The White House on Monday downplayed the significance of the June 30 deadline in its talks with Iran — which it has said it will miss — and said U.S. officials would remain engaged in the negotiations to ensure that Tehran is living up to commitments it made back in April.
“I would anticipate that negotiations will extend past the [June 30] deadline,” White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters Monday. “This is not surprising or uncommon.”
Earnest referred to the previous round of negotiations with Iran that took place Lausanne, Switzerland, which was supposed to end March 31 but continued until April 2 and produced a working framework, but not a final deal that could be implemented.
U.S. and other world powers negotiating with Tehran were supposed to hash out the thorny details that the April 2 framework did not resolve by June 30. Those details include when sanctions would be lifted, how quickly sanctions could be snapped back if Tehran fails to live up to its commitments, and whether Iran will allow international inspections at military sites.
The new missed deadline, Earnest said, is not an indication that talks have reached a brick wall, but said is simply an indication that there are still some “important unresolved issues” in the negotiations.
“These are not issues that can be solved in the next 36 hours,” he said, repeating that the U.S. is committed to ensuring that the talks produce the most “intrusive” inspections of any nuclear program in history.
Previously, Earnest and other White House officials had predicted that the odds of reaching a final deal were at least 50/50 but the president’s spokesman Monday declined to offer any type of odds.
“I’m not feeling like I’m ready to make a deal,” he said.
Last week, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a speech broadcast live on Iranian state television, demanded that most of the sanctions be removed before Tehran has dismantled part of its nuclear infrastructure and before international inspectors verify that the country is beginning to meet its commitments.
Asked whether Iranian officials can be trusted in the negotiations considering the supreme leader’s most recent public comments, Earnest said any final deal reached would not be based on trust, but rather verification measures built into the deal.
“The international community is requiring Iran to make some pretty serious commitments here …,” he said. “What is built into this agreement is a set of verification measures that will ensure that international experts have access to Iranian sites, facilities and even Iranian personnel.”
If they don’t live up to their side of the agreement, there will be “mechanisms” written into the agreement to “snap sanctions back in place,” he added.
A reporter then suggested that there is widespread skepticism that sanctions would be easily snapped back, and compared it to skepticism over the existence of the tooth fairy.
Earnest said the details of how the sanctions would be sanctions regime would work “is at least part of what is contributing to the talks going over the deadline here.”
