Palace intrigue

A glimpse inside the Lausanne framework negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program.

By MICHAEL WILNER
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif presents Tehran’s case in Lausanne, on April 2. (photo credit: JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS)
Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif presents Tehran’s case in Lausanne, on April 2.
(photo credit: JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS)
AFTER EIGHT straight days of diplomacy culminating in one all-nighter with his American counterpart, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif entered the breakfast room of the Beau Rivage Palace on April 2 looking exhausted.
It was just after 6:00 a.m., and his team was dressed for yet another day’s work.
The assembled diplomats had already blown past the self-imposed March 31 deadline for a political framework, and no one, from any side, was opposed to spending another few hours at the effort.
But Zarif left his jacket behind; it was an unusually casual look for the diplomat, where the cameras couldn’t see him, at a stage in the game where layers and patience were beginning to peel.
Reports of an imminent collapse in the talks were proven false as the days went by, and no one walked away. But the Americans tried to maintain the threat, nevertheless. US officials repeatedly packed their bags and cleared them for departure in nearby Geneva, allowing US Secretary of State John Kerry’s plane to sit parked on a runway just to maintain pressure on the Iranians.
That pressure was carefully managed, as US officials simultaneously threw cold water on reports that the French, on March 31, had issued a dawn deadline to the Iranians to accept the West’s language for a framework.
The next morning, in the same sunny breakfast hall of the palace, Zarif had told The Jerusalem Report that reports over French strong-arming at the table were false. Its foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, was fully committed to the task at hand, he said.
However, two mornings later, after an unprecedented, nine-hour night meeting with Kerry – the longest ever, he later said, between a secretary of state and a foreign counterpart – Zarif was less talkative on April 2. Instead, he was busy at his table reading page after page of documents.
American officials vociferously denied that a draft document, a framework text, was being circulated among the powers.
But “circulated” was a word they refused to define with any specificity. Should they agree on parameters for a comprehensive nuclear deal, several of their provisions were likely to remain undisclosed, officials acknowledged.
Only two tables down from Zarif and his team that morning, US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz sat with glazed eyes. He read nothing over his hour-long breakfast; he sat virtually motionless across the breakfast table from a department aide.
And diagonally across the glassenclosed terrace, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier appeared well rested. He was thumbing through press clips, reading European newspaper headlines, which addressed, primarily, negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
The peaks of the Alps were shrouded throughout much of March in Switzerland, where the negotiations ultimately produced a somewhat hazy result.
The US and EU declared the “historic” achievement of a framework agreement with Iran later that day on April 2, laying the groundwork for a deal they hope will cap Tehran’s nuclear work for a finite period.
BUT INTERPRETATIONS of just what was agreed here differ widely from Washington to Tehran, further confusing journalists after a tense month scavenging for clarity on the banks of Lake Geneva.
Those mountain peaks provide a compelling metaphor for the challenges of covering diplomacy: So much rich, sculpted detail lay just beyond the reach of reporters, sauntering in luxury together, hypothesizing what may come of the most critical international negotiation in decades.
Some of the most weathered, experienced foreign correspondents gathered in Lausanne were collectively tasked with a monumental job: breaking a code of silence agreed upon by the most weathered, experienced diplomats on the planet.
The correspondents were good; the diplomats were better, and few scoops were leaked over the course of the talks, culminating in an eight-day marathon and one all-nighter.
With two full weeks at the Beau Rivage, broken by a five-day reprieve, diplomats, their staffs and the journalists covering them had plenty of time to ogle the Swiss Alps on the occasional clear day, when sight could reach as far as Montreux and across the lake toward Evian in France.
Shuttling between cafés and hotel gardens, between $40 fattoush bread salads and $10 coffees, those mountains inspired everyone involved, as the work continued into each consecutive night.
Journalists grew in number as the delegations of France, Germany and China arrived, though space for them to work and operate continuously shrunk. The lobby, then its bar, then its side bar and its terrace were ultimately closed to most reporters, leaving the majority to sit in a single ballroom, a facility across the street or a crêperie nearby.
That aggravated some members of the press here. But the cramp also created unique opportunities. Iranian and Israeli press, this journalist included, swapped stories, understandings and tidbits of information, as did the Russians and the Americans, the British and the Chinese.
One bar provided space for journalists to meander and stretch, though no Iranian journalist dared enter. Their press corps occupied the library of the palace, built in two parts and divided conveniently for security personnel, tasked with keeping the foreign ministers of Germany, France, Russia, China, Britain, the US and Iran largely out of reach.
Some of those ministers did a better job than others: China’s Wang Yi would go for runs along the lake, providing camera crews locked outside with brief, if awkward, photo opportunities. France’s chief negotiator made a habit of stopping by the bar, mingling with American press.
One night, Kerry, still in full official attire, appeared for drinks at an Irish-styled pub, joining about a dozen American journalists. Seated in a corner of the bar, his back to the crowd, few in this sleepy Swiss city could tell who was making the crowd laugh so reliably on cue.
INSIDE THE rooms themselves, US officials say the environment was less palace intrigue and more college dorm room: empty food trays left to crust over, a Nespresso machine buzzing without end.
Technical experts slept with their heads in their hands on centuries-old tables for quick power naps.
A whiteboard was made available for them to fiddle with key timeline figures, avoiding the diplomatic confusion of paperwork – a clever trick that backfired one night, as one expert accidentally wrote down classified numbers in permanent marker.
One US official told The Report that US President Barack Obama did not, as widely reported, tell Kerry to ignore the March 31 deadline. But at that point, they were so close to a framework that they could see the finish line, the official said.
On March 28, Steinmeier exited his motorcade on the back side of the palace, pointed to the Alps and said, “The endgame of the long negotiations has begun.
Here,” Steinmeier, said, “with a view of the Swiss mountains, I’m reminded that as one sees the cross on the summit, the final meters are the most difficult but also the decisive ones.”
For the press corps the challenge, from that point on, was how to measure those final meters, and whether all nations represented in Lausanne were on the same page on the path forward.
As the talks intensified toward the deadline, in one of the palace’s baby blue rooms, one senior administration official explicitly outlined their outstanding challenges: the pace of sanctions relief for Iran, the mechanism for snapping sanctions back in place should Iran violate a deal, and the extent Iran would curb its nuclear research and development.
Those issues had to be resolved for a political framework to come together, the official said to a small group of reporters.
If they could not be resolved in March, the differences are unlikely to be bridged by the end of June – the final deadline for wrapping up the negotiations.
But from other private conversations, what also became clear was that one of the primary disagreements in those final days had nothing to do with specific policy concessions. The debate, in the end, was over the very nature and form of a political framework agreement – what diplomats would leave Lausanne with to show for their efforts.
What resulted were conflicting fact sheets in English and Farsi, neither of which addressed the three outstanding issues that challenged negotiators days before the deadline itself, and for which the deadline was extended: sanctions relief, a snap-back mechanism, or centrifuge R&D.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei had drawn a red line on the issuance of a written framework. And indeed, since the framework was introduced in the form of a White House fact sheet, Khamenei has spoken out against its tenets as “faulty, incorrect and contrary to the substance of the negotiations.”
“I’m neither in favor nor opposed to it, since nothing has happened yet,” Khamenei said just a week after the talks recessed.
“All the trouble arises when the details will be discussed.”
Guaranteed, then, is one final dramatic round of talks in the lead-up to June 30, when diplomats have set a deadline for a comprehensive nuclear accord. That agreement, requiring signatures, will be the only written document codifying formal agreement between, among others, Iran and the United States.