The Secretary (23 page)

No one had the emotional scars from dealing with Iran that America had, from the hostage
crisis of 1979 to the marine bombings in Beirut in 1983. But everybody remembered
that the weapons of mass destruction used as an excuse to topple Saddam Hussein were
never found. So Washington’s warnings about Iran’s nuclear advances were often met
with skepticism outside of the United States, Europe, and Israel. But in September
2009, the Obama administration, France, and the United Kingdom revealed that Iran
had for years hidden yet another nuclear facility deep under a mountain near the holy
city of Qom. The Russians were stunned. How could their intelligence services not
have known? They were shown the evidence, and it was irrefutable. They were furious;
they had been deceived and lied to by their own camp.

Just before the Qom revelations, Iran had agreed to discuss its nuclear program with
the P5
+
1 group, which includes the 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council—the United
Kingdom, France, Russia, China, the United States, as well as Germany. The P5
+
1 was now planning to use the world’s outrage to force Iran into a compromise at
the talks in Geneva. But Iran loved to talk; it was an opportunity to buy time and
stave off more sanctions.

The five big powers wanted a freeze for freeze: if Iran froze all of its enrichment
activities, UN sanctions would be frozen in return. But that freeze was a very elusive
end goal. They suggested an intermediary step to help build trust. Tehran had a nuclear
medical reactor that needed new supplies of highly enriched uranium, and Iran wasn’t
able to produce its own fast enough. So the P5
+
1 made an offer that could both help ease international concerns about the uranium
that Iran was stockpiling and also help Iran demonstrate that its intentions were
peaceful: give us 1,200 of your 1,500 kilograms of low-enriched uranium (LEU), they
told the Iranians, we’ll enrich it further in Russia and France, and we’ll return
the nuclear fuel to you to be used in the medical facility. With only 300 kilograms
of LEU left on its soil, Iran’s progress toward a nuclear weapon would be seriously
set back. The Iranians said yes, but then went home to study the proposal further.
They never properly responded. They were too divided themselves, between conservatives
and ultraconservatives, and no one trusted the outside world: they worried that if
they handed over their uranium, they would never see it again. The Russians were incensed:
their credibility was on the line. The sanctions that Lavrov had dismissed several
months ago were edging closer.

The Turks were starting to fret—they didn’t have a nuclear program and didn’t want
anyone in the region to have a nuclear weapon. But they were also worried about the
prospects of more sanctions on Iran. Erdo
ğ
an and Davuto
ğ
lu got to work. They traveled to Iran on several occasions, working to set themselves
up as middlemen between Tehran and Washington, trying to convince Iran to take the
deal. With Brazil, they started to explore different formulas and variations of the
plan.

Perhaps because he was an academic, Davuto
ğ
lu was an affable man with none of the rough edges that came with Turkish pride, but
he believed in his country’s destiny. In front of his audience at the Council on Foreign
Relations in Washington, he boasted in close-to-perfect English about his efforts
to have excellent relations with countries on Turkey’s borders, which he called a
zero-problem-neighborhood policy. Waving his hands and raising his left index finger,
Davuto
ğ
lu spoke emphatically about his country’s desire to bring to the region “a new era
of stability, peace, and prosperity.” And that included Iran.

“Diplomacy, diplomacy, diplomacy, more efficient diplomacy. Not military tension,
not economic tension, which will affect Turkey, a neighboring country,” said Davuto
ğ
lu. He was very open about his motivations to counter the moves toward sanctions at
the United Nations. His country had a major stake in this fight: its economy was zipping
along and would be slowed down by sanctions against Iran. Ties between the two neighbors
had blossomed since Erdo
ğ
an’s moderate Islamist AK Party (Justice and Development) came to power in 2003. From
$1 billion in trade with Iran in 2000, it was now $10 billion. Iran was Turkey’s second-largest
source of energy and its main land route for trade with Asia. Iraq had been Turkey’s
largest trading partner until it came under sanctions after the Gulf War in 1990,
and Turkey’s economy had been hard hit.

