Media reports that Iran has backed away from a key aspect of a potential nuclear deal with world powers are not true, the White House said Monday.
The New York Times reported Sunday that Iran said it will no longer ship nuclear fuel out of the country.
“The idea that there had been an agreement that Iran backed away from in the last 24 hours is not true,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One.
“In terms of what’s going to happen with that stockpile, that is something that our negotiators are working through, but it's not accurate to say there had been an agreement that was then backtracked,” he added.
Iran, along with U.S., France, UK, China, Russia, plus Germany, collectively known as the P5+1, have until the end of the day Tuesday to agree to a political framework agreement.
Part of the negotiations have centered around establishing a one-year breakout period, or time it would take for Iran to build a bomb.
That could be accomplished without having Iran ship its nuclear stockpile outside of the country, said State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf, who is currently in the Swiss city of Lusanne where talks are ongoing.
"You can have some other dispositions for it to get us to where we need to be in terms of our bottom line," she said.
As the deadline looms, Schultz said President Barack Obama "is not prepared to take a bad deal."
"It's going to be up to the Iranians in order to make some tough decisions as the deadline nears," Schultz said, adding that Obama has been briefed on the talks "regularly" and "frequently," and has provided guidance to the U.S. team "as the situation warrants."
