The Obama administration conceded Monday that international talks over Iran’s disputed nuclear program will carry on indefinitely past this week’s deadline for a final deal — and pushed back at critics who accuse the president of making last-minute concessions out of desperation to get a deal.
White House spokesman Josh Earnest insisted again that President Obama won’t proceed with the deal if Iran reneges on the parameters of an interim agreement reached in April with the so-called P5+1 negotiating group that includes the U.S., Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany.
But the prospect for nailing down April’s tentative agreement, which aims to curtail Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for relief from international economic sanctions, remained elusive on Monday night. And officials said Secretary of State John F. Kerry will stay at the negations in the Austrian capital of Vienna past Tuesday’s self-imposed deadline for an accord.
With the negotiations occurring behind closed doors, speculation is rampant about what now stands in the way of a final deal. Analysts close to the talks say most of the sticking points revolve around two specific issues.
The first is the speed at which sanctions relief for Iran will be granted. The second centers on a dispute over whether or not inspectors from the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog group — the International Atomic Energy Agency — will be allowed access to Iranian military sites, and to interview the nation’s nuclear scientists as part of the deal.
Iran has long declared that its nuclear program is purely for peaceful, civilian purposes. But the U.S. and its European allies in the P5+1 have for more than a decade accused Tehran of secretly developing nuclear weapons in violation of U.N. regulations.
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The issue inspections has long been a contentious one. While specific protocols for such inspections were left unresolved under April’s interim agreement, the hope among Western negotiators was that the Iranians so badly wanted sanctions relief that they would ultimately accept more intrusive inspection rules.
But Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has stated personal opposition to inspections of any non-nuclear sites, and the nation’s elected parliament last week pushed through legislation calling for U.N. inspectors to be banned from all military sites and barred from access to certain nuclear scientists and documents in the final deal.
The Iranian statements, coupled with the Obama administration’s eagerness to keep pushing for a deal, has prompted some to claim U.S. negotiators have already given in to Iranian demands on key aspects of the final deal.
Danielle Pletka, the vice president of foreign and defense policy studies at the conservative-learning American Enterprise Institute, claimed Monday that the administration during recent weeks has “conceded every single substantive demand that has been made of the Iranian regime.”
“Possible military dimensions of the program? No worries. Inspections? No problem. Cooperation with the IAEA? Whatever. The reality is that there are no negotiations going on with Iran. We are simply arguing over the terms of our surrender,” Mrs. Pletka said in a statement emailed to reporters.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a vocal critic of the deal, on Sunday accused the P5+1 of retreating in the face of Iranian posturing.
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But Obama administration officials rejected the idea that they are making last-minute concessions.
One U.S. official involved in the nuclear talks in Vienna told Reuters that it was “absurd” to claim that Washington would have spent years pursuing negotiations with Tehran only to give in at the end.
“If we were going to cave, I could be home already and I would be a really happy person,” the official said. “We would have done that a long time ago.”
The Associated Press reported Monday that Mr. Kerry met the head of the U.N. nuclear agency in Vienna while Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif received his latest guidance from leaders in Tehran. Mr. Zarif was scheduled to return to the talks Tuesday, followed by the arrival of Russia’s top diplomat, longtime Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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