On Fabius and the Iran Deal

Jeffrey Lewis 0:01

When in fact the French really are quite tough. You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, the leading podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a scholar at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.

Aaron Stein 0:21

And I'm Aaron Stein. I'm a contributor to the Arms Control Wonk blog, and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Rafiq Hariri Center for the Middle East.

Jeffrey 0:28

Former French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has published an amazing article in the Washington Quarterly about the negotiations that led to the Iran deal. Are you excited, Aaron?

Aaron 0:38

I have to admit, in the extremely nerdy way, I was extremely, extremely excited when I saw this piece drop on my Twitter feed. I instantly downloaded it, printed it, and read it on a long airplane flight across the country because I'm recording live from Los Angeles this week.

Jeffrey 0:53

Ooh, sunny Los Angeles?

Aaron 0:55

I have to say it's a little overcast today, although when I left the East Coast, it was 47 degrees as I caught my early morning flight. And when I arrived in Los Angeles, it was 74, so I had to flip.

Jeffrey 1:06

Well, we've got a kind of gloomy, Swiss-looking day up here in Monterey, which I guess is appropriate given what we're about to talk about.

Aaron 1:14

Right. You know, the low setting clouds over Lake Le Mans or Lake Geneva, as Fabius calls it, inside of the piece.

Jeffrey 1:24

Yeah, I wonder, does he not know that the lake has a name?

Aaron 1:27

It does have a name. You know, fans of the pod know that we used to record from the shores of Lake Le Mans.

Jeffrey 1:35

Yeah, you used to live there and I used to go there about twice a year. I loved going to Geneva.

Aaron 1:41

You know, when you live there, you know, you sort of get a little grumpy about Geneva because there's not much to do. And like restaurants are extremely expensive and close at like 530 in the afternoon. And then you move out of it and then you go, wait a minute, that was extremely nice. Can I go back? So I know what you mean.

Jeffrey 1:59

Yeah, I think you have to learn to appreciate small, quirky places. Patricia Lewis used to tell a funny story about living there, about how there was a period where on Sundays the only restaurant that was open was the restaurant at the airport, but it was really nice, and the airport's very close, and so they would drive out to the airport to have dinner, which I just think is really absurd.

Aaron 2:22

But that's changed a little bit, because now if you want to grab a bite to eat on Sundays, you know where you go? Where? Starbucks.

Jeffrey 2:30

Oh, that hurts me.

Aaron 2:32

It does. The Swiss are losing it. Swiss are losing it. Maybe somebody should tell Fabius, though, that they do have a name for their lake.

Jeffrey 2:40

Well, you know, it's funny because the whole reason that the Dayton Accords that ended the Bosnian Civil War, I guess ended the Civil War in Yugoslavia, the reason they had them in Dayton, right, is that there was this sense among the negotiators that the, well, there was a sense among the Americans that the negotiators for the warring parties had gotten, like, way too comfortable in their five-star European hotels.

Aaron 3:10

So Dayton, Ohio was a better place to sort of spur at least diplomatic focus.

Jeffrey 3:17

Yeah, yeah. They like stuck Slobodan Milosevic in a military barracks. And it's like, well, you can take as much time stalling as you'd like. You know, do you want another side of mashed potatoes?

Aaron 3:28

You get three squares and a cut, you know.

Jeffrey 3:32

But Geneva is much nicer. Right. And yet that didn't seem to stop the parties from getting the interim agreement that ultimately led to the JCPOA, which was agreed in Vienna. Although maybe not all of that. Was negotiated in Geneva. Some of it may have been negotiated in some other sunnier places, and that seems to have caused quite a bit of, what would you say, unhappiness on the part of Laurent Fabius?

Aaron 4:01

I'd say a little consternation, and I think to our ultimate benefit led to this piece. When you live in Geneva and you're in a French-speaking culture, And, you know, obviously you interact with a lot of French people every single day. The first thing I thought when I read the piece was that this thing was so quote unquote French in the way it was written.

Like no American would ever use the tone and the language in this piece, you know, the way this piece was written. And our instinctive reaction is to think that that's arrogant, but it's not. So I ultimately have a great appreciation for the style of the piece, if that makes sense.

Jeffrey 4:44

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of my big complaints is that American memoirs by people like secretaries of state are just glorified travel logs now. It's, you know, well, I went here and then I went there and then I went here. And there's like a little bit of local color, you know, a little bit of like, oh, I thought about China for five minutes.

