GENEVA — Marathon talks between major powers and Iran failed to produce a deal to freeze its nuclear program on Sunday, puncturing days of feverish anticipation and underscoring how hard it will be to forge a lasting solution to Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
Emerging from a last-ditch bargaining session that began Saturday but stretched past midnight, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, and Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, said they had failed to overcome differences. They insisted they had made progress, however, and pledged to return to the table in 10 days to try again, albeit at a lower level.
“A lot of concrete progress has been made, but some differences remain,” Ashton said at a news conference early Sunday. She appeared alongside Zarif, who added, “I think it was natural that when we started dealing with the details, there would be differences.”
In the end, though, it was not only divisions between Iran and the major powers that prevented a deal, but fissures within the negotiating group. Earlier in the day, France objected strenuously that a proposed deal would do too little to curb Iran’s uranium enrichment or to stop the development of a nuclear reactor capable of producing plutonium.
“The Geneva meeting allowed us to advance, but we were not able to conclude because there are still some questions to be addressed,” the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, told reporters.
Neither Ashton nor Zarif criticized France, saying that it had played a constructive role. But the disappointment was palpable, and the decision to hold the next meeting at the level of political director, not foreign minister, suggested that the two sides were less confident of their ability to bridge the gaps in the next round.
For all that, Zarif tried to put a brave face on the three days of talks, saying that the atmosphere had been good, even if the parties disagreed on the details of a potential agreement.
Iranian officials had promoted the possibility of a deal for days, generating an expectant atmosphere that swelled when Secretary of State John Kerry cut short a tour of the Middle East on Friday to join the talks. He was joined by the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and a vice foreign minister from China.
“There’s no question in my mind that we are closer now, as we leave Geneva, than when we came,” Kerry said. “It takes time to build confidence between countries that have really been at odds with each other for a long time now.”
Despite the insistence on progress, the failure to clinch an agreement raised questions about the future of the nuclear talks, given the fierce criticism that the mere prospect of a deal whipped up in Israel and among Republicans and some Democrats in Congress.
The announcement was a deflating end to a long day of diplomatic twists and turns, after Kerry huddled for hours with Zarif and Fabius to try to close gaps on issues like curbing Iran’s enrichment program and what to do about the heavy-water reactor Iran is building near the city of Arak, which will produce plutonium.
Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the plant could be dealt with in a future phase of the talks because it would take a year for it to be completed and even longer for it produce plutonium that could be extracted for a bomb.
But Kerry said during his recent visit to Israel that the United States was asking Iran, as part of an interim accord, to agree to a “complete freeze over where they are today,” implying that Iran’s plutonium production program would be affected in some way as well. Under a compromise favored by some American officials, Iran might agree to refrain from operating the facility for six months, while continuing to work on the installation.
Once the reactor at Arak is operational, as early as next year, it might be very hard to disable it with a military strike without risking dispersal of nuclear material. That risk might eliminate one of the West’s options for responding to Iran and reduce its leverage in the talks.
The Arak reactor has been a contentious negotiating point because it would give Iran another pathway to a bomb, using plutonium, rather than enriched uranium. Moreover, the Iranian explanations for why it is building Arak have left most Western nations and nuclear experts skeptical. The country has no need for the fuel for civilian uses now, and the reactor’s design renders it highly efficient for producing the makings of a nuclear weapon.
Iran, which has always contended that its nuclear program was for peaceful purposes only, insists the heavy-water reactor is just another path toward the goal of energy production.