But Thielmann, former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said the reported demand for the closure and dismantling of the Fordow site "is more an interest of the Israelis than of the United States".
Reza Marashi, the former State Department specialist on Iran and now research director at the National Iranian-American Council, said U.S. officials have been concerned about Fordow, but that it is the Israelis who have "turned their inability to destroy Fordow into a major issue."
Thielmann said he hopes the administration is "doing this for the Israelis and that it wouldn't push it once it is rejected."
While the demand on Fordow clearly responds to a U.S. need to accommodate Israel, it is also in line with Obama administration efforts to intimidate Iran by emphasizing that it has only a limited time "window" in which to solve the issue diplomatically. The administration has implied in recent weeks that Israel would strike Iran's nuclear facilities in the absence of progress toward an agreement guaranteeing Iran would not go nuclear.
That emphasis on threat corresponds to the approach championed by hardliners since the beginning of the Obama administration. Former Obama adviser Dennis Ross, who is still believed to maintain personal contact with Obama, was quoted in the New York Times on March 29 as saying, "For diplomacy to work there has to be a coercive side. If the Iranians think this is a bluff, you can't be as effective."
In a recent article, Ross makes clear that what he calls "coercive diplomacy" would not involve the promise of lifting sanctions, because the U.S. would continue to demand change in Iran's "behavior toward terrorism, its neighbors and its own citizens."
If such a "coercive diplomacy" underlies the administration's negotiating strategy, it would explain the absence of any leaks to the press about what it plans to offer the Iranians in return for the concessions being demanded. Reza Marashi noted that administration officials have been "holding their cards very close to their chest" in regard to what they intend to offer Iran.
The absence of any groundwork for significant incentives leads Marashi to believe the administration plans to rely on threats rather than incentives to get Iran to agree to its demands.
The Obama administration appears to be counting heavily on the one incentive it is prepared to offer in the talks: the recognition of Iran's right to enrich uranium on Iranian soil. The U.S. and Europeans will certainly demand strict limits on the number of centrifuges and the level of enriched uranium Iran could maintain.
Iranian agreement to such limits would require major changes in U.S. policy toward Iran, including dismantling sanctions and accepting a major Iranian political-diplomatic role in the region as legitimate.
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