Iran might accept 10-year freeze of nuclear program

A deal in the Iran nuclear talks looks possible after the Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif suggested that a 10-year moratorium might be acceptable to Tehran. This would mean a freeze of the sensitive nuclear activities for at least a decade, as President Barack Obama announced on Monday, a demand initially called “excessive and illogical” by the Iranian diplomat.

Zarif, who held talks with US Secretary of State John Kerry in Montreux, Switzerland, changed his tone since then and mentioned that it depends on how the limits on the nuclear program would be defined.

“If we have an agreement, we are prepared to accept certain limitations for a certain period of time but I’m not prepared to negotiate on the air”, the Iranian diplomat said in an interview for CNN, according to Reuters.

“There are a lot of details that need to be discussed. We have made some progress,” Zarif continued. “We will have to work very, very hard for the next few weeks.”

He also explained that an agreement is still far from being reached, but this will only happen if there will be the necessary political will, and added that everybody has to make “tough choices”.

President Barack Obama said that Iran must commit to a verifiable freeze of at least 10 years on sensitive nuclear activity in order to reach a deal with the six world powers. In exchange, he offered some relief from the sanctions that have crippled the Iranian economy, but the idea was immediately rejected as “unacceptable and threatening”.

US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran have set a deadline of late March to reach a framework agreement and of June for a final settlement. Up until now, said the German Foreign Minister, the negotiations had made more progress in the past year than in the previous decade.

The latest round of negotiations between the two sides took place hours before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech in the Congress, where he warned the deal being negotiated was a serious mistake. Netanyahu criticized the talks saying that US and the other countries involved are “giving up” and “accepting” that Iran will have nuclear weapons.