[The proposal on freeing up funds has been
championed by Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, a public policy institute known for its
hawkish views on Iran. “My biggest concern is that if the administration takes
out a brick from the sanctions regime, you won’t be able to put it back
together,” Mr. Dubowitz said. He called the plan “a way to provide nonsanctions
financial relief to give the administration flexibility during the
negotiations.”]
By Mark Landler
 |
Pool photo by Fabrice Coffrini
Iran's Nuclear Talks in Geneva: Two days of discussions between Iran and six world powers ended on Wednesday. They were the first talks on Iran’s nuclear program since Hassan Rouhani’s election as president. |
WASHINGTON
— The Obama administration, in the wake of a promising first round
of nuclear diplomacy with Iran, is weighing a
proposal to ease the pain of sanctions on Tehran by offering it access to
billions of dollars in frozen funds if the Iranian government takes specific
steps to curb its nuclear program,
a senior administration official said Thursday.
Such a plan, under which the United States could
free up Iran’s frozen overseas assets in installments, would avoid the
political and diplomatic risks of repealing the sanctions, which had been
agreed to by a diverse coalition of countries, the official said. It would also
give President Obama the flexibility to
respond to Iranian offers that emerge from the negotiations without unraveling
the global sanctions regime the administration has spent years cobbling
together.
The official likened the plan, which is still
being debated inside the White House and the State Department, to opening and
closing a financial spigot.
While the two days of talks in Geneva this week
did not produce a breakthrough, Iranian officials were more candid and
substantive than in previous diplomatic encounters, officials said,
particularly in direct negotiations between Iranian diplomats and the senior
American representative, Wendy R. Sherman.
Now, though, the administration faces a complex
calculation on the future of the sanctions, which have been crucial in bringing
the Iranians back to the bargaining table. Administration officials said they
would urge the Senate to hold off on voting on a new bill to strangle Iran’s
oil exports further until after the next round of talks on Nov. 7.
That may be a tough case to make to lawmakers,
given that Iran did not pledge to freeze its enrichment of uranium and offered
no plan, publicly at least, to dismantle facilities, which State Department
officials cited as a justification for holding off on a sanctions vote before
the first meeting. Several senators issued statements saying the sanctions
should go ahead.
Still, the positive tone of the talks — a senior
American diplomat who took part characterized them as “intense, detailed,
straightforward, candid conversations” — has prompted new thinking in
Washington about how to ease the pressure on Tehran, if not immediately, then
down the road, if the Iranians make real concessions.
The proposal on freeing up funds has been
championed by Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for
Defense of Democracies, a public policy institute known for its
hawkish views on Iran. “My biggest concern is that if the administration takes
out a brick from the sanctions regime, you won’t be able to put it back
together,” Mr. Dubowitz said. He called the plan “a way to provide nonsanctions
financial relief to give the administration flexibility during the
negotiations.”
If Iran refused to make concessions, the United
States, he said, could pair its offer to free Iranian money with a new sanction
that would immediately freeze all of its foreign exchange reserves by cutting
off from the American financial system any bank that gives Iran use of those
funds.
A Senate Republican aide said the proposal was
preferable to an earlier offer by the West — rejected by Iran — to lift a ban
on trading in gold if Iran agreed to shut down its Fordo enrichment facility,
which is built in a mountain near Qum.
“We thought that was a bad idea because it
replenishes Iran’s coffers,” said the aide, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because of the delicacy of the subject. “In this case, the
administration could come to Congress and ask, ‘Is closing Fordo worth $1
billion?’ ”
While the proposal is tailored and flexible,
skeptics say it might not satisfy the Iranians, whose goal is to get out from
under all the sanctions that have devastated their currency, cut their oil
exports in half, and left their economy with sky-high inflation and
unemployment.
“The Iranians are looking for fundamental
sanctions relief,” said Ray Takeyh, an expert on Iran at the Council on Foreign
Relations. “I’m not sure whether they’d accept phased access to their own
money.”
A spokeswoman for the White House, Bernadette
Meehan, said early on Friday that it was “premature and speculative” to discuss
types of sanctions relief, adding, “Iran will have to agree to meaningful,
transparent, and verifiable actions before we can seriously consider taking
steps to ease sanctions.”
As the administration tries to devise new ways
to relax the pressure on Iran, it faces another tightening of the vise, a
Senate bill that aims to drive Iran’s oil exports to zero. The House passed
similar legislation in July, by a vote of 400 to 20. Senator Tim Johnson, a
Democrat from South Dakota who is the chairman of the banking committee, told
the administration he could not hold the bill beyond the end of October.
“Given Iran’s refusal to halt its illicit
nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” said Senator Mark S. Kirk, an Illinois
Republican and Iran hawk, “the Senate should immediately move forward with a
new round of economic sanctions targeting all remaining Iranian government
revenue and reserves.”
With the Senate on recess in the aftermath of
the government shutdown, however, Congressional aides said they now expected
that the sanctions bill would not emerge from the committee and be ready for a
floor vote until the eve of the next round of talks in Geneva.
That could allow the administration to use the
specter of new sanctions as a prod to the Iranians to present more concrete
proposals then. “It’s always nice to go into these negotiations with some
coercive leverage,” Mr. Takeyh said, “because the Iranians have their own
leverage: They’re not stopping enrichment.”
Ms. Sherman, the State Department under
secretary who is leading the talks, plans to brief lawmakers in the coming days
on the progress made in Geneva. The administration is clearly concerned about
preserving a united front on sanctions. The State Department and the Treasury
Department are sending officials to Europe on Friday to discuss technical
aspects of the sanctions regime, an official said.
“Congress has been a very significant partner in
putting that sanctions regime and architecture in place,” a senior
administration official told reporters in Geneva on Wednesday. “None of us want
to undo it before we know we have some results that answer our concerns.”
Despite the inconclusive nature of this week’s
talks, former administration officials urged Congress to wait another few weeks
to give diplomacy a chance. Prematurely imposing punitive measures, they say,
could provoke a backlash from Iran’s hard-liners, who for now are backing
President Hassan Rouhani’s diplomatic overture.
“While additional sanctions may well prove
necessary, we should hold off for now,” said Robert Einhorn, a former State
Department official who helped devise the sanctions. “We should remember that
the existing sanctions are already having a devastating impact and provide
substantial incentive for the Iranians to show the necessary flexibility.”
There was no immediate reaction to the idea from
the Israeli government, which views an Iran with a nuclear bomb as a threat to
Israel’s existence. An official in the office of Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu refused to comment on Friday, saying that the reported proposal had
not yet been articulated as official American policy.
But Mr. Netanyahu has fervently pressed the case
in recent weeks that there should be no premature easing of the economic
pressure on Iran, arguing that it would be a “historic mistake” to do so when
the sanctions are so close to achieving their goal.
Giora Eiland, a former Israeli national security
adviser, said, “It was expected that the Americans would try to be forthcoming
toward the Iranians, not only to create a good atmosphere, but also because the
Americans realize that Rouhani has political constraints. He too comes in for
criticism for being overly moderate, so he has to be given some achievements.”
Still, he said in an interview with Israel
Radio, the steps being considered were “more than showing good will and changing
the atmosphere and symbolic — this helps the Iranian economy. Doing this even
before the Iranians have promised anything, or done anything, seems to me to be
very problematic American overzealousness.”
He added, “Israel doesn’t like it, but it
doesn’t seem that anyone is listening to us.”
Isabel Kershner contributed reporting from
Jerusalem.
