US President Barack Obama said Tuesday he did not know whether world powers would clinch an interim deal with Iran over its nuclear program during talks this week.
Obama also insisted any relief from crippling international sanctions that Iran could expect under an interim pact was highly limited, pushing back at complaints from political opponents at home and from Israel's government.
"I don't know if we will be able to able to close a deal this week or next week," Obama said at a Wall Street Journal CEO forum on the eve of a new round of talks between the P5+1 group and Iran in Geneva.
The president, hours after meeting senators skeptical of his approach to offer some modest and reversible sanctions relief to Iran as part of an initial nuclear deal, said the bulk of the sanctions regime would remain.
"We are not doing anything around the most powerful sanctions. The oil sanctions, the banking sanctions, the financial services sanctions, those are the ones that have really taken a big chunk out of the Iranian economy."
"All of those sanctions and the architecture for them don't go anywhere."
Obama said the proposed relief, which he described as turning a "spigot," would allow Iran to access a small portion of $100 billion in assets it had in assets frozen overseas by the sanctions.
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