Negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program will be extended through the end of June, according to a Tuesday report, with the nations involved set to put out a statement that they’ve made progress.
The statement from Iran, the U.S. and the five other countries involved in the talks will launch another round of talks. They will also release more technical documents, The Associated Press reported.
{mosads}Significant differences reportedly still remain between the parties on key questions of the talks.
The Iranian negotiating team has not yet agreed to the documents that will be released, the AP said.
Negotiators have been working with a self-imposed Tuesday deadline to determine a framework for a deal. Still, they were not predicted to finish until June under the original timeline, when parties were expected to agree on the more technical questions related to the nuclear program.
The Obama administration has said that it did not want to extend the talks in Lausanne, Switzerland. But Secretary of State John Kerry has for months left open the possibility that an extension of some sort would be feasible if the parties appeared to have honed in on the outline of a deal.
Officials will make the argument that they are moving into a new phase of the talks rather than continuing the current one, the AP reported.
The decision to forge ahead with the talks makes them vulnerable to attacks from Congress, which has pledged to pursue new sanctions against Iran.
The U.S. is pushing for a deal that would extend Iran’s breakout time, or how long it would take it to build a nuclear weapon, to one year, and freeze its nuclear program for at least 10.
Two other areas of contention are reportedly Iran’s development of other technology that could be used to make a nuclear weapon and the time frame for lifting the economic sanctions that have hurt Tehran.