Disagreements between Tehran, US persist after recent nuclear talks

WASHINGTON – Important disagreements between the United States and Iran persist after the latest round of indirect nuclear talks in Vienna this week, with the outcome of negotiations far from certain, a senior State Department official said on Wednesday.

The main differences are over what sanctions the United States would need to remove and what steps Iran would need to take to resume its obligations to curb its nuclear program, the US official told reporters in a conference call. He added that talks were likely to be a multi-round process.

“There still are disagreements, and in some cases, pretty important ones,” he said. “We are not near the conclusion of these negotiations. The outcome is still uncertain. We have made some progress. The talks have been business-like and productive, with still many differences that would need to be overcome. We’re still in the process of describing and detailing the steps that each side is going to have to take.”

The official noted that the sides are not discussing the sequence of returning to compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal. “A sequence in which the US does everything before Iran does [anything] is not an acceptable sequence – we made that clear to Iran,” the official said. “Beyond that, we’re open to different kinds of sequencing, which meet our interest – which is to see both sides in full compliance and not us coming into full compliance before Iran.”

He said that at this point, “the discussions that take place in Vienna are about full compliance for full compliance. The discussion with all the participants is about what the US would need to do to come into full compliance, and what Iran will need to do to come into full compliance.”

Asked whether the sides are working to return to the deal before May 15, the official said: “We’re not going to rush in order to meet a deadline. It may be within weeks and may be not within weeks. We’re hoping that Iran will understand that the goal is to come back into compliance with the JCPOA, all of the JCPOA, and nothing but the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action]. We’re prepared to do everything that we need to do to be in full compliance with the deal and we hope Iran will do the same.”

The official also addressed Israeli reservations about returning to the deal. “We have numerous conversations with Israeli officials before and after every round of talks,” the State Department official said. “We will have one again” next week.

“We believe we have been transparent within the process; we intend to be as transparent as we can,” the official said. “We know there’s a disagreement with Israel’s perspective and we respect that. We’ll try to be as transparent as we can about how we do things, [and] that we want to go and listen to their perspective as well.”