Negotiators did not reach agreement by Monday’s deadline on limiting Iran’s nuclear program, so the talks have been extended until July 1, a move that could push the incoming Republican-controlled Congress to tighten sanctions over President Obama’s objections.
Negotiators expect to have a broad agreement by March 1 and to work out the details by the new deadline, Secretary of State John Kerry told reporters at a news conference in Vienna, after representatives from the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China ended the current session of talks with Iranian officials.
“At the end of four months … if we have not agreed on the major elements by that point in time and there is no clear path, we can revisit how we then want to choose to proceed,” Kerry said.
Negotiators will meet in December to build on the progress made in the latest round of talks to replace an interim agreement from November 2013, he said. Until then, the interim agreement will remain in place, which means Iran will continue to receive $700 million in assets frozen under international sanctions as long as it continues to suspend its nuclear program.
The extension did not go over well with lawmakers in Washington, who warned last week they would not accept a result that allows Iran to continue to violate international restrictions on its nuclear program. They have threatened to move forward with new sanctions.
Kerry asked them to be patient, and his case was bolstered by an International Atomic Energy Agency report released Monday that said Iran was largely living up to its obligations under the interim deal.
“I hope they will come to see the wisdom of leaving us the equilibrium for a few months to be able to proceed without sending messages that might be misinterpreted and cause miscalculation,” he said.
But for many lawmakers the second extension of the talks (the interim agreement was only supposed to last six months) was one too many, amid concerns that the Obama administration already has made too many concessions to Tehran without ensuring Iran could not build a nuclear weapon. One of the key sticking points was whether Iran should be required to come clean about its past work in developing such a weapon. The IAEA has said it cannot verify that such research has stopped, and experts warn that no agreement would be viable without such proof.
“One thing that could change Tehran’s resistance to agreeing to a meaningful and effective agreement to keep it from developing a nuclear weapon is more economic pressure. Since the beginning of these negotiations, the administration aggressively opposed congressional attempts to give our negotiators more leverage with added sanctions, to go into force should negotiations fail. We’ll never know if that prospect would have made a difference over the past 12 months. But we do know that talks haven’t succeeded without more pressure,” said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., House Foreign Affairs Committee chairman.
“This seven-month extension should be used to tighten the economic vice on Tehran — already suffering from falling energy prices — to force the concessions that Iran has been resisting.”
The House has passed a package of tougher sanctions against Iran, but a similar measure was bottled up in the Senate by Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. But Reid is handing over control of the chamber in January to Republican Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has promised a vote on sanctions legislation.
“There’s certainly bipartisan support” for tougher sanctions, McConnell spokesman Don Stewart said.
The last time Obama tangled with Congress over Iran sanctions in 2010, legislation passed both chambers overwhelmingly with veto-proof, bipartisan majorities. Though the administration initially opposed the sanctions, officials now claim credit for them having forced Iran to the negotiating table. But they insist new sanctions would not have the same effect and would violate the interim deal with Tehran.
Many Democrats in Congress do not share that view, however. Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., outgoing chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, is a co-sponsor of the stalled Senate bill and joined the other co-sponsor, Republican Mark Kirk of Illinois, in warning the administration on Nov. 12 that the two lawmakers would “work decisively” to prevent a deal that did not “prevent Iran from ever becoming a threshold nuclear weapons state.”
“Now more than ever, it’s critical that Congress enacts sanctions that give Iran’s mullahs no choice but to dismantle their illicit nuclear program and allow the International Atomic Energy Agency full and unfettered access to assure the international community’s security,” Kirk said Monday.
