WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration moved on two fronts Monday to advance its nuclear diplomacy with Iran, with talks between top U.S. and Iranian diplomats and an aggressive effort to sell the emerging deal to skeptical American lawmakers and constituencies.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif met at the residence of Iran's ambassador to the United Nations in New York for the first time since April 2, when world powers and Iran sealed a framework agreement that would limit Iran's ability to build a nuclear weapon. They now have little more than two months to meet their own June 30 deadline for a comprehensive accord.
Neither man spoke to reporters as the meeting got underway, but earlier Kerry told a U.N. conference on nuclear non-proliferation that a deal would make the world a safer place. "I want you to know the hard work is far from over and some key issues remain unresolved," he said. "But we are, in fact, closer than ever to the good comprehensive deal that we have been seeking. And if we can get there, the entire world will be safer."
In Washington, lead U.S. negotiator Wendy Sherman told a conference of reform Jews that diplomatic collapse would leave Iran perilously close to nuclear weapons capacity. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz said a final agreement would in some ways be tougher than what the U.S. has outlined thus far.
All the activity was taking place before the Senate begins debate Tuesday over empowering Congress to review and possibly reject any nuclear pact. Republican presidential candidates are lining up to oppose any deal with a government the U.S. considers the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and to show their support for Israel.
Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida wants to require Iran's leaders to publicly accept Israel's right to exist, a nearly impossible mandate. Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas hopes to put the onus on advocates to win congressional approval of a deal, and not on opponents to gather enough votes for rejection.
But even as the legislation moves forward, House Speaker John Boehner privately acknowledged to a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition over the weekend that his party doesn't command enough votes to override a presidential veto of any resolution disapproving of an Iran deal, BloombergView reported. Boehner's spokesman, Michael Steel, didn't dispute the report.
"Obviously, it takes only a fraction of the House and Senate Democrats to sustain a veto, but it is impossible to say whether they will or not until we know what the final "deal' looks like," Steel said.
Kerry and Zarif reconvened after their marathon negotiations in Switzerland with several questions outstanding. Particularly problematic for President Barack Obama and his team are how quickly sanctions would be eased for Tehran in exchange for nuclear concessions, and how to snap economic restrictions back into place quickly if Iran is caught cheating.
At a breakfast meeting with journalists, Moniz, a former MIT physics department head, provided some new detail on the combination of technical limits that the U.S. says would keep Iran at least a year away from assembling enough fissile material for one nuclear weapon for at least a decade.
Hours after the framework was announced, the U.S. said Iran would be permitted to keep 6,104 centrifuges installed. Of these, a little more than 1,000 could be kept at Iran's deeply buried facility at Fordo that may be impervious to U.S. or Israeli air attack. None of those would be permitted to enrich uranium, material that can be used in a nuclear warhead.