Obama Told Iran Nuclear Negotiators to Disregard Deadline in 11th Hour

By MICHAEL R. GORDON and DAVID E. SANGER

LAUSANNE, Switzerland — If American negotiators are ultimately able to conclude a “political understanding” withIran on its nuclear program, as they said they were striving to do Thursday morning, the seeds might have been planted earlier in the week.

With only hours to go on Tuesday night before the end-of-the-month deadline that had been set by the White House, Secretary of StateJohn Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest J. Moniz stepped into a large tent erected in a luxury hotel here and dialed into a video conference with President Obama.

There was no way to meet the deadline, Mr. Kerry said from the tent, which was designed to defeat eavesdropping. The Iranians, he said, perhaps sensing that the deadline meant a lot in Washington and little in Tehran, were intransigent.

“They were turning our own deadline against us to see if we would give ground,” just to be able to claim that the March 31 date had been met, said one senior official, who would not be identified because of the secrecy surrounding the talks.

Mr. Obama, according to two people familiar with the discussion, told Mr. Kerry and Mr. Moniz to ignore the deadline, make it clear that the president was ready to walk away and leave all sanctions on Iran in place, and see if that would change the dynamic.

It is still not clear if the last-minute change in tactics will succeed in convincing the Iranians that the Obama administration does not want the accord more than they do, or yield a different result.

But it was an example of the negotiating gamesmanship that has taken over the talks here. Mr. Kerry has kept his plane warmed up. Foreign ministers who came to sign an accord have returned home for other duties. France’s top diplomat, Laurent Fabius, tieless, came up in the elevator on Wednesday night musing to his aides that he had been there just a day before.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/02/world/middleeast/iran-nuclear-talks.html?_r=0