Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani Wants a Nuclear Deal Within Three Months

Iranian President Hassan Rohani said in a newspaper interview on Wednesday that he wants to reach a deal with world powers on Tehran’s nuclear program in three to six months.

“The only way forward is for a timeline to be inserted into the negotiations that’s short,” Rohani was quoted as telling the Washington Post, through a translator, during a visit to New York where he addressed the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday.

“The shorter it is, the more beneficial it is to everyone. If it’s three months that would be Iran’s choice, if it’s six months that’s still good. It’s a question of months not years,” said Rohani when asked for a time frame for resolving Iran’s nuclear dispute with the West.

Rohani’s comments come after Iran’s foreign minister expressed hope on Wednesday that a meeting with top diplomats from the United States and five other powers this week will jump-start negotiations to resolve the decade-long dispute over the Iranian nuclear program.

Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif is set to meet with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry as well as diplomats from Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany on Thursday in New York in a rare encounter between American and Iranian officials.

Asked what he expected from the meeting with the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, Zarif said: “a jump-start to the negotiations … with a view to reaching an agreement within the shortest span.”

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday cautiously embraced overtures from Rohani, as the basis for a possible nuclear deal and challenged him to take concrete steps toward resolving the issue.

Speaking after a meeting with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Zarif added: “The Islamic Republic has the political readiness and political will for serious negotiations and we are hopeful that the opposite side has this will as well.”

“We (Zarif and Fabius)… had a good discussion about the start of nuclear talks and the talks that will take place tomorrow at the foreign ministerial level between Iran and the P5+1,” Zarif said, referring to the so-called P5+1 group comprising the five Security Council powers plus Germany.

Iran has been negotiating with the P5+1 since 2006 about its nuclear program, which Western powers and their allies suspect is aimed at developing a nuclear-weapons capability. Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful civilian energy purposes only.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.