Israel Matzav

White House weighs in on Iran briefing

In an earlier post, I wrote about an unusual briefing on Iran that was held at the White House with a small, select group of reporters. Now, the White House has weighed in on that briefing (Hat Tip: William Daroff via Twitter).

“In a nutshell, what the president was trying to make very clear is that we have had a dual track approach,” a White House official told me Friday. “The Iranians rejected the effort at engagement even after it seemed they were prepared to go down that road and be constructive … and we proceeded with sanctions and the pressure track as we always said we would."

“Now that we are putting more pressure on them and tightening the knot with tougher sanctions -- with the good cooperation of countries like Russia and our EU partners ... we want to make clear to Iran that there is a way away from this” sanctions/pressure track, the official continued.

The way out “is to engage diplomatically and to take the steps that will establish … that their program is intended for peaceful purposes,” he said.

The official acknowledged signs of diplomatic activity underway to lay the groundwork for possible renewed international Iran nuclear talks. He said there are two such international Iran negotiations tracks or processes being pursued.

One track is the P5+1 process consisting of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany, which is led on the U.S. side by Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns.

The second track is the Vienna process, the official said, concerning a possible Iranian nuclear fuel swap deal involving the U.S., Russia, France, as well as Turkey and the IAEA. The U.S. is represented in the Vienna process, the official said, by Robert Einhorn, the State Department special advisor on nonproliferation and arms control who Hillary Clinton recently named as the U.S.'s Iran and North Korea sanctions czar.

But the administration is not viewing prospective talks on either track with high expectations, the White House official indicated, given its experience with Iran the past year and a half.

“The difficulty with all this is, the Iranians are well known to use negotiations as a stalling tactic,” he said. “Until they really sit down and start taking concrete steps, we don’t know what their ultimate intentions may be.”

Am I the only one with the sickening feeling that the White House has no clue where it's going or how it wants to get there? I didn't think so.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:53 AM