And, you know, this is my impression from my one visit to Beijing and the three briefings I got. And so they're very shallow. Whereas this is a really substantive account of a European diplomat who knew his brief. Very well. Has really strong opinions and is prepared to tell you those strong opinions in a policy journal. You know, not in a puffy kind of or fluffy – Magazine piece, but in a, in a journal for other experts you know, like he's like, no, no, I'm a subject matter expert.

I know what I'm talking about. And let me tell you what happened. That's very unlike anything a U S official has ever written, at least in the last, I don't know, 20 years.

Aaron 5:51

And that came through in the piece. He did not fluff over any of the technical details where, you know, one would expect, you know, some fluffing To the point where I wrote my PhD on this subject, and I had to jog my memory about a lot of these proposals and the back and forth that were going on, because the piece was so detailed.

I wasn't lying at the top. It took me about an hour and a half to get through it, because there were so many details. I appreciated that. With that said, you get the sense that when he wrote it, And it's my one criticism of the piece. It's that, you know, it's like, well, if it wasn't for the French, everything would have collapsed.

Jeffrey 6:33

Right. Well, he had his famous explosion in public that we're going to talk about. And I suppose that a lot of this article is, I think, both defending that explosion and also maybe grinding a couple of axes. I mean, one of the examples where he talked about how much tougher they were and really gets in a dig at the British is, Oh yeah.

Is, is the discussion, which is very technical certainly very technical for a foreign minister about competing Western proposals for using the configuration of the Iranian cascades to lengthen breakout time.

Aaron 7:09

Oh yeah.

Jeffrey 7:10

You know, where it seems that the U S got infatuated with this idea that if the Iranians reconfigured the cascades In a certain way that that would lengthen the breakout time. And I mean, I love that. Like, I'm like glossing over this because I'm terrified listeners to the arms control wonk podcast are going to get bored and he like dives right into it.

Yeah. And his argument that the French – so I guess it was the US and the German experts were supportive. The French were of the view that it couldn't hurt but that we shouldn't count on it. And then the British, he felt, were totally committed to it for purely political reasons and sort of implies.

Aaron 7:55

He says it. He says it.

Jeffrey 7:56

Their technical judgment was warped by their eagerness to get an agreement. I mean that is a really – My, my, my, someone is not interested in getting invited over for tea and crumpets.

Aaron 8:12

He took a real shot at the British. I sensed a little sort of like, A, that they were warping technical analysis for political benefits, I think to get sanctions relief so that you could have sort of British companies or at least investment in Iran. And two, I sort of sense that he was taking a shot at the British atomic weapons establishment.

I don't know about you. That's what I took away from it, is that they weren't up to snuff when it came to comparisons with the Americans, the French, and the Americans, the French in particular.

Jeffrey 8:44

Yeah, this is one of those interesting phenomena over the past, say, 10 or 15 years that I think hasn't really penetrated popular American conceptions. We have these very simplistic ideas that the French didn't fight very hard in the Second World War, and so we have this idea that You know, the French, and they oppose the Iraq War.

And so we imagine that they're, you know, I don't know, what was the old joke? Cheese-eating surrender monkeys, right? Right. But in fact, French diplomats are really very good, right? Once upon a time, French was the language of diplomacy. They're very proud of their diplomatic corps, and they are very good. And they have been very, very tough on the Iranians since the early 2000s.

And I think people in America don't get that. Like they think that you're going to get this different sort of – I don't know what you would call it.

Aaron 9:41

Different – That they would be the weak ones and it's our sanctions that brought them to the table.

Jeffrey 9:48

Right, when in fact the French really are quite tough.

Aaron 9:51

They were tougher than we were and that's sort of the – And that has history. That goes back to the French role in 2003 to 2005 and their first sort of go-around with basically much of the team in the second go-around, 2000. Well, we'll get into when that actually started up until the conclusion of the Iran agreement.

Go ahead.

Jeffrey 10:15

Well, I was going to say, one thing that's different than in the United States is the French civil service is very strong. And so there's an enormous continuity. And so there are a whole series of French officials, people like Martin Brian, who worked on this problem this entire period, who have long memories and whose efforts were informed by the whole history of how we got, like, where we are.

And so, you know, they... I'm a Francophile, and in particular, I like that crowd of people. But you know they have a nickname for them in France.

Aaron 10:49

I don't know this. What is it?

Jeffrey 10:51

Le secte. And that's this kind of – I think it started as a sort of pejorative term for the idea that there was this group of really tough-minded French diplomats who were probably way tougher on Iran than, you know, maybe like general French, you know, elites would be inclined to be. You know, they kind of would occasionally get derided as like, you know, French neocons.

