Is Dennis Ross in trouble?

Jim Lobe, here

"Everyone knows that the Israelis are pressing hard for the Obama administration to set a a relatively short-term deadline for progress in its prospective diplomatic engagement with Iran to bear fruit, after which it would move to tighten sanctions, hopefully in coordination with the EU and the other permanent members of the UN Security Council, against Tehran. If, after an additional period of time, Iran proved unresponsive, the Israelis hope that Washington would either take military action on its own or give the green light to Jerusalem to do so. By all accounts, Prime Minister Netanyahu will make some understanding about such a time line his Priority Number One in his talks with Obama in the White House Monday.

Now, on the eve of those talks, the administration appears to be preemptively rejecting this pressure, at least publicly. How else to interpret the following exchange today between reporters and State Department spokesman Ian Kelly about a report in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal headlined, “U.S., Allies Set October Target for Iran Progress: If Benchmarks on Nuclear Negotiations ARen’t Met, Sanctions Would Follow…” and an earlier — and remarkably similar — report that appeared May 10 in Haaretz?

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.

QUESTION: Well, what –

MR. KELLY: Yes. Sorry, Matt.

QUESTION: They were saying the same thing. They’re saying the same thing, that they are watching the U.S. Administration and waiting for signs of change in policy, so –

MR. KELLY: Well, there is a change in policy. I mean, we have – we’ve decided that we – we’re going to – we want to – we’re going to have a seat at the table, of the P-5+1 table. We’ve decided to engage. We’ve decided that the – our previous approach of isolating Iran didn’t work. And so we want to give engagement a chance.

I’m sorry, Matt. You –

QUESTION: Well, I just – back on the whole idea of the timeline, then.This was first reported in the Israeli press over the weekend, this whole October idea. You’re saying that that’s incorrect?

MR. KELLY: I’m saying that we do not have any timeline.

QUESTION: Does that mean that these reports are incorrect?

MR. KELLY: I’m saying that we’ve decided that we want to get Iran to come back to the table and engage with us at the – on the P-5+1 process.

I don’t think there’s any doubt that Kelly knew exactly what articles these questions were based on, and thus to deny there is even a “notional timeline” seems an unusually clear rejection of the main point of the Journal and Haaretz stories.

This (WSJ) account strongly echoed the Haaretz article by Barak Ravid, entitled “U.S. Puts October Deadline on Iran Talks.” Its lede: “The United States has set October as its target for completing the first round of talks with Iran on its nuclear program, according to confidential reports sent to Jerusalem.”

Now, I have no idea who the “senior European officials” was with whom Ross communicated, but it seems like key elements of both stories make Ross a central figure, and one has to wonder whether he was Solomon’s main source. So, assuming for the moment, that Ross is playing some role in getting this story out, is he doing so as part of a strategy that has White House backing, or is he doing it as a way of bolstering Netanyahu’s position on the eve of his visit here? And does the State Department’s explicit denial of a deadline or even a “notional timeline” mark a definitive repudiation of these two reports, in which Ross and the messages he was sending during his recent trip seem to be a common denominator, or is it something less than that? After all, the administration would not want to be seen as issuing what can only be seen as an ultimatum to Tehran even before serious engagement has been initiated (despite Clinton’s recent promise to impose “crippling” sanctions against Iran if it does not respond). In any event, the timing of the State Department spokesman’s statement seems quite remarkable in light of the Netanyahu’s imminent arrival...."