With a deadline looming for an agreement that would limit Iran’s nuclear aspirations, US Secretary of State John F Kerry and Iran’s foreign minister started talks Wednesday afternoon about bridging significant gaps between the West’s demands and what Iran is willing to give up.
Kerry, Iran’s Mohammad Javad Zarif and European Union negotiator Catherine Ashton started their trilateral talks at an exclusive hotel in the center of Vienna. They posed for photographs and were overheard chatting about Kerry’s just-concluded meetings in Paris with the French and Russian foreign ministers.
Iran has been expanding its nuclear program during the decade in which the West has been trying to reach an accord with the Islamic republic. Iran insists that it has the right to increase its nuclear energy capacity for peaceful purposes. But many in the West are suspicious of Iran’s motives, fearing that it intends to use enriched uranium to make nuclear weapons.
The United States has offered to suspend and eventually lift the economic sanctions that are undermining Iran’s economy, while Iran reportedly has offered to freeze the number of operating centrifuges it uses to enrich uranium. Negotiators from the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany are pushing for a reduction, not a freeze, but are not asking Iran to eliminate its nuclear program entirely. Enriched uranium can be used as fuel for nuclear power plants, but at higher concentrations it can also be turned into fissile material for nuclear weapons.
“We never would have gotten to this point if we didn’t agree to a limited domestic enrichment program, very carefully monitored,” said a senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive negotiations.
The talks have been going on for more than a decade but picked up momentum after moderate cleric Hassan Rouhani was elected Iran’s president last year. The deadline for the negotiators to reach a deal is Nov. 24, less than six weeks away.
The State Department official said the United States believes the remaining issues can be settled within that time frame.
“There is still time to get this done,” the official said. “We’ve been very creative with technical ideas.”
Domestic politics, both in the United States and in Iran, are adding to the sense of urgency. Some Republicans have openly opposed lifting sanctions, and if they gain control of the U.S. Senate in the upcoming midterm elections, agreement on a deal may prove difficult. In Iran, hard-liners have objected to concessions, and it remains unclear whether Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s supreme leader, would support the deal.
Several of the key players say, however, that an agreement is possible by late November.