Right. But I think they take it as, like, a real compliment, you know, that they are these really hard-headed diplomats who both wanted a deal but didn't want a deal at any price and were willing to, like, fight to get the right deal. And I think that that kind of pride is what bubbled up into Fabius' very, very famous explosion.

Aaron 11:43

Yeah, I was, because I was living in Geneva at the time, And I went there. I went to the Intercontinental Hotel and I camped out in...

Jeffrey 11:55

So this is in like late 2013 for the negotiations that ultimately led to the interim agreement, which was called just the Joint Plan of Action, right?

Aaron 12:04

Right. And you got this feeling if you lived there and you were somewhat even interested that you could go down. And it wasn't quite the massive circus that it became later. Right. And so security was actually very loose. If you can believe it, you could sort of just walk in and sit there and you would shuttle between like the UN press office and then up to the Intercontinental Hotel.

And as they got closer, you know, everybody was like on their Twitter feed. And it was basically if the Chinese minister showed up, you knew you were close to a deal.

Jeffrey 12:35

Because he wasn't involved in any of the negotiations.

Aaron 12:39

Because he wasn't involved in the negotiations.

Jeffrey 12:40

They'd be like, oh, yeah, okay. Right.

Aaron 12:43

And Fabio made that very clear in his piece.

Jeffrey 12:48

Oh, well, I mean, Fabius takes so many shots, right?

Aaron 12:55

I mean, he throws Kathy Ashton under the bus. He seems to imply she's an idiot.

Jeffrey 13:03

I don't think she is an idiot, but yeah, he's not very nice.

Aaron 13:07

Yeah, he doesn't have nice words for the Chinese, and he calls Lavrov a tremendous bore.

Jeffrey 13:15

Which I have to say does appear to be true. Right.

Aaron 13:20

But so as it was getting closer, everybody got the sense that they were close to signing an agreement. And it was sort of like a mixture of, I want to say, I don't want to call it cheerleading amongst the press corps, but they'd been like sitting there for like hours and they literally get nothing, you know, like, like, and, and it's everybody's like, okay, they're going to get something.

We have something to report. And then it got sort of delayed, and then we all knew it was because of Fabius throwing his little fit. At the time, I think you wrote a piece about it, but it was interpreted as the French were just throwing up roadblocks.

Jeffrey 13:53

Yeah, I think it was really unfair. I mean, so Fabius basically sees the draft joint plan of action. And I wrote about it very carefully because... You know, if you talk to French colleagues, you know, they say and now in the piece, he's very explicit about this. But they will tell you he was angry about the fact that the Iranians had apparently seen the draft before he did.

Right. And he felt like he was being presented with a fait accompli. But then on top of that. Right. The. Initial draft was like not very good you know like I mean I don't know how to say this other than like whoever negotiated it didn't know what they were doing and it really had a series of flaws which he is all too eager to outline in his article

Aaron 14:51

So, I mean, I'm just keying them up. No, and yeah, so at the time, we weren't quite filled in on all the details that were going on, and so we thought the French were playing spoiler. And going back to that thing that we were talking about at the top, which is this implicit assumption that the American position from the outset was the strongest, and that the French were throwing a temper tantrum, essentially, for being sidelined in the agreement, right?

But it turns out, as you wrote in the piece, And then he makes really clear, you know, in sort of two paragraph details on page 14 through 15, that the French interjection strengthened the provisions that ultimately ended up in the interim agreement. And he was very upset because, as you just said, he felt like basically the entire reasons for the P5 plus one format and really...

Were undercut by this, you know, American-Iranian agreement that the French were left out of.

Jeffrey 15:57

Yeah, in retrospect, I'm really happy with the piece I wrote because, you know, at the time I said everybody should calm down, that on the merits the French were right, that the interim agreement was not as strong as it needed to be, and that the – basically that the French provisions would prevail and the Iranians would ultimately accept them and that the deal would be far better for it.

You know, and the one that I was really focused on – I mean, he has a much longer list – But the one that really bothered me at the time was that the Iranians, the way that the freeze for the plutonium production reactor that was under construction near Arak, I guess is how you say it. It always sounds like, you know, if you're from, you know, Indiana or someplace, Iraq, right?

But it's with an A. It's Arak.

Aaron 16:40

Well, I think for the purposes of this podcast, we can use the Tom Cotton Iraq versus the Iran Arak.

Jeffrey 16:48

Yeah, right. So the ARAC reactor.

Aaron 16:50

Yeah, the ARAC.

Jeffrey 16:52

Yeah. So the draft agreement, although it called for a freeze, it didn't actually freeze the activities that the Iranians were likely to do over the course of the interim agreement. And so the Iranians were going to be able to continue making progress toward fueling that reactor. So we were going to End up at a point where the interim agreement was going to be expiring and the Iranians would basically be on the verge of fueling this reactor, which would have been enormous leverage for them, right?

