In Nuclear Talks, Iran Seeks to Avoid Specifics
Secretary of State John Kerry in Lausanne, Switzerland,
PARIS - New York Times - If an agreement to limit Iran’s nuclear capability is reached by deadline in the next seven days, one thing may be missing: an actual written accord, signed by the Iranians.
Over the past few weeks, Iran has increasingly resisted any kind of formal “framework” agreement at this stage in the negotiations, preferring a more general statement of “understanding” followed by a final accord in June, according to Western diplomats involved in the talks.
Should that position hold — one of the many unknowns of the coming days — the United States and its five negotiating partners may find themselves in the uncomfortable position of describing the accord as they understand it while the Iranians go home to offer their own version.
That poses a weighty political challenge to the Obama administration, which is already under pressure to present Iran’s commitments to a suspicious Congress by early April, in an effort to hold off the passage of sanctions or a bill that would require Congress to sign off on any agreement.
Just last week, as the previous round of talks with Iran came to a close, a senior American official involved in the negotiations said that the framework accord with Iran would have to be more than a political declaration of intentions. Rather, it would have to contain a “quantifiable dimension.”
There is a lot to quantify, from the number of uranium-enriching centrifuges that would remain spinning to exactly how Iran would change the design of a reactor that is under construction to limit the production of plutonium, another pathway to a bomb. But Iran says it will not agree to such specifics, at least for now. Read more.....
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