Briefing Skipper: Iran, Iran, Iran
In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. These are the highlights of Monday’s briefing by spokesman P.J. Crowley: Crowley added his own lukewarm response to the White House’s disapproving statement about Iran’s deal with Turkey and Brazil to ship some uranium stores to Turkey in ...
In which we scour the transcript of the State Department’s daily presser so you don’t have to. These are the highlights of Monday’s briefing by spokesman P.J. Crowley:
- Crowley added his own lukewarm response to the White House’s disapproving statement about Iran’s deal with Turkey and Brazil to ship some uranium stores to Turkey in exchange for higher-enriched uranium. "The United States continues to have concerns about the arrangement. The joint declaration does not address core concerns of the international community," Crowley said, "Iran remains in defiance of five U.N. Security Council resolutions, including its unwillingness to suspend enrichment operations."
- A lot of questions still need to be answered and the U.S. push for sanctions will continue, Crowley said. Also, if Iran is getting uranium for the Tehran Research Reactor, why does it still need to continue up to 20 percent enrichment, Crowley wondered aloud. "Public statements today suggest that the TRR deal is unrelated to its ongoing enrichment activity. In fact they are integrally linked," he said.
- Clinton spoke over the phone with Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim and Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu over the weekend, but Crowley was "not aware" of any calls to them over the weekend. And the U.S. isn’t mad at Brazil and Turkey for upsetting their UN sanctions push, according to Crowley. "We welcome the fact that Turkey and Brazil continue to try to engage Iran and see if Iran is willing to come forward and address the international community’s concern. It remains to be seen whether this joint declaration passes that test," he said.
- So what next? Crowley said the ball is still in Iran’s court. "The burden is on Iran," he said, "Iran has to come forward and address the international concerns." Iran has agree to cooperate with the IAEA and suspend enrichment, for starters. If they do that, "We remain prepared to engage Iran anywhere," Crowley said. Overall, the message is, "We remain skeptical that this represents anything fundamentally new."
- In between dealing with that issue, Clinton spoke over the phone with Mexican Foreign Minister Patricia Espinosa to prepare President Felipe Calderon‘s state visit to Washington later this week. "I wouldn’t be surprised if Mexico’s concerns about the Arizona law are also part of the discussion," Crowley predicted.
- Clinton also dropped in on the meeting between Undersecretary Bill Burns and Deputy Prime Minister Sergey Ivanov, who discussed Iran, START, and the 123 Agreement
- Special Envoy George Mitchell left Monday evening for the next round of proximity talks. He’ll meet with Palestinian officials on Wednesday and Israeli officials on Thursday. Assistant Secretary Jeffrey Feltman was in Baghdad Monday and met with President Jalal Talabani, present and future Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
- USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah is in Sudan and visited Juba Monday. He’s been busy, meeting with the World Food Program, the UNAMID, the U.N. Population Fund and other UN agencies and humanitarian NGOs. He also started a new sustainable agriculture called the Food, Agribusiness and Rural Markets (the FARM project, get it?).
- Undersecretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs Maria Otero is en route to Indonesia to talk about human security issues. Assistant Secretary for Economic, Energy and Business Affairs Jose Fernandez is in Brazil Monday and Tuesday. Ambassador for global AIDS, Ambassador Eric Goosby, was in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania Monday.
- Clinton led a memorial service Monday for the embassy victims of the Haiti earthquake. The two U.S. embassy employees lost were Cultural Affairs Officer Victoria DeLong and Centers for Disease Control staff member Diane Berry Caves. U.S. Air Force Major Kenneth Bourland was also killed, as well as the wife and two children of Foreign Service Officer Andrew Wylie. Six embassy local staffers were lost, as well as several of their family members.
- "We can never replace the men, women, and children who lost their lives in the earthquake – Haitians, Americans, and others from around the world," Clinton said, "But we can remember them. We can celebrate them. And we can honor them as we continue our mission in Haiti."
Josh Rogin covers national security and foreign policy and writes the daily Web column The Cable. His column appears bi-weekly in the print edition of The Washington Post. He can be reached for comments or tips at josh.rogin@foreignpolicy.com.
Previously, Josh covered defense and foreign policy as a staff writer for Congressional Quarterly, writing extensively on Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo Bay, U.S.-Asia relations, defense budgeting and appropriations, and the defense lobbying and contracting industries. Prior to that, he covered military modernization, cyber warfare, space, and missile defense for Federal Computer Week Magazine. He has also served as Pentagon Staff Reporter for the Asahi Shimbun, Japan's leading daily newspaper, in its Washington, D.C., bureau, where he reported on U.S.-Japan relations, Chinese military modernization, the North Korean nuclear crisis, and more.
A graduate of George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs, Josh lived in Yokohama, Japan, and studied at Tokyo's Sophia University. He speaks conversational Japanese and has reported from the region. He has also worked at the House International Relations Committee, the Embassy of Japan, and the Brookings Institution.
Josh's reporting has been featured on CNN, MSNBC, C-Span, CBS, ABC, NPR, WTOP, and several other outlets. He was a 2008-2009 National Press Foundation's Paul Miller Washington Reporting Fellow, 2009 military reporting fellow with the Knight Center for Specialized Journalism and the 2011 recipient of the InterAction Award for Excellence in International Reporting. He hails from Philadelphia and lives in Washington, D.C. Twitter: @joshrogin
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