International talks seeking to limit Iran’s nuclear program blew past another self-imposed deadline early Wednesday as negotiators decided they had made enough progress to keep trying for an agreement, although several important issues remained unresolved.
Officials of the P5+1 group — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — were expected to make some kind of announcement on what they had agreed on before the March 31 deadline passed. But Iran rejected the idea of a partial declaration and wanted talks to continue until agreement was reached on all points, officials told Iranian state media.
Though U.S. negotiators agreed to keep the talks going in Lausanne, Switzerland, for at least another day, White House spokesman Josh Earnest hinted that the Obama administration’s patience was running out.
“I think it’s fair to say that we’ve reached our limit right now in so far as the conversations have been going on for more than a year,” he told reporters Tuesday.
“At the same time, it also doesn’t make sense if we are getting serious engagement from the other side, to abruptly end the talks,” he said. “If we are making progress toward the finish line, we should keep going.”
Negotiators remained stuck on several technical issues, including how many centrifuges Iran would be allowed to operate to enrich uranium, what to do with the enriched uranium stockpiles and what limits to place on Iran’s nuclear research and development capabilities. All of these factors must fall into place to meet the P5+1’s stated goal of keeping Iran at least a year away from the ability to develop a nuclear weapon.
Iran reportedly was continuing to refuse to give a full accounting of its past nuclear weapons research, which international experts have said is crucial to ensuring the ability to verify that its nuclear program is not being used to develop a weapon. The International Atomic Energy Agency, which would have the responsibility of verifying compliance with any agreement, says Iran has made progress on resolving one of 12 outstanding issues but has not cooperated on the next two.
“You need to have a good baseline for a solid monitoring. You need to know how far they got, which are the important institutions and capabilities so that you pick the right things for the monitoring, because if you go the other way around you are more or less fencing one hand behind your back and it might be difficult to find the proper places and detect them early enough,” said Olli Heinonen, a former IAEA deputy director general.
Heinonen said negotiators could hold out for additional access rights to compensate, “but I think by far the best starting point is to have a complete disclosure.”
The timing of sanctions relief also has been a major obstacle to agreement, with Iran insisting on immediate lifting of international sanctions and the P5+1 seeking a phased relief based on Iranian behavior.
An Iranian official participating in the talks said Tuesday that negotiators had agreed to lift sanctions on Iran’s oil, gas and banking sectors as soon as a deal is implemented.
“Sanctions have many aspects, there are unilateral sanctions, U.S. sanctions, [European Union] sanctions, [U.N. Security Council] sanctions … I should say that many of these aspects have been resolved, but still there are some limited areas that also need to be resolved, and we are now concentrating on those remaining technical aspects with regard to the sanctions,” Foreign Ministry official Hamid Baeidinejad told state-controlled Press TV.
“The termination of oil sanctions, gas sanctions, financial banking … many of them have been resolved. … But still there are a limited number of areas that are still under negotiations, which we hope we can resolve them and then we can admit that the whole issue of sanctions is resolved.”
His comments are likely to come as a surprise to many members of Congress, where the issue of sanctions relief also is at the heart of the dispute between lawmakers and the Obama administration over congressional approval of a deal.
Many of the sanctions Baeidinejad mentioned are enacted into U.S. law and would need to be rescinded by legislation. Further, a bipartisan bill co-sponsored by Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the panel’s top Democrat, would tie President Obama’s ability to waive any sanctions against Iran to the process of congressional oversight of any nuclear deal.
Obama has refused to submit any deal to Congress for approval, and the White House has said he would veto the Corker-Menendez bill.
Most lawmakers had already grown impatient over the talks dragging on before the latest deadline was missed, with even Democrats saying they would act if negotiators could not craft a political framework for a final deal by the end of March.
Though Congress is in recess for the next two weeks, Corker plans to bring his bill before the Foreign Relations Committee for approval April 14, and expects to have the support from a veto-proof majority in any floor vote.
Also waiting in the wings is legislation by Menendez and Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., which would impose tough new sanctions on Iran if the talks fail to produce a final deal by July 1, when an interim nuclear deal expires. The bill was approved in January by the Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee by an overwhelming bipartisan majority and has 52 co-sponsors.
“Instead of another extension of the nuclear talks, Congress should vote on Kirk-Menendez to empower the president to impose new sanctions on Iran,” Kirk tweeted on Tuesday.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, who has emerged as a leading opponent of the talks, went further, saying it was time for the United States to walk away.
“We should reinstate existing sanctions suspended under the Joint Plan of Action and Congress should act immediately to impose new sanctions,” he said. “It’s time for the United States to regain the upper hand and quit negotiating out of weakness.”
