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Iran nuclear deal: negotiators announce 'framework' agreement Iran nuclear deal: negotiators announce 'framework' agreement
(35 minutes later)
Six world powers and Iran have agreed a framework for a historic deal over Iran’s nuclear weapons after marathon talks in Lausanne that ran into eight days – two days beyond the original deadline. Iran has promised to make drastic cuts to its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief as part of a historic breakthrough in Lausanne on Thursday night that could end a 13-year nuclear standoff.
The framework paves the way for comprehensive deal outlining the shape of Iran’s future nuclear programme at the end of June, and marks a high point of compromise so far, which many thought would never be achieved because of the concessions required of each side. The “political understanding”, announced in the Swiss city’s technical university and accompanied by a list of agreed parameters, followed 18 months of intensive bargaining, culminating in an eight-day period of near continuous talks that went long into the night, and on Wednesday, all the way through the night.
Related: Iran nuclear talks: 'framework' deal agreed - live updatesRelated: Iran nuclear talks: 'framework' deal agreed - live updates
A joint statement between Iranian foreign minister Mohammed Javad Zarif and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini was read out on Thursday evening, hailing a “decisive step”. Reading out a joint statement, the European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini hailed what she called a “decisive step” after more than a decade of work.
Mogherini said the seven nations would now start writing the text of a final accord. She cited several agreed-upon restrictions on Iran’s enrichment of material that can be used either for energy production or in nuclear warheads. She said Iran won’t produce weapons-grade plutonium. The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, told reporters the agreement would show “our program is exclusively peaceful, has always been and always will remain exclusively peaceful”, while not hindering the country’s pursuit of atomic energy for civilian purposes.
Crucially for the Iranians, economic sanctions related to its nuclear programs are to be rolled back after the UN nuclear agency confirms compliance. The US secretary of state, John Kerry, mindful of scepticism back in the US, declared: “A final deal will not rely on promises, it will rely on proof.”
US secretary of state John Kerry and the top diplomats of Britain, France and Germany also briefly took the stage behind them. The declaration of a framework deal is both preliminary and partial. It does not cover all the issues in dispute and is intended to be only a precursor to a full comprehensive and detailed agreement due to be completed by the end of June. Before then, the understanding must survive attack from hardliners, in both Iran and the US.
In Lausanne, Kerry said in a tweet that there was agreement “to resolve major issues on nuclear program. Back to work soon on a final deal.” But the joint statement and the details published in Lausanne on Thursday represent a set of basic compromises that had eluded negotiators for many years. Iran will cut its nuclear infrastructure to the point that western governments are satisfied it would take a year to “breakout” and build a bomb, if Tehran chose to follow that path.
Zarif told reporters the agreement would show “our program is exclusively peaceful, has always been and always will remain exclusively peaceful,” while not hindering the country’s pursuit of atomic energy for civilian purposes. At the same time, Iran will open itself up to a level of monitoring and scrutiny of its nuclear programme that is likely to unparalleled anywhere in the world.
“Our facilities will continue,” he said. “We will continue enriching, we will continue research and development.” When all that has been achieved, which could be in as little as six months, the overwhelming bulk of international sanctions would be lifted and Iran would re-enter the global economy.
He said a planned heavy water reactor will be “modernised” and that the Iranians would keep their deeply buried underground facility at Fordo. The accord also has the potential to be a turning point in normalising Iran’s adversarial relations with the west, which have been a constant in world affairs since the Islamic revolution of 1979.
“We have taken a major step but are still some way away from where we want to be,” Zarif said, calling Thursday’s preliminary step as a “win-win outcome”. “This could be one of the most important diplomatic achievements in a generation or more,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.
Barack Obama immediately sought to sell the deal to sceptical US Congress, describing it as “the best option by far” and warning that pulling out now could lead to another military conflict in the Middle East. If implemented, the agreement would “cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon”. The UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, said: “This is well beyond what many of us thought possible even 18 months ago.”
