W.H.: We’re Open to Further Extending Iran Deadline Admits if No Deal Reached Today

EARNEST: “Julie, do you want to start?”
PACE: “Thanks, Josh. Yesterday you were at least able to describe the talks in terms of making progress. Making up progress they continued on and passed this March 31 deadline. Are we in a place right now where that progress is continuing?”
EARNEST: “The [indecipherable] the talks continue to be productive and that progress is being made. I’ve observed several times over the last few weeks that we’ve been at this for more than a year now. And time has come for the Iranian negotiators to begin to make the kinds of serious commitments the international community, including United States, will insist upon. Those are commitments related to demonstrating that they have shut down every single path to a nuclear weapon and indicating a clear commitment to cooperating with an intrusive set of inspections. And while the talks have been productive, we have not yet received the specific tangible commitments the international community seeks.”
PACE: “So yesterday when you described the productivity and the progress of the talks, you said as long as they continue you’d will be willing to go into Wednesday, today. If the progress continues today and there is no deal by the end of the day [indecipherable] in Switzerland right now —“
EARNEST: “That’s right.”
PACE: “Are you willing to go into Thursday or later into this week?”
EARNEST: “Well, I don’t have any update on the schedule simply because it still is the evening in Switzerland and they are still working on this. I’d not — I think our approach to these conversations hasn’t changed which is that as long as we are in a position of convening serious talks that are making progress that we would not arbitrarily or abruptly ended them. But if we are in a situation where we sense that the talks have stalled, then yes, the United States and the international community is prepared to walk away because we’ve been very clear about what kind of commitments we expect and we’ve been clear about those kinds of commitments for — in excess of the year. At the same time I don’t want to oversimplify what we’re dealing with here. This is a very complicated situation and we want to be sure that we were clear about the details, the details in the situation matter significantly. Those talks in Switzerland are ongoing and we will continue to monitor them from here, but for updates in the schedule we will wait for those announcements to be made.”

PACE: “All right. I just want to make sure I am getting it right because it is an important point. If we get to the end of today and there is no agreement but there is still progress, it will extend into tomorrow?”

EARNEST: “Well, any type of schedule update like that would come from the negotiators. I am at this point reluctant to fast-forward to what would happen at the end of the day if an agreement is not reached because they are still discussing an agreement right now as we speak. So I don’t want to get ahead of those ongoing negotiations. But I do think it’s fair for you to assume that the approach that we demonstrated yesterday is one that will continue to demonstrate which is placing a priority on the productive nature of the talks in trying to reach an agreement.”