Turkey was also feeling left out of the discussions about sanctions. At the UN Security
Council, China, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, and France had permanent
seats, with the other ten seats rotating among the 193 member states. Turkey was currently
on the UN Security Council, but, sitting in the CFR conference room, an indignant
Davuto
ğ
lu complained no one had shared with them the details of the sanctions that were being
prepared.

“Until now, we didn’t get a briefing, we were not consulted, and we don’t know what
is in the package … Maybe the P5, they are consulting among themselves. Of course
we are not against this, but we don’t know the content.”

*   *   *

Perhaps Hillary could answer his questions. He was heading to see her again at the
State Department the following day. Clinton had met Davuto
ğ
lu on her first trip to Turkey in 2009, when he was still an advisor to Erdo
ğ
an, laying the groundwork for his vision of Turkey’s foreign policy and its role in
the region. She appreciated his intellect and respected his worldview and his energy;
she viewed him as one of her more consequential counterparts even if she didn’t always
agree with him. She liked that he came to every one of their meetings brimming with
ideas and a commitment to pursue his country’s interests. Developing a relationship
with Davuto
ğ
lu was also a way of keeping Turkey close, in the orbit of the West. He was one the
foreign ministers Clinton spoke to most.

The Turks had wanted to become part of the European Union, but Europe—France, especially—was
hesitant to open its arms. The Turks were deeply insulted. Parts of Europe had once
fallen under the Ottoman Empire; now Old Europe was going to keep Turkey out of the
EU? The Turks looked East and tried to re-create part of their old Ottoman space with
a visa-free zone with Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. They embraced their Muslim identity
and bluntly criticized their old friend and military ally Israel for oppressing the
Palestinians. Their new ambition to be a regional power, a bridge between West and
East, meant they were cultivating ties with countries and groups that were hostile
to the West—countries like Iran but also groups like Hamas, the Palestinian radical
militant group. The Turks appeared to be slowly drifting away from the United States’
orbit. Turkey was a NATO ally in a key strategic area, and Washington could not afford
to let go of Ankara’s hand.

Clinton and Davuto
ğ
lu called each other by their first names and always started their conversations by
talking about their families. She gave him a high five in public when he became a
grandfather; he praised her in front of the cameras, saying her leadership went well
beyond the institution of the State Department. They had developed a good rapport,
and there was never enough time to talk about all the subjects on the agenda. Both
were voluble, and the conversations could sometimes get intense, like on this occasion.
Iran diplomacy was intricate and emotional for everyone.

Clinton and Davuto
ğ
lu first spent a few minutes chatting in her office and then walked across the hall
with their teams to the conference room to get down to business. Surrounded by four
peach-colored walls, senior American officials sat on one side of the long table and
Turkish officials on the other. P. J. Crowley, the State Department’s spokesperson,
took notes so he could update journalists with any details about the conversation
that could be made public. Most of the time, Clinton gave a small press conference
with ministers after their meeting in the round, blue Treaty Room, around the corner
from her offices. But neither minister had the time or desire to be quizzed by the
media, so on this occasion P. J. would answer our questions at the Daily Press Briefing.

*   *   *

“Two minutes till the briefing, two minutes.” The announcement over the public address
system into the bull pen alerted the State Department press corps that P. J. was on
his way down. The briefings usually took place around noon. The meeting with Davuto
ğ
lu was expected to last forty-five minutes; it ended just before three in the afternoon,
clocking in at almost two hours. Half a dozen journalists exited their cubicles in
the bull pen and walked thirty steps around the corner and into the briefing room
on the Building’s second floor.

