Hakan Fidan reveals failed Turkish attempts to stop Iran war
Turkey's foreign minister on Tuesday disclosed repeated Turkish initiatives to prevent a war between the United States and Iran, saying Tehran had failed to understand the mood in Washington.
Hakan Fidan said Turkey took its first steps to bring Iran and the US back to negotiations after a phone call between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and US President Donald Trump on 27 January.
Middle East Eye previously reported that Erdogan had proposed holding a teleconference between Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian. Although Trump was supportive of the idea, Pezeshkian declined the offer.
“Had the proposal for a trilateral meeting between the United States, Turkey and Mr Pezeshkian been accepted by the Iranian side, it would have been a game-changing development,” Fidan said.
“Because we were well aware that negotiations had reached an impasse on multiple fronts and that game-changing interventions were necessary.”
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Fidan added that the atmosphere surrounding the US-Iran dispute grew extremely tense in January. He described Erdogan’s phone call with Trump as historic, saying the US was on the verge of deciding whether to carry out a military strike on Iran.
“It became apparent that they were extremely serious and under considerable decision-making pressure,” Fidan said. “Those were truly dark days. Talk of war breaking out, of an imminent strike, was everywhere.”
Three days after the Trump-Erdogan phone call, Turkey hosted Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Istanbul.
During the talks, Fidan said Turkey developed a diplomatic formula to satisfy both parties and conveyed it to the Americans, requesting a meeting based on those conditions, which he declined to disclose.
“We divided the topics of negotiation into two categories, as the Americans were insisting on addressing four issues simultaneously with the Iranians, an approach the Iranians firmly rejected,” he said.
“We proposed that two of the issues be negotiated directly between the United States and Iran, while the remaining two be addressed by regional countries, including ourselves. We essentially constructed a negotiation architecture in advance.”
Fidan said the Americans agreed to the idea and indicated they could meet the Iranians immediately.
Araghchi, however, told Turkish officials that he would need to run the proposal by senior officials in Iran.
Turkish officials told MEE in early February that Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a US-Israeli strike on Saturday, opposed a multilateral meeting in Istanbul to discuss the Iran file.
Fidan said the Iranians eventually reverted to the previous format, opting for Oman as the venue for bilateral talks rather than engaging regional countries such as Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Jordan.
After several rounds of talks in Oman, Fidan said he realised on 27 February that things were not progressing in a positive direction. However, he believed that if the talks had continued longer, a resolution might have been reached.
“The Americans, meanwhile, were operating under a time constraint imposed by their military build-up. On top of all this, there was enormous pressure from Israel,” Fidan said.
“My own conviction is this: had the Iranians accurately assessed the decision-making pressure President Trump was facing and placed something in his hands earlier, Israel's pressure might not have proved as effective as it ultimately did.”
Fidan said the US had still not made up its mind about its endgame, whether it sought only to destroy Iran’s military capabilities or pursue regime change, adding that Ankara would prefer the former, as the latter would introduce far more complex risks into the region.
“At the very least, we can begin here to explore halting military operations from this standpoint,” he said.
Fidan said the temporary leadership council selected to govern until Iran appoints a new supreme leader could represent an opportunity to bring the war to an end.
Pezeshkian, a member of the council, is seen by Ankara as someone it could work with to make progress on the issues raised by the Americans.
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