Iran Nuclear Talks Make Little Headway

WSJ

NEW YORK—A week of talks between Iran and six powers over Tehran's nuclear program made little headway in closing gaps on the most difficult issues, Western diplomats said Friday, though U.S. and Iranian envoys said a deal remained possible by the Nov. 24 deadline.

Political pressures on the talks are likely to intensify rapidly if a deal isn't done on time. U.S. lawmakers held off imposing additional sanctions on Iran when the first target date was missed in July, and the White House could struggle to hold new sanctions back after the midterm elections this fall. Iran has warned that could scuttle the diplomacy.

Before the nuclear talks resumed in New York on Sept. 19, U.S. and European diplomats said they were hopeful that with leaders here for the United Nations General Assembly, this past week would be a critical moment.

By late Friday, officials' views were mixed on how much progress had been made, though senior diplomats from all sides said there was no major breakthrough and that significant gaps remained on the toughest issues.

Earlier Friday, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius told reporters there were "no significant advances" in the talks.

Iranian President Hasan Rouhani said that progress this past week had been "extremely slow" and that the Obama administration needed to show more flexibility. "The remaining time is extremely short," Mr. Rouhani said at a news conference marking the end of his week in New York.

Others were more upbeat on the New York talks. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was quoted by Russian media saying he was "cautiously optimistic" about a deal.

And late Friday, after the high-level talks had wrapped up, a senior U.S. official said an on-time deal remained possible and the talks had helped develop "some understandings that are helpful to move this process forward."

However, "we have about eight more weeks….That's not a staggering amount of time," the official said. "The gaps are still serious."

Iran and the six powers—France, the U.S., U.K., China, Russia and Germany—are seeking to seal an agreement that would place major constraints on Iran's nuclear ambitions in return for a phased lifting of international sanctions. Iran denies it is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

No new date or location has been set yet for the talks to continue, though nuclear experts from all sides will likely continue meeting in New York over the weekend, the U.S. official said.

Negotiations finished Friday evening after a two-hour meeting between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and European Union foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton, who chairs the six power group.

Hopes that Mr. Rouhani's presence would give the Iranian negotiating team cover to move on the key Western demand—that Iran agree to significantly reduce its enrichment activities—didn't materialize.

A western diplomat said that Mr. Rouhani, a former chief nuclear negotiator for Iran, who met with the leaders of the U.K., France and the European Union in New York this past week, had stayed out of detailed talks and hadn't brought "a lot of flexibility to the discussions."

Mr. Fabius said Friday with talks making little headway, a meeting of foreign ministers from Iran and the six power group had been called off. A spokesman for Ms. Ashton said she had asked ministers to reserve some time "in case she needed to consult them collectively."

"This proved unnecessary so no meeting took place," said the spokesman, Michael Mann.

The New York talks took place against a difficult backdrop, with growing fears about the rise of Sunni extremist group Islamic State and spiraling violence in the Middle East. Iran and the U.S. have discussed the threat posed by the group but both placed tight limits on their mutual cooperation.

This past week, the U.S. started carrying out airstrikes with regional allies against Islamic State in Syria without the permission of the regime of Bashar al-Assad, a close ally of Tehran.

Still, officials said the tone of this week's talks remained positive and bits of progress had been made.

U.S. officials said they had proposed some "creative" ideas to Iran over the summer on how to bridge the gap on the enrichment issue. Iran has said it could cap or slightly reduce its uranium-enrichment program for some years under a deal. But the U.S. and its European allies are seeking much deeper reductions.

Western diplomats confirmed this week that one of the ideas floated would be to remove some of Iran's nuclear infrastructure so that any excess machines Iran agrees not to deploy under a deal couldn't be quickly turned back on. However the machines—known as centrifuges—could stay in place, allowing Tehran to claim it had stood up to Western demands to remove thousands of centrifuges from its nuclear facilities.

Western officials said Iran had engaged in serious discussions on some of the ideas floated but that Tehran had not moved much on the key point—accepting a sharp reduction in its enrichment activities.

Among the other toughest issues to resolve are the timing of sanctions relief. Iran is pressing for guarantees that U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran would be lifted quickly, according to several western officials.

"This is very difficult to accept," the Western diplomat said.

Other issues still under discussion include the length of the agreement.

But officials say progress has been made on the degree of transparency Iran would accept on its future activities and the future of its nuclear research and development work.

The fate of Iran's Arak plutonium heavy-water reactor hasn't been resolved but was unlikely to be "a major hurdle for a deal," the Western diplomat said.