Hillary Clinton's secret Iran man

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Hillary Clinton's secret Iran man
Jake Sullivan, who helped bring about the nuclear talks, may have to help Clinton defend them in 2016.
By Michael Crowley
4/3/15 4:46 AM EDT
Updated 4/3/15 9:23 AM EDT
After Clinton's 2008 primary defeat, Sullivan followed her to the State Department — first as deputy chief of staff and then as State’s youngest-ever director of policy planning. | AP Photo
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It was Sept. 27, 2013, and President Barack Obama was about to place a historic phone call to the president of Iran — a conversation that would kick off the public phase of nuclear talks between two longtime adversaries.
And it was at that moment that Jake Sullivan, a 30-something aide who’d spent months secretly laying the groundwork for the talks, started to panic.
Hillary Clinton is pictured. | AP Photo
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Was he certain he’d given Obama the right number? Where exactly had it come from again? Could the president of the United States be dialing an imposter, or even a prankster?
Sullivan ran back to his office to triple check his source, according to a person familiar with the episode. The information was solid. He returned to the Oval Office — now a little sweatier — for a 15-minute call in which Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warmly agreed to pursue the talks.
Eighteen months later, Sullivan’s attention to detail has paid off. In Switzerland on Thursday, officials from the U.S. and five other nations reached a framework deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program — vindicating, for the moment at least, Sullivan’s deep personal involvement in the process.
And thanks to Sullivan, the deal also bears the clear fingerprints of his political mentor, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who first assigned him to the Iran file and with whom he remains extremely close. Sullivan “was at my side nearly everywhere I went” as secretary of state, Clinton wrote in her memoir, “Hard Choices.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, centre, arrives with US Secretary of State John Kerry, background centre right. | AP Photo
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Sullivan has emerged as Clinton’s most trusted foreign policy adviser. It remains undecided whether he‘ll have a formal post at campaign headquarters during her all-but-certain 2016 presidential run, but Clinton allies say he’ll be in daily contact with the candidate regardless.
And should Clinton win the White House, Sullivan, now 38, is almost certain to take a top post in her administration — possibly even as the country’s youngest-ever national security adviser.
“The sky’s the limit,” says Strobe Talbott, a former top State Department official under Bill Clinton. “He is somebody of extraordinary intelligence and temperament.”
Talbott speaks for a legion of admirers dazzled by the Rhodes Scholar and Yale Law School graduate’s brains, but disarmed by his self-deprecating Midwestern modesty.
Sullivan, who now teaches at Yale Law School, declined to comment for this article. But in a 2013 commencement speech at the University of Minnesota’s public affairs school, he publicly shared what many call the secret to his success: “Reject cynicism. Reject certitude. And don’t be a jerk. Be a good guy.”
FILE - In a Monday, March 16, 2015 file photo, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attends a Likud party meeting in Or Yehuda near Tel Aviv, Israel, a day ahead of legislative elections. Israel's election has yielded a fractured parliament and no clear winner, setting up a horse-trading phase that seems likely to leave Netanyahu in his post and place the country on the brink of confrontation with the world. It could also force a joint government with moderate challenger Isaac Herzog. And there is the slimmest of chances that Herzog, through machinations, ends up on top. Everything is in the hands of Moshe Kahlon, a relative newcomer to the big leagues of Israeli politics. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit, File)
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“It’s easy to be jealous of his résumé, but it’s impossible to hate him,” said one Sullivan contemporary with a similar background. “He’s just such a nice guy.”
Even many strongly opposed to the Iran deal sing his praises.
“Sharpest guy on the [Iran] issue I know,” said Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a withering critic of the Iran talks.
Sullivan was “much more skeptical and tough-minded” about the Islamic Republic than other Obama officials involved in the talks, Dubowitz said. That view was echoed by sources who have worked inside the administration: “He’s definitely been tougher,” said one.
That may reflect the influence of Clinton, who has long taken a harder line toward Tehran than has Obama.
Barack Obama is pictured. | Getty
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During the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, Clinton called Obama “irresponsible and frankly naïve” after he pledged to talk directly to Iran without preconditions. She supported declaring the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist group, a move Obama said would increase the chances of war. And when she warned that the U.S. could “totally obliterate” Iran in response to an Iranian nuclear attack on Israel, Obama likened her to George W. Bush.
Inside the Obama administration, Clinton opposed talk of a policy of “containment” that would tolerate a nuclear Iran, and was skeptical that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was truly prepared to strike a nuclear deal. She would turn to Sullivan to test that proposition.
Sullivan grew up in Minneapolis, where his father worked on the business side of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune before moving to the University of Minnesota’s journalism school. His mother worked as a teacher, librarian and guidance counselor in the city’s public schools.
Sullivan was a young standout — a debate champ and student council president at Minneapolis’s Southwest High School. Then it was Yale University, where he edited the Yale Daily News before going on to Oxford, law school — where he worked on an amicus brief challenging Texas’ sodomy laws — and then a clerkship under Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
An Iranian oil worker walks at Tehran's oil refinery south of the capital in Iran. | AP Photo
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He joined Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign as a policy adviser focusing on foreign affairs. He put his debate skills to use as Clinton’s sparring partner in presidential primary debate prep sessions.
After her primary defeat, he joined Obama’s campaign and then followed Clinton to the State Department — first as deputy chief of staff and then as State’s youngest-ever director of policy planning.
