The phone call today between President Barack Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was the first direct contact between a U.S. president and his Iranian counterpart since Iranian revolutionaries stormed the U.S. embassy during Iran’s Islamic Revolution and seized fifty two American hostages.
The New York Times notes that Rouhani, himself a revolutionary-era cleric who subsequently spent decades as a consummate regime insider, had just days ago snubbed Obama, but that the “telephone call on Friday reinforced optimism at the White House” that Rouhani might be able and willing to change Iran’s foreign policy and its posture on nuclear weapons. Secretary of State John Kerry had already suggested that Iran and the U.S. could close a deal even sooner than the three to six month timetable floated by Rouhani.
International arms control officials quoted by Bloomberg this morning were less sanguine:
“It is more likely that a first meeting between two new representatives will be a getting-to-know-each-other and stock-taking meeting than the occasion for surprise,” said Peter Jenkins, who was the U.K.’s ambassador to the IAEA when Rouhani was the country’s nuclear negotiator. “A breakthrough is unlikely.”… “Neither Obama nor Rouhani’s speeches at the UN proved to have much new in them beyond atmospherics,” Paul Ingram, executive director of the London-based British-American Security Information Council, said in an interview. “While the atmospherics are welcome, we need to pass through them quickly to agreements. This window might not stay open forever.”
Reuters yesterday emphasized that Rouhani had “offered no new concessions” on Iran’s nuclear program. David Kenner, the Middle East editor of Foreign Policy Magazine, echoed the point in the context of Syria:
Rouhani once again doing a good job of sounding conciliatory on Syria without offering the slightest prospect of a policy change.
— DavidKenner (@DavidKenner) September 27, 2013
The White House briefing on today’s phone call was kept on background, and so it is unclear whether Rouhani suggested a willingness to make any concessions.
[Photo: TheGuardian / YouTube]