LAUSANNE, Switzerland — With 10 days to a nuclear deal deadline, top U.S and Iranian officials spoke Saturday of substantial headway, and Iran’s president proclaimed that agreement was within reach.
But America’s top diplomat said it was up to Iran to make the decisions needed to get there.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said “achieving a deal is possible” by a March 31 target date for a preliminary accord that is meant to lead to a final deal by the end of June that would crimp Iran’s nuclear programs in exchange for sanctions relief.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was more circumspect as he spoke to reporters after six days of negotiations in the Swiss city of Lausanne. The talks made “substantial progress,” he said, but “important gaps remain.”
“We have an opportunity to get this right,” Kerry said, as he urged Iran to make “fundamental decisions” that prove to the world it has no interest in atomic weapons.
But Iran’s supreme leader warned against expectations that even a done deal would mend the more than three-decade freeze between the two nations in place since the Iranian revolution and siege of the American Embassy, proclaiming that the United States and Iran remained on opposite sides on most issues.
“Negotiations with America are solely on the nuclear issue and nothing else. Everyone has to know that,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said to a crowd in northeastern Iran on the first day of the Persian new year. “We do not talk with U.S. over regional issues. In the regional issues, America’s goals are completely opposed to our goals.”
In a reflection of the delicate state of negotiations, other officials differed on how close the sides were to a deal.
Top Russian negotiator Sergey Ryabkov and Iranian atomic energy chief Ali Akbar Salehi said in recent days that technical work was nearly done. French officials insisted the sides were far from agreement.
Kerry departed later Saturday to meet with European allies in London, in part to ensure unity, before returning to Washington. Kerry said the U.S. and its five negotiating partners — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — are “united in our goal, our approach, our resolve and our determination.”