Though he is a solid Democrat, colleagues say Sullivan is no ideologue. He often argues that foreign policy defies simple prescriptions.
“Policymaking is fundamentally a study in imperfection,” he told an audience at Duke University in January, adding that in many cases, American power doesn’t necessarily produce positive outcomes.
Sullivan has said he wishes the U.S. had done more to encourage Iran’s dissident Green Movement in 2009, but notes that some reformers had warned against it at the time, making for a hard decision.
And although Clinton supported sending arms to Syria’s moderate rebels in 2012, a plan Obama opposed, Sullivan has conceded that policy had only a modest chance of success.
He and Clinton were likewise skeptical about the prospects of a nuclear deal with Iran, though determined to try diplomacy. When the sultan of Oman relayed an offer from Tehran to talk, Clinton tasked Sullivan to test it.
Sullivan had little experience negotiating with foreign diplomats. But, as Clinton later wrote, “he was discreet and had my absolute confidence. His presence would send a powerful message that I was personally invested in this process.”
WASHINGTON, DC - APRIL 02: U.S. President Barack Obama delivers remarks in the Rose Garden of the White House on negotiations with Iran over their nuclear program on April 2, 2015 in Washington, DC. In exchange for Iran's agreement to curb their country's nuclear proliferation, the United States would lift some of the crippling sanctions imposed. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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In July 2012, Sullivan flew to Oman’s capital, Muscat, along with National Security Council aide Puneet Talwar. After sleeping on couches in an empty Embassy house, the two held the first of several meetings with Iranian officials aimed at establishing that the Iranians were serious about compromise.
It was the first of many meetings Sullivan had with the Iranians. Colleagues said he brought a surprisingly good touch to the talks.
“I think he has a good feel for the human element,” said Gary Samore, who handled the Iran nuclear portfolio in the Obama White House until 2013. “These negotiations are more than technical, and there’s also some need to understand the adversary and what motivates them.” Sources said that Sullivan took a lawyerly approach, offering rigorous reasoning that did not condescend to Iranian officials sensitive to any sign of disrespect.
Sullivan followed Clinton to the State Department — first as deputy chief of staff and then as State’s youngest-ever director of policy planning. | AP Photo
“The Iranians look at him as someone they can deal with,” added Dennis Ross, a former top national security official in the Obama White House.
So do Republicans, even some fierce critics of the nuclear talks, who say they find Sullivan’s briefings on Capitol Hill more substantive and respectful than those of other Obama officials.
The secret meetings in Oman convinced Sullivan and, eventually Obama, that the Iranians were serious. In 2013, Sullivan helped to arrange the vertigo-inducing phone call between the U.S. president and Rouhani, Iran’s newly elected president, who was in New York City for an annual United Nations gathering. An Iranian official gave Sullivan the number for Obama to call, and a new and public phase of the diplomatic process began.
EU's foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini (L) and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif attend the announcement of an agreement on Iran nuclear talks on April 2, 2015 at the The Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne. Iran and world powers said they had reached agreement on Thursday on 'key parameters' of a potentially historic deal aimed at preventing Tehran from building the bomb. AFP PHOTO / FABRICE COFFRINI (Photo credit should read FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images)
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By that point, Clinton was out of the administration, and Sullivan had moved to the White House to become Vice President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, working from an Old Executive Office Building suite with a combination lock on the door. The U.S. joined international talks with five other nations, managed by Undersecretary of State Wendy Sherman with oversight from Secretary of State John Kerry.
Sullivan remained deeply involved in the Iran file, although until the secret talks were public, he tried to stay out of view. As Kerry negotiated the first interim agreement with Iran in November 2013, Sullivan flew to Geneva for the talks but stayed in a different hotel and slipped through back doors to avoid the notice of reporters.
After that deal was signed, The Associated Press revealed the secret talks and Sullivan’s role in them. U.S. allies in the region, including Saudi Arabia and Israel, were infuriated that they had not been informed, but the administration pleaded that the trust-building contacts out of the public spotlight had been essential.
Sullivan left Biden’s staff last fall for Yale. But he continued to take part in the nuclear talks until several weeks ago. Even now, in an unusual role for a private citizen, he makes regular trips from New Haven to Washington to informally advise the administration and brief members of Congress on the talks.
After a wedding this June, Sullivan will increasingly focus on counseling Clinton, who will have to position herself against critics of the Iran deal and her role in it. They include Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and powerful Jewish-American political groups — not her 2016 Republican rivals, who uniformly oppose it.
Some former colleagues say Sullivan is especially valuable to Clinton because, more than many career diplomats, he has a feel for how world issues play at home. “Jake was someone a little more attuned to the politics,” Ross said.
His compulsive self-questioning, evidenced at the time of Obama’s phone call to Rouhani, will also be an asset. In Clinton’s world, said a person close to her, “there’s a level of scrutiny on everything she does. So the substance of what she does has to be 100 percent. And Jake understands that.”
Sullivan, who has spoken of his respect for people who submit themselves to the harsh spotlight of public life, has not ruled out a campaign of his own in the future. “If there were ever an opportunity to serve in elected office and I thought I could do a good job,” Sullivan told an audience in January, “I would definitely consider it.”
Others have seen broader horizons for him.
When the late Richard Holbrooke was on assignment in Afghanistan in 2009, the legendary diplomat found himself reporting back to Sullivan, then just 32 years old.
After one call, a colleague recalled, Holbrooke hung up the phone and said: “That guy could be secretary of state.”
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