With only weeks left to the deadline to reach a first-stage nuclear deal with Iran, US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Saturday that “significant gaps” remained and warned that the US was ready to walk away from the talks if Tehran does not agree to terms demonstrating that it does not want atomic arms.
Kerry spoke after the Iranian Atomic Energy Organization head Ali Akbar Salehi and US Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz added their muscle to the talks for the first time to help resolve technical disputes standing in the way of an agreement meant to curb Iran’s nuclear programs in exchange for sanctions relief for the Islamic republic.
However, Kerry warned against undue optimism.
Photo: Reuters
Salehi’s and Moniz’s presence is no “indication whatsoever that something is about to be decided,” he said. “There are still significant gaps.”
World powers and Iran have set a deadline at the end of next month for a framework agreement with four further months for the technical work to be ironed out.
The negotiations have missed two previous deadlines and US President Barack Obama has said a further extension would make little sense without a basis for continuing discussions.
Kerry, who was to fly to Geneva from London yesterday, said there was no doubt Obama was serious.
The president “is fully prepared to stop these talks if he feels that they’re not being met with the kind of productive decisionmaking necessary to prove that a program is in fact peaceful,” Kerry said.
If the talks fail, Obama might be unable to continue holding off the US Congress from passing new sanctions against Iran.
Further sanctions could scuttle any diplomatic solution to US-led attempts to increase the time Tehran would need to be able to make nuclear arms.
Iran denies having any interest in developing such weapons.
Skepticism about the negotiations already is strong among some in the US Congress, including Washington’s closest Arab allies and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to strongly criticize them in an address to Congress early next month.
Western officials say the US decided to send Moniz only after Iran announced that Salehi was to attend. They were expected to discuss the number of centrifuges Iran can operate to enrich uranium; how much enriched material it can stockpile; what research and development it may pursue related to enrichment; and the future of a planned heavy-water reactor that could produce substantial amounts of plutonium — which, like enriched uranium, is a potential pathway to nuclear arms.
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