QUESTION: I was hoping you could just give us your on-the-record assessment of the P-5+1 talks and whether or not you think we are now at risk of talking for talk's sake, (inaudible) that the next round of technical discussions in July are sort of more talks added on discussions which are clearly going nowhere.
MS. NULAND: Well, I think you saw yesterday that there was a conscious decision made that we didn't - we had not made enough progress to have - to commit ourselves to another session at the political level yet, that we need to have technical experts sit down first to work through with the Iranians the details of the proposal that the P-5+1 has put forward. Because although they are engaging now in a detailed way, there seems to be lack of understanding in their appreciation of why we're asking for what we're asking for. And then they've made some assertions in their proposal that we really need to work through as well.
So we don't want to have talks for talk's sake. We want to ensure that if we're going to continue this process that it's going to produce results, which is why the next stage is to have experts meet in Istanbul on July 3rd and see if we can close some of the gaps in comprehension here.
QUESTION: So that July 3rd meeting will then be the final sort of make or break - I mean, if that doesn't get the progress that you're seeking, will the whole process essentially be dead?
MS. NULAND: Well, I'm not going to predict before we have that meeting where we're going to go. But the clear path that Lady Ashton laid out yesterday was we need to see if we make progress at that meeting. We'll then have a subsequent session between Lady Ashton's deputy and the Iranians. And at that point we will, as a P-5+1 community, decide what makes sense. But we've always said that we're not going to have talks for their sake. If they can't make progress - that we have to make concrete progress.
QUESTION: One final one on this. U.S. - unnamed U.S. officials in Moscow and named official David Cohen of Treasury speaking to Haaretz have suggested that the failure of the Moscow talks to achieve the desired results will cause new - or may - will spur additional sanctions, more than have already been proposed or that are already in train. Can you elaborate on that at all? Does the U.S. plan to - and does allies plan to start stepping up new sanctions now because Moscow didn't work?
MS. NULAND: Well, in the first instance, as we made clear to the Iranians before and during the talks, the - all the remaining sanctions that were scheduled to come into place on July 1st, both U.S. sanctions and EU sanctions, will come into force. So that is a fact of more pressure that's coming the Iranians way. But as Lady Ashton said, as we have said, if following this July 3rd session we are still not making progress, we're going to continue to work together on what more pressure we can bring to bear, including on the sanctions track.
QUESTION: Is there a concern that the Iranians are stalling by, in fact, forcing this technical level meeting?
MS. NULAND: I don't want to characterize the Iranian position, except to say that we need - there are very significant gaps in terms of what they think concrete steps are and what we think concrete steps are, and those gaps have got to be closed in order to consider that progress is being made.
QUESTION: I'm a bit confused, because I thought that the period of time between the last meeting in Istanbul and - wasn't in - in Baghdad and this meeting was supposed to be the time that they figured out what exactly it was that was on the table. Is that not the case?
MS. NULAND: As I understand it, the advance, if you want to call it that, between the Baghdad meeting and this meeting was that if in the Baghdad meeting the way the Iranians approached it was relatively general, in this meeting they came with a relatively serious comments about what we had put on the table. But that doesn't change the fact that aspects of it clearly need further elaboration among experts. And what they've put on the table needs further elaborating among experts with us.
QUESTION: I'm sorry. I don't understand. What is so hard to understand about stop enriching at 20 percent, get the 20 percent out, and open up Qom. Where's the - what --
MS. NULAND: Well, we're going to --
QUESTION: What possible explanation could they want?
MS. NULAND: We're going to make the effort at the experts level to explain to them why, from our perspective, these steps are essential if you're going to give the international community confidence.
QUESTION: But the --
MS. NULAND: I can't speak for why they're having --
QUESTION: Well, here's the thing, though.
MS. NULAND: -- difficulty understanding that, Matt.
QUESTION: But their calls on the Hill are - I mean, it does not matter why you want this. This is your demand. Why is it up to you to explain to them why you want this to be done?
MS. NULAND: Again, there was a sense based on what happened in Moscow - and I obviously wasn't in the room - that it was worth getting technical experts together to talk through all of the details of what we've put on the table and to understand better why they think their proposal is sufficient, because we don't think it is sufficient. And then we'll go from there.
QUESTION: Right. But I mean it seems to me - do you agree or not agree that the P-5+1 position is very straightforward and not that difficult to understand?
MS. NULAND: Again, I'm not going to --
QUESTION: No, no. From --
MS. NULAND: I wasn't in the room. I wasn't - I can't speak --
QUESTION: No. I understand that. But, I mean, you know what it is. We think we know what it is. And if it is what we think it is, and what we've been told it is, it seems to me pretty clear. It doesn't seem to need any elaboration. So the fact that - and people on the Hill are going to make this argument to you - that you're just - you're allowing them to - you're giving them more time to kind of screw around and do nothing. And I just want - I mean, do you - do you, meaning the State Department - do you think that this proposal, the proposal the P-5+1 put on the table, needs elaboration?
MS. NULAND: Again, I haven't been in the room when this was discussed, but the sense was that we would try this expert-to-expert, roll up sleeves among people who do nuclear things, and see what it leads to. But it doesn't change the fact that the pressure from the international community continues to grow on Iran. So if they are trying to run out the clock here, they're going to run out the clock in the context of the noose tightening and tightening and tightening on them. So they need to think about whether that's in their interest.
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