Obama: ‘Significant gaps’ remain in Iran nuclear talks

WASHINGTON — US President Barack Obama warned that “significant gaps” remain with Iran over its disputed nuclear program, as a deadline for a deal looms large.

Iran and world powers, including Washington, engaged Sunday in a diplomatic blitz less than 36 hours before the cutoff time for an agreement, with officials on both sides insisting they were still pulling out all the stops in the Vienna talks.

Speaking to ABC News in comments broadcast Sunday, Obama said an interim deal with Tehran had been a success.

“Well, so, now the question is, can we get to a more permanent deal?  And the gaps are still significant,” Obama said in the interview Friday, before the talks intensified in Vienna.

Obama added that Tehran was isolated.

“The difference is I’ve got the entire international community on my side, and they’re sort of on their own,” he said.

The so-called P5+1 — permanent UN Security Council members Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States, plus Germany — has been locked in talks with Iran since February to turn the interim Geneva accord into a lasting agreement.

Such a deal is aimed at easing fears that Tehran could develop nuclear weapons under the guise of its civilian activities. The Islamic republic denies it wants to build an atomic bomb and insists its nuclear program is entirely peaceful.

Obama said the nuclear talks, if successful, could ultimately have a far-reaching benefit.

“What a deal would do is take a big piece of business off the table and perhaps begin a long process in which the relationship not just between Iran and us but the relationship between Iran and the world, and the region begins to change,” he said.

“I think ultimately that would be good for the people of Iran. You know, it’s a big country with a lot of talent, a lot of sophistication.”

However, with the deadline for a nuclear deal a day away, negotiators faced the choice Sunday of pushing on despite diminishing chance of agreement, or shifting to ways of extending negotiations past the target date.

A member of the Iranian delegation in Vienna said the tipping point could come Sunday night, with Iran and six world powers deciding that their differences were too big to bridge by Monday and switching to extension mode.

From that point on, he said, the negotiations would focus on reaching a “general political agreement” on what both sides are committed to resolving. The official, who demanded anonymity as a condition for briefing the media, said that talks would then be held in the near future to sign that agreement, leading to more negotiations on outstanding issues.

Another unnamed official was cited by Iran’s official IRNA news agency as saying that discussion had already begun. But the US is unlikely to accept anything that stops at outlining issues to be solved without at least progress on narrowing the gaps.

Beyond assurances that the Iranians are not just talking for the sake of winning time, the US administration wants to show to congressional skeptics that there is sense to further negotiations.

Should such a plan be agreed upon, one possibility for a resumption of talks would be the first week in December when US Secretary of State John Kerry plans to return to Europe for a previously scheduled NATO foreign ministers meeting in Brussels, and an international conference in London.

Speaking to ABC after the interview with Obama, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned world powers against making a “historic mistake” in nuclear talks with Iran.

“It’s important that there won’t be a bad deal,” Netanyahu said. “A bad deal would enable Iran to remain with thousands of centrifuges, which it could use to enrich uranium, which is what you need for a nuclear bomb.”

Netanyahu insisted sanctions should remain in place until Iran’s potential capacity for ever making a nuclear bomb had been dismantled.

“As I understand it, the Iranians are nowhere near to accepting that,” Netanyahu said. “If, for any reason, the United States and the other powers agree to leave Iran with that capacity to break out, I think that would be a historic mistake.”

Netanyahu accused Tehran of exploiting an interim deal to develop other elements of its nuclear program.

“It’s true that they haven’t raised the enrichment to the 20 percent level and beyond, but they have done other things and they’re doing things we don’t know about,” he said. “Rather than making a bad deal, I would just continue the sanctions regime, even toughen the sanctions regime, and get Iran to make the concessions it needs to make sure that they don’t have the capacity to make nuclear weapons.”