Obama: U.S. Embassy In Iran Not Likely Anytime Soon

President Barack Obama told NPR’s Steve Inskeep this week that while he would “never say never,” it is unlikely that a U.S. embassy will be opening in Iran’s capital Tehran before he leaves office.

When asked if the recent steps toward normalization of relations with Cuba announced earlier this month presaged a similar shift with Iran, Obama pointed to key differences between the two countries and their relationships with the United States.

“Cuba is a circumstance in which for 50 years, we have done the same thing over and over again and there hadn’t been any change,” Obama said, describing the island country as “a relatively tiny country that doesn’t pose any significant threat to us or our allies.”

Iran, on the other hand,

is a large, sophisticated country that has a track record of state-sponsored terrorism, that we known was attempting to develop a nuclear weapon – or at least the component parts that would be required to develop a nuclear weapon – that has engaged in disruptions to our allies, whose rhetoric is not only explicitly anti-American but also has been incendiary when it comes to its attitudes towards the state of Israel.

Inskeep’s interview covered a wide range of topics, including domestic politics and Obama’s relationship with Congress. While the Iran portion did not air until Wednesday morning, the full transcript has been available online since Monday and sparked a divided reaction among policy experts as well as people in Iran.

“If you look at the transcript of Obama’s interview with Steve Inskeep, it has to be one of the most conciliatory interviews on Iran that any U.S. president has given in the last 35 years,” Iran researcher Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment told NPR’s Robert Siegel on Tuesday. “And it kind of shows you where he’s at. Rapprochement with Iran or, at the minimum, a nuclear deal with Iran would be a significant part of Obama’s foreign policy legacy.”

The president made clear that he still holds to his campaign promise to engage with “rogue regimes” like Iran if it “advances American interests,” but pointed to elements within Iran that are committed to perpetuating the status quo for their own political benefit. If Iran is able to “break through [its] isolation,” the country could become “a very successful regional power.”

While Obama argued that such an outcome “would be good for everybody,” others are less convinced.

In an article headlined “Iran Is Getting Away With Murder,” The Atlantic ’s Jeffrey Goldberg wrote Wednesday that “there isn’t much in the way of proof to suggest that Iran’s rulers are looking to join an international order whose norms are defined by the United States and its allies.” He pointed to Tehran’s support of Bashar al-Assad in Syria as evidence that it isn’t truly willing to work with the U.S. or within the framework of international law.

But Sadjadpour told NPR that along with the crash in oil prices and Western sanctions, Iranian support of Assad is helping to cripple the country’s economy. And in a letter to his counterparts, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said last week that he is “confident that a comprehensive agreement is imminently within reach.”

But despite Obama’s conciliatory tone, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman denied on Tuesday that a U.S. embassy in Tehran might be possible any time soon, saying that “negotiations merely revolve on nuclear issues and have nothing to do with reopening of embassies.”

Obama: U.S. Embassy In Iran Not Likely Anytime Soon