- 15 May 2009
- 1 Comments
- Diplomacy, Nuclear file
After reports from Haaretz earlier in the week that the Obama administration is considering an October deadline on talks with Iran, and following the Wall Street Journal’s reportage of the same deadlines story, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly was confronted at yesterday’s press briefing on the administration’s timeline for engagement.
Personally, I think the poorly-sourced and largely speculative Haaretz report is much ado about nothing. And I am no more convinced now that the Wall Street Journal has decided to pick it up and run with it–of course there are “senior US officials” more than willing to confirm reports of some talk of a deadline, but that in no way makes it the policy regardless of whatever wishful thinking these folks might be engaging in.
Fortunately, State’s Ian Kelly was pretty definitive yesterday:
QUESTION: Back to Iran , there’s a press report this morning that the Administration is basically going to give Iran until like, the UN General Assembly in September to respond to the U.S. dialogue – an effort hasn’t started yet.
MR. KELLY: Yeah.
QUESTION: Does that coincide with your view on it?
MR. KELLY: Well, let me just say that we’re not setting any deadline.
We’re not interested in setting any kind of specific or even notional timeline. We are, of course, monitoring very closely what the Iranians are doing, assessing progress. But it – we don’t have any timeline forward.
What – you know, we’re not going to let this string out forever, of course, but we don’t have any timetable on it.