A series of miscalculations by the Obama administration and world powers were behind a failure to complete a first-stage agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program this weekend despite days of rising expectations of a deal, said diplomats involved in the process.
Washington sought to take the developments in stride, quickly moving to salvage a deal by dispatching senior American diplomats to Israel and the Persian Gulf to try to win over skeptical allies and show the delay could lead to a better agreement with Tehran.
"We are not blind, and I don't think we're stupid," Secretary of State
John Kerry said on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday. "I think we have a pretty strong sense of how to measure whether or not we are acting in the interests of our country and of the globe."
Chief international diplomats agreed that negotiators would meet again in 10 days, an indication that they expect to build on momentum from promising moments during the weekend's meetings in Switzerland. Unlike the final two days of last week's talks, however, negotiations will be conducted by senior officials, not foreign ministers.
The talks in Geneva stumbled at an ambitious moment because of developments that were unforeseen by top officials from the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran, the diplomats said.
One was the intractability of Israel's opposition. While Washington and other powers were well aware of Israel's deep antipathy to a deal, they didn't expect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to campaign to scuttle it by lobbying leaders around the world as diplomats met in Geneva, diplomats said.
Similarly, despite France's difficult history with Iran, diplomats said they didn't expect the French foreign minister to go public with a warning of a "fool's game" just as negotiations reached a critical point on Saturday.
The talks also were hamstrung by what many diplomats saw as shortcomings in the accord being considered. The proposed initial deal failed to address potentially dangerous elements posed by Iran's expanding nuclear program—in particular, Tehran's heavy water reactor in the city of Arak, which will be able to produce plutonium when it begins operating as early as next year.
Iran might not begin producing plutonium usable in weapons for more than a year after it begins operations, say nuclear experts. U.S. officials stress, meanwhile, that they don't believe Tehran has built a reprocessing facility that would allow it to harvest plutonium from the reactor's spent fuel.
Still, in recent months, as the start date for Arak has grown closer, U.S. and European officials have increasingly worried that they could be nearing a point of no return for Tehran's nuclear program.
Any possibility of using military force to halt Arak's construction is considered problematic once Iranian engineers begin feeding nuclear fuel into the reactor. An attack at that point would cause an environmental disaster if nuclear waste were to be discharged.
As it grapples with those issues, the Obama administration faces resistance not only from Israel, but from Israel's allies in the U.S. Congress. Democrats and Republicans in the Senate have voiced support for passage of new sanctions against Iran, and a bill that would do so is awaiting action before the Senate Banking Committee.
Sen.
Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) — who also is a member of the Banking Committee, which would vote first on the bill—said Sunday that heftier sanctions are possible, with the provision that they would cease if an acceptable deal were reached.
"It's insurance for the United States to make sure that Iran actually complies with an agreement that we would want to see, which is of course desirable," he said on ABC's "This Week."
The talks in Geneva—conducted by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, a bloc known as the P5+1—appeared to lurch ahead when Secretary of State John Kerry and other top-ranking diplomats began to arrive on Friday. That fueled the perception that an accord was imminent.
The optimistic tone faded when French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius began to question the deal's contents. Among the P5+1 countries, France, along with the U.K. and Germany, has had the most extensive experience negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program. The three countries conducted two years of ultimately unsuccessful talks with Tehran from 2003-2004, leaving many senior French diplomats deeply suspicious about Iran's sincerity. Tehran blamed the U.S. for scuttling that deal.
Iranian and Western diplomats said they were broadsided when Mr. Fabius broke diplomatic protocol and told French radio Saturday afternoon that Paris wouldn't accept a deal with inadequate mechanisms for limiting Iran's ability both to enrich uranium and to bring the Arak facility online.
Diplomats in the P5+1 said Mr. Fabius's interview broke an agreement among the parties not to publicly discuss the details of the negotiations. U.S. and European officials didn't challenge the merits of Mr. Fabius's arguments. But he took a demanding position among the negotiating countries, according to a Western diplomat.
Mr. Fabius was quickly backed up by Mr. Netanyahu. Mr. Kerry had sought unsuccessfully earlier in the week to gain the Israeli leader's support for talks, but Mr. Netanyahu publicly warned that Israel wasn't obligated to abide by any agreement.
On Saturday, Mr. Netanyahu increased the pressure. He called the leaders of the U.K., Russia, Germany and the Netherlands and argued against accepting the current deal with Iran. "I asked the leaders: What's the rush? I suggested to wait," Mr. Netanyahu told Israeli reporters.
As hopes for an agreement started to fade, Mr. Kerry redoubled his efforts late Saturday. U.S. officials took to email and Twitter messages to advise reporters that a deal wasn't dead. And European leaders said there was still 50-50 chance.
Mr. Kerry also continued to reach out to Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif.
Ultimately, diplomats said they still hadn't gotten the assurances they needed from the Iranians. And they sought to maintain unity amongst the P5+1, particularly France. "We worked very closely with the French," Mr. Kerry told reporters as the negotiation ended at 1 a.m. on Sunday.
A senior negotiator involved in the three days of talks in Geneva, said: "The other side [Iran] is trying to blame France, as it suits a game plan. But the truth is that we made a lot of very concrete progress, but not enough for a good deal that holds."
Washington is continuing to try and salvage a diplomatic initiative that could define President
Barack Obama's foreign policy legacy. Mr. Kerry dined with the crown prince of the United Arab Emirates in Abu Dhabi Sunday in another attempt to gain support from skeptical Persian Gulf states. The U.S. lead negotiator, Wendy Sherman, traveled to Israel to confer with Mr. Netanyahu.
And Mr. Fabius's office challenged the perception that France was seeking to torpedo an agreement with Iran.
"We are not far from an accord. We have made progress, but we still have work to do," a senior French official said Sunday.
