Iranian Nuclear Talks Enter Overtime As Debate Continues On Key Issues

Transcript

AUDIE CORNISH, HOST:

We begin this hour in Switzerland, where nuclear negotiations with Iran continue. The two sides are struggling to reach a final agreement. The White House says Iran must make serious commitments to limit its nuclear program if it wants sanctions lifted. Iran's foreign minister says the U.S. and other nations must show political will if they want the talks to succeed.

David Sanger of The New York Times is in Switzerland covering the talks. I spoke with him about the different perspectives the U.S. and Iran bring to the table. He says Americans are focused on numbers.

DAVID SANGER: You know, we're Americans, and we want to be able to weigh and measure everything. And what we're weighing and measuring here is whether or not the Iranians could get to a single nuclear weapon's worth of material in a year or less. So the Americans who are here, that's all a matter of inputs. How much fuel do you have? How many centrifuges do you have running? How fast are they spinning? What kind of limits can we put on that?

Now, the Iranians come to it from a very different viewpoint. Their view is that they are reemerging as a rising Persian power. They want respect, and that means an end to the sanctions that have crippled their economy. They certainly want to be treated as an equal, and they want to make sure that they are not perceived at home as giving in to American demands to dismantle anything that they have built up with such great national pride.

CORNISH: What does this tell us about the constituencies that each side is essentially speaking to, right, based on what we're seeing publicly?

SANGER: Well, the United States is speaking to a constituency in Congress, particularly Republicans, who believe this deal ultimately will, as Benjamin Netanyahu said in his address to Congress, pave the way to a bomb, not stop a bomb. And they have to prove that isn't the case. The Iranians are trying to push a narrative with their own people that the United States is not dictating to them, and that after a brief pause of 10 years or so in order to get those sanctions off, they will resume as a country that has the same nuclear rights as any other nation like Japan or Brazil, that also makes nuclear fuel.

CORNISH: So what does that mean behind closed doors? I mean, when we hear that they've been spending hours in a room together, what kind of conversation is that?

SANGER: Well, partly it's a conversation about those numbers and limits - what they actually look like. But partly it seems to be a discussion of how do you talk about those limits? Do you put this on paper? How much of a commitment do you make? The Iranians are likely to be arguing - we believe they are arguing - that you want to be as vague as possible before the final agreement is signed, because otherwise hardliners in Iran would step in and kill it.

Now, of course, for Secretary Kerry, he needs to be as specific as possible, because if he can't show that he's making real progress, Congress is going to move ahead or could move ahead with its threat to issue more sanctions, which would probably kill off this negotiation.

CORNISH: David Sanger, it's been 35 years since these two sides have had anything resembling like real public dialogue. What are the inherent challenges for these two countries?

SANGER: Well, one inherent challenge is to decide whether or not this agreement is just about nuclear control or whether it is the opening wedge of a rapprochement of some kind between the United States and Iran. To the Iranians that seems ridiculous. Their view is that they're here to solve a problem - get rid of the sanctions - and that people here are not really in power to create a deeper relationship. And, of course, many of the most powerful Iranians, who have a big say in this issue, are not here. So the question is are these very westernized Iranian negotiators empowered to reach this kind of a deal? And we simply don't know yet.

CORNISH: That's New York Times national security correspondent David Sanger. David, thank you so much for speaking with us.

SANGER: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.