U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif are to meet in Switzerland early next week
28 February 2015 – Talks on curbing Iran’s nuclear program have made substantial progress, a senior U.S. official said on Friday, but insisted that still many hurdles remained to reaching an agreement to restrain the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for easing economic sanctions and added that he did not expect one to be reached next week.
In making the case for an agreement, the U.S. official described what he called four U.S. “bottom lines.”
These included preventing Iran from making weapons-grade plutonium at the Arak heavy-water reactor now being built and from enriching uranium at Fordow, an underground facility Tehran kept secret until Western officials revealed it in 2009.
They also include restricting uranium enrichment at Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz and requiring it to agree to a highly intrusive inspection regime designed to ensure Tehran does not establish new covert nuclear facilities.
The official sought to play down expectations of a deal being reached at next week’s talks in Montreux, Switzerland, which will include U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Munoz.
“Obviously, the negotiations have advanced substantially, gaps have narrowed, but we really don’t know if we will be able to close a good deal because ultimately that’s going to depend on Iranian decisions” about accepting such a regime, he said.
The sides are working toward a deadline of the end of March, by which U.S. officials have said they want a political framework agreement in place. A full, technical deal would then be spelled out by June 30.