Aaron 17:26

Right, exactly.

Jeffrey 17:27

Because they would have had us in a position where we really needed to take whatever deal just to keep them from putting the fuel into the reactor. And I think Fabius and the French were absolutely right to say if you're going to be negotiating with people, you don't give them that kind of leverage. And I suspect, and this goes back to Le Sect and their long history, you know, this was not their first rodeo with Hassan Rouhani.

Aaron 17:53

No, and he makes that very clear in the piece. He says, you know, in a very French way, we had to remind our colleagues about sort of our history with Hassan Rouhani. And then he mentions in passing Hassan Rouhani's own memoirs about the original negotiations with the EU3. Between 2003 and 2005. And, you know, we talk about this a lot.

And it's something that I have like no idea why it doesn't make it out more into the Iran analysis, you know, about their nuclear decision making. And he references decision making within that too. You know, he makes sort of subtle references to what I think are French intel assessments about sort of the The fractured way that Iran makes decisions.

And they had questions about Iran's ability to live up to any sort of agreements it made because of the way that they had their own policymaking process. But the Iranians have actually released a lot about their own decision-making when they think about nuclear negotiations. And Fabius says he's read it and he was up to date on it.

Jeffrey 19:03

Yeah. Well, so, you know, the way I remember it is that the Iranians and the Europeans reached this agreement that the Iranians would suspend their enrichment-related activities. And Rouhani or the Iranian side basically interpreted that really broadly so that it didn't cover activities at the conversion facility. And so there was this whole fight that then played out about it.

And then sort of the Europeans felt pretty duped, right? And whether they were duped or not, you know, it's a little bit hard to say. I mean, sometimes when you negotiate things, you just don't figure everything out, right? And you agree to something and then you regret it. And, you know, like in the American political system, that's, you know, that's damning and you're now disqualified from ever doing anything again.

But like whatever actual diplomats, you know, can't be perfect all the time. But then to make it worse, right, like Rouhani, to defend himself against attacks from conservatives in Iran, sort of like, you know, yucks it up about that, right? He gives this speech which gets published in a journal and then, you know, he does an interview and then he writes a book in basically which he sort of, Not basically, which he sort of in which he states directly that they use negotiations to stall and only conceded on areas where they had hit technical roadblock and needed to pause.

And so. You know, he's not very kind to the Europeans. And so, you know, he comes around as president again. And I think the Obama administration is very excited. Rightfully so. This is a real opportunity. You've got, you know, a relatively – well, you have a guy who's campaigned on sanctions relief. I won't call him a moderate.

But you have a guy who has campaigned on sanctions relief. And you have, you know, Zarif, who's like a Western favorite as the foreign minister. It's not going to get any better than that. But the Europeans remember him.

Aaron 21:02

Yeah, no, and he says we have experience with these guys in the piece, and I think that experience, you know, ultimately informed one pillar of his... Particularly about the Iraq reactor. One pillar of his everything needs to be explicit and down to the extreme detail, otherwise they can wiggle around it and use it for leverage later. Pillar of his dissatisfaction with some of the terms that were being presented to him.

The other was that the terms were being presented to him for the first time. And so there's the back channel issue that he's not happy about. And I think he said in the piece, he had a very frank discussion with John Kerry. Can I ask you a question, though? Do you think that conversation was in French or English?

Jeffrey 21:52

Oh, you're right, because Carrie speaks French.

Aaron 21:55

Right, so I always wonder, you know, does Carrie slip into... Something tells me it's in English, because that's, you know, when you are upset with somebody, you sort of revert to the language that the person... Yeah, because I don't

Jeffrey 22:09

Oh, man, I want to keep this podcast clean. I was going to say something. All of the things that I imagine that Fabius said to Carrie involve American profanity.

Aaron 22:28

I sort of imagine it like they get pulled aside in the – In the Intercontinental Hotel and there's some shouting involved, though I think in reality they're probably in some bubble somewhere because there is a reference to sort of listening devices.

Jeffrey 22:43

Oh, well, I mean, there are. We shouldn't get too distracted, but you're the one who pointed out that there's the reference to walking through. Actually, I forget which part.

Aaron 22:54

Listeners will have to bear with the turning of the pages, but it's on page 21. And he said, and I quote, the French delegation got into the habit of walking through Stades park to escape living scene devices. I think at that time they were in Vienna.