Several dozen journalists were already there, mostly foreigners who worked for their
country’s national media. Any journalist with a press card was allowed to attend the
briefing and ask a question. Sometimes the briefing started with an announcement,
but this was no press conference—it didn’t matter whether anyone in the Building really
had anything new to say, whether there was a breakthrough in Mideast peace talks or
China had jailed another dissident. Journalists representing countries around the
world wanted to know what the United States had to say or what it planned to do about
the smallest incremental development in the politics of their own countries. Unless
he or she had a meeting scheduled afterward, the spokesperson would call on every
journalist who raised a hand. The briefing was filmed in full and broadcast to news
agencies worldwide. Officials would comb through it for reaction to international
events or a mention of their country’s name. On the evening news, in Japan, Tripoli,
or Islamabad, the anchor would say, “The State Department spokesperson today congratulated
Japan on the election of its new prime minister,” or “The U.S. today offered its condolences
to Pakistan after a bomb killed fifty people.” No matter how many episodes of
The West Wing
TV series with White House briefings my friends and I had watched in Beirut, lifting
the veil over the real thing was still startling. When we heard on television that
the United States was talking about us, we could not fathom that if a State Department
spokesperson mentioned our country it wasn’t necessarily because American officials
had held a meeting, discussed the situation at length, and consciously decided to
make a statement about Lebanon, but rather because someone in the briefing room had
raised a hand. I experimented a couple of times, asking a question about Lebanon and
watching the answer appear on the news in Beirut when there had been no real movement
in the United States on the issue. The look of disappointment on people’s faces in
Beirut, as well as other countries, when I told them how the briefing worked was revealing
of the extent to which people thought they were America’s sole concern.

Standing behind the light-brown wood lectern with a State Department seal, a glass
of water at hand, P. J. rifled through his white ring binder with a Red Sox sticker
on the cover. The binder was divided by region, country, and issue and contained detailed
talking points; it was a visual aid that helped him spell out American policy on an
ongoing issue or update us if something had moved. But depending on who showed up,
the range of questions was like a political knowledge pop quiz, totally disconnected
from the news. Sometimes, there was nothing in the binder, and P. J. would have to
recall from memory the exact position of the United States on countries he hadn’t
thought of for a while.

On that day, Turkey only came up briefly toward the end, and reporters were mostly
eager to know whether there was any sign that Ankara was going to support Washington’s
drive for another round of sanctions against Iran. P. J. said Turkey was being helpful.
Really? Yes, really, he insisted. He referred to Turkey’s efforts to continue engaging
with Iran and said the United States and Turkey shared a common objective, which was
to make sure Iran did not become a nuclear state.

“Did the secretary show the Turkish foreign minister a draft of the resolution, which
they hadn’t seen up until now?” asked a Turkish journalist.

“[The meeting] was about a strategic approach to Iran. This was not about the nuts
and bolts of a resolution.”

“But only yesterday, he complained that you didn’t show him the draft. He made a speech
yesterday. He complained that the Americans refused to give us a plan.”

“And we pledged during the meeting that we would have further discussions and consult
closely with Turkey as a resolution draft emerges,” P. J. answered.

Forty minutes later, we had run out of questions and left the room, unaware of what
had been a crucial item on the agenda for Clinton and Davuto
ğ
lu. They had continued the discussion started at the Nuclear Summit by Obama, Erdo
ğ
an, and Lula. None of it had been reported yet, but Erdo
ğ
an and Lula weren’t simply making a vague proposal for more diplomacy; they were suggesting
hands-on deal making.

*   *   *

The meeting between Clinton and Davuto
ğ
lu had not been about the nuts and bolts of a Security Resolution as P. J. had accurately
told us. I would learn later it had been about the nuts and bolts of a deal with Iran
that would help avoid further sanctions.

Davuto
ğ
lu began by explaining to Clinton again, as he had so often, why Turkey understood
Iran better than the United States did. We’ve known Iran for hundreds of years, he
would say. As a friend of the Iranians, we can speak bluntly to them, something the
West could not do. Mostly, he insisted that Turkey’s foreign policy was about giving
a sense of justice and vision to the region; they would not admonish or threaten the
Iranians in public, American-style.