Iranian president says nuclear deal with the west is getting closer

President Hassan Rouhani has said that a nuclear deal with the west is getting closer, as a report emerged of a possible compromise between American and Iranian negotiators over uranium enrichment.

After meeting the heads of the country’s parliament and judiciary, Rouhani was quoted by the Mehr news agency as saying: “We have narrowed the gaps,” adding that although “some issues and differences remain ... The west has realised that it should recognise the rights of the Iranian people.”

Even Ali Larijani, the parliamentary speaker and a noted hardliner on nuclear talks, declared himself “not pessimistic” about the trajectory of the negotiations.

Nuclear talks between Iran and six major powers are due to resume later this month in Geneva ahead of a March deadline for arriving at a basic framework agreement. A comprehensive permanent settlement would be reached by the end of June.

The Associated Press reported on Tuesday that US and Iranian negotiators have been discussing a compromise that could break the main impasse to an agreement over Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium. Iran has been adamant that it will not accept a major reduction to its current capacity of about 10,000 operational centrifuges. Meanwhile, the US and its allies have been pushing for less than 4,000, on the grounds that any greater capacity would allow Iran to enrich enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb within a year, should Tehran decide to build a nuclear arsenal.

The possible compromise under consideration, according to the AP, would see most of the 10,000 centrifuges in operation left in place but reconfigured so that they would be less productive. One way of doing that would be to spin the centrifuges more slowly. Other measures would be agreed upon to reassure the west that Iran could not make a warhead quickly, such as reducing its stockpile of uranium hexafluoride gas – the form in which uranium can be enriched by centrifuge.

Some observers have cautioned against interpreting the report as a sign of an imminent breakthrough.

“I think this report is reading too much into some of the innovative ideas that have been on the table, but not yet finalized,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group. “The negotiators are no longer moving in circles. It’s more like an upward spiral now. But there is no silver bullet solution that can all of a sudden resolve the enrichment issue.”

Enrichment capacity is not the only sticking point at the talks. Iran is also demanding that the west lift sanctions faster than the timetable that has been put forward.

The deadline for the negotiations to be completed has already been extended seven months, after the parties failed to reach an accord in Vienna last November. Rouhani’s government in Tehran and the Obama administration in Washington are alike negotiating under heavy pressure from hardliners in both camps.

The Republican majority in Congress has asked the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, to come to Washington next month to make the case against a deal, in what is widely seen a powerful challenge to Obama’s authority, but the White House has managed to persuade congressional Democrats to fend off a vote on new sanctions until the end of March, pending the outcome of the Geneva talks. Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, meanwhile, voted on Tuesday to fast-track its own retaliatory legislation, which would, if adopted, escalate Iran’s nuclear programme and jettison an interim deal reached in 2013, known as the Joint Plan of Action, that was designed to impose limits on enrichment and other activities until a comprehensive agreement could be reached.

Under the legislation being prepared in the Majlis, Rouhani’s government would be obliged to respond to any new US sanctions by expanding uranium enrichment and accelerating development of the heavy water reactor at Arak, which is capable of producing plutonium.