US President Barack Obama said on Monday that Iran should commit to a verifiable freeze of at least 10 years on its nuclear activity for a deal to be reached, but said the odds were still against sealing a final agreement.
“If, in fact, Iran is willing to agree to double-digit years of keeping their programme where it is right now and, in fact, rolling back elements of it that currently exist … if we’ve got that, and we’ve got a way of verifying that, there’s no other steps we can take that would give us such assurance that they don’t have a nuclear weapon,” he said in an interview with Reuters.
Obama’s comment about the time frame for a freeze represents one of the U.S. government’s strongest signals yet of its red line for a successful deal, the Reuters report said.
Meanwhile, The U.S. Secretary of State and the Iranian regime’s foreign minister on Tuesday began a second day of talks on curbing the clerical regime’s nuclear programme with the aim of securing a framework agreement by the end of March.
John Kerry and Mohammad Javad Zarif were meeting in the Swiss lakeside town of Montreux.
“Right now, no deal exists, no partial deal exists,” Kerry told a news conference in Geneva. “And unless Iran is able to make the difficult decisions that will be required, there won’t be a deal.”
In Washington, Republican Senator Ted Cruz on Monday slammed negotiators with Iran for “fundamentally” lacking understanding of their Iranian counterparts and warned that the Obama administration was leading the way to a nuclear armed Iran.
“Those who are leading this negotiation fundamentally don’t understand who it is they are negotiating with,” Cruz said.
“I think their view is it’s perfectly acceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons, and they will be part of the rational community of nations,” Cruz said.