VIENNA — Pushing past a Tuesday deadline, world powers and Iran extended negotiations for a comprehensive nuclear agreement by a week as the U.N. nuclear agency prepared to announce Tehran had met a key condition — significantly reducing its stocks of enriched uranium that could be used for atomic weapons.
Iran’s failure to comply would have severely undermined the negotiations, which are aimed at curbing the Iranians’ nuclear program for a decade in exchange for tens of billions of dollars in relief from international economic sanctions.
The State Department announced the extra days of talks only hours before the expiration of the target date for their completion. Thoughts of meeting the deadline had been long-abandoned, but the extension has added significance as it holds in place nuclear restrictions that Iran agreed to some 20 months ago as well as slightly eased conditions for Iranian business with the world.
Those preliminary measures have been prolonged to next Tuesday “to allow more time for negotiations to reach a long-term solution,” spokeswoman Marie Harf said.
The statement came after U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry held a day of meetings in Vienna with the foreign ministers of Iran and Russia, and other key officials.
The day originally had been envisioned as the culmination of almost two years of secret and then public negotiations aimed at assuring the world Iran cannot produce nuclear weapons and providing the Iranian people a path out of their international isolation. But officials said over the weekend they were nowhere near a final accord, and Iran’s foreign minister had flown back to his capital for further consultations amid increased signs of backtracking by his country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In Washington, President Barack Obama said Tuesday there will be no nuclear deal with Iran if inspections and verification requirements are inadequate.
“I will walk away from the negotiations if, in fact, it’s a bad deal,” Obama said during a news conference with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff.
Obama said it’s still unclear whether Tehran can meet the commitments made in a preliminary deal struck in Switzerland in April. “There has been a lot of talk on the other side from the Iranian negotiators about whether in fact they can abide by some of the terms that came up in Lausanne,” Obama said. “If they cannot, that’s going to be a problem.”
