"We
don’t communicate with the Iranians that much, but when we do the Swiss
have played a critical role to convey messages and avoid
miscalculation."
“I'd Like To See Them Call Me": How Trump Used An Encrypted Swiss Fax Machine To Defuse The Iran Crisis
Even
as Trump was rage-tweeting on Jan 4, two days after the killing of
Iran's top military leader Qassem Soleimani, that he would hit 52
targets including Iranian heritage sites for potential retaliation if
America suffered losses following an Iranian attack, warning that "those
targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD", the US
president was busy, secretly using an encrypted back-channel to bring
the world back from the brink of war.
As the WSJ reports,
just hours after the U.S. strike which killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem
Soleimani, the Trump administration sent an urgent back channel message
to Tehran: "Don’t escalate." The encrypted fax message
was sent via the Swiss Embassy in Iran, one of the few means of direct,
confidential communication between the two sides, U.S. officials told
the WSJ. Then, in frantic attempts to de-escalate even as top US and
Iranian leaders were stirring patriotic sentiment and nationalistic
fervor, the White House and Iranian leaders exchanged further messages
in the days that followed, which officials in both countries described
as far more measured than the fiery rhetoric traded publicly by
politicians. The
Swiss ambassador to Iran, Markus Leitner, here with Iranian President
Hassan Rouhani in 2017, helped shuttle messages between the U.S. and
Iran. Photo: Swiss embassy.
It worked: a week later, and after a retaliatory, if highly
theatrical, Iranian missile attack on two military bases hosting
American troops that purposefully inflicted no casualties, Washington
and Tehran have stepped back from the brink of open hostilities (for
now).
"We don’t communicate with the Iranians that much, but when
we do the Swiss have played a critical role to convey messages and avoid
miscalculation," a senior U.S. official said.
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