President Obama appeared to blur his own red line on Iran sanctions Friday, giving new ammunition to opponents of the developing deal to limit Iran’s nuclear weapons development just days before talks resume.
The president in a press conference on Friday pointedly declined to reaffirm his commitment to phased-out sanctions when the negotiations between Iran and a coalition that includes all the U.N. Security Council nations and Germany continue.
Instead, he made a “general observation” that bridging differences with Iran on the timing of sanctions relief would “require some creative negotiations” by Secretary of State John Kerry and others that will allow Iran to save face with its hardliners.
“Part of John’s job and part of the Iranian negotiators’ job and part of the P5+1’s job is to sometimes find formulas that get to our main concerns while allowing the other side to make a presentation to their body politic that is more acceptable,” Obama said.
He went on to say that the main U.S. goal is to ensure that, should Iran not abide by its agreement, the United States will not “have to jump through a whole bunch of hoops in order to reinstate sanctions.”
Afterward, White House National Security Council spokeswoman Bernadette Meehan said the president was not signaling any change to the U.S. position.
“[The president] just spoke to the snapback more than the phased timeline today,” she said. “The policy stands as has been articulated.”
But Obama’s comments gave critics a new opening because they fell far short of the initial agreement’s requirement that the penalties be removed over time, as well as the White House’s unequivocal statements last week rejecting remarks from Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei.
Khamenei and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani insisted they would only accept a deal to roll back his country’s nuclear program that provided full and immediate sanctions relief on its first day.
Critics interpreted Obama’s Friday statement as the waving of a white flag of capitulation on the talks as they move into the final and most critical phase before a June 30 deadline.
“President Obama has once again signaled that he will do what it takes to accommodate Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s red lines,” said Mark Dubowitz, the executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a D.C.-based policy institute. “We can expect suspension of meaningful U.S. and EU sanctions very early in the deal’s implementation.”
Dubowitz argues that Obama wrongly believes in the transformative power of the economic re-integration of Iran and the world community through sanctions relief and “the viability of a snapback sanction that can overcome Russian and Chinese intransigence and market-driven greed.”
Omri Ceren, press director of the Israel Project, an organization that works with journalists on the Middle East, also seized on the president’s Friday remarks, saying that critics of Obama’s many concessions in the face of Iran’s demands “appear justified in their concerns.”
“The administration appears to be conceding to the new demands,” he said.
Ceren also expressed deep concerns that the Obama administration is caving to another Khamenei demand — that there would be no inspections of atomic work on military sites, let alone the snap inspections that the International Atomic Energy Agency has long insisted were necessary.
Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes, Ceren pointed out, started floating language last week indicating that the White House was appearing to cave on these inspections.
The administration has long said it will demand that any deal provide whatever the IAEA requires for verification. IAEA experts have said they need “anytime, anywhere” inspections into suspicious sites, including military sites.
“There can’t be a system where the IAEA asks for permission, then the Iranians say ‘prove to us you actually need access,’ then a few weeks go by, then maybe inspectors get to go in and maybe they don’t,” Ceren said.
Without immediate access to sites, critics argue the Iranians could easily just move or destroy the evidence while blocking inspectors. In 2013, workers at Parchin, a military complex located 19 miles southeast of Tehran, paved over the facility they used for nuclear detonation research, according to the Institute for Science and International Security.
But Rhodes last week started walking back U.S. demands that the inspections be “anytime, anywhere.”
“There will have to be the ability for the IAEA to conduct inspections that are consistent with what is in framework,” Rhodes said, “if the United States and other countries, again, present information and seek access through the IAEA to those sites.”