Jeffrey 23:09

That's in Vienna. Right, right, right, right, right. But that's a, you know, like, huh. The other one that caught my attention is there's a footnote Which refers to the difficult history of Sofideaf and Eurodief, which Sofideaf was a company that involved Iranian investment in Eurodief, the European diffusion. Company. Right. And, you know, there's this reference to terrorism and hostage taking.

And I think Fabius is implying, Oh, sorry. So the new diffusion plant, right. There's actually not, not, well, actually the diffusion plant. And then I guess the centrifuge plant, right. Our George best, they're named after this Reno car executive who was murdered by You know, basically the French equivalent of the Red Army faction. I guess it was called direct action, right?

There were these Marxists. But there's this big school of thought that actually the Iranians had him killed.

Aaron 24:13

Really? I've never heard this story.

Jeffrey 24:15

Yeah. It's sort of a conspiracy theory. I'm not sure that I believe it, but I'm surprised at how prevalent it is in France. And he seems to sort of hint at it a little bit, you know, just the kind of like... Yeah, we really don't like these guys. We really don't trust these guys. There's all kinds of stuff like that buried in this article.

Aaron 24:35

Right, that's footnote number three. But, you know, yeah.

Jeffrey 24:38

But to go back, right? Like, yeah, I mean, he's basically angry not because the deal isn't as strong as it needs to be. I mean, he might have been disappointed by that and might have pressed strongly for a different outcome. But he's pissed off because he's figured out that there's a back chance.

Aaron 25:00

Right, and so the back channel takes place in Oman, and we subsequently learn about that later. I think the first time we learn about it is through Laura Rosen's reporting on this. Am I correct in my memory on that?

Jeffrey 25:17

That seems right to me. I mean, it's also usually a safe bet to assume that Laura Rosen is the first person who reported anything.

Aaron 25:26

Yeah, I saw her in action.

Jeffrey 25:28

Holy crap, was this a star turn for her?

Aaron 25:32

Just a side note, because I was there and Laura and I became friends during this because you spend a lot of time just sitting around doing nothing. I'd never seen a journalist work harder, so she chased after everybody. The Germans, and she knew everybody on the negotiating team.

Jeffrey 25:49

Somebody would walk into the Intercontinental and she's like that's XYZ first secretary from the German team how do you know all this stuff but anyways and I should say there's also a book by New York Times White House correspondent Mark Landler called Alter Egos and the way that's usually described is something like the first to disclose the full extent of the Omani back channel which I think is throwing a little bit of shade at Laura

Aaron 26:16

Right. So why this matters is that because, well, the French do make improvements. The deal does get delayed in its final sign. The French do make improvements. And ultimately, the Iranians are forced to accept what the French have interjected and then the Americans adopt into the text. But it's become sort of domestic issues here in the United States because of some bungling on our own side of how we handled some of the official reporting from government sources about said back channel.

Jeffrey 26:54

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. I'm fascinated by the reluctance on the part of the Obama administration to admit how much was done in the back channel. I mean, I can imagine one would say like, well, we didn't want to upset our allies, but the allies know and they're angry about it.

Aaron 27:14

There was a famous story, I think it was in the New York Times. It may have been in the Wall Street Journal where the Israeli intelligence says, you think we can't catch tail numbers in a Middle Eastern country across the thing? We knew what was going on, and we knew that you weren't telling us about it.

Jeffrey 27:30

Yeah, and I... You know, Fabius is really pretty pointed about suggesting that the things he was seeing coming out of the Oman back channel suggested that in his opinion, the administration was too eager for an agreement that they were basically willing to take whatever the Iranians were proposing and that he really took it upon himself to toughen the deal up.

Now, part of that may be a little bit of self inflation, right? Everybody is the hero of their own story. But regardless, and I do think the French helped tremendously to toughen up the agreement, he's mad, right? And he's really irritated about it. And it gets to this question of why they feel the need to go to the extreme lengths that they did for Secret.

It's like deleting that little... Portion where Jen Psaki sort of admits that sometimes they don't always tell the truth about secret negotiations, you know, like deleting that video for no good reason?

Aaron 28:32

Yeah, I mean, just background, you know, there was a video on December 2nd, 2013, about a press briefing about the Iranian nuclear deal. And in subsequent release of the video, a section where Where the spokeswoman is being questioned by James Rosen, a Fox News reporter, about this back channel, gets cut out of the video. And then they repost it back online with a cut.

Yeah, it's absurd. And they blame it on technical glitch, which gives fodder to a lot of people that we don't – I would say we would – both you and I don't agree with on this pod, but why give those people fodder?

