Advertisement

U.S. officials see glimmers of progress in Iran nuclear talks

Share

After months of impasse, U.S. officials say they see signs of movement as Iranian diplomats begin meeting again with representatives of six world powers for a weeklong push aimed at reaching a deal on Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.

Negotiators held a full seven-country negotiating session Friday morning and plan to continue through next week’s United Nations General Assembly session, possibly with heads of state joining the talks. Western officials want to resolve key points of disagreement in the next few days to provide enough time work through complicated secondary issues before a Nov. 24 deadline, when the interim agreement over the nuclear program expires.

Iran and the six countries — France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and the United States — are seeking a deal that would remove economic sanctions on Tehran in exchange for provable steps to ensure that its program doesn’t lead to the ability to make a bomb.

Advertisement

The two sides have been unable to resolve how much nuclear infrastructure, including centrifuges, Iran would get to keep. Iran wants to expand its enrichment capacity to an industrial scale; the U.S. and other major powers want to scale it back.

But two brief meetings that U.S. officials held with their Iranian counterparts on Wednesday and Thursday have produced hopeful signs, a senior administration official told reporters in a briefing late Thursday. While the U.S. delegation came to New York with little expectation for a breakthrough, “creative thinking” has raised hope, the official said.

“I would say there’s been a deepening of understanding,” said the official, who declined to be identified under rules set by the administration. “When that happens, sometimes it opens doors to some possibilities.”

The official signaled that President Obama would be open to a conversation with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani during the U.N. session, following the pattern set last year by a phone conversation between the two. The call was the first contact between the countries’ heads of government in more than three decades.

Iranian officials have said they’re reluctant to have another such conversation, since it brought an outcry from Iranian conservatives. But it is “very likely” that Secretary of State John Kerry will meet in the next few days with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, the U.S. official said.

“The choice is really Iran’s,” the official said.

The New York round of talks “will be the moment of truth, as it will determine whether further progress is possible or not,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran specialist with the International Crisis Group who is based in Istanbul, Turkey.

Advertisement

Iranian officials have insisted that they be allowed to maintain their current nuclear capacity, which includes about 10,000 operating centrifuges. U.S. officials would like to reduce the centrifuge inventory to a few thousand at most.

Western governments have given ground repeatedly to Iran in the negotiations. But a deal allowing a larger inventory of centrifuges could be difficult to accept because the number has acquired high visibility and importance with powerful critics of the deal, including some U.S. lawmakers.

The administration official said the centrifuge count should not be the sole focus of attention and is only “one of many elements” that will be important in ensuring that Iran doesn’t obtain bomb-making capability.

The negotiations are being watched anxiously by Israel, which worries that the Obama administration’s new preoccupation with fighting the Islamic State militant group could reduce the focus on Iran and make officials more willing to strike an overly lenient deal. Israeli officials said this week that Iran’s nuclear program is far more threatening than Islamic State.

On another front, the United States and the European Union warned Iran that it needs to increase cooperation with the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency if it hopes to reach a deal. The officials made their warning Thursday, at a meeting in Vienna of the board of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The IAEA has been investigating Iran’s suspected research on military capability, and officials of the agency say Iran has been resisting pressure to open up further to investigators.

Advertisement

Follow @Richtpau on Twitter for foreign affairs news.

Advertisement