Iran talks intensify with last-ditch attempt to reach agreement
Iran talks intensify in final-hour bid to resolve ‘tricky issues’
(about 5 hours later)
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — With just two days remaining before a deadline, Iran and diplomats from six countries trying to negotiate a preliminary nuclear deal met Monday in a last-ditch attempt to resolve differences on enriched-uranium stockpiles, sanctions and future research into nuclear technology.
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — As the White House said that talks on Iran’s nuclear program would go “down to the wire,” negotiators struggled to bridge their remaining differences in the hours before a Tuesday deadline.
Talks were scheduled throughout the day between U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, and foreign ministers Laurent Fabius of France, Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, Sergei Lavrov of Russia and Wang Yi of China.
With the clock ticking, diplomats from the six world powers conducting the negotiations with Iran held a string of meetings that have come to resemble an endurance test in their search for a preliminary agreement.
With no signs that a breakthrough was imminent, Lavrov, who arrived at the talks on Sunday evening, was already making plans to leave Lausanne on Monday afternoon. Russia has not been as intensely involved in the nitty gritty of negotiations as the United States has been, and it was not clear if his departure signified any pessimism toward an outcome.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who arrived Sunday, left for Moscow, and his spokeswoman said he would return if a deal looks realistic.
Lavrov would return if there is a “realistic understanding of a deal,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said.
Many assessments were measured, with success and failure deemed as equally plausible.
The top diplomats for Germany, France, Britain and China were not expected to leave, at least not on Monday.
Secretary of State John F. Kerry, who has been negotiating with the Iranians in Lausanne since Thursday, said that difficult issues remain on the table.
So many substantive issues are unresolved that the negotiators have not even had time to focus on whether they would commit their interim agreement — if they can reach one — to paper or not.
“We are working very hard to work those through,” he said Monday. “We are working late into the night and obviously into tomorrow. We are working with a view to get something done. There is a little more light there today, but there are still some tricky issues. Everyone knows the meaning of tomorrow.”
A senior State Department official denied Monday that there has been agreement on how to dispose of Iran’s enriched-uranium stockpiles. That became an issue when Iran’s deputy foreign minister told Iranian reporters late Sunday that Iran does not intend to send its stockpiles to Russia. That poses a possible wrinkle in the negotiations, because the world powers negotiating a deal do not want Iran to have enough enriched uranium on hand to be able to produce the fissile material needed to build nuclear weapons.
Gerard Arnaud, the French ambassador to Washington, tweeted, “Very substantial problems remain to be solved.”
“The export of stocks of enriched uranium is not in our program, and we do not intend sending them abroad,” Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said. “There is no question of sending the stocks abroad.”
[A framework? A deal? The semantics of the talks.]
However, Araghchi has made similar statements in recent months, and Tehran swiftly denied that any decision had been made on stockpiles.
Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the State Department, put the odds of an agreement at 50-50. “There’s a chance we will get it done,” she said.
The State Department official, who spoke about the sensitive talks on condition of anonymity, said the question of Iran’s stockpiles is still being negotiated.
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters that he was “cautiously optimistic” and saying that “positions are narrowing.”
“There is no question that disposition of their stockpile is essential to ensuring the program is exclusively peaceful,” the official told reporters. “There are viable options that have been under discussion for months, including shipping out the stockpile, but resolution is still being discussed.”
As the deadline loomed, the negotiators worked to settle some core issues: What kind of nuclear research would Iran be allowed to pursue in the final five years of a 15-year accord? When can the United Nations’ sanctions be eased? Will the sanctions be lifted or merely suspended so that they can be slapped back into place if Iran does not meet its commitments?
The goal, the official added, “is ensuring the amount of material remaining as enriched material will only be what is necessary for a working stock and no more.”
Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi tweeted that because the talks were ongoing, negotiators had not started drafting a document that outlines agreed-upon principles that would guide further discussions on complex scientific details. A final agreement is to be worked out by the end of June.
Even as negotiators were locked in talks Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned that the potential agreement would reward Iranian “aggression” in its support of Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The White House said that President Obama has been getting regular updates from the negotiating team, led by Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, and it predicted that the talks would stretch into the final hours.
“The agreement being formulated in Lausanne sends a message that there is no price for aggression and, on the contrary, that Iran’s aggression is to be rewarded,” he said in a statement. “The moderate and responsible countries in the region, especially Israel and also many other countries, will be the first to be hurt by this agreement. One cannot understand that when forces supported by Iran continue to conquer more ground in Yemen, in Lausanne they are closing their eyes to this aggression.”
“I’m not going to presuppose failure,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. “Those negotiations are going to go down to the wire.”
Officials in recent days have stepped up the pace of their meetings in advance of Tuesday’s deadline for a framework agreement laying out the principles for a final agreement to be completed by late June. Though they have continually reported the talks are making headway, they also caution that fundamental differences have not been settled and they may not succeed in getting an agreement.
In Jerusalem, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued a statement saying that the negotiators were turning a blind eye to Iranian “aggression” supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The six countries want Iran to suspend its nuclear research and development for 10 years, but Iran has not agreed to the pace at which restrictions would be lifted over the ensuing five years.
