Deal reached with Iran to limit its nuclear program; President Obama to speak shortly

Break­ing, his­toric news tonight. From the New York Times:

The for­eign pol­i­cy chief of the Euro­pean Union and Iran­ian offi­cials announced a land­mark accord Sun­day morn­ing that would tem­porar­i­ly freeze Tehran’s nuclear pro­gram and lay the foun­da­tion for a more sweep­ing accord.

After marathon talks that final­ly end­ed ear­ly Sun­day morn­ing, the Unit­ed States and five oth­er world pow­ers reached an agree­ment with Iran to halt much of Iran’s nuclear pro­gram. It was the first time in near­ly a decade, Amer­i­can offi­cials said, that steps had been tak­en to stop much of Iran’s nuclear effort and even roll some ele­ments back.

The freeze would last six months, with the aim of giv­ing inter­na­tion­al nego­tia­tors time to pur­sue the far more chal­leng­ing task of draft­ing a com­pre­hen­sive accord that would ratch­et back much of Iran’s nuclear pro­gram and ensure that it could be used only for peace­ful purposes.

The Times sto­ry, by Michael Gor­don, sketch­es out a more detailed out­line of the deal. It was nego­ti­at­ed in Gene­va, Switzer­land by top diplo­mats from the Unit­ed States, the Euro­pean Union, and Iran. The head of the Euro­pean Union, Cather­ine Ash­ton, has already con­firmed on Twit­ter that a deal has been reached.

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma will address the nation short­ly from the White House to dis­cuss the his­toric agree­ment. The White House sched­uled the address for 7:15 PM but it’s like­ly it won’t hap­pen for at least sev­er­al min­utes after that, par­tic­u­lar­ly since news net­works don’t seem to be ready. (CNN broke into its pro­gram­ming first, MSNBC took sev­er­al min­utes to inter­rupt “Lock­up” with live coverage).

The Asso­ci­at­ed Press has tweet­ed that one of its sources has said the deal does not rec­og­nize Iran’s right to enrich ura­ni­um, but of course Iran may por­tray the agree­ment some­what differently.

(Tech­ni­cal­ly speak­ing, the Unit­ed States does­n’t rec­og­nize that oth­er nations have a “right” to enrich ura­ni­um. Most of the world’s nations do not have nuclear weapons pro­grams, or even nuclear pow­er plants).

His­toric tweets:

We have reached an agreement.

— Javad Zarif (@JZarif) 6:03 PM Pacif­ic — 23 Nov 2013

#EU High Rep #Ash­ton: “We have reached agree­ment between E3+3 and Iran.”

— Michael Mann (‏@EUHighRepSpox) 5:55 PM Pacif­ic — 23 Nov 2013

Agree­ment in Gene­va: first step makes world safer. More work now. ‑JK [John Ker­ry] #IranTalks

— Depart­ment of State (@StateDept) 5:55 PM — 23 Nov 2013