He said Iran would face “the most robust and intrusive inspections and transparency regime ever negotiated for any nuclear program in history”, adding: “If Iran cheats, the world will know it.” Among the main points of the understanding unveiled in Lausanne are:
The US president is expected to face intense opposition on Capitol Hill, particularly from Republicans, who are determined to use their control of both chambers of the legislature to undermine an agreement they believe is soft on Tehran. The first major test of the understanding will come in the next few days when John Kerry is expected to present the details to a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, ahead of a vote on a bill that would give Congress the power to accept or reject any nuclear agreement, and another that would impose new sanctions.
Obama acknowledged there would be “a robust debate in the weeks and months to come” but insisted the agreement was both the most peaceful and effective method to ensure Iran does not obtain a nuclear weapon. “If we can get this done, and Iran follows through on the framework that our negotiators agreed to, we will be able to resolve one of the greatest threats to our security, and to do so peacefully.” Kerry’s opposite number at the talks, Mohammad Javad Zarif, is expected to return to Tehran to a hero’s welcome, from a public desperate to escape the shackles of sanctions, but he has frequently warned his fellow negotiators that he will face a backlash from hardliners opposed to dismantling any of Iran’s prized nuclear infrastructure.
The president also compared the deal to agreements signed between the US and the Soviet Union during the Cold War which he said were imperfect but made the world safer. Kazem Sadjadpour, and Iranian university professor, said on state TV: “I feel very proud as an Iranian … This is a turning point in Iran’s history of diplomacy. “This is a night of mourning for [Israeli PM Binyamin] Netanyahu and his warmongering allies in the US congress.”
The negotiations were the 19th round of high-level talks in the 18 months since Zarif and Kerry first met on the margins of the 2013 UN general assembly. The nuclear standoff with Iran has been a threat to global security and non-proliferation for well over a decade, since a uranium enrichment plant at Natanz and a heavy water production plant at Arak were exposed in 2002 by an opposition group, most likely using Israeli intelligence.
The talks – the culmination of a 12-year process – became hung up on the issues of Iran’s nuclear centrifuge research, details on the lifting of UN sanctions, and how they would be re-imposed if Iran breached the agreement. The next year negotiations began with European states in which Iran offered to limit its capacity to 3,000 centrifuges if its right to enrichment was recognised. The deal had collapsed by 2005, and for the next eight years there was no sign of compromise as the international community ratcheted up sanctions and Iran responded defiantly by expanding its nuclear programme, moving from production of low enriched uranium or 20%-enriched uranium, a major step towards the capacity to make weapons grade fissile material.
Zarif, Kerry, the Germany foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and Mogherini, held a night session on Wednesday in Lausanne’s Beau-Rivage Palace hotel, lasting more than eight hours and ending at 6am on Thursday. The confrontation continued to escalate until 2013 and the election of a pragmatist president in Iran, Hassan Rouhani, who acted swiftly to establish lines of communication with the White House, and between Kerry and Zarif. An interim deal was agreed in November 2013 that halted production of 20%-enriched uranium and eliminated Iran’s stockpile of the material in return for access to $700 million a month of its assets frozen around the world.
The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, joined the talks at midnight, and the UK foreign secretary, Philip Hammond, returned after a few hours’ break in the early hours. The interim deal, known as the Joint Plan of Action, bought time for a comprehensive agreement which was initially intended to be completed by July last year. The negotiators gave themselves another four months until November, and then after marathon talks in Vienna, it was postponed again, setting June 30 as the new deadline.
Foreign ministry political directors remained in the conference rooms even after the ministers had gone to bed, and the ministerial negotiations resumed just before 11am.
The Bloomberg news agency quoted the diplomatic historian Alan Henrikson as saying that a US secretary of state had not stayed at a single site negotiating a single issue for such a long time since the 1978 Camp David negotiations with Egypt and Israel.
It is almost 100 years since Washington’s top diplomats spent so much time negotiating on foreign soil. The last time was the 1919 Versailles peace conference after the first world war, Henrikson said.
Iran framework deal – details
Some of the key points announced by Mogherini