The Iran Primer

 

By next January, when I will have traveled, I guess, a million miles or more, I will look back on this period as one that has been a great privilege and honor to serve. But I will also know that we have a lot of work to do. And when I came into this office, I knew that we were going to have to confront a lot of difficult problems. I’ll just quickly mention a few.

 

One, Iran’s nuclear activities. How were we going to confront what was a clear threat? How could we unify the international community so they were not either on the sidelines or actively trying to undermine our diplomatic efforts?

 

So what we did was to first decide we had to give diplomacy a real chance. And President Obama extended an open hand to the Iranian people. In our public diplomacy, we used every channel, from satellite TV and Twitter, to old-fashioned snail mail. We cemented our partnership with European allies. We reengaged with institutions like the International Atomic Energy Agency. We convinced the entire Security Council, including Russia and China, to enact the most onerous sanctions that ever had been and to keep up the pressure.

 

And then we added to that through our unilateral sanctions and the EU sanctions. We worked directly with banks and insurance companies to make sure those sanctions were implemented. Iran’s tankers now sit idle; its oil goes unsold; its currency has collapsed. The window for engagement is still open, and we are actively pursuing a diplomatic solution. But we know that we have to continue to demonstrate that we’re making progress diplomatically. It’s too soon to know how this story will end, but the fact that we’ve returned to the negotiating table makes clear the choice for Iran’s leaders.