US says tonight’s Iran nuclear deadline could be extended

Nuclear talks between Iran and six world powers could be extended past Tuesday’s deadline for the outline of an agreement if enough progress is made to justify it, the White House said.

Tuesday’s statement by White House press secretary Josh Earnest suggested that talks meant to produce an outline that would allow the sides to continue negotiations until the June 30 final deadline had not bridged all gaps — but that the sides were working to produce a text with few specifics, accompanied by documents outlining areas where further talks were needed.

“If it’s necessary — and, when I say if it’s necessary I mean if it’s midnight and a deal has not been reached but the conversations continue to be productive — we’ll be prepared to continue the talks into tomorrow,” said Earnest.

He said President Barack Obama had been updated on the latest status of the talks. He also said it was possible that Obama would be in touch with members of the negotiating team.

“If we are making progress toward the finish line, then we should keep going,” Earnest added.

An Iranian negotiator said progress was being made, but “slowly.”

“We are advancing but slowly. In view of the complexity of the issues and the fact that this is the final look at the issues, it is happening slowly,” said Behrouz Kamalvandi. “We have to show patience.”

Another Iranian negotiator, Hamid Baeidinejad, was quoted by Iran’s PressTV saying that Tehran and world powers had already reached an agreement on the removal of international sanctions against Iran, but that some issues remain between the two sides.

Officials earlier said that they hoped to wrap up six days of marathon talks with a statement agreeing to continue negotiations in a new phase to control Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

They had set a deadline of Tuesday for a framework agreement, and later softened that wording to a framework understanding, between Iran and the so-called P5+1 nations — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China.

With an army of technical and sanctions experts having beavered away late into the night, the two sides are hoping to lay the groundwork for ending the 12-year-old crisis over Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The stakes are high, with fears that failure to reach a deal may set the United States and Israel on a road to military action to thwart Iran’s nuclear drive, which Tehran says is purely peaceful.

Under a deal to be finalized by June 30, the powers want Iran to scale back its nuclear program to give the world ample notice of any dash to make the bomb by extending the so-called “breakout” time.

In return, the Islamic republic is demanding the lifting of sanctions that have strangled its economy.

But the question is how much of this will be in the framework accord that Iran and the six powers — the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany — want to reach by midnight.

If it falls short of firm commitments by Iran then US President Barack Obama will find it hard to fend off attempts by his Republican opponents to pass fresh sanctions on Tehran.

Iran’s negotiators are also under pressure from their own domestic hardliners not to give too much away and for President Hassan Rouhani to deliver on his promises to secure the lifting of sanctions.

Fresh US sanctions could therefore torpedo the whole negotiating process that was launched after Rouhani became president in 2013.

Republicans fear that since some of its nuclear infrastructure will likely stay intact, Iran will still be able to get the bomb — a concern shared by Netanyahu, whose country is widely assumed to have nuclear weapons itself.

In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu issued his third broadside against the deal in as many days, saying it will “pave the way” to an Iranian nuclear bomb.

“The greatest threat to our security and our future was and remains Iran’s attempt to be armed with nuclear weapons. The agreement being formulated in Lausanne paves the way to that goal,” Netanyahu told parliament.

“We will do everything to protect our security and our future.”

Saudi Arabia, which has led an Arab coalition bombing Iran-backed rebels in Yemen in recent days, is also alarmed by what is unfolding in Lausanne.

Its Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal called on the six powers not to “short-circuit the interests of the states of the region by dangling before Iran benefits that it will not be able to reap without cooperation with the countries of the region”.

Some areas of the mooted deal, including the future size of Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity — a process for making nuclear fuel but also the core of an atomic bomb — appear to have been tentatively sewn up.

But the two sides still appear wide apart on other areas, including what to do with Iran’s stockpiles of nuclear material and the pace at which sanctions would be eased.

The six powers are only prepared to suspend sanctions, not terminate them, in order to be able to put them back into place if Tehran violates the deal.

Other tricky issues include the duration of any accord, with Iran resisting demands by the powers to submit to ultra-tight inspections by the UN atomic watchdog for at least a decade.