Reset: Russia, yes; Iran, Kinda
Rose Gottemoeller, assistant secretary of state for verification, compliance and implementation, will be the chief U.S. negotiator for nuclear arms reductions with Russia. The goal is to sign a completed deal by Dec. 15, when Start I expires.
That's not a surprise -- Gottemoeller negotiated one of Washington's single most-important successes in the post-Soviet era, which was the removal during the Clinton administration of 4,000 nuclear warheads from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
It's also not a surprise that presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev today made the re-negotiation of Start I the core of a reset of U.S.-Russia relations. Arms reduction, highly favored in Russia, "is the most productive vehicle to start with," Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University, told me by phone. "It doesn't mean we will be finished by December, but the statement provides which systems will be included" in the talks.
Yet in a post-mortem with reporters, two senior U.S. officials seemed downright giddy after today's meeting between Obama and Medvedev in London, where the Group of 20 summit will be held tomorrow. One reason was that the two leaders were even able to agree on a final agenda going forward; and second was a stronger agreement on how to deal with Iran's nuclear program.
All of this has an economic component -- energy. Geopolitics in the region are highly inter-connected: Better relations with Russia can help fertilize the ground toward a thaw of U.S. relations with Iran, which could then significantly improve global natural gas supplies, particularly to Europe, which is highly dependent on -- who else? -- Russia. It's all fairly circular. Iran has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves, and whenever the financial crisis tamps down, Europe's energy thirst is going to resume its rise.
What Obama officials said on the four-page Obama-Medvedev statement itself: "I'll tell you honestly, I was not optimistic when we started this process of negotiating this that we would get it done for this meeting. ... It started very differently several weeks ago, and that he got his government to engage in it in a very serious way and get it done in time for our meeting today I think is a statement of the possibilities in U.S.-Russian relations."
And on the statement's position on Iran: "I've dealt with [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov over the last several weeks and they've always said Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon -- 'We have no evidence of that; show me that this is there.' And this was a different tone than that."
The two sides will continue to meet ahead of a planned Obama trip to Moscow in July.
In a blog post at Democracy Arsenal, Adam Blickstein seems as delighted as the Clinton officials. Matthew Yglesias is of a similar mind.
On Iran, progress isn't as clear-cut. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made much of a brief conversation yesterday in The Hague between U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh. The diplomats were all there as part of a parlay on Afghanistan.
Michael van der Galien of PoliGazette blogged on that the encounter was significant, as simple as it was. John Boonstra at UN Dispatch thinks it's good news that Iran is even "in the mix."
Alas today, Iran denied that the Holbrooke-Akhunzadeh encounter took place. The political ground in Tehran is apparently not as far along toward a thaw than it is in the U.S.
This must be why experts say a true rapprochment between Washington and Tehran will be years away.
That's not a surprise -- Gottemoeller negotiated one of Washington's single most-important successes in the post-Soviet era, which was the removal during the Clinton administration of 4,000 nuclear warheads from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus.
It's also not a surprise that presidents Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev today made the re-negotiation of Start I the core of a reset of U.S.-Russia relations. Arms reduction, highly favored in Russia, "is the most productive vehicle to start with," Angela Stent, director of the Center for Eurasian, Russian and East European Studies at Georgetown University, told me by phone. "It doesn't mean we will be finished by December, but the statement provides which systems will be included" in the talks.
Yet in a post-mortem with reporters, two senior U.S. officials seemed downright giddy after today's meeting between Obama and Medvedev in London, where the Group of 20 summit will be held tomorrow. One reason was that the two leaders were even able to agree on a final agenda going forward; and second was a stronger agreement on how to deal with Iran's nuclear program.
All of this has an economic component -- energy. Geopolitics in the region are highly inter-connected: Better relations with Russia can help fertilize the ground toward a thaw of U.S. relations with Iran, which could then significantly improve global natural gas supplies, particularly to Europe, which is highly dependent on -- who else? -- Russia. It's all fairly circular. Iran has the world's second-largest natural gas reserves, and whenever the financial crisis tamps down, Europe's energy thirst is going to resume its rise.
What Obama officials said on the four-page Obama-Medvedev statement itself: "I'll tell you honestly, I was not optimistic when we started this process of negotiating this that we would get it done for this meeting. ... It started very differently several weeks ago, and that he got his government to engage in it in a very serious way and get it done in time for our meeting today I think is a statement of the possibilities in U.S.-Russian relations."
And on the statement's position on Iran: "I've dealt with [Russian Foreign Minister Sergei] Lavrov over the last several weeks and they've always said Iran is not developing a nuclear weapon -- 'We have no evidence of that; show me that this is there.' And this was a different tone than that."
The two sides will continue to meet ahead of a planned Obama trip to Moscow in July.
In a blog post at Democracy Arsenal, Adam Blickstein seems as delighted as the Clinton officials. Matthew Yglesias is of a similar mind.
On Iran, progress isn't as clear-cut. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made much of a brief conversation yesterday in The Hague between U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammad Mehdi Akhundzadeh. The diplomats were all there as part of a parlay on Afghanistan.
Michael van der Galien of PoliGazette blogged on that the encounter was significant, as simple as it was. John Boonstra at UN Dispatch thinks it's good news that Iran is even "in the mix."
Alas today, Iran denied that the Holbrooke-Akhunzadeh encounter took place. The political ground in Tehran is apparently not as far along toward a thaw than it is in the U.S.
This must be why experts say a true rapprochment between Washington and Tehran will be years away.
