Iran's Russian-built nuclear electricity-generating plant at Bushehr
For the past eight days, a deal in the negotiations over Iran's nuclear program has been what Reuters first used in a headline late Wednesday: "close but elusive."
That apparently has changed, according to the Associated Press. But there's still a hang-up:
Western officials say that Iran and the United States have agreed on the outlines of an understanding that would open the path to a final phase of nuclear negotiations but are in a dispute over how much to make public.
The officials spoke Thursday outside talks focused on formulating a general statement of what has been accomplished and documents setting down what the sides need to do by the end of June deadline for a deal.
The negotiations have been going on for 18 months with the United States, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany (the P5+1) on one side and Iran on the other. The six major powers seek to ensure that Iran's nuclear program is curtailed so that it would take at least a year for it to "break out" and build a nuclear weapon. Iran wants to get out from under economic sanctions imposed on it because of what those powers and much of the rest of the United Nations considers that nation's drive to build a nuclear weapon. Iran says it doesn't want to build a nuclear weapon and that its program is peaceful and intended only for civilian use.
The negotiations have been made difficult by the long-standing tensions between Iran and the United States. Hardliners in both countries would like to see the talks fail.
The United States had set a deadline of March 31 to have a preliminary agreement completed with technical details to be worked out between then and June 30. That is when an interim agreement expires. That agreement relaxed some sanctions in exchange for Iran's freezing of its nuclear program.
But during the past week's talks, it became clear that, because Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei does not want a two-part agreement—one now and one in June—it was decided that if a deal were reached now it would not be called an agreement but an understanding. That may sound like ridiculous nitpicking, but that is often what diplomacy is all about. Word choice, turns of phrase and translations of each can make all the difference.
If the details of the understanding are not fully disclosed, however, it is certain to make the Obama administration's persuasion of a Congress whose majority is hostile to any agreement with Iran that isn't highly restrictive very difficult.
For some, even that won't be enough. In the past two weeks, two prominent neoconservative superhawks have written op-eds for The Washington Post and The New York Times, one saying that war is probably the best option and one—former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton—saying Iran's nuclear facilities should be bombed now.
UPDATE: Press conference will start sometime soon. You can watch it here. Additional updates will appear below the fold.
10:47 AM PT: All centrifuges spinning uranium will be at Natanz, not the fortified underground facility at Fordow. The ones at Fordow will be for medical, industrial and scientific isotopes.