Iran, 6 powers hit deal to pause nuclear work

Secretary of State John Kerry (from left), French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov joined colleagues early today in Geneva to seal the deal on Iran’s nuclear program.
Secretary of State John Kerry (from left), French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov joined colleagues early today in Geneva to seal the deal on Iran’s nuclear program.

GENEVA - Iran and six major powers agreed early today on a historic deal that freezes key parts of Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for temporary relief on some economic sanctions, diplomats confirmed.

The deal was reached after four days of marathon bargaining and an eleventh-hour intervention by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and other foreign ministers from Europe, Russia and China, the sources said.

The agreement, sealed at a 3 a.m. signing ceremony in Geneva’s Palace of Nations, requires Iran to halt or scale back parts of its nuclear infrastructure, the first such pause in more than a decade.

The pact builds on the momentum of the dialogue opened during September’s annual United Nations gathering, which included a 15-minute phone conversation between President Barack Obama and Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani.

It marks a milestone between the two countries, which broke diplomatic ties 34 years ago when Iran’s Islamic Revolution culminated in the storming of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran. Since then, relations between the two countries have been frigid to hostile - until the recent outreach between the two presidents.

Obama hailed the deal as putting “substantial limitations” on a nuclear program that the United States and its allies fear could be turned to nuclear weapons use.

“While today’s announcement is just a first step, it achieves a great deal,” Obama said. “For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back.”

According to The Associated Press, the United States and Iran secretly engaged in high-level, face-to-face talks at least three times over the past year.

The discussions were kept hidden even from America’s closest friends, including its negotiating partners and Israel, until two months ago, according to senior Obama administration officials.

Today’s deal, intended as first step toward a more comprehensive nuclear pact to be completed in six months, freezes or reverses progress at all of Iran’s major nuclear facilities, according to Western officials familiar with the details. It halts the installation of new centrifuges and caps the amount and type of enriched uranium that Iran is allowed to produce.

Iran also agreed to halt work on key components of a heavy-water reactor that could someday provide Iran with a source of plutonium. In addition, Iran accepted a dramatic increase in oversight, including daily monitoring by international nuclear inspectors, the officials said.

The concessions not only halt Iran’s nuclear advances but also make it virtually impossible for Tehran to build a nuclear weapon without being detected, the officials said. In return, Iran will receive modest sanctions relief and access to some of its frozen accounts overseas, concessions said to value less than $7 billion over the six-month term of the deal. The sanctions would be reinstated if Iran violates the agreement’s terms.

The agreement is a long sought victory for the Obama administration, which from its earliest days made the Iranian nuclear program one of its top foreign-policy priorities. The administration, helped by allies as well as Congress, achieved unprecedented success in imposing harsh economic sanctions that cut Iran’s vital oil exports in half and decimated the country’s currency. But it was hoping to quickly finalize an agreement in the face of threats by Congress to impose additional economic sanctions on Iran.

The deal is also a win for Kerry, who traveled to Geneva twice in two weeks to lend his personal diplomacy to the negotiations.

Still, the agreement is likely to face heavy opposition from key allies - chiefly Israel and Saudi Arabia - as well as congressional skeptics who have demanded much greater concessions from Iran, including the dismantling of its enrichment program.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu loudly criticized the agreement, saying the international community is giving up too much to Iran, which it believes will retain the ability to produce a nuclear weapon and threaten Israel.

The marathon discussions with Iran were described by Western diplomats Saturday as “very difficult” and “intense,” and several officials had sought to lower expectations that a resolution could be reached before today, when Kerry and the other foreign ministers were due to depart. Negotiations over the deal had remained snarled late into Saturday evening, with the foreign ministers of Britain, France, Germany, China, Russia, the European Union and the United States huddled in a hotel conference room.

Several of the diplomats met earlier in the day with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif, who told reporters that the parties remained divided on key details of the six-month trial deal.

Kerry, Zarif and European Union foreign-policy chief Catherine Ashton met late Saturday, but the session ended with no announcement of progress. Instead, Iran’s deputy foreign minister hardened his country’s position.

Although “98 percent” of the deal was done, Iran said it could not accept any agreement that does not recognize what it calls its uranium-enrichment rights, Abbas Araghchi told reporters at the time.

“Any agreement without recognizing Iran’s right to enrich, practically and verbally, will be unacceptable for Tehran,” Araghchi said, according to Reuters.

Araghchi and Zarif have insisted that the deal hinges on international recognition of Iran’s right to enrich uranium, a matter of deep national pride.

Western officials have balked at recognizing a legal “right” to uranium enrichment, hoping instead to craft language in the final agreement that acknowledges the right of all countries to pursue nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Zarif appeared to endorse that approach publicly last week.

The sides also continued to haggle over details of the limited sanctions relief to be offered to Iran in return for scaling back its nuclear program, diplomats said.

The most painful sanction, affecting Iran’s oil and banking sectors, would remain until the end of the deal’s first phase, depending on Iran’s willingness to accept permanent curbs on its nuclear program, Western officials said.

Still another obstacle was Iran’s partially completed heavy-water reactor in the city of Arak. The agreement freezes construction of the reactor’s core, which could, if completed, give Iran a pathway toward obtaining plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Information for this article was contributed by Anne Gearan and Joby Warrick of The Washington Post and by Deb Riechmann, George Jahn, John Heilprin, Jamey Keaten and Robert Reid of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/24/2013

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