Word: rossing
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...Ross's view, is the state of Iran's economy. Though it sits on the world's third largest reserves of oil, Iran faces a growing economic crisis. The government is dependent on oil exports for 85% of its revenue, but Iran's aging production capacity is diminishing by about 500,000 bbl. per year, according to some analyses. What oil it can produce, it has little ability to refine, importing as much as 50% of its gasoline. In 2007, Iran imposed gas-rationing, which set off riots...
...Ross wanted to target that economic vulnerability. "If you're really going to concentrate the Iranian mind to what they stand to lose, they're going to have to see that the economic price goes up dramatically from where it is right now," he explained. But to make sanctions work, countries like Germany, China and Russia would have to join in an economic crackdown. To get those countries on board, Ross wrote last year, "there may be value in enlisting Israel to send a high-level delegation privately to European capitals to make the point that while others feel they...
Working the Back Channels At first, the "bigger carrots, bigger sticks" approach seemed to show promise. When, after eight years away, Ross returned to the State Department in early February, he quickly assembled a seven-person team and began working through a long list of moves. The first and still the most important came on March 20, when Obama gave a speech to Iranians on the holiday of Nowruz. The President made it clear that the U.S. would seek full normalization of relations with Iran, that it recognized Iran as an Islamic republic, that it would not pursue regime change...
...Ross then laid the carrots on thick, dispensing with the formal line that the U.S. doesn't talk to Iran. On the weekend of March 27, a U.S. diplomat discussed economic issues with his Iranian counterpart in Moscow. Days later, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, met with Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed Mehdi Akhundzadeh at an international conference in the Hague. At a Friends of Pakistan meeting in Tokyo, one of Holbrooke's diplomats met with his Iranian counterpart. And in a secret back-channel outreach in April, State Department staffers working for Ross got clearance...
This tough line on the part of the U.S. should not be seen as a surprise. Ross's policy is straightforward; if bigger carrots don't work, try bigger sticks. If Tehran doesn't enter serious negotiations by September, the U.S. intends to unveil a raft of penalties. In return for U.S. participation in the nuclear talks, Ross got the Europeans to help plan sanctions that would target Iranian businesses that have nothing to do with the nuclear program. The U.S. wants bans on insuring Iranian energy firms and any companies that do business with them. It also wants...