International negotiators working on a deal to limit Iran’s nuclear program agreed Tuesday to extend the talks until July 7, the State Department said.
The talks in Vienna between Iran and the P5+1 countries — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — had widely been expected to go beyond the self-imposed deadline of end of the day Tuesday for an agreement. This was the first official confirmation that they would last longer, though officials have been hinting that an extension was possible.
State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf tweeted that the extension was “to allow more time for negotiations to reach a long-term solution.”
A member of Iran’s negotiating team earlier told the official Islamic Republic News Agency that the talks would continue several more days until “a good agreement” is reached.
The extension brings the talks dangerously close to another deadline the Obama administration hopes to avoid. If Congress receives an agreement with Iran by July 9, it will have only 30 days to review it. If the deal comes in later, Congress has 60 days, giving opponents more time to argue against the deal.
The extension also comes a week after Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, laid down a list of “major red lines” seen as a hardening of Iran’s position. That pronouncement fueled renewed calls for the Obama administration to consider walking away from the talks.
Administration officials have resisted that pressure, insisting they can still get a good deal that would meet their goal of ensuring Iran doesn’t develop a nuclear weapon over the next 10 years and possibly longer.
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“The thing that the president has been very clear about is if the Iranians refuse to agree to a framework that’s consistent — or a final agreement that’s consistent with the framework that was reached in April, then there won’t be an agreement. And we understand at this point that that’s something that the Iranians are hoping to avoid,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Monday.
Any agreement is expected to be based on a framework announced April 2 that would essentially freeze Iran’s nuclear program for 10 years in exchange for sanctions relief, including the release of more than $100 billion in frozen assets. But serious issues remain to be resolved in the talks, especially after Khamenei appeared to harden Iran’s position in a June 23 speech.
Among Khamenei’s “major red lines” laid out in the speech were no international inspections of Iran’s military sites and the “immediate removal of economic, financial and banking sanctions” on the signing of any nuclear agreement.
Neutral experts agree that the first condition would make any agreement unverifiable, and the second would become a serious issue for Congress if the administration agrees to that condition, since most U.S. sanctions in that area were imposed because of Iran’s continuing support for terrorism, not the nuclear issue. Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry have repeatedly promised lawmakers they would lift only nuclear-related sanctions as part of any deal.
Upon returning to the talks Tuesday from consultations in Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told reporters: “I’m here to get a final deal and I think we can.”
