World powers, Iran OK landmark plan
LAUSANNE, Switzerland — Capping exhausting and contentious talks, Iran and world powers sealed a breakthrough agreement Thursday outlining limits on Iran’s nuclear program to keep it from being able to produce atomic weapons. The Islamic Republic was promised an end to years of crippling economic sanctions, but only if negotiators transform the plan into a comprehensive pact.
They will try to do that in the next three months.
The United States and Iran, long-time adversaries who hashed out much of the agreement, each hailed the efforts of their diplomats in Switzerland. Speaking at the White House, President Barack Obama called it a “good deal” that would address concerns about Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif called it a “win-win outcome.”
Those involved have
spent 18 months in broader negotiations that were extended twice since an interim accord was reached shortly after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani entered office. That deal itself was the product of more than a year of secret negotiations between the Obama administration and Iran, a country the U.S. still considers the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
Opponents of the emerging accord, including Israel and Republican leaders in Congress, reacted with skepticism. They criticized the outline for failing to do enough to curb Iran’s potential to produce nuclear weapons or to mandate intrusive enough inspections. Obama disagreed.
“This framework would cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon,” he said. “This deal is not based on trust. It’s based on unprecedented verification.”
The plan commits Tehran to significant cuts in centrifuges, the machines that can spin uranium gas to levels used in nuclear warheads. Of the nearly 20,000 centrifuges Iran now has installed or running at its main enrichment site, the country would be allowed to operate just over 5,000. Much of its enriched stockpiles would be neutralized. A planned reactor would be reconstructed so it produced no weaponsgrade plutonium. Monitoring and inspections by the U.N. nuclear agency would be enhanced.
America’s negotiating partners in Europe strongly backed the result. President Francois Hollande of France, which had pushed the U.S. for a tougher stance, endorsed the accord while warning that “sanctions lifted can be reestablished if the agreement is not applied.”
Obama sought to frame the deal as a salve that reduces the chances of the combustible Middle East becoming even more unstable with the introduction of a nuclear-armed Iran.
Obama said he had spoken with Saudi Arabia’s King Salman and that he’d invite him and other Arab leaders to Camp David this spring to discuss security strategy. The Sunni majority Saudis have made veiled threats about creating their own nuclear program to counter Shia-led Iran.
Obama also spoke by telephone with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the sharpest critic of the diplomacy with Iran. A final agreement “must significantly roll back Iran’s nuclear capabilities and stop its terrorism and aggression,” Netanyahu said in Israel.
But Obama saved his sharpest words for members of Congress who have threatened to either try to kill the agreement or approve new sanctions against Iran. Appearing in the Rose Garden, Obama said the issues at stake are “bigger than politics.”
“These are matters of war and peace,” he said, and if Congress kills the agreement “international unity will collapse, and the path to conflict will widen.”