Talks on Nuclear Deal to Restrain Iran Hit a Snag

By MARK LANDLER and MICHAEL R. GORDON

Negotiations by the United States and five other major powers on an agreement to temporarily freeze Iran’s nuclear program hit a snag on Saturday, as France questioned whether the deal being drafted would do enough to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions. But diplomats were struggling into the evening to see if they could overcome their differences. After several days of optimistic reports that the negotiations with Iran could produce an agreement — the first of its kind in a decade — the marathon talks on Saturday laid bare the challenge of crafting a deal that would satisfy both the Iranians and a group of major powers with their own interests and agendas. Signs of division among the foreign ministers meeting in Geneva first emerged when France questioned whether the proposed deal would do enough to curb the development of a nuclear reactor that would produce plutonium, or limit Iran’s enrichment of uranium. The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, said a draft of a potential agreement was unacceptable to France and there was no certainty that this round of negotiations would lead to an agreement. “We are hoping for a deal, but for the moment there are still issues that have not been resolved,” he told France Inter radio. His comments came amid a whirl of diplomatic activity, with Secretary of State John Kerry and foreign ministers from Britain, France, Germany and Russia engaged in round-robin meetings with Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, who is overseeing the talks. Hopes that a deal was at hand surged when Mr. Kerry cut short a trip to the Middle East to fly to Geneva on Friday. But he, too, sought to temper expectations, saying after he arrived that an agreement had not yet been reached and that gaps needed to be narrowed. On Saturday, Mr. Kerry made no further comment before a two-hour meeting with Mr. Zarif. While talks continued on Saturday afternoon, it increasingly appeared that the negotiators would be unable to overcome gaps in this round, and officials said they hoped to return in coming weeks to try again. American officials said they sensed an opportunity to wrap up an interim accord that would freeze Iran’s program for perhaps six months so there would be time for both sides to reach a more lasting agreement. But they also said the United States was ready to meet again in a couple of weeks should the remaining differences prove difficult to overcome. “It’s important that Iran knows we’ll walk away if our concerns aren’t met,” a senior administration official said, “but we do have substantive outlines set well enough that it’s worth trying to narrow gaps.” France has taken a harder line than the United States in recent years on curbing Iran’s capacity to produce nuclear fuel that could be used in weapons. Diplomats said the French were particularly concerned about the heavy-water reactor being built near Arak, because it would produce plutonium, an alternative to uranium for fueling a weapon. Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, said the plant could be dealt with in a future phase of the talks because it would take a year for it to be completed and much more time for it produce plutonium that could be extracted for a bomb. But Mr. Kerry said during his recent visit to Israel that the United States was asking Iran, as part of an interim accord, to agree to a “complete freeze over where they are today,” implying that Iran’s plutonium production program would be affected in some way as well. Under a compromise favored by some American officials, Iran might agree to refrain from operating the facility for six months, while continuing to work on the installation. Once the reactor at Arak is operational, as early as next year, it might be very hard to disable it through a military strike without risking the dispersal of nuclear material. That risk might eliminate one of the West’s options for responding to Iran and reduce its leverage in the talks. The heavy-water reactor at Arak has been a contentious negotiating point because it would give Iran another pathway to a bomb, using plutonium, rather than enriched uranium. Moreover, the Iranian explanations for why it is building Arak have left most Western nations and nuclear experts skeptical. The country has no need for the fuel for civilian uses right now, and the reactor’s design renders it highly efficient for producing the makings of a nuclear weapon. Israel has been vocal about not letting the new reactor get to the point where the fuel is inserted, after which military action against the reactor could create an environmental disaster. Israel has destroyed two reactors from the air in the past three decades, in Iraq in 1981 and in Syria in 2007. Both attacks took place before fuel had been put in the reactors. French officials also noted a difference between the United States and Europe on the issue of sanctions relief, which Iran is seeking in return for a halt in nuclear activities. The most sweeping American sanctions on Iran’s oil and banking industries were passed by Congress, giving President Obama little flexibility to lift them. That has led the Obama administration to focus on a narrower set of proposals involving Iranian cash that is frozen in overseas banks. Freeing that cash in installments, in return for specific steps by Tehran, would not require the repeal of any congressional sanctions. France and other European Union countries, however, face fewer political restrictions on ending their core sanctions, which means any decision to lift them could be more far-reaching. In addition, officials said that the measures would be harder to reinstate should the talks unravel or Iran renege on its pledges. European officials appeared to be balancing their wariness of Iran with a hopeful sense that these negotiations were fundamentally different from the fruitless sessions during the presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “All of the ministers who are here are conscious of that fact that some momentum has built up in these negotiations,” Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, told reporters on Saturday. “There is now a real concentration on these negotiations, so we have to do everything we can to seize the moment and seize the opportunity to reach a deal.” But that momentum has spooked other American allies, notably Israel, which continued Saturday to inveigh against an interim deal. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has demanded that Iran shutter the Arak nuclear reactor and give up all enrichment of uranium, not just the 20 percent enrichment that is at issue in the current negotiations. On Saturday, Israel’s minister of strategic affairs, Yuval Steinitz, alluded to Scripture to condemn the potential deal. “In return for a mess of pottage,” he said, “Iran has achieved gains on both the sanctions and the nuclear fronts.” Mr. Netanyahu earlier said the agreement could be a “deal of the century” for Iran. On Friday, Mr. Obama called Mr. Netanyahu to brief him on the talks and to assure him that the United States was still committed to preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.