Jeffrey 29:17

Yeah, it is always this incredibly frustrating moment when, you know, you watch people make really reckless and partisan allegations that imply that all of these people who work for the Obama administration are, you know, Lying and, you know, covering things up and hiding things. And they have this crazy conspiracy theory that makes no sense, that the administration would have deleted the video of Jen Psaki saying this while leaving the transcript on the website.

It was absolutely insane. And it made no sense whatsoever. And then to discover that it's not the problem. The problem is not with the conspiracy theory. The problem is they did the insane thing. They did, in fact, order that Someone who they now claim they don't remember, which I will admit I don't believe, someone ordered that deleted while leaving the transcript up.

It is crazy. It's just stupid. Why the hell would you do that?

Aaron 30:21

It's dumb because if you read the quote that was deleted, I mean, it was something like as asinine as like, you know, I mean, I have it in front of me, but just to spare the list. It was something like, you know, sometimes you need, you know, to talk in private to advance the diplomatic process.

Jeffrey 30:37

Right. I mean, I think there is this incredible defensiveness that makes no sense to me. I mean, okay, it would be nice if we could do everything openly. There was this movement in the, I think it was in the 1920s, among, I guess, naive idealists, or as I like to call them, idiots, that the United States shouldn't conduct any secret negotiations about That's crazy.

Aaron 31:05

Like sometimes diplomacy has to be in secret.

Jeffrey 31:08

Like, yes, we have a, you know, we have a Congress and there's oversight and, you know, things will leak. We have a free press. Transparent. Yeah. But like, Well, yes, there are times in very delicate diplomatic negotiations where it's like, yeah, we're not going to have a press conference. You don't need to know about that. You know, like the United States negotiated unsuccessfully to get the UAE to return the Scud missiles they bought from North Korea.

Right. And they kept that out of the press.

Aaron 31:36

No comment.

Jeffrey 31:37

Yeah, right.

Aaron 31:38

Well, no comment on anything involving the UAE.

Jeffrey 31:42

Yeah. Yeah. I'll just, let me, I'll just, I'll make the point for myself and you can just quietly sit there. You know, if that had worked out, like we did not need to know about that until it was done.

Aaron 31:54

Yeah. I don't know what you're talking about. Everything is fine anyway. But if I had to say something, I think it has to do, well, there's discrepancy in the time and when the back channel began. And I think that is at the heart of the great sort of, The missing few minutes on the videotape, even though the transcript's posted online.

What we do know is that before Hassan Rouhani is elected in June and assumes August, in August 2013, Laura Rosen tells us that the first back-channel meeting with the Iranians takes place with the previous dudes in Oman in March 2013.

Jeffrey 32:34

Which, by the way, we should have known. Because we know that the administration tried that terrible idea that I've called the zombie fuel swap. Called it the zombie fuel swap because it was a bad idea that just would never die. Where the Iranians were going to ship out their stockpile of enriched uranium in exchange for fuel for the Tehran research reactor.

Which was like just whatever. I mean... Don't need to ruin this podcast with a discussion of that idea.

Aaron 33:04

Don't, because my country of expertise is Turkey, and they still talk about that, and I bang my head into the wall every time I hear it at a track two.

Jeffrey 33:12

Well, you should go to Brazil and see how they feel about it. Yeah, so holding aside this terrible idea, we knew that when that deal collapsed... Administration officials would walk around saying, we think Ahmadinejad wants a deal. We don't think he has the political power to make a deal stick.

Aaron 33:33

Yeah, and they were leaking that publicly. I mean, they were leaking that at the time.

Jeffrey 33:37

So we knew they were trying to talk to him, right? So it should not be all that surprising. Like, it's interesting to know that it was in Oman. You know, there is a fascinating story about the characters who were involved in setting it up. And it's, you know, probably nice to know that, you know, they were, you know, sipping tea and munching on hummus when they were talking about this stuff.

Aaron 33:57

So another French diplomat, a former French diplomat who, you know, took up residence at my former institution in Geneva.

Jeffrey 34:05

You're terrible at disguising identities.

Aaron 34:09

We were sitting having coffee, sort of. And this is right when the back channel first came out. And he sort of looked at me and he says, I can guarantee you that they didn't just talk about the nuclear agreement.

Jeffrey 34:20

Right, so you think that's the problem.

Aaron 34:22

Yes, because, you know, for reasons to sell it back home here in the United States, when you had, you know, the Corcoran bill, you know, according to Fabius.

Jeffrey 34:32

Yeah, there are. Oh, gosh, I feel bad. But whoever edited the Fabius article made a shocking number of typos, including getting poor Ben Cardin's name wrong.

