Deal would get Iran nuclear help

VIENNA — Western powers are offering Tehran high-tech reactors under a proposed nuclear agreement, a confidential document reads, but a defiant speech by Iran’s supreme leader less than a week before a negotiating deadline casts doubt on whether he’s willing to make concessions to seal a deal.

The talks, which resumed Wednesday in Vienna, on restraining Iranian efforts to make atomic arms appeared to be behind schedule. A draft document, one of several appendices meant to accompany the deal’s main body, has bracketed text in dozens of places where disagreements remain. Technical cooperation is the least controversial issue at the talks, and the number of brackets suggest each side has a ways to go only on that topic and other disputes before the deal’s June 30 deadline.

Iran’s top leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Tuesday rejected a long-term freeze on nuclear research and supported barring international inspectors from military sites. Khamenei, in comments on Iranian state television, also said Iran would sign a final deal only if all economic sanctions were first lifted. The preliminary deal calls for sanctions to be lifted gradually after a pact is finalized.

In Washington, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said Wednesday, “What we’re most focused on are the actions, not the words.” That would involve the “actions of the Iranians as they implement the agreement, if one can be reached,” he said, including cooperation with “intrusive inspections.” A day earlier, he suggested the talks could go past the June 30 deadline.

In another sign the Islamic Republic might be toughening its stance, Iran’s Guardian Council on Wednesday enacted legislation banning access to military sites and scientists, according to state television.

Both Washington and the International Atomic Energy Agency — the U.N. monitor of Iranian compliance to any deal — say IAEA experts need access to watch Tehran’s nuclear programs and to breathe life into a long-stalled investigation of suspicions that Iran worked on nuclear arms.

Graham Allison, who directs Harvard’s Belfer Center think tank, told the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Khamenei’s ban on visits to military facilities would be “a show-stopper” for a deal.

The West has held out the prospect of providing Iran peaceful nuclear technology in the nearly decadelong effort to reduce Tehran’s ability to make nuclear weapons. But the scope of the help now being offered in the draft displeases U.S. congressional critics, who say Washington is giving away too much.

Iran denies any interest in or work on nuclear weapons and is prepared to make concessions on limits for relief from economic penalties. Beyond a pact limiting Iran’s ability to make a nuclear weapon for at least 10 years, the U.S. and its partners hope to eliminate grounds for Iran to argue that it needs to expand programs that could be used to make such arms once an agreement expired.