U.S. negotiators heading to Geneva this week for new round of Iran talks

PanARMENIAN.Net - U.S. negotiators heading back to Geneva this week for a new round of talks on Iran's nuclear program are under pressure to reach a deal before new sanctions legislation gains traction in Congress, Washington Examiner reports.

Acting Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is leading a U.S. team that will meet Thursday, Jan 15, through Sunday with Iranian negotiators before Jan 18 talks between the "P5+1" group — the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — and Iran.

It will be the second round of talks since an interim deal was again extended on Nov 24 for seven months. Negotiators hope to have the framework for a permanent deal in place by March and finalize it before the extension runs out June 30.

"I expect that once they have this round of discussions they’ll have — they’ll make determinations about the schedule moving forward," State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said last week.

The interim deal, signed in November 2013, was expected to last only six months. Now, the administration is under pressure to show results in the latest round of talks.

Lawmakers, concerned that the administration has lost the leverage necessary to reach a deal that would prevent Iran from being able to build a nuclear weapon, are pushing for new sanctions to prod Tehran. Though the administration was able to block a similar push last year in the Senate, the chamber's new Republican leadership is more supportive of the idea. Democratic support means President Obama could lose a veto fight over sanctions legislation.

A related concern among many lawmakers and observers is that Obama is giving too much in the talks because of his desire for a general rapprochement with Iran. The president fueled that concern in an interview last month with NPR, when he suggested a nuclear deal could lead to improved relations, perhaps even the re-opening of a U.S. embassy in Tehran.

"If we can take that big first step, then my hope would be that that would serve as the basis for us trying to improve relations over time," Obama said, referring to a potential nuclear deal.

"The pressure is as much internally generated as it is a fact of actions on the Hill in the sense that I think that this is absolutely Obama's priority," said Michael Doran, a former National Security Council staffer now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Pressure on the administration also is coming from Tehran, where Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, on Wednesday said his nation should immunize itself against Western sanctions to increase its leverage in the talks, according to the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

Khamenei later tweeted: "US is blatantly saying that even if Iran backs down on nuclear issue, sanctions won’t be lifted at once. Can such an enemy be trusted?"

Though a confrontation with Congress over sanctions may be inevitable, paradoxically it may push the administration to make even more concessions to Tehran to seal a permanent deal, Doran suggested.

"They will go as far toward the Iranians as possible," he said. "I don't see any other way out for the administration."