Saeed Jalili: The View From Across the Table

Before last Friday’s lively debate, Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili was widely considered to be the frontrunner in the upcoming presidential election. But his rivals used their debate platform to attack his record at the negotiating table, blaming his failed diplomacy as the chief cause of intensified Western sanctions. Jalili defended his record, and continues to invoke his successful ‘resistance’ against Western pressure as evidence of his capacity to lead Iran. To examine that, we turned to someone who sat across the table from Jalili for years. Gary Samore was the White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction Terrorism until 2013. We talked to President Obama’s former nuclear advisor about Jalili’s negotiating style, his reputation as a diplomat, and the extent to which he’s been empowered to have a real conversation with the West at all.  

 

What have been your interactions with Saeed Jalili?

I’ve been in all of the P5+1 meetings with him since 2009, and I’ve met him only by way of saying hello, because of course he refuses to meet separately with Americans. So I haven’t had any contacts with him on a bilateral basis, it’s all been sitting across the big table in which he’s sitting at one side at the representatives of the EU and the P5+1 are sitting on the other side, so it’s just a formal presentation. I’ve never had any real conversation with him, because he refuses to have any conversation with Americans, since 2009.

 

Jalili was the Iranian official who met with then Under Secretary of State William Burns in 2009, correct?

That’s correct. After the collapse of the Tehran Research Reactor Deal in 2009, I think the Supreme Leader basically decided to shut down the  negotiations. Since then virtually nothing has happened beyond formal presentation of positions that are so far apart that it’s obvious to everybody that no diplomatic progress can be made. I think Jalili played his part to basically refuse to engage in any real back and forth discussion or negotiation. He just presented formal positions and repeated them over and over again.

 

Why do you think that 2009 deal -- which Jalili himself presented -- fell through?

I think there’s no question about it, the deal fell through because once it was presented back in Tehran, it ran into a lot of stiff resistance. And the Supreme Leader decided not to support it. So Jalili and Ahmadinejad had negotiated an agreement which would have required Iran to remove a portion of their low enriched uranium and in exchange they would have gotten finished fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor. All of the technical details had been agreed to in Vienna at the expert level. But once the agreement was presented to the Supreme Leader there was a lot of opposition, including from some of the reformist candidates at the time, Mousavi and Karroubi, as well as some of the hardliners, who argued that Iran was giving up precious nuclear material without any guarantee that it would get fuel in return. So I think the Supreme Leader got cold feed and refused to support the deal.

 

You would think if they had presented the deal in the first place, they would have at least preliminarily cleared it with the Supreme Leader’s office?

I believe that’s probably true, I believe they would not have gone ahead, Jalili would not have gone ahead unless he believed for whatever reason that the agreement would be approved at home. So I think he was probably embarrassed and maybe that’s part of the reason why ever since then he’s been totally without any willingness to engage in any back and forth and creative discussion.

 

On the one hand, Jalili seems like a reflexive hardliner, this war veteran with ideological rhetoric about morality and resistance, but it could also simply be that he’s following tough directive from the Supreme Leader?

I think the question that we don’t know the answer to is if the Supreme Leader said to Jalili, ‘I want you to go meet with the P5+1 and negotiate an agreement,’ is he capable of that? We just don’t have the answer, because he’s never been authorized to do that. His instructions were ‘I want you go to go P5+1 meetings and I want you to basically just filibuster, just repeat our position over and over again and don’t give anything away.’ And Jalili was very good at that, much to the frustration and annoyance of everybody who participated. You can say it’s not his fault, he was operating under the Supreme Leader’s instructions and was carrying out his instructions.

 

I suppose a negotiator can only be successful to the extent that he’s empowered to negotiate.

Exactly. And I think it’s very clear, to me anyway. Remember you had for a while Larijani as the negotiator, and he actually was trying to come up with an agreement and then finally he quit in frustration. And then they brought in Jalili, and I think Jalili’s job was to avoid an agreement, which he did very well.

 

Some consider him to be quite anti-American, did you get a sense of whether he had a personal fixation or grievance against America?

No, I wouldn’t say so. The one thing they did say, which I thought was interesting, was at one of the experts meetings in Istanbul. I approached Ambassador Sultanay who I’ve known for many years, and said I was authorized to have a bilateral meeting with Jalili if he would seek permission from Tehran. The next day he came back and said that permission had been denied and that [Jalili] was not authorized to meet with me. And then I said that’s very unfortunate or something like that, and he made some reference to the fact that when Jalili’s meeting with Bill Burns became public in 2009 it caused all kinds of political problems for Jalili. So I can’t say that Jalili had any personal grievance against Americans, but at least on the evidence that I’ve seen he did not think it would be good for his political future to be seen meeting with Americans.

 

Some of the press coverage of that 2009 meeting was quite positive, but that sort of thing can be used both ways in Iran. It can politically expedient in Iran to show yourself as speaking to the Americans, even when you have no intention of actually speaking to them.

 

Well they have a love hate relationship. I think on one hand many Iranian leaders would like to take credit for improving relations with the United States, and I think that would be popular; but at the same time, the United States is still the Great Satan, and for a lot of Iranian leaders, including I suspect the Leader himself, the US is not to be trusted and dealing with the US is very dangerous and can only lead to bad things. It’s a contradiction that I think springs from great ambivalence about the United States.

 

Did Jalili ever acknowledge during the negotiations the tremendous cost these sanctions are inflicting on the Iranian people?

Yes, in the first Istanbul meeting he acknowledged that the sanctions were having an impact, and as I recall there was some criticism of him back at home for admitting that the sanctions were doing damage, so he never again made that statement. Although it’s very clear that that’s what they were negotiating for, they were negotiating for sanctions relief. But they I think probably didn’t want to acknowledge that it was something they really wanted.

 

How is Jalili viewed in comparison with previous negotiators?

I think there was a great difference, because Rowhani and Larijani were actually trying to negotiate agreements, whereas Jalili, with the exception of the Tehran Research Reactor, was not trying to negotiate an agreement. So I think they were viewed completely differently, but as I said, I don’t know that that necessarily reflects on their personal abilities, I think it reflects most importantly on the instructions they were operating under.

 

Is there anything else about Jalili that might be interesting to mention?

I would say he seemed to me very uncomfortable, very stiff and didn’t seem to have much of a sense of humour. Now again, I don’t know if that’s just his personality or if he was told ‘don’t be friendly.’

Rowhani was certainly much more sophisticated and easy to talk to and relaxed, and Larijani as well. Jalili does seem more limited, at least in dealing with foreigners, I don’t know what he’s like with fellow Iranians.

In a way that makes him the most trustworthy person to have in that position , doesn’t it? Someone who holds back and isn’t even inclined to make a connection on a personal level.

Probably it’s become clear from experience, you’ve got to get somebody in that job who doesn’t have any independent thoughts or personality.