran’s cunning gamble, insisting that Tehran
had not signed an agreement, just a nonbinding declaration. Another “written agreement
and proper arrangement” was needed before any fuel exchange would take place. Ahmadinejad
had seen the Brazilian and Turkish effort as a gift from heaven: he could buy time,
delay sanctions, and cause havoc in the established channels of international diplomacy.

Despite their fury, the Americans were still delicate in their reaction to the Turks.
Standing behind his lectern, P. J. acknowledged the Turkish and Brazilian effort but
said Washington was still studying the details of the deal—a diplomatic way of saying,
“The deal is awful, but we can’t get ourselves to say it.” He faced an onslaught of
questions. Matt Lee of the AP went first.

“Why is this [deal] even remotely acceptable?”

Others chimed in.

“Why don’t you just reject this?”

“Were you informed of the Turkish and Brazilian effort while they were under way?”

P. J. tried his best to defend American diplomacy without alienating proud Turkey.
But the Turks were not into nuances: they weren’t picking up on the coolness of the
American reaction. The Russians were more forthcoming—President Dmitry Medvedev said
the deal would not satisfy the international community and indicated that work at
the UN would continue.

The following morning, on Tuesday the eighteenth, fresh off the plane from Tehran
and more ebullient than ever, Davuto
ğ
lu gave a press conference in Istanbul.

“With the agreement yesterday, an important psychological threshold has been crossed
towards establishing mutual trust,” Davuto
ğ
lu told reporters.

“Sanctions, the discussions on sanctions, will spoil the atmosphere, and the escalation
of statements may provoke the Iranian public opinion,” he added. Turkish diplomacy
had won the day in his view: there would be no sanctions against Iran.

But a few hours later, just after ten in the morning in Washington, Clinton was appearing
in the Senate for a hearing and she announced her own diplomatic coup. After victory
had been announced in Tehran, she had helped seal the deal the administration had
been working on for months—consensus with Russia and China on the text of a resolution,
the broadest, most comprehensive set of sanctions against Iran to date.

“With all due respect to my Turkish and Brazilian friends, the fact that we have Russia
on board, China on board and that we’re moving early this week, namely today … put[s]
pressure on Iran which they were trying to somehow dissipate,” Clinton told the senators.

Across time zones and oceans, word was starting to reach Turkey that America was displeased.
Journalists were calling up officials at the foreign ministry to ask for their reaction
to Clinton’s announcements.

“Are you kidding?” one of them asked when a journalist shared the news about the sanctions.
“This can’t be good.” The Turks were in disbelief—maybe they were misreading something.
A few hours later, when Clinton was back from Capitol Hill, Davuto
ğ
lu called her. He was still on a high and spent forty-five minutes trying to explain
to her why this was a great achievement, a great day.

I don’t think so, replied Clinton tersely. The Turks felt like they had been stabbed
in the back. They bristled at the way Russia, China, and the United States had looked
past their own differences and banded together to elbow out the rising powers. The
powers of yesterday behaved like they still ran the planet, the Turks thought, it
was so Cold War.

*   *   *

A few weeks later, the sanctions were put to a vote at the UN Security Council, and
everybody relived the trauma of old and new powers pulling in different directions.
Despite much lobbying, Turkey and Brazil voted against the resolution. The United
States was outraged and this time stated clearly and publicly how disappointed it
was in its NATO ally. The vote was excruciatingly painful for Ankara, but the Turks
felt stuck. They had worked hard to gain Tehran’s trust and couldn’t suddenly vote
to punish them at the UN; it would have been their undoing as a broker in the region.
And they were in lockstep with their new partner Lula, whose presidency was coming
to an end in six months. The Turks were bitter about the Brazilians and dismissive
about their role. Months later, a Turkish official would tell me: “Lula said no at
the Security Council and then left. Who remembers Lula today? But for us it was very
difficult to say no to the U.S.”