Aaron 34:43

Yeah, Ben Gardner wasn't treated well by the copy editing team at the Washington Quarterly. So get on that, guys. But I think that's the issue. And I think it began a little earlier than 2013. And it builds upon a narrative that is very prevalent and popular amongst the right in this country. I'm not talking about the Trumpkins, you know, like serious people, is that, you know, that this is a broader, I want to call axis shift on the U.S. And this causes a lot of anxiety amongst traditional allies, you know, in the region.

And so you had an incentive to say, oh, no, it only began just after. Yeah, go ahead.

Jeffrey 35:20

You avoided saying it, right? I mean, the fear is that they threw Syria to the wolves. To get the Iran deal.

Aaron 35:27

Right. Exactly.

Jeffrey 35:30

And it's not just like they held off on, you know, some airstrikes. Because, you know, no matter what, like, I think even the hawkiest of the hawks didn't want to celebrate the signing of the Iran deal with an airstrike. Like, we're not talking about a tactical delay. Right. In something. We are talking about a real concern among critics of the president that they cut some deal, some long-term deal on not acting in Syria in order to get the Iran nuclear deal.

There's no evidence of that. I don't actually agree with that, by the way.

Aaron 36:04

That's an entire other podcast. Oh, you would? I don't actually agree that there was a secret wink and a nod agreement about Syria.

Jeffrey 36:10

Oh, yeah. There's no evidence of it. I don't agree.

Aaron 36:12

But I'm saying that's what people are worried about, right? I think that's the optics, right. And so you can't say that this was a longer-term iterative discussion. And particularly because, you know, Rouhani you can sell because he smiles and Zarif can speak perfect English. The Ahmadinejad team was far nastier. And so, you know... Sometimes you have to negotiate in secret because the people you're talking to are abysmal humans.

And I think that's part of it as well, just domestic political optics.

Jeffrey 36:45

Well, but what I'm – I mean the timing is such that it's not – what's the way to say this? It's not that they reach that deal at the beginning, right? It's just the idea that there is this Oman back channel. And that they don't want to talk about when it started, and they don't really want to talk about what they talked about, I think naturally gives rise to the concern that the concern about secrecy is...

That the scope of those talks extended beyond just the nuclear program, right? And that so much of the frustration that, I can't say everybody, but that many, I would say most of the national security community, myself included, feels about how the Obama administration has approached Syria, the sort of unwillingness to do a lot of things that we think might be done, Grows out of, I think, the concern is it grows out of the Iran deal.

And that would be terrible if that were true.

Aaron 37:45

Again, just to be clear, I don't think that's true, but it builds upon that perception. And then you do something stupid like edit a video. Right. Because the way to stop this is to release everything. Right.

Jeffrey 37:58

Well, so the thing I was thinking is that and I've had this discussion with some colleagues, you know, why buy the cow when you're going to get the milk for free? I mean, I don't think the I think the Obama administration is desperate to not do anything in Syria. And even though I am skeptical of that, I'm sort of I disagree.

I think that we should do more. They don't have to make that deal with the Iranians because the Iranians are going to get that for free. But maybe they said something like, well, we really don't want to get involved in this as a – I don't know what you would call it – to make the Iranians more – To make the Iranians think that cooperation was more likely to pay off.

So I suspect there wasn't a deal, but I can totally see why people think that there might have been. And as you say, when they do things like edit videos, it becomes really hard to defend them against the claims that they might have done that.

Aaron 38:55

Right. But, I mean, whatever the case, you know, you end up with an agreement that both you and I Gave support to.

Jeffrey 39:10

On the merits, it is, I think, a fantastic agreement.

Aaron 39:13

I do too. And Fabius says so himself in a very French way at the end. Yes.

Jeffrey 39:21

Owing largely to the intervention of the French.

Aaron 39:24

Right. So largely because he himself is so wonderful. Yeah. We got an agreement that is great. He set John Kerry straight. Yeah. And look, there's something wrong with that, by the way. The telling of this narrative.

Jeffrey 39:37

No, I think, you know, we have our own political process. And so everybody always wants credit. And if the agreement's great, the administration wants to take credit for being great. And they don't want to admit that maybe some people in the administration weren't pressing hard enough because, you know, then that becomes a talking point in an election, which, you know, I mean,

Aaron 39:57

Well, not this election.

Jeffrey 39:59

Political rhetoric is always stupid, and it is really stupid right now. So I understand that. But, you know, as a scholar, when you look at things, I mean, I do think that the French really did bring real expertise and backbone. So I have a proposal, by the way, I think to solve or at least manage this perception, which, again, whether there was a secret deal to throw Syria to the wolves in order to get the Iran nuclear deal, and I think neither of us think that there was such a deal, there is a perception among allies that that may have happened, and there is a worry.

