The Obama administration on Wednesday put a damper on hopes that the thaw in relations between Iran and the United States will lead to a normalization of ties between the two countries.
State Department spokesperson Marie Harf said that the the multilateral talks are aimed only at international oversight of Iran’s nuclear program, in a back-and-forth with reporters that started with an exchange between Harf and a French journalist.
“No one’s talking about a rapprochement with Iran,” Harf said. “Even as we negotiate, this does in no way represent a broader warming of ties.”
She expanded on the point in response to another reporter’s question, saying that a “rapprochement” would suggest a situation in which the US didn’t “have serious concerns about human rights, about terrorism, about Syria, about Hizballah, and would not speak out publicly and loudly and aggressively when we disagree.”
“That, somehow, our mentality about all of these other ways we strongly disagree with the Iranian regime would somehow change because we could get to a nuclear agreement–that would not be the case,” she said. “We would have an agreement that would be a good thing if we can prevent them from getting a weapon, but it wouldn’t mean that on all these other issues, our relationship with Iran would suddenly change.
The reporter pushed back, saying that an agreement, and the subsequent lessened probability for war it would bring, would, in effect, amount to a “rapprochement,” and suggested asking the French reporter what “rapprocher” means.
“It means a process of moving toward warmer relations,” he said.
“And I would disagree that a nuclear agreement would do that,” Harf replied.
In late December, when asked if the US could one day open an embassy in Tehran, President Obama responded that it was a possibility.
“I never say never, but I think these things have to go in steps,” he said.
About a week before, after President Obama announced he was seeking to restore ties with Cuba, some observers, including Trita Parsi and Ryan Costello of the National Iranian American Council, had said that they hoped the same developments would transpire in US-Iran relations, and that a lack of normal ties had similarly failed to bring about changes that the US claimed to want to see in Tehran. Others, including Haleh Esfandiari of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, said that it would not happen because “unlike Cuban President Raul Castro, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has no interest in relations with the United States.”
Harf alluded to Obama’s December commentary on Wednesday, noting that she “can’t predict what could happen in two or five or ten or fifteen years,” and that the president has said “we would like to have a different relationship with Iran and the Iranian people.”
“But I want to be very clear that we are not linking the nuclear agreement or a successful nuclear agreement to a broader warming of ties, to a broader rapprochement on other issues or in general,” she added. “I think that’s an important point to make.
According to the Larousse French-English dictionary, “rapprocher,” as a transitive verb, can mean “to bring nearer,” “to bring closer,” or “to bring closer together.”