“The agreement being formulated in Lausanne sends a message that there is no price for aggression and on the contrary that Iran’s aggression is to be rewarded,” he said.
Tehran has insisted that its nuclear weapons program is purely for civilian purposes and that it has no intention of building nuclear weapons. But Iran is willing to accept the restrictions in return for an end to international sanctions that have hobbled the economy.
“The moderate and responsible countries in the region, especially Israel and also many other countries, will be the first to be hurt by this agreement. One cannot understand that when forces supported by Iran continue to conquer more ground in Yemen, in Lausanne they are closing their eyes to this aggression.”
The two big sticking points, according to a U.S. official familiar with the negotiations, are Iran’s research into more modern centrifuges that can separate and process uranium faster, and how fast United Nations sanctions can be lifted.
[Netanyahu says U.S. is on verge of ‘bad deal’ with Iran over nuclear program]
Several of the diplomats are rearranging their schedules so that they can remain at the talks for several more days.
The Tuesday deadline is crucial for U.S. negotiators, because Obama and Kerry have said that if a framework agreement is not reached by then, they will have to assess whether to continue the process. But an interim agreement, under which Iran has limited its nuclear output, does not expire until June 30. Negotiators from France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia have expressed less urgency about getting some sort of understanding outlined by midnight Tuesday.
The negotiations have grown more intensive, starting early in the morning and continuing until almost midnight. A U.S. official familiar with the talks said it would not be surprising if the negotiations come down to the wire, continuing through deadline day.
[Fact-checking Obama’s reference to “unprecedented” nuclear inspections]
Negotiations started more than a decade ago, but they picked up momentum a year and a half ago after Hassan Rouhani was elected president of Iran on a promise to get sanctions relief.
An agreement, if there is one, could still be difficult to sell to a skeptical Congress — and many Americans.
Although nothing is considered settled until the parameters of the entire agreement are outlined, Iran has tentatively agreed that an accord would last 15 years and that sanctions would be eased gradually. Those represent concessions by Tehran, which initially wanted a shorter duration and immediate sanctions relief.
“The very notion of America compromising with Iran is very difficult,” said Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council, who is in Lausanne and following the talks. “We’re dealing with what America thinks of as a Third World country, and the United States doesn’t have to compromise.
But differences remain over the details within those areas, said a U.S. official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.
“But this is not about discussing Iran’s capitulation. It’s a negotiation.”
One sticking point is timing: when Iran can expect to see at least some international sanctions lifted, particularly those imposed by the United Nations.
Parsi said Iran’s deputy foreign minister may have been practicing some 11th-hour brinksmanship when he told Iranian reporters Sunday that Tehran would not send most of its stockpiles of enriched uranium to Russia.
“We all have agreed, including Iran, that there needs to be a phased, step-by-step, reciprocal approach in any understanding that is reached. How we judge that, obviously, may be a little different on different parameters of the agreement, and that’s what a negotiation is all about,” the official said.
Araghchi has made similar comments in recent months, and Tehran swiftly denied that any decision on stockpiles had been reached. A senior State Department official said that the fate of Iran’s stockpiles is still open for discussion.
Another persistent disagreement, the official said, involves how much nuclear research and development Iran would be permitted to conduct over the final five years of a 15-year pact. Iran wants to modernize about 6,000 centrifuges it would be allowed to keep operating for civilian purposes.
“Iran has by and large accepted American demands,” Parsi said. “What it’s not accepting is what it’s getting in return. The United States has said it won’t lift sanctions upfront. But it may have to.”
“A lot of other pieces of the puzzle that sit on the table are not yet resolved,” the official said. “But they are the kind of puzzle pieces that most of us think will fall into place more likely than not if we get through some of these really tough, tough issues.”
William Booth in Jerusalem contributed to this report.
In Israel, Netanyahu expressed alarm over what he characterized as a budding “Iran-Lausanne-Yemen axis.”
“This agreement, as it appears, confirms all of our concerns and even more so,” he said at his weekly cabinet meeting.
Later, Netanyahu continued his criticism of a possible deal during a meeting with a delegation of U.S. senators led by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
“As Israel and the Arab countries see Iran progressing with its aggression to conquer Yemen and the Bab al-Mandeb straits, talks continue as usual and go on, on a deal that from everything that we hear, paves Iran’s way to the bomb,” he said, according to a transcript released by his office.
“Will the fact that Iran will have now, while it’s still having sanctions, doesn’t yet have an easy path to the bomb, it is conquering the Middle East in ways that are unprecedented?” he continued. “Will this make their move forward more moderate or will it make it more extreme? I think it’s a no-brainer.”
McConnell said the visitors he was leading “share your concerns about this potential agreement.” He vowed to bring to a vote a bill requiring congressional approval of any deal.
And if the talks collapse without a deal, he said, “ratcheting up sanctions might be the best direction to take.”
William Booth in Jerusalem and Daniela Deane in London contributed to this report.
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Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world
