Lausanne--US Secretary of State John Kerry and his Iranian counterpart meet in Switzerland on Thursday for a final round of talks before a March 31 deadline to agree the outlines of an elusive nuclear deal.
This "framework" accord -- no one knows how detailed it will be -- is meant to be fleshed out into a comprehensive agreement by July 1 that severely restricts Iran's ability to obtain nuclear weapons.
Here are the possible contours of such an agreement, which Iran and the US, China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany (the P5+1) have been negotiating since late 2013.
- UN inspections -
Few details have been leaked, but it appears this final deal would see Iran reduce its nuclear activities in scale and place those that remain under ultra-tight UN inspections.
This would extend the "breakout time" that Iran in theory needs to make one bomb's worth of material -- highly "enriched" uranium or plutonium -- to at least a year from a few months at present.
The assumption is that the international community would then have enough time to detect such a move, through intense diplomatic pressure or military action.
- Centrifuges -
The P5+1 want Iran to slash the number of centrifuges -- enrichment machines -- to several thousand from the current 19,000, around half of which are in operation.
In addition, Iran would close or change the purpose of its virtually impregnable Fordo enrichment facility and send abroad some or all of the uranium already enriched.
The design of a new reactor being built at Arak would meanwhile be changed so it that far less plutonium could be extracted from its spent fuel.
Moreover Iran would limit its research and development of centrifuges able to process uranium several times faster than its current machines.
- Peaceful -
Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons and that it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes such as nuclear power generation and medicines for cancer patients.
It says it needs to expand greatly its enrichment capacities in order to provide fuel for a future fleet of nuclear power stations.
But the P5+1 say that Iran only has one nuclear power station now, which Russia is under contract to supply until at least 2021, and that others are years if not decades away from being built.
Sending Iran's uranium stocks abroad would allow them to be turned into fuel -- a highly complex process -- by another country, most likely Russia.
AFP
