A 15-minute phone call made just under a year ago may be what historians say set the stage for a landmark nuclear agreement with Iran – if one is achieved by a November 24 deadline.
between Presidents Barack Obama and Hassan Rouhani marked the first direct contact between the United States and Iran since 1979.
The subject was Tehran’s disputed nuclear program, and it opened up the door to renewed talks between Iran and the so-called P5 + 1 countries — the United States, Russia, China, the United Kingdom and France, all members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany.
The resumption of talks last October led to reached in January. The Joint Plan of Action (JPA) froze Iran's enrichment, in return granting Tehran some relief from Western-imposed economic sanctions.
The entire process is delicate as illustrated by the latest round of U.S. sanctions and Tehran's sharp response. The penalties — —target businesses and inviduals the Obama administration says are involved in expanding in Iran's nuclear program. Rouhani described them as a "crime against humanity," reflecting a comparatively tougher stance towards the United States.
Still, the negotiations have raised the possibility of a historic agreement with Iran. Observers say that would provide a legacy moment for the president, whose approval ratings on foreign policy are dismally low.
While the opening with Iran didn’t come until Obama’s second term in office, a shift in strategy toward Tehran began shortly after he was sworn in, said Robert Litwak, author of ".”
The president’s first administration “jettisoned the term 'rogue state,'” instead referring to countries such as Iran and North Korea as “outliers,” said Litwak, who directs security studies at Washington’s Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "And that really was the heart of the reset: reframing the challenge posed, in this case, particularly by Iran, not in terms of some unilateral American concept of rogue state, but rather in terms of conduct that violates established international norms."
The Obama reset was informed in part by a serious misstep by former President George W. Bush, said Peter Galbraith, a former ambassador to Croatia who also held several senior positions at the United Nations.
"Let's be clear with what happened with the ," said Galbraith, a senior diplomatic fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation in Washington. "In April of 2003, the Iranians made an offer to give up on their nuclear program in its entirety. And the Bush administration's response was 'we don't negotiate with evil.' "
Galbraith said that refusal gave the Iranian government eight years to perfect its uranium enrichment, allowing it to make what he described as "great strides" toward nuclear weapons capability.
But by the time the president began his first term, the option of diplomacy was already on the table, said Robert Einhorn, who participated in the P5 + 1 talks and served as former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s special adviser for non-proliferation and arms control.
"The Bush administration approach had evolved considerably," with representatives "prepared to take part in discussions with the Iranians in the P5 + 1 process," said , now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
A key part of the shift was allowing Iran to enrich uranium, a decision that critics say is a grave mistake.
"Obama was prepared to participate in the P5 + 1 talks without making enrichment an issue,” Einhorn said. “He was willing to approach diplomacy in a more creative way.”
With Rouhani’s June 2013 election, Obama could reach out to a decidedly less hostile and more moderate leader than former Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Iran is a signatory of the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. As such, it argues it retains the right to enrich low-level uranium for nuclear power plants.
But the United States and a long list of other countries suspect Tehran’s civil nuclear program is a cover for its real endgame: to acquire the capability to build a nuclear weapon. Iran’s leaders have repeatedly denied the charge.
"The Iranians have mastered the nuclear fuel cycle," putting the United States in a negotiating bind, Litwak said. "Those centrifuges that spin to create low-enriched uranium for reactors can keep spinning to generate highly rich uranium that could be used in a weapon."
So the focus for the Obama administration has been on bounding, or limiting, Iran’s nuclear program and allowing some enrichment.
That negotiating position has critics – including Hillary Clinton, Obama’s former secretary of state.