On May 13, a senior U.S. official cautioned that the beginning of the drafting process does not necessarily mean a nuclear agreement is imminent. “We do not know if Iran will be able to make the tough decisions they must to ensure the world that they will not obtain a nuclear weapon,” said the official in a background briefing on the eve of talks in Vienna between Iran and the world’s six major powers – Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States. The following are excerpts.
BACKGROUND BRIEFING
As we’ve said previously, at this round we will begin drafting specific language for the comprehensive plan of action. Everyone has approached these talks with seriousness and with professionalism. It also appears that everyone has come to the table wanting a diplomatic solution, but having the intent doesn’t mean it will necessarily happen. Quite frankly, this is very, very, difficult. I would caution people that just because we will be drafting it certainly doesn’t mean an agreement is imminent or that we are certain to eventually get to a resolution of these issues.
There are a range of complicated issues to address. And we do not know if Iran will be able to make the tough decisions they must to ensure the world that they will not obtain a nuclear weapon and that their program is for entirely peaceful purposes, as they have said.
As this process moves forward, there will be a lot of noise out there – some of you might even make – about issues that may be under consideration, people speculating about where we’ve made progress and what the final language on any one issue might look like. There will also be speculation about where the sticking points remain. People will try to read the tea leaves and guess who’s offering what, who’s accepting what, and what is actually on the table for any given topic. I cannot advise you strongly enough not to buy into that kind of speculation.
And I’d also remind people of a very, very critical point: No one can define this agreement by any one element – any element that is under discussion. And no one can predict what the overall comprehensive plan of action will look like from dissecting any one piece of it in isolation. As we’ve said for quite some time now, and I’ve noticed others have begun to pick it up, this process is like solving a Rubik’s Cube. There isn’t only one possible solution to providing the international community with the assurances we need that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, that Iran will not obtain a nuclear weapon, and that there will be appropriate verification and transparency. Put simply, what we are working on is a package, not a checklist. And how we deal with each individual piece affects the overall eventual outcome.
We are quite focused on the July 20th date and we expect to be working every single moment until then. If you remember when we were negotiating the Joint Plan of Action, we were hashing out differences over individual words up until the very last minute, and many of you wrote a few days before it was done, when ministers came to Geneva and then departed, that it wasn’t going to happen, only to come back again and get the deal done.
As we’ve said, this process is far, far more difficult even than the Joint Plan of Action. But we’re committed to undertaking this effort because we know the diplomatic path is the one with the best chance of resolving our concerns in a peaceful way with Iran, and that is all that we all want to do. Finally, before I take your questions, again, speaking to the importance of the package of the combination of elements, nothing is agreed until everything is agreed. The only percentage that matters is 100 percent, and nothing is agreed until everyone agrees to it.
QUESTION: Since last meeting, the tension with Russia [over Ukraine] has reached yet another level. Do you have the feeling that it might impact the unity of the 5+1?
SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL: All I can tell you is that our Russian colleagues have focused in on this negotiation with the same seriousness of purpose that everyone else at the table has.
QUESTION: There’s no impact so far?
SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL: Not discernible.
QUESTION: Talking about the draft, are you going to be approaching it – and I’m not sure you want to answer this – but basically component by component, taking the relatively easy issues first? Or are you going to be looking at it in a totality?
SENIOR U.S. OFFICIAL: One, we’ll have to look at the totality, because, as I’ve said, this is a package. So even if one has a discussion about an element, one will have to return to it again and again and again as you discuss the other elements, which interact with the first element that you might have discussed or the fifth element you might have discussed, to see whether, in fact, the package comes together. That’s why this is so complex. And each one of those has a great deal of technical detail behind it, and so you have to know all the technical details to know whether what you aspire to achieve can actually happen.
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