US: Limited sanction relief if Iran halts activity

WASHINGTON — The White House said world powers negotiating with Iran are pursuing an agreement that would offer some sanctions relief if Iran halts and possibly reverses parts of its nuclear program.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said the first step would deal with Iran’s most advanced nuclear activities. The goals would be to increase transparency and create more time for further negotiations.

Carney said in exchange, the world powers would consider targeted and limited sanctions relief. He said the relief would be reversible, and sanctions could even be tightened, if Iran breaks its word.

Talks resumed Thursday between Iran and the US and five world powers. Iran’s chief negotiator says those countries have accepted Iran’s plan. Carney wouldn’t comment on timing for reaching a deal.

The US and Iranian delegations held a bilateral meeting Thursday on the sidelines of the P5+1 negotiations. “It was a substantive and serious conversation,” the State Department said in a statement.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday described the reported Western offer to Iran — of “limited” sanctions relief in response to an Iranian agreement to start scaling back nuclear activities — as a “historic mistake.”

Sanctions had brought Iran to the brink of economic collapse, and the P5+1 countries have the opportunity to force Iran to completely dismantle its nuclear weapons program, the prime minister said. “Anything less than that” would reduce the likelihood of a peaceful solution to the crisis, he said, and Israel would always reserve to protect itself against any threat.

“If the news that I am receiving of the impending proposal by the P5+1 is true, this is the deal of the century, for Iran. Because Iran is essentially giving nothing and it’s getting all the air taken out, the air begins to be taken out of the pressure cooker that it took years to build in the sanctions regime. What we’re having today is a situation that Iran is giving up, at best, a few days of enrichment time, but the whole international regime’s sanctions policy has the air taken out of it. That’s a big mistake,” Netanyahu told a visiting delegation of members of the US Congress on Thursday.

Earlier Thursday, the chief Iranian nuclear negotiator said that Iran’s plan to cap some of the country’s atomic activities in exchange for selective relief from crippling economic sanctions was accepted by six world powers.

The upbeat comments from Abbas Araqchi, reported by Iranian state TV, suggest that negotiators in Geneva are moving from broad discussions over a nuclear deal to specific steps limiting Tehran’s ability to make atomic weapons. In return, Iran would start getting relief from sanctions that have hit its economy hard.

“Today, they clearly said that they accept the proposed framework by Iran,” Araqchi said.

Though he described the negotiations as “very difficult,” he said he expected agreement on details by Friday, the last scheduled round of the current talks.

The last round of talks three weeks ago reached agreement on a framework of possible discussion points. The two sides kicked off Thursday’s round focused on getting to a “first step” — described by Western negotiators as an initial curb on uranium enrichment and other activities.

Though Tehran says it needs to do this work for peaceful purposes, the United States and its allies fear that Iran could turn it to use to arm warheads with fissile material.

Araqchi did not detail the contours of his country’s plan. But it could touch on Iran’s production of uranium enriched to 20 percent — a level that is only a technical step short of weapons grade material. Iranian officials have hinted they are ready to discuss Western demands both for a production stop and of turning stockpiles into a form that is difficult to use for nuclear arms.

Though that would not, in itself, be sufficient to ease oil and finance sanctions, diplomats have previously said initial sanctions rollbacks could free Iranian funds in overseas accounts, and allow trade in gold and petrochemicals.