Negotiating with the Great Satan: Zalmay Khalilzad's Report on Secret Talks with Iran

The repeated assertions by Ayatollah Khamenei regarding the enmity of the United States are well-known. He went so far as to say, "Those who speak of negotiating with the U.S. either know nothing about the alphabet of politics or are unaware of the alphabet of honor." With Ayatollah Khamenei's shift in stance on the nuclear issue, he has emphasized that negotiations with the U.S. are strictly limited to nuclear discussions. Although there is strong suspicion, there is no concrete evidence that hundreds of hours of intensive nuclear negotiations have extended beyond nuclear issues. However, a book is about to be published that provides a detailed account of the secret negotiations between the Islamic Republic and the 'Great Satan' during the U.S. attack to oust Saddam Hussein. This book, titled 'The Envoy,' contains the memoirs of Zalmay Khalilzad, a senior U.S. diplomat, who officially reports on his long-term secret negotiations with Mohammad Javad Zarif, the then Iranian ambassador to New York, before and after the U.S. invasion of Saddam Hussein. The New York Times has published excerpts from these memoirs, which contain interesting points. The most significant point is that despite Ayatollah Khamenei's opposition to any negotiations with the U.S., long and certainly secret negotiations between Iran and the U.S. (the Great Satan!) took place before and after the U.S. attack on Saddam. The claim that these negotiations occurred without the knowledge of the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic is strongly rejected, as Khalilzad states that these negotiations began so that the U.S. could receive sufficient guarantees from Iran's air defense to refrain from shooting down U.S. fighter jets entering Iranian airspace. According to Khalilzad, the Islamic Republic provided this guarantee to the U.S. Granting such a guarantee to the U.S. without the approval of Ayatollah Khamenei, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, is unimaginable. Interestingly, according to Khalilzad, these talks continued even after Saddam Hussein's fall. He adds that one of the negotiation agendas with the Iranian side was for Tehran to use its influence over pro-Iranian Shiite leaders to encourage them to form a government in Iraq after Saddam. Now, what Khalilzad finds important and regrettable a decade after those negotiations is that, in his assessment, if the U.S. had continued 'diplomatic engagement' with Tehran, it could have 'changed' Tehran's behavior. Although Khalilzad does not refer to Obama's foreign policy with Iran based on smart power and known as new engagement, he clearly supports this approach, writing: 'I am convinced that if we [instead of cutting off talks with Tehran] had combined diplomatic engagement with some coercive actions, we could have changed Iran's behavior.' The issue of cutting off talks with Tehran, which Khalilzad expresses regret over, refers to George W. Bush's inclusion of Iran in the 'Axis of Evil' after Tehran cooperated significantly with Washington to overthrow the Taliban in Afghanistan. Essentially, Khalilzad describes his main task in negotiations with Zarif as assessing the extent of Iran's cooperation with the U.S. to overthrow Saddam. Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Khalilzad's memoirs in his negotiations with Zarif is the lack of understanding between the two sides on the issue of terrorism, which itself indicates the breadth of the negotiation topics that were underway between the two diplomats. He states that in the discussion of combating terrorism, Zarif asked him to exchange the leaders of the Mujahideen-e Khalq with senior al-Qaeda officials, including Bin Laden's son, who was in Iran. According to Khalilzad, this request was rejected by Washington, thus closing the door to negotiations with Iran until he was appointed as U.S. ambassador in Baghdad in 2005. He writes that at this time, Abdul Aziz Hakim insisted to Ayatollah Khamenei that he open the door to talks with the U.S., which was accepted, resulting in a team composed of the foreign minister and security agencies from Iran and himself from the U.S. being designated for negotiations in Baghdad. From Khalilzad's perspective, the problem that arose was that he was only authorized to discuss issues related to Iraq with the Iranian side, while the Iranian side had a wide range of various topics on the negotiation agenda. Khalilzad writes that for reasons unclear to him, the negotiations were canceled at the last minute at Washington's order. The cancellation of this meeting, which according to Khalilzad and Hakim caused Ayatollah Khamenei's displeasure, led the U.S. National Security Council to determine that Iran provided advanced explosive devices to Shiites in Iraq to target U.S. forces, thus rendering any negotiations futile. Khalilzad writes that in this situation, three months before the end of his mission in Baghdad, he advised Washington to adopt tougher measures alongside diplomacy against Iran, resulting in a travel ban for some Quds Force officials to Iraq in December 2006. Conclusion: The New York Times reports that despite contacting the Iranian Foreign Ministry, no response has been received from Zarif regarding Khalilzad's statements. In the author's opinion, while secret diplomacy is always part of any country's diplomacy, if Khalilzad's statements regarding Ayatollah Khamenei's agreement to open negotiations with the U.S. are correct, at least one point becomes clear: the Islamic Republic cannot claim that 'the U.S. can do nothing.' If there were no concerns about U.S. actions, why did Ayatollah Khamenei accept cooperation with the U.S. for the attacks on the Taliban and Saddam Hussein? While these memoirs confirm that Ayatollah Khamenei's practical policy for dialogue with the U.S. contradicts the Islamic Republic's declared policy that the U.S. can do nothing, Khalilzad's memoirs also confirm that the U.S. has never been able to ignore Iran's role in regional equations and has been compelled to open negotiations with Iran.