Pressure is mounting on the Obama administration to walk away from talks on limiting Iran’s nuclear program after an extra day of negotiating Wednesday failed to result in agreement, but officials planned to keep working nevertheless.
Secretary of State John Kerry will remain in Lausanne, Switzerland, for another day of talks on Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf tweeted. She noted that the current round of talks, which started a week ago, are making progress, but negotiators have not reached a political understanding.
The ongoing talks between Iran and the P5+1 group — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — were supposed to have resulted in a political framework for a final agreement by Tuesday, but negotiators let that deadline slip. The final agreement would replace an interim deal that expires July 1.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said negotiators were working on a statement but had not been able to finalize it.
“Talks are still going on,” Zarif said, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency, adding that “discussions are underway not between two delegations but among several ones,” and have been complicated by competing interests.
Earlier, Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told reporters that any agreement limiting Iran’s nuclear program must guarantee that all sanctions against that country are lifted.
Araqchi also said Iran insists on being allowed to continue research and development of advanced centrifuges used to enrich uranium — an insistence that casts doubt on whether the country’s nuclear program is peaceful.
“Until we have solutions to all problems, we cannot have a comprehensive agreement,” he said.
The dispute over sanctions has put the U.S. negotiating team, led by Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, under pressure since it’s also the primary focus of congressional concerns about any deal. Many of the sanctions in dispute are enacted into U.S. law, and Congress would need to act to overturn them.
But lawmakers from both parties are skeptical of the administration’s negotiating strategy and want guarantees that any deal would prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon before they would be willing to vote to lift sanctions.
Reported concessions already made by U.S. negotiators have raised concerns among international experts about whether the deal can keep Iran at least a year away from developing a nuclear weapon if it decides to cheat. Experts have said that allowing Iran to develop and operate advanced centrifuges would add to those concerns.
The Senate is poised to consider bipartisan legislation that would impose new sanctions on Iran if the talks fail, and many lawmakers are saying the time has come for the United States to walk away and increase the pressure.
“We appreciate the diligent efforts to find a diplomatic solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions. However, it is clear the negotiations are not going well,” Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., and potential GOP presidential candidate Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said in a joint statement.
“At every step, the Iranians appear intent on retaining the capacity to achieve a nuclear weapon. Without significant change, we have little confidence the negotiations will end well.”
Rep. Robert Pittenger, R-N.C., invoked President Ronald Reagan in a message to President Obama, noting that the former president had reached a better arms-control deal from the Soviet Union after walking away from negotiations.
“Mr. President, I encourage you to learn the lessons of history,” he said. “Now is the time to employ severe sanctions against Iran and support those who fight for freedom and democracy in their country. Appeasing and concurring with the demands of Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism, has been counterproductive and mindless. We should seek to weaken our adversary and not enable them to work against our interests.”
Even former Democratic National Committee chairman and presidential candidate Howard Dean suggested that a pause in the talks would benefit the U.S. position.
“I think the United States is negotiating from a much stronger position than we were four years ago, and the reason for that is these guys are desperate to get rid of the sanctions,” Dean told MSNBC.
“I do think it makes sense to be at the negotiating table,” he said. “I’m worried about the way these negotiations have gone.”
But White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters the Obama administration was open to extending the talks as long as they make progress, though he suggested Iran was stonewalling on efforts to ensure its nuclear program was not aimed at developing a weapon.
“We’ve been at this for more than a year now, and the time has come for Iranian negotiators to begin to make the commitments that the U.S. and the international community will insist on,” Earnest said. “We have not yet received the specific tangible commitments that the international community seeks.”
• This article was originally published at 3:52 p.m. and has been updated.
