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Iran Nuclear Talks Are Extended Once Again Iran Nuclear Talks Are Extended Once Again
(about 14 hours later)
VIENNA — The talks to complete a landmark accord limiting Iran’s nuclear program have been extended for several days after negotiators acknowledged that they would be unable to meet a Tuesday deadline. VIENNA — A deadline is a deadline, except, it seems, at the Iran nuclear negotiations.
To give negotiators more time to pursue a final accord, the diplomats agreed to extend through Friday an interim nuclear accord called the Joint Plan of Action. That interim agreement, which had been set to expire on Tuesday, freezes much of Iran’s nuclear program in return for modest sanctions relief. As diplomats declared they were entering yet another overtime period on Tuesday — the second since negotiators blew past the supposedly final June 30 deadline for concluding the accord — they sidestepped any talk of a firm date for reaching one of the hardest but potentially most consequential accords in recent diplomatic history.
“We are continuing to negotiate for the next couple of days,” Federica Mogherini, the foreign policy chief for the European Union, told reporters here. “We are continuing to negotiate for the next couple of days,” said Federica Mogherini, the foreign policy chief for the European Union, who insisted that should not be construed as establishing yet another deadline.
This is the second time the talks have been extended since Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here in late June. The original goal was to complete a final accord by June 30. Yet at the same time, Western officials, knowing that it is important to have the other side always believe that you are ready to walk away, asserted that the talks were not open-ended.
Ms. Mogherini said that the negotiations had entered “a difficult and sensitive” phase, but she did not discuss the remaining issues. “We are taking negotiations day by day,” said Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the American negotiating team.
The unresolved issues in recent days have included what limits would be placed on the development of more efficient types of centrifuges after the first decade of an accord, what steps would be taken to address suspicions about Iran’s past nuclear activities, and the timeline for removing sanctions. For the Obama administration, its critics in Congress and even for the Iranians, the psychology and tactics of setting deadlines have changed drastically over the past year.
The Obama administration hoped to finish the accord by Thursday, so that it could be submitted to Congress for a 30-day review. If the agreement is finished this summer, the duration of the review period will double. Earlier this year, congressional Republicans pressed for a firm date for coming up with an agreement, warning they were ready to respond to a negotiating failure by imposing tougher sanctions on Iran.
“We are taking these negotiations day to day to see if we can conclude a comprehensive agreement,” Marie Harf, a spokeswoman for the American negotiating team here, said in a statement. Then it became clear that the deadlines were helping Tehran more than they were helping Washington. The Iranians seemed to be holding out on critical issues in the hopes that the United States would yield in the final hours.
“We’ve made substantial progress in every area, but this work is highly technical and high-stakes for all of the countries involved,” Ms. Harf added. “We’re frankly more concerned about the quality of the deal than we are about the clock, though we also know that difficult decisions won’t get any easier with time.” So Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who sponsored the law that now requires the White House to send any agreement to Congress for approval, began urging patience.
Although some diplomats may leave in the coming days, Mr. Kerry and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, plan to stay in Vienna and keep negotiating. Ms. Mogherini will remain, too. Obama administration officials argue that deadlines would push all sides, but especially the Iranians, whose opaque political system make it difficult to reach the decisions needed to seal any nuclear accord.
The six world powers negotiating with Iran are the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China. Yet administration officials have also been willing to interpret the deadlines somewhat liberally. At an early round of talks in Lausanne, Switzerland, American negotiators opted to put another couple of days on the clock in early April rather than return home empty-handed.
An Iranian spokesman said that no new deadline had been set, as did Ms. Mogherini. “It does not mean we are extending our deadline,” she said in front of the Coburg Hotel, were the negotiations are being held. “An agreement is still possible.” The Iranians have insisted that meeting deadlines did not enter into their calculations. “We do not see any definite deadline as to our work here,” a senior Iranian official told reporters here on Monday.
After repeatedly missing deadlines, the United States and its negotiating partners appeared to be reluctant to formally announce another target date. There are concerns that setting a deadline might work to the Iranians’ advantage by encouraging them to hold out on critical issues, in the hope that Western powers will yield in the final hours. No deadline, perhaps, but plenty of urgency. The chief Iranian negotiator, Mohammad Javad Zarif, knows he will be measured at home by the details of the deal, but also by the speed with which sanctions on oil sales and financial transactions begin to be lifted.
Some Congressional Republicans have complained that Mr. Kerry was rushing to finish the accord by Thursday, which would allow the Obama administration to submit the accord to Congress this week and limit the review period to 30 days. The fixation all sides have on time, after 20 months, has been exacerbated in part by soaring temperatures in Vienna, overwhelming the air-conditioning systems of a city that is long accustomed to heated negotiations, though not to actual heat.
Senator Bob Corker, the Tennessee Republican who chairs the Foreign Relations Committee, urged Mr. Kerry to take his time in a telephone call on Saturday. To sustain itself during its marathon meetings, the United States negotiating team has since the beginning of June consumed at least 10 pounds of Twizzlers, 30 pounds of mixed nuts and dried fruit, 20 pounds of string cheese and more than 200 Rice Krispie Treats, according to its informal count.
Mr. Kerry told reporters on Sunday that the Obama administration would not cut corners just to get an agreement and was prepared to walk away from the talks if a sound accord could not be reached. At a briefing Tuesday, a senior administration official suggested that progress had been made on some long-running issues, including access to military sites by inspectors. The answer lay in guaranteeing what is known as “managed access” for inspectors working for the International Atomic Energy Agency. The term refers to an elaborate set of procedures that allow a country to shield conventional, secret military facilities while still allowing the agency’s inspectors to look for evidence of nuclear activity. How that would be established under an agreement with the Iranians, and how any disputes over managed access would be resolved, remained unclear.
Similarly, the official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, declined to say whether the scope and sophistication of Iran’s longer-range research and development program to design far faster, more efficient centrifuges to enrich uranium would ultimately be made public. Unless that information was made available in some form, it would be difficult to assess to what extent an accord slows Iran’s longer-term nuclear ambitions.
And there have been continuing arguments over the shape of a new United Nations Security Council resolution on Iran that would replace several existing resolutions that impose sanctions on the country’s import and export of conventional arms. American officials said there was agreement in Lausanne three months ago that the arms embargo would continue under any new resolution.
In Washington on Tuesday, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who is coming to the end of his term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, bluntly told Congress that “under no circumstances should we relieve pressure on Iran relative to ballistic missile capabilities and arms trafficking.”
Yet Iran is pushing heavily to ease or remove the restrictions, possibly with support from Russia, which may want to sell arms to Tehran. Sergei V. Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, said Tuesday that the United Nations ban on missile and arms sales to Iran was still a “big problem” in the talks.
Administration officials still hoped to conclude the talks by Thursday — though that is not a deadline — so the agreement could be submitted to Congress for a 30-day review. That review period would double if the agreement were completed later this summer.
The White House has sought to rebut Republican charges that it has been rushing to finish the agreement in order to limit the time congressional critics might have to mobilize opposition to an accord. “The president’s ready to call the team home” if American objectives cannot be met, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary said.
But the Obama administration is not at that point yet. The first sign the talks would be extended came when a sign was posted in the lobby of a four-star hotel notifying members of the United States delegation who are staying there that they needed new room keys because their reservations had been extended. (The new reservation, a hotel clerk said, is until Saturday.)