GeNEVA — With Secretary of State John Kerry and other ranking Western officials converging here Friday, negotiators wrestled with the final hurdles to a landmark nuclear agreement with Iran that would temporarily freeze its nuclear program.
But they quit shortly before midnight, still confronting several difficult issues. Among the most contentious issues during the talks have been the fate of a reactor that Iran is building near Arak, what to do about Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium, and how much relief to give Iran from punishing economic sanctions.
Kerry, who cut short a Middle East tour to fly to Geneva for the talks, warned that “there are important gaps that have to be closed.” But his mere presence, along with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Russia and China, suggested that an initial deal was in reach, the first such pact between Iran and major world powers in a decade.
As a first step, Western nations are seeking to freeze Iran’s nuclear program so that the West can conduct further negotiations without fear that Tehran is using the time to inch closer to a weapons capability.
“I want to emphasize: There is not an agreement at this point in time,” Kerry told reporters before plunging into meetings, including one with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif. “There are still some important issues on the table that are unresolved.”
After Kerry’s meetings had ended, a senior State Department official said: “We continued to make progress as we worked to the narrow the gaps. There is more work to do. The meetings will resume tomorrow morning.”
The major powers are demanding that Iran mothball the nuclear plant, a heavy-water reactor to produce plutonium that is scheduled for completion next summer, analysts say. If it becomes operational it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the West to disable it by military means for fear of igniting the plutonium, a component of nuclear weapons.
“Once the reactor starts, any hostile action will have environmental consequences,” said Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency. “Thus the construction should be stopped at the front end of any agreement to pave the way for a long-term solution.”
As a possible compromise, Iran might agree to refrain from starting up the plant for the six months of an interim agreement, while continuing some work on the installation.
Iran has made clear that it has no intention of suspending the enrichment of low-enriched uranium, either under an interim agreement or as part of a comprehensive accord.
But US officials still want to curb Iran’s ability to make a bomb in a matter of months. This could be done by banning Iran from enriching uranium to 20 percent and arranging for Iran to covert its current stock of such uranium into oxide form, which is harder to convert to weapons grade. Such a step, many experts say, would be more effective if it were coupled with constraints on the number and type of centrifuges Iran is permitted to retain.
“If there aren’t more constraints put on the Iranian centrifuge program, then you haven’t accomplished very much at all,” David Albright, the president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said on a recent conference call organized by the Israel Project, a nonprofit organization.
US officials are believed to have sought a commitment by Iran that it would not operate sophisticated centrifuges, known as IR-2s, or install new ones. Banning Iran from manufacturing additional centrifuges of all types would also slow Iran’s progress toward a bomb, but Albright said it might not be part of the Obama administration’s proposal.
To induce Iran to halt its program, the United States is proposing freeing up billion of dollars in Iranian funds that have been frozen in banks overseas, and could be given to Iran in installments in return for concessions. But an Iranian negotiator said that Iran expected relief from sanctions against its oil and banking industries.
“We have announced to the West that in the first phase the issue of banking and oil sanctions must be considered,” said the representative, Majid Takht-Ravanchi, according to Iran’s Mehr news agency.
Takht-Ravanchi is a seasoned diplomat, but his statement seemed out of character for an Iranian delegation that has worked hard to raise expectations for an agreement.
In any event, the broader sanctions can be lifted only with US congressional approval, a lengthy and politically difficult process, given the strong sentiment among lawmakers to keep the pressure on Iran.
The potential agreement was derided by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who called it the “deal of the century” for Iran and said that Israel rejected it unequivocally.