Aaron 40:37

I think it's easy to fix.

Jeffrey 40:40

I think Clinton just needs to say, look, I wasn't in office at the time that deal was struck. And my understanding of the deal is exactly the same as everyone else's understanding. And it is the public understanding that the deal was sanctions relief in exchange for limits on the nuclear program. That's the deal that I support. And when I am president, that's the deal I'm going to implement.

And if there are any secret side agreements that I don't know about, they are off. Because I don't know about them. I'm not committed to them, right? The public deal is the deal you agreed to, and that's the deal I'm going to enforce. I think she should say that.

Aaron 41:17

Yeah, that'd be, I mean, that would be, yeah, I mean, that's perfectly reasonable. I mean, unless there's something in her emails that the Russians hacked. Maybe Lavrov is a huge bore, but his intel services...

Jeffrey 41:36

Pretty active on the cyber front. well, you know, I would, I would, you, this is, this is the the francophile in me, right? If we had a functioning political system, my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, would, we'd sort of all agree to pretend that that didn't happen, right? Because I think it's manifestly in our interest that there not be any secret agreements, and that it be clear to our allies that there are not any secret agreements, and while I don't think anybody got into them.

You know, like, if they did, like, instead of pointing fingers at each other, we should just dispose of those secret agreements. And this is a way to do that without... You don't have to know whether they exist or not in order to reassure allies that there aren't any, right? Because you could just make the statement of, like, well, I, you know...

That's the problem with the secret agreement, right, is it's only good for one term. And you got a new person, and I'm just going to go by the public agreement because I wasn't there for your secret deal. That's what I would say.

Aaron 42:39

She's sort of done that. Her Syria policy is far more hawkish than President Obama's in terms of the willingness to use military force. I don't think when she actually gets into office it will actually look all that much different once she gets laid out with the options than the current Obama administration. But even saying that, do you think that that's enough?

Or do you think she needs to explicitly take it on?

Jeffrey 43:07

Well, I just think that it would be good to communicate to allies who – Maybe I've been dancing around it, too. I think that the Saudis think that there is a secret agreement, that they are puzzled by the administration's inaction in Syria, and they are inventing explanations for that inaction. And So I think they worry that there's a secret agreement basically to let the Iranians do what they will in Syria in exchange for the Iran nuclear deal, and I think that that's false, but I think that it is worth correcting that perception.

So yeah, I do think that it's worth going that extra step to say, You know, look, I supported this deal and it is a good deal, but it is a good deal as it is described publicly. And so if people think it's a good deal based on secret things that I don't know about, bad news, right? I'm going to enforce the deal as it is publicly understood.

And that I think is a good way to reassure allies that like their worst fears are I guess I would say it this way. You don't have to talk someone out of their concern. You don't have to say to them, like, no, no, no, you've got Barry all wrong. You just have to say, look, I don't think there's a secret deal.

You worry there might be. Let's just agree going forward that if there is, it's off. That's a positive note. I think that's the way you do it.

Aaron 44:31

There's a Donald Trump joke to be made about the art of the deal, but the orange menace, I think, isn't going to win after his latest shenanigans. So I think we're okay. And I think both of those facts, sorry, a little partisan stuff here, both of those facts are positive notes, if you ask me.

Jeffrey 44:50

Absolutely. Absolutely. We're likely to have a new president, one who I think is going to be stronger on Syria and one who is not a plaything of the Kremlin. And I think that's a good thing for American security.

Aaron 45:05

Probably doesn't use spray tan either.

Jeffrey 45:11

That's also a good thing.

Aaron 45:13

This podcast is going off the rails now.

Jeffrey 45:14

This is the part where I thank you, Aaron.

Aaron 45:18

Right.

Jeffrey 45:19

And thank you. So thanks for coming on and talking to me about Laurent Fabius and the Iran deal. And, you know, thanks for... Delaying your parent lunch with your father.

Aaron 45:35

I can turn my phone back on and give him a call. Thanks, Jeffrey, as well, for hosting the podcast. Thanks to all the listeners.

Jeffrey 45:43

Aaron, that's my job. I'm driving. Yeah. So thank you for listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast. If you enjoyed the podcast, please leave us a review in iTunes. And if you really enjoyed the podcast, consider making a donation to our Patreon page. We're currently figuring out the subscriber rewards, but we wanted to take this opportunity to thank two long-term subscribers, Dr. Mark McCall and Tim Emerton.

Thanks, guys. Thank you. And thanks again for listening.