Iran, world powers adjourn talks with progress but no agreement

With a deadline for a deal just a month away, Iran and world powers have yet to find common ground on key areas being discussed in nuclear talks aimed at reaching a comprehensive agreement, Tehran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Friday.

His remarks, broadcast live on state television, came after five days of negotiations in Vienna that sought to transform an interim deal, which was reached in November, into a lasting accord to resolve a decade-long standoff over Iran's nuclear ambitions.

"We have not reached agreement on the main issues. In some cases, we can see light for agreement but in some others, there is none yet," Zarif told a briefing with Iranian media.

The overarching goal for the United States, Russia, China, France, Britain and Germany, known as the P5+1, is to get Iran to scale back its uranium enrichment program, denying it any capability to move quickly into production of a nuclear bomb. 

Iran denies any such ambition and demands that crippling economic sanctions, eased slightly in recent months, be lifted swiftly as part of any settlement, something that Western governments are loath to do too soon, believing Iran will otherwise lose motivation to comply fully with terms of a final deal. 

"Everybody expected difficult moments in the negotiations," Alireza Nader, a senior policy analyst at the RAND Corporation, told Al Jazeera. 

"It’s not surprising that there are problems,” he said. “Because each side is trying to get the best deal possible."

Both sides made some progress in drafting the workings of a deal, but key sections of the document were left blank, reflecting significant differences on how much Iran needs to limit its nuclear program in exchange for full relief from sanctions. 

Zarif did say that a full agreement was possible at the next round of negotiations in Vienna on July 2, but at the same time, he made clear that there was no common text. 

"This text has more parentheses compared to the number of words," he said, referring to the blank sections in the draft.

Zarif said major differences persisted after five more days of talks in the Austrian capital, and urged the six nations to "abandon excessive demands which will not be accepted by Iran."

The main sticking point, according to Nader, is the number of centrifuges the P5+1 wants Iran to eliminate. 

“Because right now Iran has 19,000 centrifuges – 10,000 operating – and the P5+1 wants to bring that number down, the precise number is not clear, but maybe to 3,000 if not less. But Iran actually wants to keep open the option of installing more centrifuges for what it considers to be its practical needs,” he said.  

“Zarif needs to be able to take this back to Iran and have it be accepted not only by the Supreme Leader, but the Iranian people and eventually the U.S. Congress is going to need to accept this deal and lift sanctions at some point,” Kelsey Davenport, a nonproliferation analyst at the Arms Control Association, told Al Jazeera. 

But U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman said it was Iran that would need to shift its position: "What is still unclear is if Iran is really ready and willing to take all the necessary steps to assure the world that its nuclear program is and will remain exclusively peaceful." 

The sides also must resolve other complex issues, including the extent of U.N. nuclear watchdog monitoring of Iranian nuclear sites, how long any agreement should run and the future of Iran's planned Arak research reactor, a potential source of plutonium for atomic bombs.

Iran moved to eliminate virtually all of its most sensitive stockpile of enriched uranium gas under a landmark preliminary nuclear deal with the six world powers last year, an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on the interim accord's implementation showed on Friday. 

The monthly update by the IAEA, which has a key role in ensuring that Iran lives up to its obligations from the Nov. 24 agreement, showed that Iran was meeting its commitments to curb its disputed energy activities. 

It said since the six-month interim agreement took effect on Jan. 20, Iran had either diluted to a lower enrichment level or fed for conversion into a less proliferation-sensitive oxide form about 97 percent of its holding of uranium gas refined to a fissile concentration of 20 percent. 

"This most recent report notes that Iran’s stockpile of 20 percent enriched Uranium … has been reduced to 4 kg. It was 209 kg in January, which is close to the level necessary to make a bomb when further enriched,” Davenport said. “This is huge in terms of its significance."

“I think both sides have demonstrated that they are taking these negotiations very seriously and that they aim to reach an agreement by July 20," she said. "You have to consider a good deal against the alternative, which is no deal and no deal could result in an unconstrained Iranian nuclear program with less monitoring and verification and possibly increased sanctions on Iran, so that’s in nobody’s best interest."

Philip J. Victor contributed to this report, with wire services