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We seek to negotiate a comprehensive plan of action that, when implemented, will ensure that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon and that Iran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful. A good deal will be one that cuts off the various pathways Iran could take to obtain a nuclear weapon: a uranium pathway, through its activities at Natanz and Fordow; a plutonium pathway, through the Arak heavy water reactor; and a covert pathway. It will therefore need to include tight constraints and strict curbs on Iran’s program, and enhanced monitoring and transparency measures to ensure that any attempt to break out will detected as quickly as possible.

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From January to July, the negotiating teams were hard at work in search of a durable and comprehensive settlement. Based primarily in Vienna, our discussions on all issues were serious and exhaustive. Our experts spent hundreds of hours engaged in dialogue about the technical details. We made tangible progress in key areas, including Fordow, Arak, and IAEA access. However, critical gaps still exist on these and a number of other important elements – including the pivotal issue of uranium enrichment capacity – that must be part of a comprehensive plan.

Under the current four month extension, the commitments under the JPOA will remain in effect. And, in fact, Iran has agreed in the time ahead to substantially increase the pace at which it is turning its stockpile of 20 percent enriched uranium oxide into fuel plates, including 25 kilograms over the next four months. That will make it much harder for that material ever to be used for a weapon. Iran will also mix depleted uranium with its inventory of up to two percent enriched uranium. The result is essentially a dilution of approximately three metric tons of material to its natural state and a step further away from the kind of highly enriched uranium that could be employed in a nuclear weapon.

In return, the P5+1 and EU will continue to suspend the narrow group of sanctions that we committed to suspend when the JPOA was negotiated and will allow Iran access to $2.8 billion dollars of its restricted assets, the four-month prorated amount of the JPOA.

To sum up, under the JPOA, instead of becoming more dangerous over time, Iran’s nuclear activities have been more constrained, more closely inspected, and more transparent. This is the first true freeze in Iran’s nuclear program in nearly a decade.

Meanwhile, sanctions relief for Iran will continue to be targeted and limited to amounts that will do little, if anything, to heal Iran’s deep-seated economic ills. From the perspective of international investors, Iran will remain closed for business. The overall sanctions regime will still be in place. Iran will continue to be cut off from the global financial system. Iran’s oil sector will still be negatively affected by sanctions, as will Iran’s currency. All told, we have sanctioned nearly 680 Iranian individuals and entities under our Iran sanctions authorities. And as we have demonstrated in the past few months, and throughout the past half dozen years, the Obama Administration will continue to enforce sanctions rigorously and thoroughly.

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